Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

The problem is that if we are to try to think of the sentence as a picture of a fact, where picturing is defined in terms of the isomorphism of the structure of the picture and the structure of the corresponding fact, then equally the fact is a picture of the sentence.

Levine in fact rejects the assumption that our intuitions give us access to metaphysical reality, arguing that "one's ideas can be as clear and distinct as you like, and nevertheless not correspond to what is in fact possible.

Yet the fact remains that the distinction between tied behavior and free, rule-regulated symbol activity, whatever they may have in common, is a fact of experience, one that the philosopher cannot afford to neglect.

What she learns only after emerging from her room is not a new fact, but an old fact known in a new way.

Grant that the meaning of a word, or of a concept,[9] has an external dimension; that is, grant that the fact that a word or concept has a certain meaning is not a fact wholly about the internal state of the speaker or thinker, and is not a fact that is available a priori to everyone who understands the word, or possesses the concept.

If people attach something to a word within their minds, then this is a fact of their individual psychologies, not capable of establishing the different fact that the word actually means something within their language.

The fact also that oil does not mix with water is not simply owing to the difference of weight, but to the ill consent of these fluids, as may be seen from the fact that spirit of wine, though lighter than oil, yet mixes well enough with water.

Must not the rationalist admit that the assumption of a real connection between A and B doesn't entail that all actual cases of A are cases of B, and hence that the very concept of a synthetic necessary connection is a self-frustrating one?" Now, as far as I can see, the only reply open to the defender of real connections is that it is a matter of ultimate fact that there are no possible worlds which violate the generalization "All A's are B" -- though he might explain this fact about A and B to the extent of subsuming it under a more general fact about the realm of the possible, namely, that for every universal there is at least one generalization which no possible world violates.

What is believed, however true it may be, is not the actual fact that makes the belief true, but a present event related to the fact.

So we say that the thermometer (which is in fact functioning normally, and which registers 17) carries the information that the temperature is 17 degrees centigrade, even though if, contrary to fact, the temperature were 27 degrees, and certain particular anomalous conditions also obtained, the thermometer would still be in the state it is in. The presupposed background conditions must obtain for information to be carried in the strict sense, but one can use the same content ascriptions, and the same distinction, without making the assumption that relevant conditions in fact obtain.