3 ideas
| 7803 | Modal logic began with translation difficulties for 'If...then' [Lewis,CI, by Girle] |
| Full Idea: C.I.Lewis began his groundbreaking work in modal logic because he was concerned about the unreliability of the material conditional as a translation of 'If ... then' conditionals. | |
| From: report of C.I. Lewis (Symbolic Logic (with Langford) [1932]) by Rod Girle - Modal Logics and Philosophy 12.3 | |
| A reaction: Compare 'if this is square then it has four corners' with 'if it rains then our afternoon is ruined'. Different modalities seem to be involved. We even find that 'a square has four corners' will be materially implied if it rains! |
| 5210 | We could know what a lion thinks by mapping both its brain patterns and its experiences [Douglas,A] |
| Full Idea: In principle, it seems possible to monitor both the brain activity and the external experiences of a lion cub from birth, and by extensive mapping of one against the other to work out fairly accurately what a lion is thinking. | |
| From: Andy Douglas (talk [2003]) | |
| A reaction: This has limitations (e.g. we could monitor the external events, but not the way the lion experiences them), but it seems to me to offer a real theoretical possibility of breaching the mental privacy of an inarticulate creature. |
| 16764 | The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus] |
| Full Idea: Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted. | |
| From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763. |