13 ideas
| 21560 | Any linguistic expression may lack meaning when taken out of context [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Any sentence, a single word, or a single component phrase, may often be quite devoid of meaning when separated from its context. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.165) | |
| A reaction: Contextualism is now extremely fashionable, in philosophy of language and in epistemology. Here Russell is looking for a contextual way to define classes [so says Lackey, the editor]. |
| 21561 | 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless [Russell] |
| Full Idea: 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are, I maintain, not merely silly remarks, but totally devoid of meaning. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.166) | |
| A reaction: He connects this to paradoxes in set theory, such as the assertion that 'the class of human beings is a human being' (which is the fallacy of composition). |
| 10845 | To be true a sentence must express a proposition, and not be ambiguous or vague or just expressive [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Sentences or assertions can be derivately called true, if they succeed in expressing determinate propositions. A sentence can be ambiguous or vague or paradoxical or ungrounded or not declarative or a mere expression of feeling. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.276) | |
| A reaction: Lewis has, of course, a peculiar notion of what a proposition is - it's a set of possible worlds. I, with my more psychological approach, take a proposition to be a particular sort of brain event. |
| 10847 | Truthmakers are about existential grounding, not about truth [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Instances of the truthmaker principle are equivalent to biconditionals not about truth but about the existential grounding of all manner of other things; the flying pigs, or what-have-you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001]) | |
| A reaction: The question then is what the difference is between 'existential grounding' and 'truth'. There wouldn't seem to be any difference at all if the proposition in question was a simple existential claim. |
| 10846 | Truthmaker is correspondence, but without the requirement to be one-to-one [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker principle seems to be a version of the correspondence theory of truth, but differs mostly in denying that the correspondence of truths to facts must be one-to-one. | |
| From: David Lewis (Forget the 'correspondence theory of truth' [2001], p.277) | |
| A reaction: In other words, several different sentences might have exactly the same truthmaker. |
| 18130 | Axiom of Reducibility: there is always a function of the lowest possible order in a given level [Russell, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Russell's Axiom of Reducibility states that to any propositional function of any order in a given level, there corresponds another which is of the lowest possible order in the level. There corresponds what he calls a 'predicative' function of that level. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.2 |
| 21562 | There is no complexity without relations, so no propositions, and no truth [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Relations in intension are of the utmost importance to philosophy and philosophical logic, since they are essential to complexity, and thence to propositions, and thence to the possibility of truth and falsehood. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.174) | |
| A reaction: Should we able to specify the whole of reality, if we have available to us objects, properties and relations? There remains indeterminate 'stuff', when it does not compose objects. There are relations between pure ideas. |
| 3785 | You can't separate acts from the people performing them [Glover] |
| Full Idea: A mistake of consequentialists is to treat actions as though they can somehow be isolated from the people performing them. | |
| From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Five) | |
| A reaction: I agree. The weather produces consequences. Morality is about people. Crocodiles, for example, are exempt. |
| 3786 | Aggression in defence may be beneficial but morally corrupting [Glover] |
| Full Idea: Forming the intention to use nuclear retaliation if attacked may both be the best way to avoid the catastrophe of nuclear war and at the same time be morally corrupting. | |
| From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Five) | |
| A reaction: A famous moment in 2017 when Jeremy Corbyn refused to say he would be willing to use the weapons, if elected. It would be hard to sustain a determination to do it, and then reject it at the crucial moment. |
| 3784 | Duty prohibits some acts, whatever their consequences [Glover] |
| Full Idea: The deontological view is that some acts are absolutely prohibited, regardless of consequences. | |
| From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Five) |
| 3782 | Satisfaction of desires is not at all the same as achieving happiness [Glover, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Objections to utilitarianism as maximisation of preferences: faded past desires or the desires of the dead; obtaining desires and happiness are different; fewer desires are easier to satisfy; pain is good if it can be removed. | |
| From: report of Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Two) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 3787 | Rule-utilitarianism is either act-utilitarianism, or not really utilitarian [Glover] |
| Full Idea: Rule-utilitarianism seems either to collapse into act-utilitarianism, or else it is only partly utilitarian. | |
| From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Six) |
| 3783 | How can utilitarianism decide the ideal population size? [Glover] |
| Full Idea: There are deep problems for utilitarianism in trying to work out what the ideal population size would be. | |
| From: Jonathan Glover (Introductions to Utilitarianism and its Critics [1990], Pt Four) |