6 ideas
| 8188 | Davidson takes truth to attach to individual sentences [Davidson, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Davidson, by contrast to Frege, has taken truth as attaching to linguistic items, that is, to actual or hypothetical token sentences. | |
| From: report of Donald Davidson (True to the Facts [1969]) by Michael Dummett - Truth and the Past 1 | |
| A reaction: My personal notion of truth is potentially applicable to animals, so this doesn't appeal to me. I am happy to think of animals as believing simple propositions that never get as far as language, and being right or wrong about them. |
| 19370 | 'Blind thought' is reasoning without recognition of the ingredients of the reasoning [Leibniz, by Arthur,R] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz invented the concept of 'blind thought' - reasoning by a manipulation of characters without being able to recognise what each character stands for. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Towards a Universal Characteristic [1677]) by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz |
| 19391 | We can assign a characteristic number to every single object [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The true principle is that we can assign to every object its determined characteristic number. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Towards a Universal Characteristic [1677], p.18) | |
| A reaction: I add this as a predecessor of Gödel numbering. It is part of Leibniz's huge plan for a Universal Characteristic, to map reality numerically, and then calculate the truths about it. Gödel seems to allow metaphysics to be done mathematically. |
| 19390 | Everything is subsumed under number, which is a metaphysical statics of the universe, revealing powers [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing which is not subsumable under number; number is therefore a fundamental metaphysical form, and arithmetic a sort of statics of the universe, in which the powers of things are revealed. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Towards a Universal Characteristic [1677], p.17) | |
| A reaction: I take numbers to be a highly generalised and idealised description of an aspect of reality (seen as mainly constituted by countable substances). Seeing reality as processes doesn't lead us to number. So I like this idea. |
| 2798 | Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) x prob(E given H) / prob(E) [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Bayesianism says ideally rational people should have degrees of belief (not all-or-nothing beliefs), corresponding with probability theory. Probability of H, given evidence E, is prob(H) X prob(E given H) / prob(E). | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.41) |
| 2799 | Bayes' theorem explains why very surprising predictions have a higher value as evidence [Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Bayesianism can explain the fact that in science surprising predictions have greater evidential value, as the equation produces a higher degree of confirmation. | |
| From: Paul Horwich (Bayesianism [1992], p.42) |