Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On Carnap's Views on Ontology', 'Law, Pragmatism and Democracy' and 'Neutral Relations'

expand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


10 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 4. Metaphysics as Science
Quine rejects Carnap's view that science and philosophy are distinct [Quine, by Boulter]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything [Quine]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
We can use quantification for commitment to unnameable things like the real numbers [Quine]
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
The 'standard' view of relations is that they hold of several objects in a given order [Fine,K]
The 'positionalist' view of relations says the number of places is fixed, but not the order [Fine,K]
A block on top of another contains one relation, not both 'on top of' and 'beneath' [Fine,K]
Language imposes a direction on a road which is not really part of the road [Fine,K]
Explain biased relations as orderings of the unbiased, or the unbiased as permutation classes of the biased? [Fine,K]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 3. Analytic and Synthetic
Without the analytic/synthetic distinction, Carnap's ontology/empirical distinction collapses [Quine]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / a. Nature of democracy
Democracy is competition for support of the people, guided by self-interest on all sides [Posner]