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2 ideas
5969 | Chrysippus said the uncaused is non-existent [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus said that the uncaused is altogether non-existent. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1045c | |
A reaction: The difficulty is to see what empirical basis there can be for such a claim, or what argument of any kind other than an intuition. Induction is the obvious answer, but Hume teaches us scepticism about any claim that 'there can be no exceptions'. |
9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The standard sense of a 'contextual definition' permits the eliminating of the defined expression, by transforming any sentence containing it into an equivalent one not containing it. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: So the whole definition might be eliminated by a single word, which is not equivalent to the target word, which is embedded in the original expression. Clearly contextual definitions have some problems |