4 ideas
| 12220 | Is it the sentence-token or the sentence-type that has a logical form? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Do we attribute a logical form to a sentence token because it is a token of a type with that form, or do we attribute a logical form to a sentence type because it is a type of a token with that form? | |
| From: Kit Fine (Quine on Quantifying In [1990], p.110) | |
| A reaction: Since I believe in propositions (as the unambiguous thought that lies behind a sentence), I take it that logical form concerns propositions, though strict logicians don't like this, for fear that logic spills into psychology. |
| 12222 | Substitutional quantification is referential quantification over expressions [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Substitutional quantification may be regarded as referential quantification over expressions. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Quine on Quantifying In [1990], p.124) | |
| A reaction: This is an illuminating gloss. Does such quantification involve some ontological commitment to expressions? I feel an infinite regress looming. |
| 3400 | Things must have parts to intermingle [Gassendi] |
| Full Idea: If you are no larger than a point, how are you joined to the whole body, which is so large? …and there can be no intermingling between things unless the parts of them can be intermingled. | |
| From: Pierre Gassendi (Objections to 'Meditations' (Fifth) [1641]), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Philosophy of Mind p.131 | |
| A reaction: As Descartes says that mind is distinct from body because it is non-spatial, it doesn't seem quite right to describe it as a 'point', but the second half is a real problem. Being non-spatial is a real impediment to intermingling with spatial objects. |
| 5845 | Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'. | |
| From: Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue |