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All the ideas for '', 'Semantics, Conceptual Role' and 'A Plea for Substitutional Quantification'

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8 ideas

4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 4. Alethic Modal Logic
9470 Modal logic is not an extensional language [Parsons,C]
     Full Idea: Modal logic is not an extensional language.
     From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.159 n8)
     A reaction: [I record this for investigation. Possible worlds seem to contain objects]
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.
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 4. Substitutional Quantification
9469 Substitutional existential quantifier may explain the existence of linguistic entities [Parsons,C]
     Full Idea: I argue (against Quine) that the existential quantifier substitutionally interpreted has a genuine claim to express a concept of existence, which may give the best account of linguistic abstract entities such as propositions, attributes, and classes.
     From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
     A reaction: Intuitively I have my doubts about this, since the whole thing sounds like a verbal and conventional game, rather than anything with a proper ontology. Ruth Marcus and Quine disagree over this one.
9468 On the substitutional interpretation, '(∃x) Fx' is true iff a closed term 't' makes Ft true [Parsons,C]
     Full Idea: For the substitutional interpretation of quantifiers, a sentence of the form '(∃x) Fx' is true iff there is some closed term 't' of the language such that 'Ft' is true. For the objectual interpretation some object x must exist such that Fx is true.
     From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
     A reaction: How could you decide if it was true for 't' if you didn't know what object 't' referred to?
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / c. Meaning by Role
18033 The meaning of a representation is its role in thought, perception or decisions [Block]
     Full Idea: According to conceptual role semantics, the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, thought and decision-making.
     From: Ned Block (Semantics, Conceptual Role [1998])
     A reaction: I never believe theories of this kind, because I always find myself asking 'what is the nature of this representation which enables it to play this role?'.
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).