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Single Idea 12766

[filed under theme 5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 1. Ontology of Logic ]

Full Idea

Logical space is not given independently of the individuals that occupy it, but is abstracted from the world as we find it.

Gist of Idea

Logical space is abstracted from the actual world

Source

Robert C. Stalnaker (Anti-essentialism [1979], p.85)

Book Ref

Stalnaker,Robert C.: 'Ways a World Might Be' [OUP 2003], p.85


A Reaction

I very much like the second half of this idea, and am delighted to find Stalnaker endorsing it. I take the logical connectives to be descriptions of how things behave, at a high level of generality.


The 22 ideas with the same theme [overview of what must exist to enable logic]:

Our research always hopes that reality embodies the logic we are employing [Peirce]
Logic is a fiction, which invents the view that one thought causes another [Nietzsche]
Logicians presuppose a world, and ignore logic/world connections, so their logic is impure [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol]
Phenomenology grounds logic in subjective experience [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol]
Logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology [Russell]
Logic can be known a priori, without study of the actual world [Russell]
Logic can only assert hypothetical existence [Russell]
Logic is highly general truths abstracted from reality [Russell, by Glock]
Russell unusually saw logic as 'interpreted' (though very general, and neutral) [Russell/Whitehead, by Linsky,B]
The only classes are things, predicates and relations [Russell]
The propositions of logic are analytic tautologies [Wittgenstein]
Whether a modal claim is true depends on how the object is described [Quine, by Fine,K]
Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine]
Unfashionably, I think logic has an empirical foundation [Putnam]
Logicians like their entities to exhibit a maximum degree of purity [Kaplan]
Logical space is abstracted from the actual world [Stalnaker]
Logic is a mathematical account of a universe of relations [Badiou]
A sentence can't be a truth of logic if it asserts the existence of certain sets [Boolos]
In first-order we can't just assert existence, and it is very hard to deny something's existence [Bach]
Either logic determines objects, or objects determine logic, or they are separate [Shapiro]
Maybe mathematical logic rests on information-processing [Ladyman/Ross]
We can use truth instead of ontologically loaded second-order comprehension assumptions about properties [Halbach]