19 ideas
| 22438 | Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is in large part concerned with ...what science could get along with, could be reconstructed by means of, as distinct from what science has historically made us of. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: This nicely summarises the programme for the whole of the philosophy of David Lewis, who was Quine's pupil. If you start by asking what it could 'get by with', it is not surprising that simplicity is the top intellectual virtue for both of them. |
| 22436 | Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The logician does not even need to paraphrase the vernacular into his logical notation, for he has learned to think directly in his logical notation, or even (which is the beauty of the thing) to let it think for him. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: See Williamson's love of logic (and his book on modal metaphysics). This idea embodies the dream of hardcore Frege-Russellian analytic philosophers. I wish someone had told me when I studied logic that the target was to actually think symbolically. |
| 22431 | Good algorithms and theories need many occurrences of just a few elements [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The power and simplicity of an algorithm, or indeed of any theory, depend on there being many occurrences of few elements rather than few occurrences of many. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], III) | |
| A reaction: Not sure how this applies to a software function. One which produces a good result from a large number of input variables sounds particularly impressive to me. Many occurrences of a single variable sounds rather inefficient. |
| 22435 | The logician's '→' does not mean the English if-then [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The logician drops 'if-then' in favour of '→' without ever entertaining the mistaken idea that they are synonymous. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: [Quine uses the older horseshoe symbol] The conditional in English is not well understood, whereas the symbol is unambiguous. A warning to myself, since I have a tendency to translate symbols into English all the time. [p.156 'implies' is worse!] |
| 22433 | It is important that the quantification over temporal entities is timeless [Quine] |
| Full Idea: It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of recognising the timelessness of quantification over temporal entities. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], IV) | |
| A reaction: 'Some moments in this cricket match were crucial'. The domain is not timeless, but consists of moments in this match. Can you say the quantifier is timeless but its domain is not? Only in the sense that 'very' is a timeless word, I think. |
| 22437 | Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A logical language is not independent of ordinary language. It has its roots in ordinary language, and these roots are not to be severed. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. When you study logic, no one has to teach you what the words 'or' and 'if-then' mean, but they are disambiguated by the symbolism. The roots of logic are in ordinary talk of 'and', 'or' and 'not', which is the real world. |
| 22434 | Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ordinary language is reduced to logical form in two ways: reduction of the variety of idioms and grammatical constructions, and reduction of each surviving idiom to one fixed and convenient interpretation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V) | |
| A reaction: Is there a conflict between a 'fixed' and a 'convenient' result? By 'fixed' I suppose he means it is a commitment (to not waver). What is the logical form of a sentence which is deliberately ambiguous? |
| 14775 | Numbers are just names devised for counting [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Numbers are merely a system of names devised by men for the purpose of counting. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems a perfectly plausible view prior to the advent of Cantor, set theory and modern mathematical logic. I suppose the modern reply to this is that Peirce may be right about origin, but that men thereby stumbled on an Aladdin's Cave of riches. |
| 14776 | That two two-eyed people must have four eyes is a statement about numbers, not a fact [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To say that 'if' there are two persons and each person has two eyes there 'will be' four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: One eye for each arm of the people is certainly a fact. Frege uses this equivalence to build numbers. I think Peirce is wrong. If it is not a fact that these people have four eyes, I don't know what 'four' means. It's being two pairs is also a fact. |
| 22432 | Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Ordinarily the conditional is not thought of as true or false at all, but rather the consequent is thought of as conditionally true or false given the antecedent. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], III) | |
| A reaction: At first this seems obvious, but a conditional asserts a relationship between two propositions, and so presumably it is true if that relationship exists. 'Is it actually true that if it is Monday then everyone in the office is depressed?'. |
| 14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: All positive reasoning is judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Hence we can never hope to attain absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: This is the basis of Peirce's fallibilism - that all 'positive' reasoning (whatever that it?) is based on statistical induction. I'm all in favour of fallibilism, but find Peirce's claim to be a bit too narrow. He was too mesmerised by physical science. |
| 14774 | Innate truths are very uncertain and full of error, so they certainly have exceptions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me there is the most historic proof that innate truths are particularly uncertain and mixed up with error, and therefore a fortiori not without exception. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14773 | A truth is hard for us to understand if it rests on nothing but inspiration [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: A truth which rests on the authority of inspiration only is of a somewhat incomprehensible nature; and we can never be sure that we rightly comprehend it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14772 | If we decide an idea is inspired, we still can't be sure we have got the idea right [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Even if we decide that an idea really is inspired, we cannot be sure, or nearly sure, that the statement is true. We know one of the commandments of the Bible was printed without a 'not' in it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14771 | Only reason can establish whether some deliverance of revelation really is inspired [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We never can be absolutely certain that any given deliverance [of revelation] really is inspired; for that can only be established by reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], I) | |
| A reaction: The importance of this is its connection between imagination and 'rational' understanding. This is an important corrective to a crude traditional picture of the role of imagination. I would connect imagination with counterfactuals and best explanation. |
| 22430 | If we understand a statement, we know the circumstances of its truth [Quine] |
| Full Idea: We understand under what circumstances to say of any given statement that it is true, just as clearly as we understand the statement itself. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], II) | |
| A reaction: This probably shouldn't be taken as a theory of meaning (in which Quine doesn't really believe) but as a plausible statement of correlated facts. Hypothetical assertions might be a problem case. 'If only I could be in two places at once'? |
| 15998 | Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158) | |
| A reaction: A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY] |
| 13713 | Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Quine's view is that time is 'space-like'. Past objects are as real as present ones; they're just temporally distant, just as spatially distant objects are just as real as the ones around here. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953]) by Theodore Sider - Logic for Philosophy 7.3.1 | |
| A reaction: Something is a wrong with a view that says that a long-dead person is just as real as one currently living. Death is rather more than travelling to a distant place. Arthur Prior responded to Quine by saying 'tense operators' are inescapable. |