Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Web of Belief' and 'Philosophy of Logics'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 1. Nature of Analysis

8460	Philosophers have given precise senses to deduction, probability, computability etc [Quine/Ullian]
	Full Idea: Successful explications (giving a precise sense to a term) have been found for the concepts of deduction, probability and computability, to name just three.
	From: W Quine / J Ullian (The Web of Belief [1970], 65), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
	A reaction: Quine also cites the concept of an 'ordered pair'. Orenstein adds Tarski's definition of truth, Russell's definite descriptions, and the explication of existence in terms of quantifications. Cf. Idea 2958.

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique

2572	Logical truth seems much less likely to 'correspond to the facts' than factual truth does [Haack]
	Full Idea: It is surely less plausible to suppose that logical truth consists in correspondence to the facts than that 'factual' truth does.
	From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.6)

3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 1. Tarski's Truth / a. Tarski's truth definition

2570	The same sentence could be true in one language and meaningless in another, so truth is language-relative [Haack]
	Full Idea: The definition of truth will have to be, Tarski argues, relative to a language, for one and the same sentence may be true in one language, and false or meaningless in another.
	From: Susan Haack (Philosophy of Logics [1978], 7.5)

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature

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

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution

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.