31 ideas
| 13966 | Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames] |
| Full Idea: The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166) | |
| A reaction: Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of. |
| 13974 | If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames] |
| Full Idea: If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186) | |
| A reaction: He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read. |
| 22289 | Dedekind proved definition by recursion, and thus proved the basic laws of arithmetic [Dedekind, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Dedkind gave a rigorous proof of the principle of definition by recursion, permitting recursive definitions of addition and multiplication, and hence proofs of the familiar arithmetical laws. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 13 'Deriv' |
| 10183 | An infinite set maps into its own proper subset [Dedekind, by Reck/Price] |
| Full Idea: A set is 'Dedekind-infinite' iff there exists a one-to-one function that maps a set into a proper subset of itself. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], §64) by E Reck / M Price - Structures and Structuralism in Phil of Maths n 7 | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if it is only infinite if it is contradictory, or doesn't know how big it is! |
| 22288 | We have the idea of self, and an idea of that idea, and so on, so infinite ideas are available [Dedekind, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind had an interesting proof of the Axiom of Infinity. He held that I have an a priori grasp of the idea of my self, and that every idea I can form the idea of that idea. Hence there are infinitely many objects available to me a priori. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], no. 66) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 12 'Numb' | |
| A reaction: Who said that Descartes' Cogito was of no use? Frege endorsed this, as long as the ideas are objective and not subjective. |
| 10706 | Dedekind originally thought more in terms of mereology than of sets [Dedekind, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind plainly had fusions, not collections, in mind when he avoided the empty set and used the same symbol for membership and inclusion - two tell-tale signs of a mereological conception. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], 2-3) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy 02.1 | |
| A reaction: Potter suggests that mathematicians were torn between mereology and sets, and eventually opted whole-heartedly for sets. Maybe this is only because set theory was axiomatised by Zermelo some years before Lezniewski got to mereology. |
| 9823 | Numbers are free creations of the human mind, to understand differences [Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: Numbers are free creations of the human mind; they serve as a means of apprehending more easily and more sharply the difference of things. | |
| From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Does this fit real numbers and complex numbers, as well as natural numbers? Frege was concerned by the lack of objectivity in this sort of view. What sort of arithmetic might the Martians have created? Numbers register sameness too. |
| 10090 | Dedekind defined the integers, rationals and reals in terms of just the natural numbers [Dedekind, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: It was primarily Dedekind's accomplishment to define the integers, rationals and reals, taking only the system of natural numbers for granted. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Intro |
| 17452 | Ordinals can define cardinals, as the smallest ordinal that maps the set [Dedekind, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind and Cantor said the cardinals may be defined in terms of the ordinals: The cardinal number of a set S is the least ordinal onto whose predecessors the members of S can be mapped one-one. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 5 |
| 7524 | Order, not quantity, is central to defining numbers [Dedekind, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind said that the notion of order, rather than that of quantity, is the central notion in the definition of number. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle's nice question in Idea 646. My intuition is that quantity comes first, because I'm not sure HOW you could count, if you didn't think you were changing the quantity each time. Why does counting go in THAT particular order? Cf. Idea 8661. |
| 14131 | Dedekind's ordinals are just members of any progression whatever [Dedekind, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind's ordinals are not essentially either ordinals or cardinals, but the members of any progression whatever. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §243 | |
| A reaction: This is part of Russell's objection to Dedekind's structuralism. The question is always why these beautiful structures should actually be considered as numbers. I say, unlike Russell, that the connection to counting is crucial. |
| 14437 | Dedekind's axiom that his Cut must be filled has the advantages of theft over honest toil [Dedekind, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind set up the axiom that the gap in his 'cut' must always be filled …The method of 'postulating' what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil. Let us leave them to others. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy VII | |
| A reaction: This remark of Russell's is famous, and much quoted in other contexts, but I have seen the modern comment that it is grossly unfair to Dedekind. |
| 18094 | Dedekind says each cut matches a real; logicists say the cuts are the reals [Dedekind, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: One view, favoured by Dedekind, is that the cut postulates a real number for each cut in the rationals; it does not identify real numbers with cuts. ....A view favoured by later logicists is simply to identify a real number with a cut. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.4 | |
| A reaction: Dedekind is the patriarch of structuralism about mathematics, so he has little interest in the existenc of 'objects'. |
| 9824 | In counting we see the human ability to relate, correspond and represent [Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: If we scrutinize closely what is done in counting an aggregate of things, we see the ability of the mind to relate things to things, to let a thing correspond to a thing, or to represent a thing by a thing, without which no thinking is possible. | |
| From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I don't suppose it occurred to Dedekind that he was reasserting Hume's observation about the fundamental psychology of thought. Is the origin of our numerical ability of philosophical interest? |
| 9826 | A system S is said to be infinite when it is similar to a proper part of itself [Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: A system S is said to be infinite when it is similar to a proper part of itself. | |
| From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], V.64) |
| 13508 | Dedekind gives a base number which isn't a successor, then adds successors and induction [Dedekind, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind's natural numbers: an object is in a set (0 is a number), a function sends the set one-one into itself (numbers have unique successors), the object isn't a value of the function (it isn't a successor), plus induction. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 5 | |
| A reaction: Hart notes that since this refers to sets of individuals, it is a second-order account of numbers, what we now call 'Second-Order Peano Arithmetic'. |
