display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
8078 | Modus ponens is one of five inference rules identified by the Stoics [Chrysippus, by Devlin] |
Full Idea: Modus ponens is just one of the five different inference rules identified by the Stoics. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Keith Devlin - Goodbye Descartes Ch.2 | |
A reaction: Modus ponens strikes me as being more like a definition of implication than a 'rule'. Implication is what gets you from one truth to another. All the implications of a truth must also be true. |
6023 | Every proposition is either true or false [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
Full Idea: We hold fast to the position, defended by Chrysippus, that every proposition is either true or false. | |
From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 38 | |
A reaction: I am intrigued to know exactly how you defend this claim. It may depend what you mean by a proposition. A badly expressed proposition may have indeterminate truth, quite apart from the vague, the undecidable etc. |
10925 | Failure of substitutivity shows that a personal name is not purely referential [Quine] |
Full Idea: Failure of substitutivity shows that the occurrence of a personal name is not purely referential. | |
From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §1) | |
A reaction: I don't think I understand the notion of a name being 'purely' referential, as if it somehow ceased to be a word, and was completely transparent to the named object. |
10926 | Quantifying into referentially opaque contexts often produces nonsense [Quine] |
Full Idea: If to a referentially opaque context of a variable we apply a quantifier, with the intention that it govern that variable from outside the referentially opaque context, then what we commonly end up with is unintended sense or nonsense. | |
From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §2) |