3 ideas
| 14895 | 'Superficial' contingency: false in some world; 'Deep' contingency: no obvious verification [Evans, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| Full Idea: Evans says intuitively a sentence is 'superficially' contingent if the function from worlds to truth values assigns F to some world; it is 'deeply' contingent if understanding it does not guarantee that there is a verifying state of affairs. | |
| From: report of Gareth Evans (Reference and Contingency [1979]) by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 2 | |
| A reaction: This distinction is used by Davies and Humberstone (1980) to construct an early version of 2-D semantics (see under Language|Semantics). The point is that part comes from understanding it, and another part from assigning truth values. |
| 11881 | Rigid designators can be meaningful even if empty [Evans, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Evans argues that there can be rigid designators that are meaningful even if empty. | |
| From: report of Gareth Evans (Reference and Contingency [1979]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.8 |
| 23218 | The brain has no responsibility for sensations, which occur in the heart [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: And of course, the brain is not responsible for any of the sensations at all. The correct view is that the seat and source of sensation is the region of the heart. | |
| From: Aristotle (The Parts of Animals [c.345 BCE]), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 1 | |
| A reaction: [Need a reference] Hippocrates's assertion a century earlier made no impression on the great man. I wish he had been a little more circumspect with his own view. |