8 ideas
2572 | Logical truth seems much less likely to 'correspond to the facts' than factual truth does [Haack] |
Full Idea: It is surely less plausible to suppose that logical truth consists in correspondence to the facts than that 'factual' truth does. | |
From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.6) |
2570 | The same sentence could be true in one language and meaningless in another, so truth is language-relative [Haack] |
Full Idea: The definition of truth will have to be, Tarski argues, relative to a language, for one and the same sentence may be true in one language, and false or meaningless in another. | |
From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.5) |
18270 | Choice suggests that intensions are not needed to ensure classes [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The axiom of choice was an assumption that implicitly questioned the necessity of intensions to guarantee the presence of classes. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'Log') | |
A reaction: The point is that Choice just picks out members for no particular reason. So classes, it seems, don't need a reason to exist. |
18263 | The semantic tradition aimed to explain the a priori semantically, not by Kantian intuition [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The semantic tradition's problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kantian pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base that theory on a development of semantics. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 2 Intro) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that intuition, in the modern sense, has been unnecessarily demonised. I would define it as 'rational insights which cannot be fully articulated'. Sherlock Holmes embodies it. |
18272 | Platonism defines the a priori in a way that makes it unknowable [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The trouble with Platonism had always been its inability to define a priori knowledge in a way that made it possible for human beings to have it. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'What') | |
A reaction: This is the famous argument of Benacerraf 1973. |
18266 | Mathematics generalises by using variables [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The instrument of generality in mathematics is the variable. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 4 'The conc') | |
A reaction: I like the idea that there are variables in ordinary speech, pronouns being the most obvious example. 'Cats' is a variable involving quantification over a domain of lovable fluffy mammals. |
18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991]) | |
A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity. |
3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |