8 ideas
14181 | Validity is where either the situation or the interpretation blocks true premises and false conclusion [Etchemendy, by Read] |
Full Idea: The Representational account of validity says an argument is valid if there is no situation where the premises are true and the conclusion false. The Interpretation account says the premises are true and conclusion false under no interpretations. | |
From: report of John Etchemendy (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1999]) by Stephen Read - Formal and Material Consequence 'Inval' | |
A reaction: My immediate instinct is to want logic to be about situations, rather than interpretations. Situations are more about thought, where interpretations are more about language. I think our account of logic should have some applicability to animals. |
14180 | Etchemendy says fix the situation and vary the interpretation, or fix interpretations with varying situations [Etchemendy, by Read] |
Full Idea: In Etchemendy's Interpretational Semantics (perhaps better called 'Substitutional') we keep the situation fixed and vary the interpretation; in Representational Semantics ('Modal'?) we keep interpretations fixed but consider varying situations. | |
From: report of John Etchemendy (The Concept of Logical Consequence [1999]) by Stephen Read - Formal and Material Consequence 'Inval' | |
A reaction: [compressed] These are semantic strategies for interpreting logic, so they are two ways you might go about assessing an argument. |
10464 | A trope is a bit of a property or relation (not an exemplification or a quality) [Bacon,John] |
Full Idea: A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation. Bill Clinton's eloquence is not his participating in the universal eloquence, or the peculiar quality of his eloquence, but his bit, and his alone, of eloquence. | |
From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], Intro) | |
A reaction: If we have identified something as a 'bit' of something, we can ask whether that bit is atomic, or divisible into something else, and we can ask what are the qualities and properties and powers of this bit, we seems to defeat the object. |
10465 | Trope theory is ontologically parsimonious, with possibly only one-category [Bacon,John] |
Full Idea: A major attraction of tropism has been its promise of parsimony; some adherents (such as Campbell) go so far as to proclaim a one-category ontology. | |
From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §2) | |
A reaction: This seems to go against the folk idiom which suggests that it is things which have properties, rather than properties ruling to roost. Maybe if one identified tropes with processes, the theory could be brought more into line with modern physics? |
10467 | Individuals consist of 'compresent' tropes [Bacon,John] |
Full Idea: 'Qualitons' or 'relatons' (quality and relation tropes) are held to belong to the same individual if they are all 'compresent' with one another. | |
From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §4) | |
A reaction: There is a perennial problem with bundles - how to distinguish accidental compresence (like people in a lift) from united compresence (like people who make a family). |
10466 | Maybe possible worlds are just sets of possible tropes [Bacon,John] |
Full Idea: Meinongian tropism has the advantage that possible worlds might be thought of as sets of 'qualitons' and 'relatons' (quality and relational tropes). | |
From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §3) | |
A reaction: You are still left with 'possible' to explain, and I'm not sure that anything is explain here. If the actual world is sets of tropes, then possible worlds would also have to be, I suppose. |
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. |