17 ideas
| 13010 | In order to select the logic justified by experience, we would need to use a lot of logic [Boghossian on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine ends up with the logic that is maximally justified by experience, ...but a large number of the core principles of logic will have to be used to select the logic that is maximally justified by experience. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Paul Boghossian - Knowledge of Logic p.233 | |
| A reaction: In order to grasp some core principles of logic, you will probably need a certain amount of experience. I take logic to be an abstracted feature of reality (unless it is extended by pure fictions). Some basic logic may be hard wired in us. |
| 9002 | Elementary logic requires truth-functions, quantifiers (and variables), identity, and also sets of variables [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Elementary logic, as commonly systematized nowadays, comprises truth-function theory (involving 'or', 'and', 'not' etc.), quantifiers (and their variables), and identity theory ('='). In addition, set theory requires classes among values of variables. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: Quine is famous for trying to squeeze properties out of the picture, which would then block higher-order logics (which quantify over properties). Quine's list gives a nice programme for a student of the philosophy of logic to understand. |
| 13681 | Logical consequence is marked by being preserved under all nonlogical substitutions [Quine, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Quine's view of logical consequence is that it is when there is no way of uniformly substituting nonlogical expressions in the premises and consequences so that the premises all remain true but the consequence now becomes false. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], p.103) by Theodore Sider - Logic for Philosophy 1.5 | |
| A reaction: One might just say that the consequence holds if you insert consistent variables for the nonlogical terms, which looks like Aristotle's view of the matter. |
| 13829 | If logical truths essentially depend on logical constants, we had better define the latter [Hacking on Quine] |
| Full Idea: Quine said a logical truth is a truth in which only logical constants occur essentially, ...but then a fruitful definition of 'logical constant' is called for. | |
| From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §02 |
| 9003 | Set theory was struggling with higher infinities, when new paradoxes made it baffling [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Unlike elementary logic, the truths of set theory are not obvious. Set theory was straining at the leash of intuition ever since Cantor discovered higher infinites; and with the added impetus of the paradoxes of set theory the leash snapped. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: This problem seems to have forced Quine into platonism about sets, because he felt they were essential for mathematics and science, but couldn't be constructed with precision. So they must be real, but we don't quite understand them. |
| 9004 | If set theory is not actually a branch of logic, then Frege's derivation of arithmetic would not be from logic [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We might say that set theory is not really logic, but a branch of mathematics. This would deprive 'includes' of the status of a logical word. Frege's derivation of arithmetic would then cease to count as a derivation from logic: for he used set theory. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II) | |
| A reaction: Quine has been making the point that higher infinities and the paradoxes undermine the status of set theory as logic, but he decides to continue thinking of set theory as logic. Critics of logicism frequently ask whether the reduction is to logic. |
| 9006 | Commitment to universals is as arbitrary or pragmatic as the adoption of a new system of bookkeeping [Quine] |
| Full Idea: One's hypothesis as to there being universals is at bottom just as arbitrary or pragmatic a matter as one's adoption of a new brand of set theory or even a new system of bookkeeping. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], x) | |
| A reaction: This spells out clearly the strongly pragmatist vein in Quine's thinking. |
| 9001 | Frege moved Kant's question about a priori synthetic to 'how is logical certainty possible?' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: When Kant's arithmetical examples of a priori synthetic judgements were sweepingly disqualified by Frege's reduction of arithmetic to logic, attention moved to the less tendentious and logically prior question 'How is logical certainty possible?' | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], I) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of the story so far, from someone who should know. This still leaves the question open of whether any synthetic truths can be derived from the logical certainties which are available. |
| 9005 | Examination of convention in the a priori begins to blur the distinction with empirical knowledge [Quine] |
| Full Idea: In trying to make sense of the role of convention in a priori knowledge, the very distinction between a priori and empirical begins to waver and dissolve. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], VI) | |
| A reaction: This is the next stage in the argument after Wittgenstein presents the apriori as nothing more than what arises from truth tables. The rationalists react by taking us back to the original 'natural light of reason' view. Then we go round again... |
| 4871 | A thing is free if it acts only by the necessity of its own nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its own nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letter to G.H. Schaller [1674], 1674.10) | |
| A reaction: Of course, this isn't 'freedom' at all, but it seems to exactly right as an account of so-called freedom. In the case of a human being the 'necessity of our own nature' is character, and virtue and vice are the expressions of the necessities of character. |
| 20937 | The state should produce higher civilisations for all, in tune with the economic apparatus [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The role of the State is always that of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the 'civilisation' and the morality of the broades popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Collective') | |
| A reaction: This makes education virtually the prime role of the state. Reminiscent of Sir John Reith's original dream, in the 1930s, for the BBC. Many marxists feel that the economy is in direct conflict with morality and civilisation. |
| 20935 | Eventually political parties lose touch with the class they represent, which is dangerous [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: At a certain point in their lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In that particular form ...the parties are no longer recognised by their class as its exopression. ...The field is then open for violent solutions. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parties') | |
| A reaction: Left wing parties pursue ideologies that don't connect with the actual current interests of the working class, and righ wing parties are taken over by rich elites who don't value safe traditonal communities. (This thought is resonant in the 2018 UK). |
| 20936 | Caesarism emerges when two forces in society are paralysed in conflict [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Caesarism (as the emergence of a 'heroic' personality) expresses a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner ...which can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Caesarism') | |
| A reaction: He goes on to distinguish progressive and reactionary versions of Caesarism. Gramsci's interest is in the circumstances that throw up such people. Marx had identified 'Bonapartism'. |
| 20941 | Totalitarian parties cut their members off from other cultural organisations [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: A totalitarian party ensures that members find in that particular party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations. They break the threads that bind them to extraneous cultural organisms. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Organisation') | |
| A reaction: British parties traditionally had a 'club house', where you could do most of your socialising. Presumably Nazis left the church, and various interest groups. |
| 20939 | What is the function of a parliament? Does it even constitute a part of the State structure? [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The question has to be asked: do parliaments, even in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is the real function? | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parliament') | |
| A reaction: Nice question. In the UK it is only the cabinet which has active power. Backbench MPs are usually very frustrated, especially if their party has a comfortable majority, and their vote is not precious. They are privileged lobbyists. |
| 20938 | Liberalism's weakness is its powerful rigid bureaucracy [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism's weakness is the bureacracy - the crystallisation of the leading personnel - which exercises power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Hegemony') | |
| A reaction: This sounds more like what is called 'the Establishment' in Britain, which is the hidden controllers of power, rather than the administrators (whose role is only despised by right-wingers). |
| 20940 | Perfect political equality requires economic equality [Gramsci] |
| Full Idea: The idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality ...remains correct. | |
| From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'The State') | |
| A reaction: In the west we are living in a period (2018) when the top 0.1% of the wealthy are racing away, creating huge inequality. Their wealth controls the media, and it seems unrestrainable. The belief that we live in a 'democracy' is an illusion. |