10 ideas
14249 | Boolos reinterprets second-order logic as plural logic [Boolos, by Oliver/Smiley] |
Full Idea: Boolos's conception of plural logic is as a reinterpretation of second-order logic. | |
From: report of George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975]) by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? n5 | |
A reaction: Oliver and Smiley don't accept this view, and champion plural reference differently (as, I think, some kind of metalinguistic device?). |
10830 | Second-order logic metatheory is set-theoretic, and second-order validity has set-theoretic problems [Boolos] |
Full Idea: The metatheory of second-order logic is hopelessly set-theoretic, and the notion of second-order validity possesses many if not all of the epistemic debilities of the notion of set-theoretic truth. | |
From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.45) | |
A reaction: Epistemic problems arise when a logic is incomplete, because some of the so-called truths cannot be proved, and hence may be unreachable. This idea indicates Boolos's motivation for developing a theory of plural quantification. |
10829 | A sentence can't be a truth of logic if it asserts the existence of certain sets [Boolos] |
Full Idea: One may be of the opinion that no sentence ought to be considered as a truth of logic if, no matter how it is interpreted, it asserts that there are sets of certain sorts. | |
From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.44) | |
A reaction: My intuition is that in no way should any proper logic assert the existence of anything at all. Presumably interpretations can assert the existence of numbers or sets, but we should be able to identify something which is 'pure' logic. Natural deduction? |
10832 | '∀x x=x' only means 'everything is identical to itself' if the range of 'everything' is fixed [Boolos] |
Full Idea: One may say that '∀x x=x' means 'everything is identical to itself', but one must realise that one's answer has a determinate sense only if the reference (range) of 'everything' is fixed. | |
From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.46) | |
A reaction: This is the problem now discussed in the recent book 'Absolute Generality', of whether one can quantify without specifying a fixed or limited domain. |
10834 | Weak completeness: if it is valid, it is provable. Strong: it is provable from a set of sentences [Boolos] |
Full Idea: A weak completeness theorem shows that a sentence is provable whenever it is valid; a strong theorem, that a sentence is provable from a set of sentences whenever it is a logical consequence of the set. | |
From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.52) | |
A reaction: So the weak version says |- φ → |= φ, and the strong versions says Γ |- φ → Γ |= φ. Presumably it is stronger if it can specify the source of the inference. |
13841 | Why should compactness be definitive of logic? [Boolos, by Hacking] |
Full Idea: Boolos asks why on earth compactness, whatever its virtues, should be definitive of logic itself. | |
From: report of George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §13 |
10833 | Many concepts can only be expressed by second-order logic [Boolos] |
Full Idea: The notions of infinity and countability can be characterized by second-order sentences, though not by first-order sentences (as compactness and Skolem-Löwenheim theorems show), .. as well as well-ordering, progression, ancestral and identity. | |
From: George Boolos (On Second-Order Logic [1975], p.48) |
7946 | The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things [Williams,B, by Macdonald,C] |
Full Idea: The memory criterion for personal identity permits 'branching' (where two things can later meet the criteria of persistence of a single earlier thing), which presents it with serious problems. | |
From: report of Bernard Williams (Personal Identity and Individuation [1956]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.4 | |
A reaction: Of course, any notion of personal identity would have serious problem if people could branch into two, like fissioning amoeba. If that happened, we probably wouldn't have had a strong notion of personal identity in the first place. See Parfit. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |