Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Natural Kinds', 'On Fate ('De fato')' and 'Precepts for Advancing Science and Arts'

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2 ideas

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 / F. Communication / 1. Rhetoric
Oratory and philosophy are closely allied; orators borrow from philosophy, and ornament it [Cicero]
     Full Idea: There is a close alliance between the orator and the philosophical system of which I am a follower, since the orator borrows subtlely from the Academy, and repays the loan by giving to it a copious and flowing style and rhetorical ornament.
     From: M. Tullius Cicero (On Fate ('De fato') [c.44 BCE], 02.03)
     A reaction: It is a misundertanding to think that rhetoric and philosophy are seen as in necessary opposition. Philosophers just seemed to think that oratory works a lot better if it is truthful.