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5784
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In its primary and formal sense, 'true' applies to propositions, not beliefs [Russell]
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Full Idea:
We call a belief true when it is belief in a true proposition, ..but it is to propositions that the primary formal meanings of 'truth' and 'falsehood' apply.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV)
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A reaction:
I think this is wrong. A proposition such as 'it is raining' would need a date-and-time stamp to be a candidate for truth, and an indexical statement such as 'I am ill' would need to be asserted by a person. Of course, books can contain unread truths.
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5783
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Propositions of existence, generalities, disjunctions and hypotheticals make correspondence tricky [Russell]
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Full Idea:
The correspondence of proposition and fact grows increasingly complicated as we pass to more complicated types of propositions: existence-propositions, general propositions, disjunctive and hypothetical propositions, and so on.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV)
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A reaction:
An important point. Truth must not just work for 'it is raining', but also for maths, logic, tautologies, laws etc. This is why so many modern philosophers have retreated to deflationary and minimal accounts of truth, which will cover all cases.
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18904
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'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
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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.
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From:
report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
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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.
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18895
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Logic which maps ordinary reasoning must be transparent, and free of variables [Sommers]
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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.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'How We')
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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.
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18893
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Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers]
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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.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], Intro)
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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.
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18903
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Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
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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.
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From:
report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
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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?
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18894
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Predicates form a hierarchy, from the most general, down to names at the bottom [Sommers]
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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.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Category')
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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!
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5780
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The three questions about belief are its contents, its success, and its character [Russell]
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Full Idea:
There are three issues about belief: 1) the content which is believed, 2) the relation of the content to its 'objective' - the fact which makes it true or false, and 3) the element which is belief, as opposed to consideration or doubt or desire.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III)
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A reaction:
The correct answers to the questions (trust me) are that propositions are the contents, the relation aimed at is truth, which is a 'metaphysical ideal' of correspondence to facts, and belief itself is an indefinable feeling. See Hume, Idea 2208.
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5778
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If we object to all data which is 'introspective' we will cease to believe in toothaches [Russell]
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Full Idea:
If privacy is the main objection to introspective data, we shall have to include among such data all sensations; a toothache, for example, is essentially private; a dentist may see the bad condition of your tooth, but does not feel your ache.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §II)
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A reaction:
Russell was perhaps the first to see why eliminative behaviourism is a non-starter as a theory of mind. Mental states are clearly a cause of behaviour, so they can't be the same thing. We might 'eliminate' mental states by reducing them, though.
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5781
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Our important beliefs all, if put into words, take the form of propositions [Russell]
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Full Idea:
The important beliefs, even if they are not the only ones, are those which, if rendered into explicit words, take the form of a proposition.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III)
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A reaction:
This assertion is close to the heart of the twentieth century linking of ontology and epistemology to language. It is open to challenges. Why is non-propositional belief unimportant? Do dogs have important beliefs? Can propositions exist non-verbally?
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5782
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A proposition expressed in words is a 'word-proposition', and one of images an 'image-proposition' [Russell]
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Full Idea:
I shall distinguish a proposition expressed in words as a 'word-proposition', and one consisting of images as an 'image-proposition'.
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From:
Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III)
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A reaction:
This, I think, is good, though it raises the question of what exactly an 'image' is when it is non-visual, as when a dog believes its owner called. This distinction prevents us from regarding all knowledge and ontology as verbal in form.
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22489
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'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot]
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Full Idea:
Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'.
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From:
report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro
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A reaction:
[In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it.
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