Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'A Puzzle about Belief', 'fragments/reports' and 'A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori'

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9 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic

9358	There are several logics, none of which will ever derive falsehoods from truth [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: The fact is that there are several logics, markedly different, each self-consistent in its own terms and such that whoever, using it, avoids false premises, will never reach a false conclusion.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.366)
	A reaction: As the man who invented modal logic in five different versions, he speaks with some authority. Logicians now debate which version is the best, so how could that be decided? You could avoid false conclusions by never reasoning at all.

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle

9357	Excluded middle is just our preference for a simplified dichotomy in experience [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: The law of excluded middle formulates our decision that whatever is not designated by a certain term shall be designated by its negative. It declares our purpose to make a complete dichotomy of experience, ..which is only our penchant for simplicity.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.365)
	A reaction: I find this view quite appealing. 'Look, it's either F or it isn't!' is a dogmatic attitude which irritates a lot of people, and appears to be dispensible. Intuitionists in mathematics dispense with the principle, and vagueness threatens it.

5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names

9364	Names represent a uniformity in experience, or they name nothing [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: A name must represent some uniformity in experience or it names nothing.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368)
	A reaction: I like this because, in the quintessentially linguistic debate about the exact logical role of names, it reminds us that names arise because of the way reality is; they are not sui generis private games for logicians.

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity

9362	Necessary truths are those we will maintain no matter what [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: Those laws and those laws only have necessary truth which we are prepared to maintain, no matter what.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.367)
	A reaction: This bold and simple claim has famously been torpedoed by a well-known counterexample - that virtually every human being will cling on to the proposition "dogs have at some time existed" no matter what, but it clearly isn't a necessary truth.

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 7. A Priori from Convention

9365	We can maintain a priori principles come what may, but we can also change them [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: The a priori contains principles which can be maintained in the face of all experience, representing the initiative of the mind. But they are subject to alteration on pragmatic grounds, if expanding experience shows their intellectual infelicity.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.373)
	A reaction: [compressed] This simply IS Quine's famous 'web of belief' picture, showing how firmly Quine is in the pragmatist tradition. Lewis treats a priori principles as a pragmatic toolkit, which can be refined to be more effective. Not implausible...

13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism

604	Knowledge is mind and knowing 'cohabiting' [Lycophron, by Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Lycophron has it that knowledge is the 'cohabitation' (rather than participation or synthesis) of knowing and the soul.
	From: report of Lycophron (fragments/reports [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1045b
	A reaction: This sounds like a rather passive and inert relationship. Presumably knowing something implies the possibility of acting on it.

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 5. Mental Files

16383	Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke]
	Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object.
	From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1
	A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…).

18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection

9361	We have to separate the mathematical from physical phenomena by abstraction [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: Physical processes present us with phenomena in which the purely mathematical has to be separated out by abstraction.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.367)
	A reaction: This is the father of modal logic endorsing traditional abstractionism, it seems. He is also, though, endorsing the view that a priori knowledge is created by us, with pragmatic ends in view.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism

9363	Science seeks classification which will discover laws, essences, and predictions [Lewis,CI]
	Full Idea: The scientific search is for such classification as will make it possible to correlate appearance and behaviour, to discover law, to penetrate to the "essential nature" of things in order that behaviour may become predictable.
	From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368)
	A reaction: Modern scientific essentialists no longer invoke scare quotes, and I think we should talk of the search for the 'mechanisms' which explain behaviour, but Lewis seems to have been sixty years ahead of his time.