Moreover, the doctrine of meaninglessness of contradictions has the severe methodological drawback that it makes it impossible, in principle, ever to devise an effective test of what is meaningful and what is not. It would be forever impossible for us to devise systematic ways of deciding whether a string of signs made sense—even to us individually, let alone other people—or not. For it follows from a discovery in mathematical logic, due to Church [2], that there can be no generally applicable test of contradictoriness.
One's ontology is basic to the conceptual scheme by which he interprets all experiences, even the most commonplace ones. Judged within some particular conceptual scheme -- and how else is judgment possible? -- an ontological statement goes without saying ,standing in need of no separate justification at all. Ontological statements follow immediately from all manner of casual statements of commonplace fact, just as -- from the point of view, anyway, of McX's conceptual scheme -- 'There is an attribute' follows from 'There are red houses, red roses, red sunsets'.
Names are, in fact, altogether immaterial to the ontological issues, for I have shown, in connection with 'Pegasus' and 'pegasize', that names can be converted to descriptions, and Russell has sown that descriptions can be eliminated.
a theory is committed to those and only those entities to which the bound variables of the theory must be capable of referring in order that the affirmations made in the theory be true
Physical objects are postulated entities which round out and simplify our account of the flux of experience, just as the introduction of irrational numbers simplifies laws of arithmetic
But I'm not so sure that is as innocent an introduction as Quine might believe. (meaning, "conceptual scheme" is not ontologically neutral, but pregnant) — Moliere
What does this analogy mean? I didn't follow this part of the essay at all until he got to the part about how objects are a myth view of physics and physics is a myth from the point of view of phenomenalism. — Moliere
The positions he disposes of so neatly seem so silly it's difficult to believe they were, well, believed. — Ciceronianus the White
What does this analogy mean? I didn't follow this part of the essay at all until he got to the part about how objects are a myth view of physics and physics is a myth from the point of view of phenomenalism. — Moliere
*I switched out Godel for Walter Scott to make this work.Suppose that Walter Scott was not in fact the author of Waverly. A man named Schmidt whose body was found in Vienna under mysterious circumstances many years ago, actually did the work in question. His friend named Walter Scott somehow got hold of the manuscript and it was thereafter attributed to Walter Scott. On this view then when the ordinary man uses the name 'Walter Scott' he really means to refer to Schmidt, as Schmidt is the unique person satisfying the description 'the man who wrote Waverly' — Kripke
Exactly, but then Russel's theory of description fails because 'Walter Scott' can not be replaced by 'the man who wrote Waverly'.As to the Kripke example, the "ordinary man" using the name "Walter Scott" is in fact using it to refer to Walter Scott. The "ordinary man" is mistaken, however, in believing Wally wrote that most enchanting work Waverly. Why think anything else about such a situation? — Ciceronianus the White
As I mentioned Kripke's example was about Godel instead of Walter Scott. In the context the ordinary man is one who only know that Godel created/discovered the incompleteness theory, and knows nothing else about Godel.By the way, is the "ordinary man" referred to by philosophers a kind of cousin of the "reasonable man" we lawyers like so much? My guess would be he isn't, as the philosophers' "ordinary man" seems to be considered a dimwit and the "reasonable man" by definition is not. — Ciceronianus the White
What I meant was that the notion of a conceptual scheme seems to be compatible with idealism, anti-realism and realism; that is it seems to be compatible across the range of different ontologies. On the other hand, I don't see how physicalism could be wedded to, for example, an idealist ontology, wherein mind is considered to be prime substance, as this would be a contradiction.
I haven't read the Davidson paper you refer to, but I have heard a little about it in relation to translatability — John
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