10529
|
If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K]
|
|
Full Idea:
Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth.
|
|
From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
|
|
A reaction:
This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers.
|
10530
|
Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K]
|
|
Full Idea:
The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition.
|
|
From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312)
|
|
A reaction:
I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition.
|
15201
|
That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN]
|
|
Full Idea:
The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact.
|
|
From:
Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b
|
|
A reaction:
He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful.
|
10527
|
An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K]
|
|
Full Idea:
If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not.
|
|
From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307)
|
|
A reaction:
I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects.
|
22899
|
'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN]
|
|
Full Idea:
One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'.
|
|
From:
Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive'
|
|
A reaction:
[Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein?
|