Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Carving Content at the Joints' and 'Making It Explicit'

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4 ideas

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 2. Correspondence to Facts
Facts can't make claims true, because they are true claims [Brandom, by Kusch]
     Full Idea: Brandom says that facts do not make claims true, because facts simply are true claims.
     From: report of Robert B. Brandom (Making It Explicit [1994], p.327) by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.18
     A reaction: Nice. Notoriously, anyone defending the correspondence theory of truth in terms of facts had better say what they mean by a 'fact'. Personally I take a fact to be a non-verbal, mind-independent situation in the world, so I disagree with Brandom.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 7. Abstracta by Equivalence
A sentence should be recarved to reveal its content or implication relations [Yablo]
     Full Idea: A sentence invites recarving iff it will then do better justice to the internal structure of its content and/or its implication relations.
     From: Stephen Yablo (Carving Content at the Joints [2002], §11)
     A reaction: This invites human intervention in a logical process (by choosing which recarvings to do, instead of allowing all equivalences to generate them). He seems to think we should abstract in order to reveal logical form.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature
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
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
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.