12 ideas
| 16186 | The Barcan Formulas express how to combine modal operators with classical quantifiers [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formula and its converse gives expression to the most straightforward way of combining modal operators with classical quantification. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) |
| 16187 | The Barcan Formulas are orthodox, but clash with the attractive Actualist view [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formulas are a threat to 'actualism' in modal metaphysics, which seems regrettable since the Formulas are validated by standard modal logics, but clash with the plausible and attractive actualist view (that there are no merely possible things). | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1) | |
| A reaction: He notes that the Barcan Formulas 'appear to require quantification over possibilia'. So are you prepared to accept the 'possible elephant in your kitchen'? Conceptually yes, but actually no, I would have thought. So possibilia are conceptual. |
| 16190 | BF implies that if W possibly had a child, then something is possibly W's child [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: In accordance with the Barcan Formula we assume that if it is possible that Wittgenstein should have had a child, then something or other is possibly Wittgentein's child. | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §5) | |
| A reaction: Put like this it sounds unpersuasive. What is the something or other? Someone else's child? A dustbin? A bare particular? Wittgenstein's child? If it was the last one, how could it be Wittgenstein's child while only possibly being that thing? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 16188 | Serious Actualism says there are no facts at all about something which doesn't exist [Simchen] |
| Full Idea: Serious Actualism is the view that in possible circumstances in which something does not exist there are no facts about it of any kind, including its very non-existence | |
| From: Ori Simchen (The Barcan Formula and Metaphysics [2013], §1 n4) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that the Converse Barcan Formula implies this view. It sounds comparable to the view of Presentism about time, that no future or past truthmakers exist right now. If a new square table were to exist, it would have four corners. |
| 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). |
| 23395 | Mohists desire wealth, population and social order as the best consequences [Mozi, by Norden] |
| Full Idea: The consequentialist Mohists give a fairly objective characterisation of benefits as wealth, populousness, and social order, and harm as poverty, depopulation, and social chaos. | |
| From: report of Mozi (The Mozi [c.440 BCE]) by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 4.I | |
| A reaction: That is a formula favoured by many authoritarian leaders in modern times. |
| 23394 | If people regarded other states as they did their own, they would never attack them [Mozi] |
| Full Idea: If people regarded other people's states in the same way that they regard their own, who then would incite their own state to attack that of another? | |
| From: Mozi (The Mozi [c.440 BCE], 16), quoted by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 4.I | |
| A reaction: A nice case of the application of golden rule thinking to states, instead of to individuals. I can't see Putin (in 2022) being impressed by 'how would you like it if another country invaded Russia?'. The Golden Rule is an analogy argument. |
| 23396 | Mozi condemns partiality, which is the cause of all the great harms in the world [Mozi] |
| Full Idea: It is those who are partial in their dealings with others who are the real cause of all the great harms in the world. That is why our teacher Mozi says 'I condemn partiality'. | |
| From: Mozi (The Mozi [c.440 BCE], 16), quoted by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 4.II | |
| A reaction: This is morality as the rule of law, rather than as the result of human affections. He is on the same wavelength as Kant. Mozi was criticising Confucius, who favoured family over strangers. |
| 23397 | Those who are against impartiality still prefer impartial protectors [Mozi] |
| Full Idea: Even though one may not advocate impartiality, one would certainly want to entrust one's family to the person who is impartial. | |
| From: Mozi (The Mozi [c.440 BCE], 16), quoted by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 4.II | |
| A reaction: In the modern world his example would be the police, so he effectively he wants the impartiality of the law. But who wants legal impartiality within the affairs of a family? |