Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus'' and 'Postscripts on supervenience'

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5 ideas

4. Formal Logic / A. Syllogistic Logic / 1. Aristotelian Logic
Aristotelian logic cannot express 'Everyone loves someone' [White,RM]
     Full Idea: There is no way within Aristotelian logic that you can give a proper expression for the logical form of such a proposition as 'Everyone loves someone'.
     From: Roger M. White (Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' [2006], 1 'Frege')
     A reaction: This needs a combination of two different quantifiers.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim]
     Full Idea: It is a mistake, or at least misleading, to think of supervenience itself as a special and distinctive type of dependence relation, alongside causal dependence, mereological dependence, semantic dependence, and others.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
     A reaction: The point, I take it, is that supervenience is something which requires explanation, rather than being a conclusion to the debate. Why are statues beautiful? Why do brains generate minds?
Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation [Kim]
     Full Idea: Supervenience itself is not an explanatory relation, not a 'deep' metaphysical relation; rather it is a 'surface' relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it.
     From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
     A reaction: I think the underlying idea here is that supervenience appeals to the Humean view of physical laws as mere regularities, but it is no good for those who seek underlying mechanisms to explain the patterns and regularities. Humeans are wrong.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature
Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3
27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution
Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield]
     Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime.
     From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus
     A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea.