13 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) |
| 14249 | Boolos reinterprets second-order logic as plural logic [Boolos, by Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Boolos's conception of plural logic is as a reinterpretation of second-order logic. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975]) by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? n5 | |
| A reaction: Oliver and Smiley don't accept this view, and champion plural reference differently (as, I think, some kind of metalinguistic device?). |
| 10830 | Second-order logic metatheory is set-theoretic, and second-order validity has set-theoretic problems [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: The metatheory of second-order logic is hopelessly set-theoretic, and the notion of second-order validity possesses many if not all of the epistemic debilities of the notion of set-theoretic truth. | |
| From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.45) | |
| A reaction: Epistemic problems arise when a logic is incomplete, because some of the so-called truths cannot be proved, and hence may be unreachable. This idea indicates Boolos's motivation for developing a theory of plural quantification. |
| 10829 | A sentence can't be a truth of logic if it asserts the existence of certain sets [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: One may be of the opinion that no sentence ought to be considered as a truth of logic if, no matter how it is interpreted, it asserts that there are sets of certain sorts. | |
| From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.44) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that in no way should any proper logic assert the existence of anything at all. Presumably interpretations can assert the existence of numbers or sets, but we should be able to identify something which is 'pure' logic. Natural deduction? |
| 10832 | '∀x x=x' only means 'everything is identical to itself' if the range of 'everything' is fixed [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: One may say that '∀x x=x' means 'everything is identical to itself', but one must realise that one's answer has a determinate sense only if the reference (range) of 'everything' is fixed. | |
| From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.46) | |
| A reaction: This is the problem now discussed in the recent book 'Absolute Generality', of whether one can quantify without specifying a fixed or limited domain. |
| 10834 | Weak completeness: if it is valid, it is provable. Strong: it is provable from a set of sentences [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: A weak completeness theorem shows that a sentence is provable whenever it is valid; a strong theorem, that a sentence is provable from a set of sentences whenever it is a logical consequence of the set. | |
| From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.52) | |
| A reaction: So the weak version says |- φ → |= φ, and the strong versions says Γ |- φ → Γ |= φ. Presumably it is stronger if it can specify the source of the inference. |
| 13841 | Why should compactness be definitive of logic? [Boolos, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Boolos asks why on earth compactness, whatever its virtues, should be definitive of logic itself. | |
| From: report of George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §13 |
| 6368 | If my ticket won't win the lottery (and it won't), no other tickets will either [Kyburg, by Pollock/Cruz] |
| Full Idea: The Lottery Paradox says you should rationally conclude that your ticket will not win the lottery, and then apply the same reasoning to all the other tickets, and conclude that no ticket will win the lottery. | |
| From: report of Henry E. Kyburg Jr (Probability and Logic of Rational Belief [1961]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §7.2.8 | |
| A reaction: (Very compressed by me). I doubt whether this is a very deep paradox; the conclusion that I will not win is a rational assessment of likelihood, but it is not the result of strict logic. |
| 10833 | Many concepts can only be expressed by second-order logic [Boolos] |
| Full Idea: The notions of infinity and countability can be characterized by second-order sentences, though not by first-order sentences (as compactness and Skolem-Löwenheim theorems show), .. as well as well-ordering, progression, ancestral and identity. | |
| From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.48) |
| 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) |