Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'General Facts,Phys Necessity, and Metaph of Time', 'Representation and Reality' and 'What is Logic?'

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34 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly
The job of the philosopher is to distinguish facts about the world from conventions [Putnam]
2. Reason / D. Definition / 3. Types of Definition
A decent modern definition should always imply a semantics [Hacking]
3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 3. Truthmaker Maximalism
The truth-maker principle is that every truth has a sufficient truth-maker [Forrest]
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 2. Semantic Truth
Semantic notions do not occur in Tarski's definitions, but assessing their correctness involves translation [Putnam]
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
Asserting the truth of an indexical statement is not the same as uttering the statement [Putnam]
4. Formal Logic / B. Propositional Logic PL / 2. Tools of Propositional Logic / d. Basic theorems of PL
'Thinning' ('dilution') is the key difference between deduction (which allows it) and induction [Hacking]
Gentzen's Cut Rule (or transitivity of deduction) is 'If A |- B and B |- C, then A |- C' [Hacking]
Only Cut reduces complexity, so logic is constructive without it, and it can be dispensed with [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 4. Pure Logic
The various logics are abstractions made from terms like 'if...then' in English [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 5. First-Order Logic
First-order logic is the strongest complete compact theory with Löwenheim-Skolem [Hacking]
A limitation of first-order logic is that it cannot handle branching quantifiers [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
Second-order completeness seems to need intensional entities and possible worlds [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives
With a pure notion of truth and consequence, the meanings of connectives are fixed syntactically [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 4. Variables in Logic
Perhaps variables could be dispensed with, by arrows joining places in the scope of quantifiers [Hacking]
5. Theory of Logic / J. Model Theory in Logic / 3. Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems
If it is a logic, the Löwenheim-Skolem theorem holds for it [Hacking]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Realists believe truth is correspondence, independent of humans, is bivalent, and is unique [Putnam]
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
Aristotle says an object (e.g. a lamp) has identity if its parts stay together when it is moved [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 2. Machine Functionalism
Functionalism says robots and people are the same at one level of abstraction [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / C. Functionalism / 8. Functionalism critique
If concepts have external meaning, computational states won't explain psychology [Putnam]
Functionalism can't explain reference and truth, which are needed for logic [Putnam]
Is there just one computational state for each specific belief? [Putnam]
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
If we are going to eliminate folk psychology, we must also eliminate folk logic [Putnam]
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 4. Folk Psychology
Can we give a scientific, computational account of folk psychology? [Putnam]
18. Thought / C. Content / 5. Twin Earth
Reference may be different while mental representation is the same [Putnam]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
Meaning and translation (which are needed to define truth) both presuppose the notion of reference [Putnam]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
"Meaning is use" is not a definition of meaning [Putnam]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
Holism seems to make fixed definition more or less impossible [Putnam]
Meaning holism tried to show that you can't get fixed meanings built out of observation terms [Putnam]
Understanding a sentence involves background knowledge and can't be done in isolation [Putnam]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / a. Direct reference
We should separate how the reference of 'gold' is fixed from its conceptual content [Putnam]
Like names, natural kind terms have their meaning fixed by extension and reference [Putnam]
19. Language / B. Reference / 3. Direct Reference / c. Social reference
Aristotle implies that we have the complete concepts of a language in our heads, but we don't [Putnam]
Reference (say to 'elms') is a social phenomenon which we can leave to experts [Putnam]
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 5. Reference to Natural Kinds
"Water" is a natural kind term, but "H2O" is a description [Putnam]