Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Particulars in Particular Clothing', 'Substitutional Classes and Relations' and 'Tonk, Plonk and Plink'

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6 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 7. Contextual Definition

21560	Any linguistic expression may lack meaning when taken out of context [Russell]
	Full Idea: Any sentence, a single word, or a single component phrase, may often be quite devoid of meaning when separated from its context.
	From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.165)
	A reaction: Contextualism is now extremely fashionable, in philosophy of language and in epistemology. Here Russell is looking for a contextual way to define classes [so says Lackey, the editor].

2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes

21561	'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless [Russell]
	Full Idea: 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are, I maintain, not merely silly remarks, but totally devoid of meaning.
	From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.166)
	A reaction: He connects this to paradoxes in set theory, such as the assertion that 'the class of human beings is a human being' (which is the fallacy of composition).

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / p. Axiom of Reducibility

18130	Axiom of Reducibility: there is always a function of the lowest possible order in a given level [Russell, by Bostock]
	Full Idea: Russell's Axiom of Reducibility states that to any propositional function of any order in a given level, there corresponds another which is of the lowest possible order in the level. There corresponds what he calls a 'predicative' function of that level.
	From: report of Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.2

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations

21562	There is no complexity without relations, so no propositions, and no truth [Russell]
	Full Idea: Relations in intension are of the utmost importance to philosophy and philosophical logic, since they are essential to complexity, and thence to propositions, and thence to the possibility of truth and falsehood.
	From: Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.174)
	A reaction: Should we able to specify the whole of reality, if we have available to us objects, properties and relations? There remains indeterminate 'stuff', when it does not compose objects. There are relations between pure ideas.

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes

18431	Internal relations combine some tropes into a nucleus, which bears the non-essential tropes [Simons, by Edwards]
	Full Idea: Simons's 'nuclear' option blends features of the substratum and bundle theories. First we have tropes collected by virtue of their internal relations, forming the essential kernel or nucleus. This nucleus then bears the non-essential tropes.
	From: report of Peter Simons (Particulars in Particular Clothing [1994], p.567) by Douglas Edwards - Properties 3.5
	A reaction: [compression of Edwards's summary] This strikes me as being a remarkably good theory. I am not sure of the ontological status of properties, such that they can (unaided) combine to make part of an object. What binds the non-essentials?

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / a. Types of explanation

17897	Analytic explanation is wholes in terms of parts; synthetic is parts in terms of wholes or contexts [Belnap]
	Full Idea: Throughout the whole texture of philosophy we distinguish two modes of explanation: the analytic mode, which tends to explain wholes in terms of parts, and the synthetic mode, which explains parts in terms of the wholes or contexts in which they occur.
	From: Nuel D. Belnap (Tonk, Plonk and Plink [1962], p.132)
	A reaction: The analytic would be bottom-up, and the synthetic would be top-down. I'm inclined to combine them, and say explanation begins with a model, which can then be sliced in either direction, though the bottom looks more interesting.