6 ideas
| 8754 | Logic is dependent on mathematics, not the other way round [Heyting, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Heyting (the intuitionist pupil of Brouwer) said that 'logic is dependent on mathematics', not the other way round. | |
| From: report of Arend Heyting (Intuitionism: an Introduction [1956]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 7.3 | |
| A reaction: To me, this claim makes logicism sound much more plausible, as I don't see how mathematics could get beyond basic counting without a capacity for logical thought. Logic runs much deeper, psychologically and metaphysically. |
| 19540 | Don't confuse justified belief with justified believers [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: Much theorizing about justification conflates issues of justified belief with issues of justified/blameless believers. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.12) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Kent Bach 1985] Presumably the only thing that really justifies a belief is the truth, or the actual facts. You could then say 'p is a justified belief, though no one actually believes it'. E.g. the number of stars is odd. |
| 19539 | If knowledge is unanalysable, that makes justification more important [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: If knowledge is indeed unanalyzable, that could be seen as a liberation of justification to assume importance in its own right. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.11) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Kvanvig 2003:192 and Greco 2010:9-] See Scruton's Idea 3897. I suspect that we should just give up discussing 'knowledge', which is a woolly and uninformative term, and focus on where the real epistemological action is. |
| 19538 | Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion (where 'mammals' contains 'cats') [Dougherty/Rysiew] |
| Full Idea: Entailment is modelled in formal semantics as set inclusion. 'Cat' entails 'mammal' because the cats are a subset of the mammals. | |
| From: Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (What is Knowledge-First Epistemology? [2014], p.10) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that this was only one type of entailment. 'Travelling to Iceland entails flying'. Travelling includes flying, the reverse of cats/mammals, to a very complex set-theoretic account is needed. Interesting. |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |