more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
Propositions about 'some' arise, in practice, in four ways: as generalisations of disjunctions; when an instance suggests compatibility of terms we thought incompatible; as steps to a generalisation; and in cases of imperfect memory.
Gist of Idea
There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things
Source
Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth' [Penguin 1967], p.83
A Reaction
Modern logicians seem to have no interest in the question Russell is investigating here, but I love his attempt, however vague the result, to connect logic to real experience and thought.
16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
13900 | 'Some Frenchmen are generous' is rendered by (∃x)(Fx→Gx), and not with the conditional → [Lemmon] |
13502 | ∃y... is read as 'There exists an individual, call it y, such that...', and not 'There exists a y such that...' [Hart,WD] |
13523 | Existential Generalization (or 'proof by example'): if we can say P(t), then we can say something is P [Wolf,RS] |