9 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. |
| 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). |
| 23829 | National leaders want to preserve necessary order - but always the existing order [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Those in command see their duty as defending order, without which no social life can survive; and the only order they conceive is the existing one. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.249) | |
| A reaction: She sympathises with them, because a new order is such an unknown. But it always struck me as weird that traditions are preserved because they are traditions, and not because they are good. (My old school, for example!). |
| 23828 | National prestige consists of behaving as if you could beat the others in a war [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is called national prestige consists in behaving always in such a way as to demoralise other nations by giving them the impression that, if it comes to war, one would certainly defeat them. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.244) | |
| A reaction: It's true. No nation gains prestige because of the happy lives of its citizens, or the creativity of its culture. |
| 23827 | Modern wars are fought in the name of empty words which are given capital letters [Weil] |
| Full Idea: For our contemporaries the role of Helen in the Trojan War is is played by words with capital letters. …When empty words are given capital letters, then, on the slightest pretext, men will begin shedding blood for them and piling up ruin in their name. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Power of Words [1934], p.241) | |
| A reaction: This seems particularly true of the 1930s, where specific dogmatic ideologies seemed to grip and divide people. Simple aggressive nationalism seems to be the cause of current wars, now the fear of Communism has diminished. |
| 12719 | Clearly, force is that from which action follows, when unimpeded [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The notion of force is as clear as that of action and passion, because it is that from which action follows when nothing prevents it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Paul Pellison-Fontinier [1691], A1.6.226), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: For Leibniz, force seems to be a metaphysical notion, rather than a feature of the physical world. I take it to be the bottom level of explanation, and it equates with Aristotelian form and essence. |
| 12720 | Time doesn't exist, since its parts don't coexist [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Time never exists, since all of its parts never exist together. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Paul Pellison-Fontinier [1691], A1.6.226), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: The problem here is that he seems to be admitting that time has 'parts'. Can something have parts and not exist? Events will also fail to exist by this criterion, though we could hardly deny that events (or some such) 'happen'. |