| 18096 | Zero is a member, and all successors; numbers are the intersection of sets satisfying this [Dedekind, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind's idea is that the set of natural numbers has zero as a member, and also has as a member the successor of each of its members, and it is the smallest set satisfying this condition. It is the intersection of all sets satisfying the condition. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.4 |
| 18841 | Categoricity implies that Dedekind has characterised the numbers, because it has one domain [Rumfitt on Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: It is Dedekind's categoricity result that convinces most of us that he has articulated our implicit conception of the natural numbers, since it entitles us to speak of 'the' domain (in the singular, up to isomorphism) of natural numbers. | |
| From: comment on Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 9.1 | |
| A reaction: The main rival is set theory, but that has an endlessly expanding domain. He points out that Dedekind needs second-order logic to achieve categoricity. Rumfitt says one could also add to the 1st-order version that successor is an ancestral relation. |
| 14130 | Induction is proved in Dedekind, an axiom in Peano; the latter seems simpler and clearer [Dedekind, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind proves mathematical induction, while Peano regards it as an axiom, ...and Peano's method has the advantage of simplicity, and a clearer separation between the particular and the general propositions of arithmetic. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §241 |
| 8924 | Dedekind originated the structuralist conception of mathematics [Dedekind, by MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind is the philosopher-mathematician with whom the structuralist conception originates. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], §3 n13) by Fraser MacBride - Structuralism Reconsidered | |
| A reaction: Hellman says the idea grew naturally out of modern mathematics, and cites Hilbert's belief that furniture would do as mathematical objects. |
| 9153 | Dedekindian abstraction talks of 'positions', where Cantorian abstraction talks of similar objects [Dedekind, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Dedekindian abstraction says mathematical objects are 'positions' in a model, while Cantorian abstraction says they are the result of abstracting on structurally similar objects. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence §6 | |
| A reaction: The key debate among structuralists seems to be whether or not they are committed to 'objects'. Fine rejects the 'austere' version, which says that objects have no properties. Either version of structuralism can have abstraction as its basis. |
| 9825 | A thing is completely determined by all that can be thought concerning it [Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: A thing (an object of our thought) is completely determined by all that can be affirmed or thought concerning it. | |
| From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], I.1) | |
| A reaction: How could you justify this as an observation? Why can't there be unthinkable things (even by God)? Presumably Dedekind is offering a stipulative definition, but we may then be confusing epistemology with ontology. |
| 13969 | Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames] |
| Full Idea: By (Kripkean) 'essential' properties and relations I mean simply properties and relations that hold necessarily of objects (in all genuinely possible world-states in which the objects exist). | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.168 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard modern view of essences which I find so unsatisfactory. Kit Fine has helped to take us back to the proper Aristotelian view, where 'necessary' and 'essential' actually have different meanings. Note the inclusion of relations. |
| 13973 | A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames] |
| Full Idea: None of Kripke's many achievements is more important than his breaking the spell of the linguistic as the source of philosophically important modalities. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186) | |
| A reaction: Put like that, Kripke may have had the single most important thought of modern times. I take good philosophy to be exactly the same as good scientific theorising, in that it all arises out of the nature of reality (and I include logic in that). |
| 13968 | Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames] |
| Full Idea: For the Kripkean possible states of the world are not alternate concrete universes, but abstract objects. Metaphysically possible world-states are maximally complete ways the real concrete universe could have been. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.167) | |
| A reaction: This is probably clearer about the Kripkean view than Kripke ever is, but then that is part of Soames's mission. It sounds like the right way to conceive possible worlds. At least there is some commitment there, rather than instrumentalism about them. |
| 9189 | Dedekind said numbers were abstracted from systems of objects, leaving only their position [Dedekind, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: By applying the operation of abstraction to a system of objects isomorphic to the natural numbers, Dedekind believed that we obtained the abstract system of natural numbers, each member having only properties consequent upon its position. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by Michael Dummett - The Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Dummett is scornful of the abstractionism. He cites Benacerraf as a modern non-abstractionist follower of Dedekind's view. There seems to be a suspicion of circularity in it. How many objects will you abstract from to get seven? |
| 9827 | We derive the natural numbers, by neglecting everything of a system except distinctness and order [Dedekind] |
| Full Idea: If in an infinite system, set in order, we neglect the special character of the elements, simply retaining their distinguishability and their order-relations to one another, then the elements are the natural numbers, created by the human mind. | |
| From: Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888], VI.73) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the classic abstractionist view of the origin of number, but with the added feature that the order is first imposed, so that ordinals remain after the abstraction. This, of course, sounds a bit circular, as well as subjective. |
| 9979 | Dedekind has a conception of abstraction which is not psychologistic [Dedekind, by Tait] |
| Full Idea: Dedekind's conception is psychologistic only if that is the only way to understand the abstraction that is involved, which it is not. | |
| From: report of Richard Dedekind (Nature and Meaning of Numbers [1888]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind IV | |
| A reaction: This is a very important suggestion, implying that we can retain some notion of abstractionism, while jettisoning the hated subjective character of private psychologism, which seems to undermine truth and logic. |
| 13972 | Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames] |
| Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age. | |
| From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183) | |
| A reaction: I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that? |
| 1748 | 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 |
| 5989 | 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. |