12 ideas
11064 | Classes can be reduced to propositional functions [Russell, by Hanna] |
Full Idea: Russell held that classes can be reduced to propositional functions. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 2.4 | |
A reaction: The exact nature of a propositional function is disputed amongst Russell scholars (though it is roughly an open sentence of the form 'x is red'). |
6407 | The class of classes which lack self-membership leads to a contradiction [Russell, by Grayling] |
Full Idea: The class of teaspoons isn't a teaspoon, so isn't a member of itself; but the class of non-teaspoons is a member of itself. The class of all classes which are not members of themselves is a member of itself if it isn't a member of itself! Paradox. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
A reaction: A very compressed version of Russell's famous paradox, often known as the 'barber' paradox. Russell developed his Theory of Types in an attempt to counter the paradox. Frege's response was to despair of his own theory. |
10418 | Type theory seems an extreme reaction, since self-exemplification is often innocuous [Swoyer on Russell] |
Full Idea: Russell's reaction to his paradox (by creating his theory of types) seems extreme, because many cases of self-exemplification are innocuous. The property of being a property is itself a property. | |
From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Chris Swoyer - Properties 7.5 | |
A reaction: Perhaps it is not enough that 'many cases' are innocuous. We are starting from philosophy of mathematics, where precision is essentially. General views about properties come later. |
10047 | Russell's improvements blocked mathematics as well as paradoxes, and needed further axioms [Russell, by Musgrave] |
Full Idea: Unfortunately, Russell's new logic, as well as preventing the deduction of paradoxes, also prevented the deduction of mathematics, so he supplemented it with additional axioms, of Infinity, of Choice, and of Reducibility. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §2 | |
A reaction: The first axiom seems to be an empirical hypothesis, and the second has turned out to be independent of logic and set theory. |
23478 | Type theory means that features shared by different levels cannot be expressed [Morris,M on Russell] |
Full Idea: Russell's theory of types avoided the paradoxes, but it had the result that features common to different levels of the hierarchy become uncapturable (since any attempt to capture them would involve a predicate which disobeyed the hierarchy restrictions). | |
From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 2H |
21718 | Ramified types can be defended as a system of intensional logic, with a 'no class' view of sets [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
Full Idea: A defence of the ramified theory of types comes in seeing it as a system of intensional logic which includes the 'no class' account of sets, and indeed the whole development of mathematics, as just a part. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Bernard Linsky - Russell's Metaphysical Logic 6.1 | |
A reaction: So Linsky's basic project is to save logicism, by resting on intensional logic (rather than extensional logic and set theory). I'm not aware that Linsky has acquired followers for this. Maybe Crispin Wright has commented? |
18126 | A set does not exist unless at least one of its specifications is predicative [Russell, by Bostock] |
Full Idea: The idea is that the same set may well have different canonical specifications, i.e. there may be different ways of stating its membership conditions, and so long as one of these is predicative all is well. If none are, the supposed set does not exist. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 |
18128 | Russell is a conceptualist here, saying some abstracta only exist because definitions create them [Russell, by Bostock] |
Full Idea: It is a conceptualist approach that Russell is relying on. ...The view is that some abstract objects ...exist only because they are definable. It is the definition that would (if permitted) somehow bring them into existence. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 | |
A reaction: I'm suddenly thinking that predicativism is rather interesting. Being of an anti-platonist persuasion about abstract 'objects', I take some story about how we generate them to be needed. Psychological abstraction seems right, but a bit vague. |
18124 | Vicious Circle says if it is expressed using the whole collection, it can't be in the collection [Russell, by Bostock] |
Full Idea: The Vicious Circle Principle says, roughly, that whatever involves, or presupposes, or is only definable in terms of, all of a collection cannot itself be one of the collection. | |
From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908], p.63,75) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 | |
A reaction: This is Bostock's paraphrase of Russell, because Russell never quite puts it clearly. The response is the requirement to be 'predicative'. Bostock emphasises that it mainly concerns definitions. The Principle 'always leads to hierarchies'. |
12712 | Substance is that which can act [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: I define substance as that which can act. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Definitiones cogitationesque metaphysicae [1678], A6.4.1398), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
A reaction: This is in tune with the notion that to exist is to have causal powers. I find the view congenial, and the middle period of Leibniz's thought, before monads became too spiritual, chimes in with my view. |
19699 | A Gettier case is a belief which is true, and its fallible justification involves some luck [Hetherington] |
Full Idea: A Gettier case contains a belief which is true and well justified without being knowledge. Its justificatory support is also fallible, ...and there is considerable luck in how the belief combnes being true with being justified. | |
From: Stephen Hetherington (The Gettier Problem [2011], 5) | |
A reaction: This makes luck the key factor. 'Luck' is a rather vague concept, and so the sort of luck involved must first be spelled out. Or the varieties of luck that can produce this outcome. |
12737 | Nature can be fully explained by final causes alone, or by efficient causes alone [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: All the phenomena of nature can be explained solely by final causes, exactly as if there were no efficient causes; and all the phenomena of nature can be explained solely by efficient causes, as if there were no final causes. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Definitiones cogitationesque metaphysicae [1678], A6.4.1403), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
A reaction: Somewhat speculative (a virtue!), but it is interesting to see him suggesting that there might be two complete and satisfactory explanations, which never touched one another. I can't see Aristotle agreeing with that. |