Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Intellectual Autobiography' and 'fragments/reports'

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12 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / a. What makes truths

18901	Truthmakers are facts 'of' a domain, not something 'in' the domain [Sommers]
	Full Idea: A fact is an existential characteristic 'of' the domain; it is not something 'in' the domain. To search for truth-making facts in the world is indeed futile.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Existence')
	A reaction: Attacking Austin on truth. Helpful. It is hard to see how a physical object has a mysterious power to 'make' a truth. No energy-transfer seems involved in the making. Animals think true thoughts; I suspect that concerns their mental maps of the world.

4. Formal Logic / A. Syllogistic Logic / 3. Term Logic

18904	'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
	Full Idea: Sommers took the 'predicable' terms of any language to come in logically charged pairs. Examples might be red/nonred, massive/massless, tied/untied, in the house/not in the house. The idea that terms can be negated was essential for such pairing.
	From: report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
	A reaction: If, as Rumfitt says, we learn affirmation and negation as a single linguistic operation, this would fit well with it, though Rumfitt doubtless (as a fan of classical logic) prefers to negation sentences.

18895	Logic which maps ordinary reasoning must be transparent, and free of variables [Sommers]
	Full Idea: What would a 'laws of thought' logic that cast light on natural language deductive thinking be like? Such a logic must be variable-free, conforming to normal syntax, and its modes of reasoning must be transparent, to make them virtually instantaneous.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'How We')
	A reaction: This is the main motivation for Fred Sommers's creation of modern term logic. Even if you are up to your neck in modern symbolic logic (which I'm not), you have to find this idea appealing. You can't leave it to the psychologists.

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 4. Identity in Logic

18897	Predicate logic has to spell out that its identity relation '=' is an equivalent relation [Sommers]
	Full Idea: Because predicate logic contrues identities dyadically, its account of inferences involving identity propositions needs laws or axioms of identity, explicitly asserting that the dyadic realtion in 'x=y' possesses symmetry, reflexivity and transitivity.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Syllogistic')

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form

18893	Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers]
	Full Idea: Modern predicate logic's methods of justification, which involve translation into an artificial quantificational idiom, offer no clues to how the average person, knowing no logic and adhering to the vernacular, is so logically adept.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], Intro)
	A reaction: Of course, people are very logically adept when the argument is simple (because, I guess, they can test it against the world), but not at all good when the reasoning becomes more complex. We do, though, reason in ordinary natural language.

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / c. not

18903	Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
	Full Idea: If there is one idea that is the keystone of the edifice that constitutes Sommers's united philosophy it is that terms are the linguistic entities subject to negation in the most basic sense. It is a very old idea, tending to be rejected in modern times.
	From: report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
	A reaction: Negation in modern logic is an operator applied to sentences, typically writing '¬Fa', which denies that F is predicated of a, with Fa being an atomic sentence. Do we say 'not(Stan is happy)', or 'not-Stan is happy', or 'Stan is not-happy'? Third one?

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 7. Predicates in Logic

18894	Predicates form a hierarchy, from the most general, down to names at the bottom [Sommers]
	Full Idea: We organise our concepts of predicability on a hierarchical tree. At the top are terms like 'interesting', 'exists', 'talked about', which are predicable of anything. At the bottom are names, and in between are predicables of some things and not others.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Category')
	A reaction: The heirarchy seem be arranged simply by the scope of the predicate. 'Tallest' is predicable of anything in principle, but only of a few things in practice. Is 'John Doe' a name? What is 'cosmic' predicable of? Challenging!

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism

18900	Unfortunately for realists, modern logic cannot say that some fact exists [Sommers]
	Full Idea: Unfortunately for the fate of realist philosophy, modern logic's treatment of 'exists' is resolutely inhospitable to facts as referents of phrases of the form 'the existence or non-existence of φ'.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Realism')
	A reaction: Predicate logic has to talk about objects, and then attribute predicates to them. It tends to treat a fact as 'Fa' - this object has this predicate, but that's not really how we understand facts.

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

5987	Alcmaeon was the first to say the brain is central to thinking [Alcmaeon, by Staden, von]
	Full Idea: Alcmaeon apparently was the first Greek to assign central cognitive and biological functions to the brain.
	From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE]) by Heinrich von Staden - Alcmaeon
	A reaction: The name of Alcmaeon should be remembered with honour. This was 200 years before Aristotle, who still hadn't worked it out. I presume Alcmaeon inferred the truth from head injuries, which is overwhelming evidence, if you notice it.

19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories

18898	In standard logic, names are the only way to refer [Sommers]
	Full Idea: In modern predicate logic, definite reference by proper names is the primary and sole form of reference.
	From: Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Reference')
	A reaction: Hence we have to translate definite descriptions into (logical) names, or else paraphrase them out of existence. The domain only contains 'objects', so only names can uniquely pick them out.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

7903	The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
	Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
	From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
	A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / b. Soul

24043	Soul must be immortal, since it continually moves, like the heavens [Alcmaeon, by Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Alcmaeon says that the soul is immortal because it resembles immortal things and that this affection belongs to it because it is always in movement, like divine things, such the moon, the sun, the stars and the whole heaven.
	From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE], DK 24) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a30
	A reaction: Hm. Fish and rivers seem to be continually moving too. Presumably we are like gods, but then Greek gods seem awfully like humans. I don't know the history of belief in immortality; an interesting topic.