8 ideas
| 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. |
| 7413 | Without confidence in our beliefs, how should we actually live? [Tuck] |
| Full Idea: The central question for sceptics is if we lose confidence in the truth of most existing beliefs, then how do we actually live? | |
| From: Richard Tuck (Hobbes [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Scepticism is not, of course, all or nothing. You can lead a 'normal' life in a virtual reality machine. I find it much more of a struggle to live if I lose faith in values, than if I lose faith in tables. |
| 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). |
| 299 | What is fine is always difficult [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The proverb says 'Anything fine is difficult'. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 304e) | |
| A reaction: attributed (as usual) to Solon |
| 297 | What is fine is the parent of goodness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Fineness is the father of goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 297b) |
| 298 | While sex is very pleasant, it should be in secret, as it looks contemptible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: As for sex, everyone agrees that, while it is extremely pleasant, it should be indulged in (if at all) in secret, because it is a highly contemptible sight. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 299a) |