display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 5745 | Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine charges quantified modal systems of logic with giving rise to unintended sense or nonsense, committing us to an incomprehensible ontology, and entailing an implausible or unsustainable Aristotelian essentialism. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by Joseph Melia - Modality Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice summary. Personally I like essentialism in accounts of science (see Nature|Laws of Nature|Essentialism), so would like to save it in metaphysics. Possible worlds ontology may be very surprising, rather than 'incomprehensible'. |
| 18170 | The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if true, it isn't needed [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if it is true, the ramification it is meant to cope with was pointless to begin with. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Introduction to Russell's Theory of Types [1967], p.152), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: Maddy says the rejection of Reducibility collapsed the ramified theory of types into the simple theory. |