9 ideas
| 17896 | We need to know the meaning of 'and', prior to its role in reasoning [Prior,AN, by Belnap] |
| Full Idea: For Prior, so the moral goes, we must first have a notion of what 'and' means, independently of the role it plays as premise and as conclusion. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.132 | |
| A reaction: The meaning would be given by the truth tables (the truth-conditions), whereas the role would be given by the natural deduction introduction and elimination rules. This seems to be the basic debate about logical connectives. |
| 17898 | Prior's 'tonk' is inconsistent, since it allows the non-conservative inference A |- B [Belnap on Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: Prior's definition of 'tonk' is inconsistent. It gives us an extension of our original characterisation of deducibility which is not conservative, since in the extension (but not the original) we have, for arbitrary A and B, A |- B. | |
| From: comment on Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.135 | |
| A reaction: Belnap's idea is that connectives don't just rest on their rules, but also on the going concern of normal deduction. |
| 11021 | Prior rejected accounts of logical connectives by inference pattern, with 'tonk' his absurd example [Prior,AN, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Prior dislike the holism inherent in the claim that the meaning of a logical connective was determined by the inference patterns into which it validly fitted. ...His notorious example of 'tonk' (A → A-tonk-B → B) was a reductio of the view. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: [The view being attacked was attributed to Gentzen] |
| 13836 | Maybe introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference leads to absurdity [Prior,AN, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Prior intended 'tonk' (a connective which leads to absurdity) as a criticism of the very idea of introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960], §09) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? |
| 21513 | We can no more expect a precise definition of coherence than we can of the moral ideal [Ewing] |
| Full Idea: I think it is wrong to tie down the advocates of the coherence theory to a precise definition. ...It would be altogether unreasonable to demand that the moral ideal should be exhaustively defined, and the same may be true of the ideal of thought. | |
| From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.231), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 7.6 | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree. It is not a council of despair. I think the criteria of coherence can be articulated quite well (e.g by Thagard), and the virtues of enquiry can also be quite well specified (e.g. by Zagzebski). Very dissimilar evidence must cohere. |
| 21497 | If undetailed, 'coherence' is just a vague words that covers all possible arguments [Ewing] |
| Full Idea: Without a detailed account, coherence is reduced to the mere muttering of the word 'coherence', which can be interpreted so as to cover all arguments, but only by making its meaning so wide as to rob it of almost all significance. | |
| From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.246), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 2.2 | |
| A reaction: I'm a fan of coherence, but it is a placeholder, involving no intrinsic or detailed theory. I just think it points to the reality of how we make judgements, especially practical ones. We can categorise the inputs, and explain the required virtues. |
| 19355 | The soul doesn't understand many of its own actions, if perceptions are confused and desires buried [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The soul does many things without knowing how it does them - when it does them by means of confused perceptions and unconscious inclinations or appetites. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [L]) | |
| A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as a wonderful and important insight for its time. He's really paid attention to his own mind, and given up the simplistic view that derives from Descartes. Are birds conscious? Yes or no! Silly. |
| 19350 | We should say that body is mechanism and soul is immaterial, asserting their independence [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I think we should keep both sides: we should be more Democritean and make all actions of bodies mechanical and independent of souls, and we should also be more than Platonic and hold that all actions of souls are immaterial and independent of mechanism. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [C]) | |
| A reaction: This is about as dualist as it is possible to get. It certainly looks as if many of Leibniz's doctrines are rebellions against Spinoza (in this case his 'dual aspect monism'). I take Leibniz to be utterly but heroically wrong. |
| 19356 | Minds unconsciously count vibration beats in music, and enjoy it when they coincide [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: In music, the soul counts the beats of the vibrating object which makes the sound, and when these beats regularly coincide at short intervals, it finds them pleasing. Thus it counts without knowing it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [L]) | |
| A reaction: Only a mathematician would see music this way! He is defending his account of the unconscious mind. The proposal that we unconsciously count sounds highly implausible. He needs to recognise the patterns that ground mathematics. |