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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Logic (Encyclopedia I)' and 'Thinking About Logic'

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9 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato]
     Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d)
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / f. Primary being
Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many.
     From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
     A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato]
     Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c)
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic
Would a language without vagueness be usable at all? [Read]
     Full Idea: We must ask whether a language without vagueness would be usable at all.
     From: Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.7)
     A reaction: Popper makes a similar remark somewhere, with which I heartily agreed. This is the idea of 'spreading the word' over the world, which seems the right way of understanding it.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / f. Supervaluation for vagueness
Supervaluations say there is a cut-off somewhere, but at no particular place [Read]
     Full Idea: The supervaluation approach to vagueness is to construe vague predicates not as ones with fuzzy borderlines and no cut-off, but as having a cut-off somewhere, but in no particular place.
     From: Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.7)
     A reaction: Presumably you narrow down the gap by supervaluation, then split the difference to get a definite value.
A 'supervaluation' gives a proposition consistent truth-value for classical assignments [Read]
     Full Idea: A 'supervaluation' says a proposition is true if it is true in all classical extensions of the original partial valuation. Thus 'A or not-A' has no valuation for an empty name, but if 'extended' to make A true or not-true, not-A always has opposite value.
     From: Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.5)
Identities and the Indiscernibility of Identicals don't work with supervaluations [Read]
     Full Idea: In supervaluations, the Law of Identity has no value for empty names, and remains so if extended. The Indiscernibility of Identicals also fails if extending it for non-denoting terms, where Fa comes out true and Fb false.
     From: Stephen Read (Thinking About Logic [1995], Ch.5)
7. Existence / E. Categories / 1. Categories
Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel]
     Full Idea: As an activity of the particular, thinking has the categories as its only product and content.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62)
     A reaction: There seems to be an interesting implication in this remark (taken in isolation!) that one can somehow transcend the categories when one begins to think about the universal. Are the universal and the categories not connected?
Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Categories, like 'being', or 'individuality', are already mingled into every proposition, even when it has a completely sensible content, such as "this leaf is green".
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §246 Add), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This is the source of the idea that observation is theory-laden (which tracks back to Kant). Not Duhem, who gets the credit among analytic philosophers. Quine obviously never read Hegel. But the idea is overrated.