Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Natural Kinds' and 'The Limits of Reason'

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3 ideas

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
A sentence's truth conditions are all the situations where it would be true [Button]
     Full Idea: A sentence's truth conditions comprise an exhaustive list of the situations in which that sentence would be true.
     From: Tim Button (The Limits of Reason [2013], 03.4)
     A reaction: So to know its meaning you must know those conditions? Compare 'my cat is licking my finger' with 'dramatic events are happening in Ethiopia'. It should take an awful long time to grasp the second sentence.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine]
     Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6)
     A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'?
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 2. Analytic Truths
The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis]
     Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239.