19044
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Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world.
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From:
Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39
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A reaction:
If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved....
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18810
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Aristotle's proofs give understanding, so it can't be otherwise, so consequence is necessary [Smiley, by Rumfitt]
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Full Idea:
The ingredient of necessity [in Aristotle's account of consequence] is required by his demand that proof should produce 'understanding' [episteme], coupled with his claim that understanding something involves seeing that it cannot be otherwise.
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From:
report of Timothy Smiley (Conceptions of Consequence [1998], p.599) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 3.2
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A reaction:
An intriguing reverse of the normal order. Not 'necessity in logic delivers understanding', but 'reaching understanding shows the logic was necessary'.
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6400
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Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
The third dogma of empiricism is the dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, which cannot be made intelligible and defensible. If we give it up, it is not clear that any distinctive empiricism remains.
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From:
Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.189)
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A reaction:
The first two dogmas were 'analyticity' and 'reductionism', as identified by Quine in 1953. Presumably Hume's Principles of Association (Idea 2189) would be an example of a scheme. A key issue is whether there is any 'pure' content.
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