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PHL451 Q1 and Q2
PHL451 Frege/Russell/Strawson
| Question | Answer |
|---|---|
| 1. What is Formalism in mathematics? | Mathematics is a process of symbol manipulation, the truth of mathematical statements is dependent on the existence of a proof for that statement. What constrains mathematics is the syntax of its symbols. |
| 2. What is Frege's Primary objection to formalism? | That it equates the laws of mathematics with the laws of chess, mathematics unlike chess is applicable - its laws are non arbitrary and they can describe nature. |
| 3. How is the truth of classes of statements determined? According to Frege? | By determining the most fundemental way to justify the class |
| 4. What is Frege argument for logicism? from the highest view up. | 1-2 [Truth in math is grounded by justification] 3 If a statement can be provided with a logical proof, the logical proof provides the most fundamental means of justification for the statement. 4 The true statememts of mathematics are logical truths. |
| 5. What is Frege's Metalingustic solution to the problem of informative identities? | Identity statements state a relationship between the signs flanking the identity sign, that relationship being their co-reffering to the same object. |
| 6. What is the standard view concerning Frege's revised solution to the problem of informative identities? | On the standard view Frege was dissastified that it treated identity statements as statements about names and not objects. |
| 7. What is the alternative view concerning Frege's revised solution to the problem of informative identities? | That sense maps inferential qualities, not names. What makes one sense not another is iff it can turn a good proof into a bad one (ie has differing inferential qualities). |
| 8. What is the main problem with the alternative view concerning Frege's revised solution to the problem of informative identities? | It is very hard to keep track with natural language terms. Perhaps we can map this on to inferential properties, but it isnt easy. Frege never tells us how the parts compose the whole in a sentence, making its use in a theory of sense difficult. |
| 9. What is a precis of Frege's view of communication? | Communication is about the transmission of sense, roughly: getting on the same terms about the licensed forms of rational inference we have access to. |
| 10. What is Frege's problem as it arises for I? | Your usage of I entitles you to different thoughts than me. By Dummett's account, the method of verification differs. You verify statements about "I" in a different way than I do. |
| 11. What is Frege's problem as it arises for proper names? | If two people associare distinct descriptions with the same proper name "Gustav Lauden", they dont have a way to communicate about the same object, as there is no way to verify the information refers to the same object. |
| 12. What is the formula that Russell equates with 'The F is φ' | Ex((Fx & Ay(Fy -> x=y)) & Gx) Existence, Uniqueness, Property Ascription |
| 13. What are the two kinds of statement (/thought) which Russell is concerned with in 'on denoting'? | Those statements which characterise (logically properly) real particulars. These place objects before your mind as objects of thought. Those statements which characterise patterns of property instantiation. |
| 14. What are Russell's three major contributions? | i) The theory of descriptions ii) Descriptivism, arguing the theory of descriptions should be the starting point for understanding thoughts of that form. iii) The epistemic notion of acquaintance (on the singular side). |
| 15. What are the steps to Russell's argument from scope ambiguity? | i When you negate a description, it is ambiguous whether you are negating existence, uniqueness or the property ii This is not the case when a proper name is in the argument place iii Names and Descriptions are not the same syntactic and semantic kind |
| 16. What is the major issue with the argument from scope ambiguity? | It assumes natural language negation follows the pattern of "~" in the predicate calculus. But there is a tradition going back to Aristotle wherein you deny the predicate. You deny that it refers to the thing spoken of. |
| 17. What are the three natural language readings of negation? | Sentential - This is the '~' of PL Metalinguistic - Flipping the truth value of the subsentential expression Constituent - Refusal to treat the sentence as true |
| 18. What is the generalized scope ambiguity argument? | Replace the negation operators in the last argument with modal operators, the same problems arise "The first man in space might have been american" can say either "YG might have been american", "The person who was first in space might have been american" |
| 19. What are the four major objections to the theory of descriptions? | i the proposal does violence to the syntax of natural language. ii there are actually two uses of descriptions (referential and attributive uses) iii There are non Tod Expression. iv Strawson's claim that many empty descriptions lack truth values. |
| 20. What is the 'violence to natural language' objection? | The surface syntax of "The F is φ" suggests none of this underlying machinery. We can substitute terms here and preserve grammaticality (same syntactic category). Russell takes it that 'real' syntax can be revealed by laying down PL truth conditions. |
| 21. How do natural language quantifiers create issues for Russell? | "All" and "Some" are uniquely workable in the predicate calculus. The boundaries of "most" are vague, conditionals in their domains will come out true for any objects not fufilled by their terms. Wx(Fx->Gx) comes out true for anything ~Fx. |
| 22. |
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