Posted by alexandra_k on December 12, 2004, at 22:54:52
sometimes even the crystaline purity of logic
cannot abstract enough.
the whole of logic can be reduced to a simple tautology
p=p
logic is unable to say anything more
it just makes that form apparant
to finite minds like ours.All and
Some
and one in particular.
But is a particular just the sum of its properties
Or is there bare particularity?If there are x and y - a big ball of iron
And that is all that exists in the universe
Then if they are qualitatively identical
(if they share all the same properties)
Then because location is relative and they are z apart
Well then if there is no bare particularity
There is only one iron ball.But particulars
And properties (universals) do not exist independently in reality.
You never see a property that does not inhere in some particular
And you never see a particular with no properties.
It is the human mind that abstracts one away from the other in thought.Russell thought that names (aside from the Proper names - 'this' and 'that' and perhaps 'I')
Refer to conjunctions of properties.
In this way he was able to account for how utterances that do not refer
(such as 'the present king of France is bald')
are able to be meaningful.The notion is that that sentance can be translated into the following:
1) There is at least one present king of France
2) There is at most one present king of France
3) Whatever is a present king of France is bald.
He thought it came out false because those three propositons are deductively implied by 'the present king of france is bald' and thus all three are required to be true for the whole thing to come out true. Because 1 is false, the whole thing is false.Anyway, 'the present king of France' is just a conjunction of properties.
Whatever has that conjunction of properties
Qualifies as being a present king of France.
Whether there is an object (in reality) that has those properties or not
Meaning is assured because we can have the concept of the present king of france just by grasping (implicitly) the conjunction of properties.(For Russell everything is composed of sense data. Properties may be thought of as sense data. Objects are bundles of sense data).
What a shame the logical positivists project failed. It is beautiful.
We access the sense data by direct acquantance
and thus our knowledge of the world is immediate.
Beautiful.p=p
You can't argue with that.
poster:alexandra_k
thread:428660
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/write/20041210/msgs/428660.html