9 ideas
| 6782 | Realism is the only philosophy of science that doesn't make the success of science a miracle [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Realism….is the only philosophy science which does not make the success of science a miracle. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (works [1980]), quoted by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This was from his earlier work; he became more pragmatist and anti-realist later. Personally I approve of the remark. The philosophy of science must certainly offer an explanation for its success. Truth seems the obvious explanation. |
| 15327 | Kripke's semantic theory has actually inspired promising axiomatic theories [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has a semantic theory of truth which has inspired promising axiomatic theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 01.2 | |
| A reaction: Feferman produced an axiomatic version of Kripke's semantic theory. |
| 15343 | Kripke offers a semantic theory of truth (involving models) [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: One of the most popular semantic theories of truth is Kripke's theory. It describes a class of models which themselves involve a truth predicate (unlike Tarski's semantic theory). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 02.3 | |
| A reaction: The modern versions explored by Horsten are syntactic versions of this, derived from Feferman's axiomatisation of the Kripke theory. |
| 14966 | The Tarskian move to a metalanguage may not be essential for truth theories [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke established that, contrary to the prevalent Tarskian dogma, attributions of truth do not always force a move to a metalanguage. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975], 5.1) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] |
| 14967 | Certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke showed via a fixed-point argument that certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] It is an odd paradox that truth can only be included if one adds a truth-value of 'neither true nor false'. The proposed three-valued system is 'strong Kleene logic'. |
| 16328 | Kripke classified fixed points, and illuminated their use for clarifications [Kripke, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's main contribution was …his classification of the different consistent fixed points and the discussion of their use for discriminating between ungrounded sentences, paradoxical sentences, and so on. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 15.1 |
| 22181 | Putnam says anti-realism is a bad explanation of accurate predictions [Putnam, by Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Putnam's 'no miracle' argument says that being an anti-realist is akin to believing in miracles (because of the accurate predictons). …It is a plausibility argument - an inference to the best explanation. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (works [1980]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 4 | |
| A reaction: [not sure of ref] Putnam later backs off from this argument, but my personal realism rests on best explanation. Does anyone want to prefer an inferior explanation? The objection is that successful theories can turn out to be false. Phlogiston, ether. |
| 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. |