4 ideas
| 16030 | 'Nominal' definitions identify things, but fail to give their essence [Jones,J-E] |
| Full Idea: In the Aristotelian tradition, a 'nominal' definition is a pseudo-definition that identifies the members of the species or genus, but fails to capture the essence, e.g. 'man is the featherless biped'. | |
| From: Jan-Erik Jones (Real Essence [2012], §2) | |
| A reaction: You can 'individuate' an object as 'the only object in that drawer', while revealing nothing about it. So what must a definition do, in addition to picking something out uniquely? |
| 17962 | The truth-maker principle is that every truth has a sufficient truth-maker [Forrest] |
| Full Idea: Item x is said to be a sufficient truth-maker for truth-bearer p just in case necessarily if x exists then p is true. ...Every truth has a sufficient truth-maker. Hence, I take it, the sum of all sufficient truth-makers is a universal truth-maker. | |
| From: Peter Forrest (General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Note that it is not 'necessary', because something else might make p true instead. |
| 14263 | Strong Kleene disjunction just needs one true disjunct; Weak needs the other to have some value [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Under strong Kleene tables, a disjunction will be true if one of the disjuncts is true, regardless of whether or not the other disjunct has a truth-value; under the weak table it is required that the other disjunct also have a value. So for other cases. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], n7) | |
| A reaction: [see also p.111 of Fine's article] The Kleene tables seem to be the established form of modern three-valued logic, with the third value being indeterminate. |
| 14262 | Formal grounding needs transitivity of grounding, no self-grounding, and the existence of both parties [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The general formal principles of grounding are Transitivity (A«B, B«C/A«C: if A helps ground B and B helps C, then A helps C), Irreflexivity (A«A/absurd: A can't ground itself) and Factivity (A«B/A; A«/B: for grounding both A and B must be the case). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Some Puzzles of Ground [2010], 4) |