9 ideas
| 18270 | Choice suggests that intensions are not needed to ensure classes [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The axiom of choice was an assumption that implicitly questioned the necessity of intensions to guarantee the presence of classes. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'Log') | |
| A reaction: The point is that Choice just picks out members for no particular reason. So classes, it seems, don't need a reason to exist. |
| 490 | Everything happens by reason and necessity [Leucippus] |
| Full Idea: Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity. | |
| From: Leucippus (fragments/reports [c.435 BCE], B002), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 18263 | The semantic tradition aimed to explain the a priori semantically, not by Kantian intuition [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The semantic tradition's problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kantian pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base that theory on a development of semantics. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 2 Intro) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that intuition, in the modern sense, has been unnecessarily demonised. I would define it as 'rational insights which cannot be fully articulated'. Sherlock Holmes embodies it. |
| 18272 | Platonism defines the a priori in a way that makes it unknowable [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The trouble with Platonism had always been its inability to define a priori knowledge in a way that made it possible for human beings to have it. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'What') | |
| A reaction: This is the famous argument of Benacerraf 1973. |
| 14794 | Instead of seeking Truth, we should seek belief that is beyond doubt [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the Truth, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable beyond doubt. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as saying that belief beyond doubt IS truth. He is merely offering a strategy for scientists to side-step the sort of scepticism raised by Descartes and radical empiricists. |
| 18266 | Mathematics generalises by using variables [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The instrument of generality in mathematics is the variable. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 4 'The conc') | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that there are variables in ordinary speech, pronouns being the most obvious example. 'Cats' is a variable involving quantification over a domain of lovable fluffy mammals. |
| 14792 | A 'conception', the rational implication of a word, lies in its bearing upon the conduct of life [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The present writer framed the theory that a 'conception', that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) |
| 14793 | The definition of a concept is just its experimental implications [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) | |
| A reaction: Strictly, I would have thought you could only affirm or deny a complete proposition, rather than a concept. What should I do with the concept of a 'unicorn'? Note that all theories, such as empiricism or pragmatism, begin with an account of our concepts. |
| 18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991]) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity. |