display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 19252 | Objective chance is the property of a distribution [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Chance, as an objective phenomenon, is a property of a distribution. ...In order to have any meaning, it must refer to some definite arrangement of all the things. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], VI) |
| 19232 | In ordinary language a conditional statement assumes that the antecedent is true [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: In our ordinary use of language we always understand the range of possibility in such a sense that in some possible case the antecedent shall be true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Reasoning and the Logic of Things [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Peirce is discussing Diodorus, and proposes the view nowadays defended by Edgington, though in the end Peirce defends the standard material conditional as simpler. I suspect that this discussion by Peirce is not well known. |
| 14002 | Possible worlds must be abstract, because two qualitatively identical worlds are just one world [Markosian] |
| Full Idea: Possible worlds are just abstract objects that play a certain role in philosophers' talk about modality. They are ways things could be. That's why there are no two abstract possible worlds which are qualitatively identical. They count as one world. | |
| From: Ned Markosian (A Defense of Presentism [2004], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: Brilliant! This looks like the best distinction between concrete and abstract. If two concreta are identical they remain two; if two abstracta are identical they are one (like numbers, or logical connectives with the same truth table). |