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9217
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Modern empirical metaphysics focuses on ontological commitments of discourse, or on presuppositions [Loux/Zimmerman]
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Full Idea:
The empiricist revival of metaphysics came with Quine, who focused on ontological commitments associated with accepting a body of discourse, and Strawson, asking about the presuppositions of our conceptual practices.
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From:
M Loux / D Zimmerman (Intro to Oxford Hndbk of Metaphysics [2003])
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A reaction:
I find myself preferring the British approach. I can discourse about things without ontological commitment, and utter truths about non-existent things. I really yearn, though, for the third way - actually reasoning towards knowing what's out there.
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6343
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For Russell, both propositions and facts are arrangements of objects, so obviously they correspond [Horwich on Russell]
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Full Idea:
Given Russell's notion of a proposition, as an arrangement of objects and properties, it is hard to see how there could be any difference at all between such a proposition and the fact corresponding to it, since they each involve the same arrangement.
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From:
comment on Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Paul Horwich - Truth (2nd edn) Ch.7.35
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A reaction:
This seems a little unfair, given that Russell (in 1912) uses the notion now referred to as 'congruence', so that the correspondence is not in the objects and properties, but in how they are 'ordered', which may differ between proposition and fact.
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7534
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In 1906, Russell decided that propositions did not, after all, exist [Russell, by Monk]
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Full Idea:
With a characteristic readiness to abandon views that he had previously considered definitively correct, Russell declared in 1906 that there were, after all, no such 'things' as propositions. It is judgements that are true or false.
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From:
report of Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.6
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A reaction:
Written 1906. Russell developed a 'multiple relation theory of judgement'. But if a judgement is an assessment of truth or falsehood, what is it that is being assessed?
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