Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Content Preservation', 'Personal Identity and Individuation' and 'Presidential Address of Am. Math. Soc'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


3 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 2. History of Logic
We have no adequate logic at the moment, so mathematicians must create one [Veblen]
     Full Idea: Formal logic has to be taken over by mathematicians. The fact is that there does not exist an adequate logic at the present time, and unless the mathematicians create one, no one else is likely to do so.
     From: Oswald Veblen (Presidential Address of Am. Math. Soc [1924], 141), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics
     A reaction: This remark was made well after Frege, but before the advent of Gödel and Tarski. That implies that he was really thinking of meta-logic.
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 1. External Justification
Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge]
     Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject.
     From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
     A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
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.