Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts', 'Propositions' and 'The Psychophysical Nexus'

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13 ideas

3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers

13941	Are the truth-bearers sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgements, propositions or statements? [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: What is it that is susceptible of truth or falsity? The answers suggested constitute a bewildering variety: sentences, utterances, ideas, beliefs, judgments, propositions, statements.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 01)
	A reaction: Carwright's answer is 'statements', which seem to be the same as propositions.

13942	Logicians take sentences to be truth-bearers for rigour, rather than for philosophical reasons [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: The current fashion among logicians of taking sentences to be the bearers of truth and falsity indicates less an agreement on philosophical theory than a desire for rigor and smoothness in calculative practice.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 01)
	A reaction: A remark close to my heart. Propositions are rejected first because language offers hope of answers, then because they seem metaphysically odd, and finally because you can't pin them down rigorously. But the blighters won't lie down and die.

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.

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience

4242	Pure supervenience explains nothing, and is a sign of something fundamental we don't know [Nagel]
	Full Idea: Pure, unexplained supervenience is never a solution to a problem but a sign that there is something fundamental we don't know.
	From: Thomas Nagel (The Psychophysical Nexus [2000], §III)
	A reaction: This seems right. It is not a theory or an explanation, merely the observation of a correlation which will require explanation. Why are they correlated?

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.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity

13945	A token isn't a unique occurrence, as the case of a word or a number shows [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: We cannot take a token of a word to be an occurrence of it. Suppose there is exactly one occurrence of the word 'etherized' in the whole of English poetry? Exactly one 'token'? This sort of occurrence is like the occurrence of a number in a sequence.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], Add 2)
	A reaction: This remark is in an addendum to his paper, criticising his own lax use of the idea of 'token' in the actual paper. The example nicely shows that the type/token distinction isn't neat and tidy - though I consider it very useful.

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning

13948	For any statement, there is no one meaning which any sentence asserting it must have [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: It does have to be acknowledged, I think, that every statement whatever is such that there is no one meaning which any sentence used to assert it must have.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 11)
	A reaction: This feels to me like a Gricean move - that what we are really interested in is communicating one mental state to another mental state, and there are all sorts of tools that can do that one job.

13950	People don't assert the meaning of the words they utter [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: No one ever asserts the meaning of the words he utters.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 12)
	A reaction: Cartwright is using this point to drive a wedge between sentence meaning and the assertion made by the utterance. Hence he defends propositions. Presumably people utilise word-meanings, rather than asserting them. Meanings (not words) are tools.

19. Language / D. Propositions / 1. Propositions

13944	We can pull apart assertion from utterance, and the action, the event and the subject-matter for each [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: We need to distinguish 1) what is asserted, 2) that assertion, 3) asserting something, 4) what is predicated, 5) what is uttered, 6) that utterance, 7) uttering something, 8) the utterance token, and 9) the meaning.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 05-06)
	A reaction: [summary of his overall analysis in the paper] It is amazingly hard to offer a critical assessment of this sort of analysis, but it gives you a foot in the door for thinking about the issues with increasing clarity.

13947	'It's raining' makes a different assertion on different occasions, but its meaning remains the same [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: A person who utters 'It's raining' one day does not normally make the same statement as one who utters it the next. But these variations are not accompanied by corresponding changes of meaning. The words 'It's raining' retain the same meaning throughout.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 10)
	A reaction: This is important, because it shows that a proposition is not just the mental shadow behind a sentence, or a mental shadow awaiting a sentence. Unlike a sentence, a proposition can (and possibly must) include its own context. Very interesting!

19. Language / D. Propositions / 4. Mental Propositions

13943	We can attribute 'true' and 'false' to whatever it was that was said [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: We do sometimes say of something to which we have referred that it is true (or false). Are we not ordinarily doing just this when we utter such sentences as 'That's true' and 'What he said was false'?
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 03)
	A reaction: This supports propositions, but doesn't clinch the matter. One could interpret this phenomenon as always being (implicitly) the reference of one sentence to another. However, I remember what he said, but I can't remember how he said it.

13946	To assert that p, it is neither necessary nor sufficient to utter some particular words [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: In order to assert that p it is not necessary to utter exactly those words. ...Clearly, also, in order to assert that p, it is not sufficient to utter the words that were actually uttered.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 07)
	A reaction: I take the first point to be completely obvious (you can assert one thing with various wordings), and the second seems right after a little thought (the words could be vague, ambiguous, inaccurate, contextual)

19. Language / F. Communication / 2. Assertion

13951	Assertions, unlike sentence meanings, can be accurate, probable, exaggerated, false.... [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: Whereas what is asserted can be said to be accurate, exaggerated, unfounded, overdrawn, probable, improbable, plausible, true, or false, none of these can be said of the meaning of a sentence.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Propositions [1962], 12)
	A reaction: That fairly firmly kicks into touch the idea that the assertion is the same as the meaning of the sentence.