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All the ideas for '', 'In Defence of Convention T' and 'The Nature of Judgement'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 5. Modern Philosophy / b. Modern philosophy beginnings

6405	Moore's 'The Nature of Judgement' (1898) marked the rejection (with Russell) of idealism [Moore,GE, by Grayling]
	Full Idea: The rejection of idealism by Moore and Russell was marked in 1898 by the publication of Moore's article 'The Nature of Judgement'.
	From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2
	A reaction: This now looks like a huge landmark in the history of British philosophy.

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 1. Nature of Analysis

7527	Analysis for Moore and Russell is carving up the world, not investigating language [Moore,GE, by Monk]
	Full Idea: For Moore and Russell analysis is not - as is commonly understood now - a linguistic activity, but an ontological one. To analyse a proposition is not to investigate language, but to carve up the world so that it begins to make some sort of sense.
	From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4
	A reaction: A thought dear to my heart. The twentieth century got horribly side-tracked into thinking that ontology was an entirely linguistic problem. I suggest that physicists analyse physical reality, and philosophers analyse abstract reality.

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

11211	If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II)
	A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts.

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives

11210	Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000])
	A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge.

11212	The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III)
	A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value.

19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 5. Fregean Semantics

7331	A theory of meaning comes down to translating sentences into Fregean symbolic logic [Davidson, by Macey]
	Full Idea: For a theory of meaning for a fragment of natural language, what Davidson requires, in effect, is that the sentences be translatable into the language of Frege's symbolic logic.
	From: report of Donald Davidson (In Defence of Convention T [1973]) by David Macey - Penguin Dictionary of Critical Theory
	A reaction: This assumes the adequacy of Fregean logic, which seems unlikely. Is this the culmination of Leibniz's dream of a fully logical language - so that anything that won't fit into our logical form is ruled (logical positivist style) as meaningless?

19. Language / D. Propositions / 3. Concrete Propositions

22302	Moor bypassed problems of correspondence by saying true propositions ARE facts [Moore,GE, by Potter]
	Full Idea: Moore avoided the problematic correspondence between propositions and reality by identifying the former with the latter; the world consists of true propositions, and there is no difference between a true proposition and the fact that makes it true.
	From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 28 'Refut'
	A reaction: This is "the most platonic system of modern times", he wrote (letter 14.8.1898). He then added platonist ethics. This is a pernicious and absurd doctrine. The obvious problem is that false propositions can be indistinguishable, but differ in ontology.

19. Language / D. Propositions / 5. Unity of Propositions

7526	Hegelians say propositions defy analysis, but Moore says they can be broken down [Moore,GE, by Monk]
	Full Idea: Moore rejected the Hegelian view, that a proposition is a unity that defies analysis; instead, it is a complex that positively cries out to be broken up into its constituent parts, which parts Moore called 'concepts'.
	From: report of G.E. Moore (The Nature of Judgement [1899]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4
	A reaction: Russell was much influenced by this idea, though it may be found in Frege. Anglophone philosophers tend to side instantly with Moore, but the Hegel view must be pondered. An idea comes to us in a unified flash, before it is articulated.

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial

11214	We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
	A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).