Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time', 'Making It Explicit' and 'The Web of Belief'

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3 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 1. Nature of Analysis
Philosophers have given precise senses to deduction, probability, computability etc [Quine/Ullian]
     Full Idea: Successful explications (giving a precise sense to a term) have been found for the concepts of deduction, probability and computability, to name just three.
     From: W Quine / J Ullian (The Web of Belief [1970], 65), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
     A reaction: Quine also cites the concept of an 'ordered pair'. Orenstein adds Tarski's definition of truth, Russell's definite descriptions, and the explication of existence in terms of quantifications. Cf. Idea 2958.
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 3. Truthmaker Maximalism
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.
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 2. Correspondence to Facts
Facts can't make claims true, because they are true claims [Brandom, by Kusch]
     Full Idea: Brandom says that facts do not make claims true, because facts simply are true claims.
     From: report of Robert B. Brandom (Making It Explicit [1994], p.327) by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.18
     A reaction: Nice. Notoriously, anyone defending the correspondence theory of truth in terms of facts had better say what they mean by a 'fact'. Personally I take a fact to be a non-verbal, mind-independent situation in the world, so I disagree with Brandom.