Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts', 'Conditionals' and 'Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford'

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5 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.

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 / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / c. Truth-function conditionals

14289	There are some assertable conditionals one would reject if one learned the antecedent [Jackson, by Edgington]
	Full Idea: Jackson came to realise that there are assertable conditionals which one would not continue to believe if one learned the antecedent, such as Lewis's "If Reagan worked for the KGB, I'll never find out".
	From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals [1987]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.2
	A reaction: That pesky David Lewis made trouble for everybody. Edgington agrees that his earlier formulation (Idea 14288) holds good for nearly all cases. There is a self-referential element in Lewis's example.

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories

18088	Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental [Place]
	Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1)
	A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws

18089	Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place]
	Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6)
	A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world.