4 ideas
| 7566 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is really the same as the verification principle [Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Various writers have noted that the Identity of Indiscernibles is really tantamount to the verification principle. | |
| From: Nicholas Jolley (Leibniz [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Both principles are false, because they are the classic confusion of epistemology and ontology. The fact that you cannot 'discern' a difference between two things doesn't mean that there is no difference. Things beyond verification can still be discussed. |
| 13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
| Full Idea: There are two senses of 'semantic' - as theory of meaning or as truth-based theory of logical consequence, and they are very different. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.78) | |
| A reaction: This subtle point is significant in considering the role of logic in philosophy. The logicians' semantics (based on logical consequence) is in danger of ousting the broader and more elusive notion of meaning in natural language. |
| 13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
| Full Idea: The semantic content of a sentence is not the set of circumstances supporting its truth. It is rather the semantic content of a structured proposition the constituents of which are the semantic contents of the constituents of the sentence. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.74) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I get this, but while I like the truth-conditions view, I am suspicious of any proposal that the semantic content of something is some actual physical ingredients of the world. Meanings aren't sticks and stones. |
| 4366 | We can't accept Aristotle's naturalism about persons, because it is normative and unscientific [Williams,B, by Hursthouse] |
| Full Idea: Williams has expressed pessimism about the project of Aristotelian naturalism on the grounds that his conception of nature, and thereby of human nature, was normative, and that, in a scientific age, this is not a conception that we can take on board. | |
| From: report of Bernard Williams (works [1971]) by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.11 | |
| A reaction: I think there is a compromise here. The existentialist denial of intrinsic human nature seems daft, but Aristotelians must grasp the enormous flexibility that is possible to human behaviour because of the open nature of rationality. |