15 ideas
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 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] |
| 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 |
| 11184 | Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: An object must have some of its natural properties in this world. Some of those it has in common with objects of some proximate kind (Aristotelian essentialism), and others individuate it from objects of the same kind (individuating essentialism). | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) |
| 11181 | Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian essentialism may best be understood on a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of the modal operators. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.189) | |
| A reaction: I record this because I very much like the sound of it, though I have yet to fully understand it. |
| 11180 | Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: In the range of modal systems for which Saul Kripke has provided a semantics, no essentialist sentence is a theorem. Furthermore, there are models for which such sentences are demonstrably false. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.188) |
| 11186 | 'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: We would never use 'is essentially' for 'is necessarily' where vacuous properties are concerned, as in 'Socrates is essentially snub-nosed' or 'Socrates is essentially Socrates'. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) | |
| A reaction: This simple point does us a huge service in rescuing the word 'essential' from several hundred years of misguided philosophy. |
| 11185 | 'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be surface synonymy between 'is essentially' and de re occurrences of 'is necessarily', but intersubstitution often fails to preserve sense (as in 'Winston is essentially a cyclist' and 'Winston is necessarily a cyclist'). | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193) | |
| A reaction: Clearly the two sentences have different meanings, with 'essentially' being a comment about the nature of Winston, and 'necessarily' probably being a comment about the circumstances in which he finds himself. Very nice. See also Idea 11186. |
| 11182 | If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers make a metaphysical shift, by inventing objects (individual concepts, forms, substances) called 'essences', which have only essential properties, and then worry when they can't locate them by rummaging around in possible worlds. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192) |
| 11183 | The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects) [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: The usefulness of talk about possible worlds is not for purposes of individuating the object - that can be done in this world; such talk is a way of sorting its properties. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192) | |
| A reaction: 'Possible worlds are a device for sorting properties' sounds to me like a promising slogan. Ruth Marcus originated rigid designation, before Kripke came up with the label. |
| 11187 | In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: The strategem of talk about possible worlds is that truth assignments of sentences and extensions of predicates may vary, but individual names don't alter their reference (unless they don't refer). They are a neutral peg for descriptions. | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.194) |
| 22200 | If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle] |
| Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. | |
| From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible. |
| 11189 | Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: Being gold or being a man is not accidental. ..Such essences are dispositional properties of a very special kind: if an object had such a property and ceased to have it, it would have ceased to exist or have changed (as if gold is transmuted to lead). | |
| From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.202) | |
| A reaction: Ruth Marcus is an important founder of modern scientific essentialism, by not only proposing the notion we call rigid designation, but by explicitly defending the essential identities that seem to emerge from modal logic. |