Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Philosopher's Toolkit', 'The Quest for Certainty' and 'Tarski's Theory of Truth'

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28 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
4643 The Principle of Sufficient Reason does not presuppose that all explanations will be causal explanations [Baggini /Fosl]
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 3. Non-Contradiction
4633 You cannot rationally deny the principle of non-contradiction, because all reasoning requires it [Baggini /Fosl]
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
4635 Dialectic aims at unified truth, unlike analysis, which divides into parts [Baggini /Fosl]
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 4. Uses of Truth
10825 The notion of truth is to help us make use of the utterances of others [Field,H]
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 9. Rejecting Truth
10820 In the early 1930s many philosophers thought truth was not scientific [Field,H]
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition
13499 Tarski reduced truth to reference or denotation [Field,H, by Hart,WD]
10818 Tarski really explained truth in terms of denoting, predicating and satisfied functions [Field,H]
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / b. Satisfaction and truth
10817 Tarski just reduced truth to some other undefined semantic notions [Field,H]
4. Formal Logic / B. Propositional Logic PL / 2. Tools of Propositional Logic / e. Axioms of PL
4632 'Natural' systems of deduction are based on normal rational practice, rather than on axioms [Baggini /Fosl]
4631 In ideal circumstances, an axiom should be such that no rational agent could possibly object to its use [Baggini /Fosl]
5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 1. Bivalence
4638 The principle of bivalence distorts reality, as when claiming that a person is or is not 'thin' [Baggini /Fosl]
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 2. Formal Truth
10819 Tarski gives us the account of truth needed to build a group of true sentences in a model [Field,H]
5. Theory of Logic / J. Model Theory in Logic / 1. Logical Models
10827 Model theory is unusual in restricting the range of the quantifiers [Field,H]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
4640 If identity is based on 'true of X' instead of 'property of X' we get the Masked Man fallacy ('I know X but not Y') [Baggini /Fosl, by PG]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity
4647 'I have the same car as you' is fine; 'I have the same fiancée as you' is not so good [Baggini /Fosl]
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects
4639 Leibniz's Law is about the properties of objects; the Identity of Indiscernibles is about perception of objects [Baggini /Fosl]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 3. Types of Necessity
4646 Is 'events have causes' analytic a priori, synthetic a posteriori, or synthetic a priori? [Baggini /Fosl]
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty
21516 We want certainty in order achieve secure results for action [Dewey]
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 1. Nature of the A Priori
4645 'A priori' does not concern how you learn a proposition, but how you show whether it is true or false [Baggini /Fosl]
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 4. Foundationalism / b. Basic beliefs
4582 Basic beliefs are self-evident, or sensual, or intuitive, or revealed, or guaranteed [Baggini /Fosl]
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 6. Falsification
4644 A proposition such as 'some swans are purple' cannot be falsified, only verified [Baggini /Fosl]
14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction
4584 The problem of induction is how to justify our belief in the uniformity of nature [Baggini /Fosl]
14. Science / C. Induction / 4. Reason in Induction
4583 How can an argument be good induction, but poor deduction? [Baggini /Fosl]
14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / a. Best explanation
4634 Abduction aims at simplicity, testability, coherence and comprehensiveness [Baggini /Fosl]
4637 To see if an explanation is the best, it is necessary to investigate the alternative explanations [Baggini /Fosl]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 2. Reduction of Mind
10826 'Valence' and 'gene' had to be reduced to show their compatibility with physicalism [Field,H]
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 5. Rationality / a. Rationality
4629 Consistency is the cornerstone of rationality [Baggini /Fosl]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / b. Causal reference
7615 Field says reference is a causal physical relation between mental states and objects [Field,H, by Putnam]