3 ideas
| 13858 | The truth-functional account of conditionals is right, if the antecedent is really acceptable [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson defends the truth-functional account by saying that for a conditional to be assertable, it must not only be believed that its truth-conditions are satisfied, but the belief must be robust or resilient with respect to the antecedent. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals and Possibilia [1981]) by Dorothy Edgington - Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? 4 | |
| A reaction: ..That is, one would not abandon the conditional if one believed the antecedent to be true. |
| 9145 | We form the image of a cardinal number by a double abstraction, from the elements and from their order [Cantor] |
| Full Idea: We call 'cardinal number' the general concept which, by means of our active faculty of thought, arises when we make abstraction from an aggregate of its various elements, and of their order. From this double abstraction the number is an image in our mind. | |
| From: George Cantor (Beitrage [1915], §1), quoted by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence Intro | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the great Cantor, creator of set theory, endorsing the traditional abstractionism which Frege and his followers so despise. Fine offers a defence of it. The Frege view is platonist, because it refuses to connect numbers to the world. |
| 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? |