Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'Calculus Ratiocinator' and 'Conditionals'

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6 ideas

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / a. Conditionals

13768	Validity can preserve certainty in mathematics, but conditionals about contingents are another matter [Edgington]
	Full Idea: If your interest in logic is confined to applications to mathematics or other a priori matters, it is fine for validity to preserve certainty, ..but if you use conditionals when arguing about contingent matters, then great caution will be required.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.2.1)

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / b. Types of conditional

13770	There are many different conditional mental states, and different conditional speech acts [Edgington]
	Full Idea: As well as conditional beliefs, there are conditional desires, hopes, fears etc. As well as conditional statements, there are conditional commands, questions, offers, promises, bets etc.
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.3.4)

10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / c. Truth-function conditionals

13764	Are conditionals truth-functional - do the truth values of A and B determine the truth value of 'If A, B'? [Edgington]
	Full Idea: Are conditionals truth-functional - do the truth values of A and B determine the truth value of 'If A, B'? Are they non-truth-functional, like 'because' or 'before'? Do the values of A and B, in some cases, leave open the value of 'If A,B'?
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.1)
	A reaction: I would say they are not truth-functional, because the 'if' asserts some further dependency relation that goes beyond the truth or falsity of A and B. Logical ifs, causal ifs, psychological ifs... The material conditional ⊃ is truth-functional.

13765	'If A,B' must entail ¬(A & ¬B); otherwise we could have A true, B false, and If A,B true, invalidating modus ponens [Edgington]
	Full Idea: If it were possible to have A true, B false, and If A,B true, it would be unsafe to infer B from A and If A,B: modus ponens would thus be invalid. Hence 'If A,B' must entail ¬(A & ¬B).
	From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.1)
	A reaction: This is a firm defence of part of the truth-functional view of conditionals, and seems unassailable. The other parts of the truth table are open to question, though, if A is false, or they are both true.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / a. Idealism

12742	A whole is just its parts, but there are no smallest parts, so only minds and perceptions exist [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The whole, if it is assumed to be body or matter, is nothing other than all of its parts; but this is absurd, since there aren't any smallest parts. Therefore there really exist only minds and their perceptions.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Calculus Ratiocinator [1679], A6.4.279), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
	A reaction: Leibniz is sometimes labelled as an 'idealist', but this text is unusual in being so explicit, and he was mainly concerned to explain the reality of individual bodies. Monads were his final attempt to do this, not an attempt to escape into pure minds.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

6017	Nomos is king [Pindar]
	Full Idea: Nomos is king.
	From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
	A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.