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15510
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Classes are a host of ethereal, platonic, pseudo entities [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
I will not willingly use apparatus that peoples the world with a host of ethereal, platonic, pseudo entities.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951], II.2), quoted by David Lewis - Parts of Classes 2.1
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A reaction:
This represents the big gap that opened up with Goodman's former comrade in arms, Quine. Lewis quotes it in order to ask whether he means ethereal or platonic, as they are very different. I sympathise with Goodman.
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9920
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Two objects can apparently make up quite distinct arrangements in sets [Goodman, by Burgess/Rosen]
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Full Idea:
Goodman argues that the set or class {{a}},{a,b}} is supposed to be distinct from the set or class {{b},{a,b}}, even though both are ultimately constituted from the same a and b.
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by JP Burgess / G Rosen - A Subject with No Object I.A.2.a
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A reaction:
I'm with Goodman all the way here, even though it is deeply unfashionable, particularly in the circles I move in. If there are trillion grains of sand on a beach, how many sets are we supposed to be committed to?
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10657
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The counties of Utah, and the state, and its acres, are in no way different [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
A class (counties of Utah) is different neither from the individual (state of Utah) that contains its members, nor from any other class (acres of Utah) whose members exhaust the whole. For nominalists, distinction of entity means distinction of content.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951], p.26), quoted by Achille Varzi - Mereology 3.1
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A reaction:
This is a nice credo for the nominalist version of mereology. You can still have a mereology that commits you to the wholes as well as the parts. Cf. Lewis in Idea 10660.
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7956
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If all and only red things were round things, we would need to specify the 'respect' of the resemblance [Goodman, by Macdonald,C]
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Full Idea:
According to Goodman's 'companionship difficulty', resemblance nominalism has a problem if, say, all and only the red things were the round things, because we cannot distinguish the two different respects in which the things resemble one another.
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6
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A reaction:
Goodman opts for extreme linguististic nominalism in response to this (Idea 7952), whereas Russell opts for a sort of Platonism (4441). The current idea gives Russell a further problem, of needing a universal of the respect of the resemblance.
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7957
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Without respects of resemblance, we would collect blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock together [Goodman, by Macdonald,C]
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Full Idea:
Goodman's 'imperfect community' problem for Resemblance Nominalism says that without mention of respects in which things resemble, we end up with a heterogeneous collection with nothing wholly in common (blue book, blue pen, red pen, red clock).
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (The Structure of Appearance [1951]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6
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A reaction:
This suggests Wittgenstein's 'family' resemblance as a way out (Idea 4141), but a blue book and a red clock seem totally unrelated. Nice objection! At this point we start to think that the tropes resemble, rather than the objects.
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14618
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Semantics is either an assignment of semantic values, or a theory of truth [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
On one view, a semantics for a given language is taken to be an assignment of semantic values to its expressions; according to the other, a semantics is taken to be a theory of truth for that language.
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From:
Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], Intro)
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A reaction:
The first is Frege, the second Tarski via Davidson, says Fine. Fine argues against these as the correct alternatives, and says the distinction prevents us understanding what is really going on. He votes for semantics as giving 'semantic requirements'.
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14619
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The Quinean doubt: are semantics and facts separate, and do analytic sentences have no factual part? [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
The source of the Quinean scepticism about analytic and synthetic is, first, scepticism over whether we can factor truth into a semantic and a factual component, and (second) if we can, is the factual component ever null?
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From:
Kit Fine (Semantic Necessity [2010], 1)
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A reaction:
You certainly can't grasp 'bachelors are unmarried men' if you haven't grasped the full Woosterian truth about men and marriage. But I could interdefine four meaningless words, so that you could employ them in analytic sentences.
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