Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Steven Pinker, Benjamin Franklin and Susan Haack

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14 ideas

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Logical truth seems much less likely to 'correspond to the facts' than factual truth does [Haack]
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition
The same sentence could be true in one language and meaningless in another, so truth is language-relative [Haack]
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 2. Reduction
Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker]
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker]
12. Knowledge Sources / E. Direct Knowledge / 4. Memory
Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker]
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 5. Against Free Will
Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism
Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker]
23. Ethics / B. Contract Ethics / 8. Contract Strategies
Punctuality and justice in dealings are excellent for raising a man in the world [Franklin]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 11. Capitalism
Time is money, ..credit is money, ..and money breeds more money [Franklin]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 2. Life
In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker]
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker]
Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker]