15 ideas
| 14767 | The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 14764 | I am saturated with the spirit of physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I am saturated, through and through, with the spirit of the physical sciences. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.1) |
| 23291 | Without truth, both language and thought are impossible [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Without a grasp of the concept of truth, not only language, but thought itself, is impossible. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Davidson never mentions animals, but I like this idea because it points to importance of truth for animals as well. I say that truth is relevant to any mind that makes judgements - and quite small animals (e.g. ants and spiders) make judgements. |
| 23284 | Plato's Forms confused truth with the most eminent truths, so only Truth itself is completely true [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Plato's conflation of abstract universals with entities of supreme value reinforced the confusion of truth with the most eminent truths. …The only perfect exemplar of a Form is the Form itself, …and only truth itself is completely true. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.3) | |
| A reaction: Even non-subscribers to Plato often talk as if there were some grand thing called the Truth with a capital T, quite often used in a religious context. Truth is the hallmark of successful (non-fanciful) thought. |
| 23286 | Truth can't be a goal, because we can neither recognise it nor confim it [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Since it is neither visible as a target, nor recognisable when achieved, there is no point in calling truth a goal. We should only aim at increasing confidence in our beliefs, by collecting further evidence or checking our calculations. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], P.6) | |
| A reaction: This is mainly aimed at pragmatists, but Davidson obviously subscribes (as do I) to their fallibilist view of knowledge. |
| 23292 | Correspondence can't be defined, but it shows how truth depends on the world [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence, while it is empty as a definition, does capture the thought that truth depends on how the world is. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.16) | |
| A reaction: Just don't try to give a precise account of the correspondence between two things (thoughts and facts) which are so utterly different in character. |
| 23288 | When Tarski defines truth for different languages, how do we know it is a single concept? [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: We have to wonder how we know that it is some single concept which Tarski indicates how to define for each of a number of well-behaved languages. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], P.11) | |
| A reaction: Davidson says that Tarski makes the assumption that it is a single concept, but fails to demonstrate the fact. This resembles Frege's Julius Caesar problem - of how you know whether your number definition has defined a number. |
| 23287 | Disquotation only accounts for truth if the metalanguage contains the object language [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Disquotation cannot pretend to give a complete account of the concept of truth, since it works only in the special case where the metalanguage contains the object language. Neither can contain their own truth predicate. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.10) | |
| A reaction: Presumably more sophisticated and complete accounts would need a further account of translation between languages - which explains Quine's interest in that topic. […see this essay, p.12] |
| 23285 | If we try to identify facts precisely, they all melt into one (as the Slingshot Argument proves) [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: If we try to provide a serious semantics for reference to facts, we discover that they melt into one; there is no telling them apart. The relevant argument (the 'Slingshot') was credited to Frege by Alonso Church. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like good grounds for not attempting to be too precise. 'There are bluebells in my local wood' identifies a fact by words, but even an animal can distinguish this fact. Only a logician dreams of making its content precise. |
| 14768 | Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.3) |
| 14765 | Association of ideas is the best philosophical idea of the prescientific age [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of the association of ideas is, to my thinking, the finest piece of philosophical work of the prescientific ages. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 14766 | Duns Scotus offers perhaps the best logic and metaphysics for modern physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The works of Duns Scotus have strongly influenced me. …His logic and metaphysics, torn away from its medievalism, …will go far toward supplying the philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical science. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 23289 | Knowing the potential truth conditions of a sentence is necessary and sufficient for understanding [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It is clear that someone who knows under what conditions a sentence would be true understands that sentence, …and if someone does not know under what conditions it would be true then they do not understand it. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.13) | |
| A reaction: I've always subscribed to this view. Langauge is meaningless if you can't relate it to reality, and I don't think there could be a language without an intuitive notion of truth. |
| 23290 | It could be that the use of a sentence is explained by its truth conditions [Davidson] |
| Full Idea: It may be that sentences are used as they are because of their truth conditions, and they have the truth conditions they do because of how they are used. | |
| From: Donald Davidson (Truth Rehabilitated [1997], p.13) | |
| A reaction: I've always taken the attempt to explain meaning by use as absurd. It is similar to trying to explain mind in terms of function. In each case, what is the intrinsic nature of the thing, which makes that use or that function possible? |
| 19384 | Space and time are the order of all possibilities, and don't just relate to what is actual [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Space and time taken together constitute the order of possibilities of the one entire universe, so that these orders relate not only to what actually is, but also to anything that could be put in its place. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to 'Rorarius' 2nd ed [1702], GP iv 568), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Space and Time' | |
| A reaction: A very nice idea. Rather like the 'space of reasons', where all rational thought must exist, space and time are the 'space of existence and action'. Their concepts involve more than relations between what actually exists. |