Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'The Epistemology of Essentialist Claims' and 'The Philosopher's Toolkit'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 1. Bivalence
The principle of bivalence distorts reality, as when claiming that a person is or is not 'thin' [Baggini /Fosl]
     Full Idea: Forcing everything into the straightjacket of bivalence seriously distorts the world. The problem is most acute in the case of vague concepts, such as thinness. It is not straightforwardly true or false that a person is thin.
     From: J Baggini / PS Fosl (The Philosopher's Toolkit [2003], §3.03)
     A reaction: Can't argue with that. Can we divide all our concepts into either bivalent or vague? Presumably both propositions and concepts could be bivalent.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form
For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady]
     Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4
     A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional.