8 ideas
10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
Full Idea: Ramsey's Test for conditionals is that a conditional should be believed if a belief in its antecedent would commit one to believing its consequent. | |
From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
A reaction: A rather pragmatic approach to conditionals |
14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: If two people are arguing 'If p, will q?' and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge, and arguing on that basis about q; ...they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], B 155 n) | |
A reaction: This has become famous as the 'Ramsey Test'. Bennett emphasises that he is not saying that you should actually believe p - you are just trying it for size. The presupposition approach to conditionals seems attractive. Edgington likes 'degrees'. |
18699 | Carnap tried to define all scientific predicates in terms of primitive relations, using type theory [Carnap, by Button] |
Full Idea: Carnap's ultimate ambition in the Aufbau is to provide a constitution-system within which any predicate of any scientific vocabulary can be explicitly defined in terms of primitive relations holding among basic elements, using type theory. | |
From: report of Rudolph Carnap (The Logical Structure of the World (Aufbau) [1928]) by Tim Button - The Limits of Reason 05.2 | |
A reaction: David Chalmers has a modern shot at the same project in 'Constructing the World'. Ramsey sentences seem to be part of the same game. |
6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: Ramsey Sentences are his technique for eliminating theoretical terms in science (and can be applied to mental terms, or to social rights); a term in a sentence is replaced by a variable and an existential quantifier. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]), quoted by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.469 | |
A reaction: The technique is used by functionalists and results in a sort of eliminativism. The intrinsic nature of mental states is eliminated, because everything worth saying can be expressed in terms of functional/causal role. Sounds wrong to me. |
12131 | All concepts can be derived from a few basics, making possible one science of everything [Carnap, by Brody] |
Full Idea: In the 'Aufbau', Carnap tried to show how all of our concepts can be derived from a few basic concepts. ..Consequently there can be one science which studied all that existed, the science of the objects corresponding to the basic concepts. | |
From: report of Rudolph Carnap (The Logical Structure of the World (Aufbau) [1928]) by Baruch Brody - Identity and Essence 2.2 | |
A reaction: This is Carnap's Constructionist programme. |
9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: Even if we knew everything, we should still want to systematize our knowledge as a deductive system, and the general axioms in that system would be the fundamental laws of nature. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §A) | |
A reaction: This is the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. Cf. Idea 9420. |
9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
Full Idea: Causal laws are consequences of those propositions which we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system. | |
From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §B) | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 9418. |
2116 | The concept of an existing thing must contain more than the concept of a non-existing thing [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: There must be more in the concept of a thing which exists than in that of one which does not exist. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (On the Principles of Indiscernibles [1696], p.134) |