5 ideas
| 14263 | Strong Kleene disjunction just needs one true disjunct; Weak needs the other to have some value [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Under strong Kleene tables, a disjunction will be true if one of the disjuncts is true, regardless of whether or not the other disjunct has a truth-value; under the weak table it is required that the other disjunct also have a value. So for other cases. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], n7) | |
| A reaction: [see also p.111 of Fine's article] The Kleene tables seem to be the established form of modern three-valued logic, with the third value being indeterminate. |
| 14262 | Formal grounding needs transitivity of grounding, no self-grounding, and the existence of both parties [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The general formal principles of grounding are Transitivity (A«B, B«C/A«C: if A helps ground B and B helps C, then A helps C), Irreflexivity (A«A/absurd: A can't ground itself) and Factivity (A«B/A; A«/B: for grounding both A and B must be the case). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], 4) |
| 15990 | Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke] |
| Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist. | |
| From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism | |
| A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species. |
| 15994 | If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke] |
| Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge. | |
| From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism | |
| A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it. |
| 18988 | Behind the bare phenomenal facts there is nothing [Wright,Ch] |
| Full Idea: Behind the bare phenomenal facts, as my tough-minded old friend Chauncey Wright, the great Harvard empiricist of my youth, used to say, there is nothing. | |
| From: Chauncey Wright (talk [1870]), quoted by William James - Pragmatism - eight lectures Lec 7 | |
| A reaction: This is the best slogan for strong phenomenalism ever coined! It also seems to fit David Lewis's approach to philosophy, as the pure study of the mosaic of experiences. |