Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'Existence and Quantification' and 'Philosophy and the Nature of Language'

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24 ideas

4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 1. Modal Logic
5745 Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
8789 Various strategies try to deal with the ontological commitments of second-order logic [Hale/Wright on Quine]
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / c. Theory of definite descriptions
4568 If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / b. Being and existence
16966 Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / e. Being and nothing
21982 I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L]
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence
16965 All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
16963 Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / c. Commitment of predicates
16964 Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / d. Commitment of theories
4216 Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe]
18966 Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
14490 You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine]
7. Existence / E. Categories / 1. Categories
16961 In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine]
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
4574 If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
4573 If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE]
4575 A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
4561 Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
4564 I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE]
4565 The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
4563 'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE]
4562 Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
4571 Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE]
4566 Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
4572 If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 2. Analytic Truths
4576 An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE]