Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

Carnap has recognized12a that he is able to preserve a double standard for ontological questions and scientific hypotheses only by assuming an absolute distinction between the analytic and the synthetic; and I need not say again that this is a distinction which I reject.

I had long before remarked that, in relation to practice, it is sometimes necessary to adopt, as if above doubt, opinions which we discern to be highly uncertain, as has been already said; but as I then desired to give my attention solely to the search after truth, I thought that a procedure exactly the opposite was called for, and that I ought to reject as absolutely false all opinions in regard to which I could suppose the least ground for doubt, in order to ascertain whether after that there remained aught in my belief that was wholly indubitable.

Speech perception HCF implicitly reject Alvin Liberman’s hypothesis that “Speech is Special” (SiS).

They suggest that this null hypothesis has withstood all attempts to reject it. We are not so sure.

And if we suppose that our world is the XYZ-world (that is, that the liquid in the oceans and lakes is XYZ, and so on), then we should rationally endorse the claim 'water is XYZ', and we should rationally reject the claim 'water is H2O'.

And it is plausible that for any such S, there is a world W such that if we suppose that our world is qualitatively like W, we should rationally reject S. If so, then the primary intension of S is false at W.

For example, if we are given a complete qualitative characterization of the bodies visible in the sky at various times, with the feature that no body is visible both in the morning sky and the evening sky, then we should rationally reject the claim 'Hesperus is Phosphorus'.

Kripke's argument might be put by saying that (i) W is not ruled out a priori, and (ii) if we accept that W obtains, we should reject the claim 'Gödel proved the incompleteness of arithmetic', so (iii) 'Gödel proved the incompleteness of arithmetic' is not a priori.

But the two-dimensionalist takes this as good reason to reject the stipulation, or at least stipulates a different understanding of apriority for the purposes of the framework.

And though none but a fool or madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience, or to reject that great guide of human life, it may surely be allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least as to examine the principle of human nature, which gives this mighty authority to experience, and makes us draw advantage from that similarity which nature has placed among different objects.