Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Origin of the Work of Art', 'Philosophy of Logics' and 'The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent
Later Heidegger sees philosophy as more like poetry than like science [Heidegger, by Polt]
     Full Idea: In his later work Heidegger came to view philosophy as closer to poetry than to science.
     From: report of Martin Heidegger (The Origin of the Work of Art [1935], p.178) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 5 'Signs'
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique
Logical truth seems much less likely to 'correspond to the facts' than factual truth does [Haack]
     Full Idea: It is surely less plausible to suppose that logical truth consists in correspondence to the facts than that 'factual' truth does.
     From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.6)
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition
The same sentence could be true in one language and meaningless in another, so truth is language-relative [Haack]
     Full Idea: The definition of truth will have to be, Tarski argues, relative to a language, for one and the same sentence may be true in one language, and false or meaningless in another.
     From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.5)
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 6. Falsification
Observation can force rejection of some part of the initial set of claims [Duhem, by Boulter]
     Full Idea: Logic and observation alone do not force a scientist to reject a scientific claim if experimental observations so not turn out as expected. The scientist must reject something of the initial set of claims, but that is a matter of choice.
     From: report of Pierre Duhem (The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory [1906]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 2
     A reaction: This is a key point against any simplified Popperian notion of falsification. Tiny observations can't kill huge well supported theories.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 6. Theory Holism
Experiments only test groups of hypotheses, and can't show which one is wrong [Duhem]
     Full Idea: The physicist can never subject an isolated hypothesis to experimental test, but only a whole group of hypotheses; when the experiment is in disagreement with his predictions ...it does not designate which one should be changed.
     From: Pierre Duhem (The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory [1906], p.187), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.2
     A reaction: This is the idea frequently invoked by Quine, in support of his holistic view of scientific knowledge (along with Neurath's Boat).