3 ideas
7319 | If we give up synonymy, we have to give up significance, meaning and sense [Grice/Strawson] |
Full Idea: If we are to give up the notion of sentence-synonymy as senseless, we must give up the notion of sentence-significance (of a sentence having meaning) as senseless too. But then perhaps we might as well give up the notion of sense. | |
From: P Grice / P Strawson (In Defense of a Dogma [1956]), quoted by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2 | |
A reaction: This is very prescient. Nearly all American philosophers seem to embrace Quine's view of analyticity (the philosophical equivalent of Americans putting a man on the moon?), but have they digested the implications (which Quine later largely admits)? |
20662 | The biology of societies: kin selection, parenting, mating; status, territory, contracts [Wilson,EO] |
Full Idea: Societies are ordered around six sociobiological principles: kin selection; parental investment; mating strategy; status; territorial expansion and defence; contractual agreement. | |
From: Edmund O. Wilson (Consilience [1998], 19 'Intro'), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I trust such a precise list. Personally I'm in society because I'm too frightend to drop out. So where is 'defence'? Still, I like attempts at assembling such a list. Politics needs grounding. |
14409 | I am a presentist, and all language and common sense supports my view [Bigelow] |
Full Idea: I am a presentist: nothing exists which is not present. Everyone believed this until the nineteenth century; it is writing into the grammar of natural languages; it is still assumed in everyday life, even by philosophers who deny it. | |
From: John Bigelow (Presentism and Properties [1996], p.36), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Truth and Ontology | |
A reaction: The most likely deniers of presentism seem to be physicists and cosmologists who have overdosed on Einstein. On the whole I vote for presentism, but what justifies truths about the past and future. Traces existing in the present? |