ellauri089.html on line 556: § 73. One cause of this supposition seems to be the logical prejudice that all propositions are of the most familiar type—that in which subject and predicate are both existents. …
ellauri089.html on line 558: § 74. But ethical propositions cannot be reduced to this type: in particular, they are obviously to be distinguished …
ellauri089.html on line 572: § 81. and, once this analogy between Volition and Cognition is accepted, the view that ethical propositions have an essential reference to Will or Feeling, is strengthened by another error with regard to the nature of Cognition—the error of supposing that "perception" denotes merely a certain way of cognising an object, whereas it actually includes the assertion that the object is also true. …
ellauri096.html on line 67: In response to the apparent conflict between freedom and foreknowledge, medieval philosophers denied that future contingent propositions have a truth-value. That´s silly. They took themselves to be extending a solution Aristotle discusses in De Interpretatione to the problem of logical fatalism. According to this truth-value gap approach, ‘You will take a dump tomorrow’ is not true now. The prediction will become true tomorrow. A morally serious theist can agree with the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam:
ellauri096.html on line 129: A paradox is commonly defined as a set of propositions that are individually plausible but jointly inconsistent. Paradoxes pressure us to revise beliefs in a highly structured way. For instance, much epistemology orbits a riddle posed by the regress of justification, namely, which of the following is false?
ellauri096.html on line 136: Foundationalists reject (1). They take some propositions to be self-evident. Coherentists reject (2). They tolerate some forms of circular reasoning. For instance, Nelson Goodman (1965) has characterized the method of reflective equilibrium as virtuously circular. Charles Peirce (1933–35, 5.250) rejected (3), an approach later refined by Peter Klein (2007) and championed at book-length by Scott F. Aikin (2011). Infinitists believe that infinitely long chains of justification are no more impossible than infinitely long chains of causation. Finally, the epistemological anarchist rejects (4). As Paul Feyerabend refrains in Against Method, “Anything goes” (1988, vii, 5, 14, 19, 159).
ellauri096.html on line 140: Kyburg might answer that there is a scale effect. Although the dull pressure of joint inconsistency is tolerable when diffusely distributed over a large set of propositions, the pain of contradiction becomes unbearable as the set gets smaller (Knight 2002). And indeed, paradoxes are always represented as a small set of propositions.
ellauri096.html on line 151: If paradoxes were always sets of propositions or arguments or conclusions, then they would always be meaningful. But some paradoxes are semantically flawed (Sorensen 2003b, 352) and some have answers that are backed by a pseudo-argument employing a defective “lemma” that lacks a truth-value. Kurt Grelling’s paradox, for instance, opens with a distinction between autological and heterological words. An autological word describes itself, e.g., ‘polysyllabic’ is polysllabic, ‘English’ is English, ‘noun’ is a noun, etc. A heterological word does not describe itself, e.g., ‘monosyllabic’ is not monosyllabic, ‘Chinese’ is not Chinese, ‘verb’ is not a verb, etc. Now for the riddle: Is ‘heterological’ heterological or autological? If ‘heterological’ is heterological, then since it describes itself, it is autological. But if ‘heterological’ is autological, then since it is a word that does not describe itself, it is heterological. The common solution to this puzzle is that ‘heterological’, as defined by Grelling, is not a genuine predicate (Thomson 1962). In other words, “Is ‘heterological’ heterological?” is without meaning. There can be no predicate that applies to all and only those predicates it does not apply to for the same reason that there can be no barber who shaves all and only those people who do not shave themselves.
ellauri096.html on line 189: Trivially, false propositions cannot be proved true. Are there any true propositions that cannot be proved true?
ellauri096.html on line 225: But secular idealists and logical positivists concede that there are some actual unknown truths. How can they continue to believe that all truths are knowable? Astonishingly, these eminent philosophers seem refuted by a pinch of epistemic logic. Also injured are those who limit their claims of universal knowability to a limited domain. For instance, Immanuel Kant (A223/B272) asserts that all empirical propositions are knowable. This pocket of optimism would be enough to ignite the contradiction (Stephenson 2015).
ellauri096.html on line 265: no test is given by Thursday, the student will find the announcement incredible. At the beginning of the week, the student does not know (or believe) that the teacher will wait that long. A principle that tells me to defer to the opinions of my future self does not imply that I should defer to the opinions of my hypothetical future self. For my hypothetical future self is responding to propositions that need not be actually true.
ellauri096.html on line 287: Since the surprise test paradox can also be formulated in terms of rational belief, there will be parallel adjustments for what we ought to believe. We are criticized for failures to believe the logical consequences of what we believe and criticized for believing propositions that conflict with each other. Anyone who meets these ideals of completeness and consistency will be unable to believe a range of consistent propositions that are accessible to other complete and consistent thinkers. In particular, they will not be able to believe propositions attributing specific errors to them, and propositions that entail these off-limit propositions.
ellauri171.html on line 1054: Tamar’s plan is as simple as it is clever: she covers herself with a veil so that Judah won’t recognize her, and then she sits in the roadway at the “entrance to Enaim” (Hebrew petah enayim; literally, “eye-opener”). She has chosen her spot well. Judah will pass as he comes back happy and horny (and maybe tipsy) from a sheep-shearing festival. The veil is not the mark of a prostitute (haha); rather, it simply will prevent Judah from seeing Tamar’s face, and women sitting by the roadway are apparently fair game. So, Judah propositions her, offering to give her a kid (well he did) for her services and giving her his pet seal and staff id (the ancient equivalent of a credit card) in pledge.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 84: Ex nihilo, nihil fit – is one of the propositions to which great significance was attributed in metaphysics. The proposition is either to be viewed as just a barren tautology, nothing is nothing, or, if becoming is supposed to have real meaning in it, then, since only nothing comes from nothing, there is in fact none in it, for the nothing remains nothing in it. Becoming entails that nothing not remain nothing, but that it pass over into its other, being. – Later metaphysics, especially the Christian, rejected the proposition that out of nothing comes nothing, thus asserting a transition from nothing into being; no matter how synthetically or merely imaginatively it took this proposition, there is yet even in the most incomplete unification of being and nothing a point at which they meet, and their distinguishedness vanishes. –
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