Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

To know English is to know, for example, that the form of words 'there are cats' is standardly used to express the thought that there are cats; and that the form of words 'it's raining' is standardly used to express the thought that it's raining; and that the form of words 'it's not raining' is standardly used to express the thought that it's not raining; and so on for in(de)finitely many such cases."

The paradigmatic cases of such 'inferentially explicit' languages are, of course, the languages of logic.

If we understand generating rules as rules of composition of wholes out of parts (which can be in some cases taken literally and in others as an illuminating metaphor), then we can say that there is no 'real' infinite set without a part-whole structure; and that there is no 'real' function on such a 83 set that would not follow the part-whole structure, i.e. which would not be compositional.

Certain technical questions arise, indeed, over cases of ambiguity or homonymy; let us not pause for them, however, for we are already digressing.

A recalcitrant experience can, I have already urged, bc accommodated by any of various alternative re-evaluations in various alternative quarters of the total system; but, in the cases which we are now imagining, our natural tendency to disturb the total system as little as possible would lead us to focus our revisions upon these specific statements concerning brick houses or centaurs.

To explain a word such as "red" by pointing to something gives but one rule for its use, and in cases where one cannot point, rules of a different sort are given.

We are talking here of the grammar of the words "reason" and "cause": in what cases do we say we have given a reason for doing a certain thing, and in what cases, a cause?

In such cases it is not necessary to add "and a, b, c, .

If it is correct to say the general proposition is a shorthand for a logical product or sum, as it is in some cases, then the class of things named in the product or sum is defined in the grammar, not by properties.

We have a different calculus where (Œx)fx is not a logical sum fa is not deduced asp is deduced in the calculus of T's and F's from p v q.p. I once made a calculus in which following was the same in all cases.