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All the ideas for '', 'works' and 'The Ultimate Constituents of Matter'

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15 ideas

4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 8. Critique of Set Theory
7548 Classes, grouped by a convenient property, are logical constructions [Russell]
     Full Idea: Classes or series of particulars, collected together on account of some property which makes it convenient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125)
     A reaction: When does a construction become 'logical' instead of arbitrary? What is it about a property that makes it 'convenient'? At this point Russell seems to have built his ontology on classes, and the edifice was crumbling, thanks to Wittgenstein.
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 / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle
15941 For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer]
     Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth.
     From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2
     A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11]
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.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / h. Reals from Cauchy
18247 Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities.
     From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6
     A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
7545 Visible things are physical and external, but only exist when viewed [Russell]
     Full Idea: I believe that common sense is right in regarding what we see as physical and (in one of several possible senses) outside the mind, but is probably wrong in supposing that it continues to exist when we are no longer looking at it.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.123)
     A reaction: This remark (in 1915) is a bit startling from a philosopher well known for his robustly realist stance. Just one of his phases! It seems very counterintuitive - that objects really exist externally, but only when viewed. Schrödinger's Cat?
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / b. Nature of sense-data
7553 Sense-data are purely physical [Russell]
     Full Idea: Sense-data are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.138)
     A reaction: Once this account of sense-data becomes fully clear, it also becomes apparent what a dualist theory it is. The mind is a cinema, I am the audience, and sense-data are the screen. There has to be a big logical gap between viewer and screen.
7549 If my body literally lost its mind, the object seen when I see a flash would still exist [Russell]
     Full Idea: My meaning may be made plainer by saying that if my body could remain in exactly the same state in which it is, though my mind had ceased to exist, precisely that object which I now see when I see a flash would exist, though I should not see it.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.126)
     A reaction: Zombies, 70 years before Robert Kirk! Sense-data are physical. It is interesting to see a philosopher as committed to empiricism, anti-spiritualism and the priority of science as this, still presenting an essentially dualist picture of perception.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
7546 A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell]
     Full Idea: The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124)
     A reaction: This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 2. Reduction of Mind
7550 We could probably, in principle, infer minds from brains, and brains from minds [Russell]
     Full Idea: It seems not improbable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.131)
     A reaction: This strikes me as being a very good summary of the claim that mind is reducible to brain, which is the essence of physicalism. Had he been born a little later, Russell would have taken a harder line with physicalism.
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).
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 4. Standard Model / a. Concept of matter
7551 Matter is a logical construction [Russell]
     Full Idea: We must regard matter as a logical construction.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.132)
     A reaction: A logical construction is a fancy way of saying a best explanation (but with Ockham's Razor hanging over it). A key component missing from Russell's account is that we can directly experience matter, because we are made of it.
7547 Matter requires a division into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles [Russell]
     Full Idea: A true theory of matter requires a division of things into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125)
     A reaction: The division of matter in space seems decidable by physicists, but the division in time seems a bit arbitrary (unless it is quanta of time?). Russell focuses on observable qualities, but are there also intrinsic qualities?
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
7552 Six dimensions are needed for a particular, three within its own space, and three to locate that space [Russell]
     Full Idea: The world of particulars is a six-dimensional space, where six co-ordinates will be required to assign the position of any particular, three to assign its position in its own space, and three to assign the position of its space among the other spaces.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.134)
     A reaction: Not a proposal that has caught on. One might connect the idea with the notion of 'frames of reference' in Einstein's Special Theory. Inside a frame of reference, three co-ordinates are needed; but where is the frame of reference?