17 ideas
| 18369 | There are at least fourteen candidates for truth-bearers [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Among the candidates [for truthbearers] are beliefs, propositions, judgments, assertions, statements, theories, remarks, ideas, acts of thought, utterances, sentence tokens, sentence types, sentences (unspecified), and speech acts. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I vote for propositions, but only in the sense of the thoughts underlying language, not the Russellian things which are supposed to exist independently from thinkers. |
| 19318 | A 'sequence' of objects is an order set of them [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: A 'sequence' of objects is like a set of objects, except that, unlike a set, the order of the objects is important when dealing with sequences. ...An infinite sequence satisfies 'x2 is purple' if and only if the second member of the sequence is purple. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This explains why Tarski needed set theory in his metalanguage. |
| 19319 | If one sequence satisfies a sentence, they all do [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: If one sequence satisfies a sentence, they all do. ...Thus it matters not whether we define truth as satisfaction by some sequence or as satisfaction by all sequences. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: So if the striker scores a goal, the team has scored a goal. |
| 19320 | If we define truth by listing the satisfactions, the supply of predicates must be finite [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: Because the definition of satisfaction must have a separate clause for each predicate, Tarski's method only works for languages with a finite number of predicates, ...but natural languages have an infinite number of predicates. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: He suggest predicates containing natural numbers, as examples of infinite predicates. Davidson tried to extend the theory to natural languages, by (I think) applying it to adverbs, which could generate the infinite predicates. Maths has finite predicates. |
| 19315 | In quantified language the components of complex sentences may not be sentences [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: In a quantified language it is possible to build new sentences by combining two expressions neither of which is itself a sentence. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: In propositional logic the components are other sentences, so the truth value can be given by their separate truth-values, through truth tables. Kirkham is explaining the task which Tarski faced. Truth-values are not just compositional. |
| 19317 | An open sentence is satisfied if the object possess that property [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: An object satisfies an open sentence if and only if it possesses the property expressed by the predicate of the open sentence. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This applies to atomic sentence, of the form Fx or Fa (that is, some variable is F, or some object is F). So strictly, only the world can decide whether some open sentence is satisfied. And it all depends on things called 'properties'. |
| 4261 | The Lottery Paradox says each ticket is likely to lose, so there probably won't be a winner [Bonjour, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The Lottery Paradox says that for 100 tickets and one winner, each ticket has a .99 likelihood of defeat, so they are all likely to lose, so there is unlikely to be a winner. | |
| From: report of Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §5) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: The problem seems to be viewing each ticket in isolation. If I buy two tickets, I increase my chances of winning. |
| 19322 | Why can there not be disjunctive, conditional and negative facts? [Kirkham] |
| Full Idea: It has been said that there are no disjunctive facts, conditional facts, or negative facts. ...but it is not at all clear why there cannot be facts of this sort. | |
| From: Richard L. Kirkham (Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction [1992], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: I love these sorts of facts, and offer them as a naturalistic basis for logic. You probably need the world to have modal features, but I have those in the form of powers and dispositions. |
| 4255 | Externalist theories of knowledge are one species of foundationalism [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: Externalist theories of knowledge are one species of foundationalism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why there shouldn't be a phenomenalist, anti-realist version of externalism, which just has 'starting points' instead of a serious commitment to foundations. |
| 4257 | The big problem for foundationalism is to explain how basic beliefs are possible [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental question that must be answered by any acceptable version of foundationalism is: how are basic beliefs possible? | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §I) | |
| A reaction: This question seems to be asking for a justification for basic beliefs, which smacks of 'Who made God?' Look, basic beliefs are just basic, right? |
| 4256 | The main argument for foundationalism is that all other theories involve a regress leading to scepticism [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The central argument for foundationalism is simply that all other possible outcomes of the regress of justifications lead inexorably to scepticism. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §I) | |
| A reaction: If you prefer coherence to foundations, you need the security of reason to assess the coherence (which seems to be an internal foundation!). |
| 4258 | Extreme externalism says no more justification is required than the truth of the belief [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme version of externalism would be one that held that the external condition required for justification is simply the truth of the belief in question. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §II) | |
| A reaction: The question is, why should we demand any more than this? The problem case is, traditionally, the lucky guess, but naturalist may say that these just don't occur with any regularity. We only get beliefs right because they are true. |
| 4259 | External reliability is not enough, if the internal state of the believer is known to be irrational [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: External or objective reliability is not enough to offset subjective irrationality (such as unexplained clairvoyance). | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §IV) | |
| A reaction: A good argument. Where do animals fit into this? If your clairvoyance kept working, in the end you might concede that you 'knew', even though you were baffled about how you managed it. |
| 4260 | Even if there is no obvious irrationality, it may be irrational to base knowledge entirely on external criteria [Bonjour] |
| Full Idea: It may be that where there are no positive grounds for a charge of irrationality, the acceptance of a belief with only external justification is still subjectively irrational in a sense that rules out its being epistemologically justified. | |
| From: Laurence Bonjour (Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge [1980], §IV) | |
| A reaction: A key objection. Surely rational behaviour requires a judgement to be made before a belief is accepted? If you are consistently clairvoyant, you must ask why. |
| 5049 | Intelligent pleasure is the perception of beauty, order and perfection [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: An intelligent being's pleasure is simply the perception of beauty, order and perfection. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §18) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz seems to have inherited this from the Greeks, especially Pythagoras and Plato. Buried in Leibniz's remark I see the Christian fear of physical pleasure. He should have got out more. Must an intelligent being always be intelligent? |
| 5048 | Perfection is simply quantity of reality [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Perfection is simply quantity of reality. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §11) | |
| A reaction: An interesting claim, but totally beyond my personal comprehension. I presume he inherited 'quantity of reality' from Plato, e.g. as you move up the Line from shadows to Forms you increase the degree of reality. I see 'real' as all-or-nothing. |
| 5050 | Evil serves a greater good, and pain is necessary for higher pleasure [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Evils themselves serve a greater good, and the fact that pains are found in minds is necessary if they are to reach greater pleasures. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (A Résumé of Metaphysics [1697], §23) | |
| A reaction: How much pain is needed to qualify for the 'greater pleasures'? Some people receive an awful lot. I am not sure exactly how an evil can 'serve' a greater good. Is he recommending evil? |