Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Their ideological background is furnished by logical positivism and analytical philosophy (esp. by Russell, Carnap, Wittgenstein and their followers); and their practical output is Chomskian formal syntax and subsequent formal semantics.

In logical and mathematical systems either of two mutually antagonistic types of economy may be striven for, and each has its peculiar practical utility.

On the one hand we may seek economy of practical expression: ease and brevity in the statement of multifarious relationships.

But it is practical in another way: it greatly simplifies theoretical discourse about the language, through minimizing the terms and the forms of construction wherein the language consists.

In general the sentences we are tempted to utter occur in practical situations.

Hertz said that wherever something did not obey his laws there must be invisible masses to account for it. This statement is not right or wrong, but may be practical or impractical.

First, my claim that the mind is a computational system is different from the claim Fodor attacks (that the mind has the architecture of a Turing Machine); therefore the practical limitations of Turing Machines are irrelevant.

For it occurred to me that I should find much more truth in the reasonings of each individual with reference to the affairs in which he is personally interested, and the issue of which must presently punish him if he has judged amiss, than in those conducted by a man of letters in his study, regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater ingenuity and art to render them probable.

I’m told that Jones advises buying potatoes; so, for practical purposes, my question whether it is wise for me to buy potatoes is reduced to the question whether it is wise for me to do as Jones advises.

Therefore the practical limitations of Turing Machines are irrelevant.