Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts', 'Intro to I: Classical Logic' and 'Tropes'

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7 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 3. Value of Logic

9390	Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13)
	A reaction: There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy.

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 6. Classical Logic

9463	Classical logic is bivalent, has excluded middle, and only quantifies over existent objects [Jacquette]
	Full Idea: Classical logic (of Whitehead, Russell, Gödel, Church) is a two-valued system of propositional and predicate logic, in which all propositions are exclusively true or false, and quantification and predication are over existent objects only.
	From: Dale Jacquette (Intro to I: Classical Logic [2002], p.9)
	A reaction: All of these get challenged at some point, though the existence requirement is the one I find dubious.

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes

10467	Individuals consist of 'compresent' tropes [Bacon,John]
	Full Idea: 'Qualitons' or 'relatons' (quality and relation tropes) are held to belong to the same individual if they are all 'compresent' with one another.
	From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §4)
	A reaction: There is a perennial problem with bundles - how to distinguish accidental compresence (like people in a lift) from united compresence (like people who make a family).

10464	A trope is a bit of a property or relation (not an exemplification or a quality) [Bacon,John]
	Full Idea: A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation. Bill Clinton's eloquence is not his participating in the universal eloquence, or the peculiar quality of his eloquence, but his bit, and his alone, of eloquence.
	From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], Intro)
	A reaction: If we have identified something as a 'bit' of something, we can ask whether that bit is atomic, or divisible into something else, and we can ask what are the qualities and properties and powers of this bit, we seems to defeat the object.

10465	Trope theory is ontologically parsimonious, with possibly only one-category [Bacon,John]
	Full Idea: A major attraction of tropism has been its promise of parsimony; some adherents (such as Campbell) go so far as to proclaim a one-category ontology.
	From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §2)
	A reaction: This seems to go against the folk idiom which suggests that it is things which have properties, rather than properties ruling to roost. Maybe if one identified tropes with processes, the theory could be brought more into line with modern physics?

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects

9389	Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept.
	From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5)
	A reaction: I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy.

10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds

10466	Maybe possible worlds are just sets of possible tropes [Bacon,John]
	Full Idea: Meinongian tropism has the advantage that possible worlds might be thought of as sets of 'qualitons' and 'relatons' (quality and relational tropes).
	From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §3)
	A reaction: You are still left with 'possible' to explain, and I'm not sure that anything is explain here. If the actual world is sets of tropes, then possible worlds would also have to be, I suppose.