Lexicon of Arguments

Philosophical and Scientific Issues in Dispute
 
[german]


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Theses I
Theses II

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II 56
DavidsonVsCorrespondence Theory: no thing makes sentences true (VsTruthmaker).
Quine: stimuli do not make true, but lead to beliefs.
>Correspondence theory, >Stimuli, >Beliefs.
II 217 ff
Truthmaker/making true/QuineVsCresswell/Quine: Cresswell poses his metaphysical question as follows: "What is it that makes one physical theory true and another false?"

Quine: I can do nothing but answer with unhelpful realism that it is the nature of the world.

Cresswell, however, helpfully adds that this question is often asked in the epistemological sense: How can we know that one theory is true and the other is false?
That is a completely different question, and it must be taken more seriously. One obstacle still lies in the verb "to know". Does it have to imply certainty, infallibility? Then the answer is that we cannot know.
But if instead we ask why belief in one theory is more justified than belief in another, our question has substance.
A complete answer would be a complete theory of observational evidence and the scientific method.
Cresswell quotes Quine briefly and quickly that the final decision lies with the Court of Arbitration of Experience.
II 218
CresswellVsQuine: "Quine's metaphors about the arbitration will never be executed as far as we feel is necessary".
Cresswell compares Quine's view with Russell's logical atomism and rightly finds both incompatible. "Quine does not value a theory that would turn atomic facts into simple facts about our experience that are logically independent of any other. Quine: that is correct.
II 218
Experience/Quine: my observation sentences are not about experience (!) but they are reasonably naturalistic analogues of sentences about experience in that their use is learned by direct conditioning on the stimulation of sense receptors. Moreover, simple observational sentences are in most cases actually independent of each other.
QuineVsAtomism/QuineVsRussell: the fundamental difference between Russell's logical atomism and my view is that, in my view, the other truths are not somehow composed of or implied by the observation propositions. Their connection with the sentences of observation is more mediated and more complex.
>Atomism.
II 219
Cresswell burdens me with a realm of reified experiences or phenomena, which stands in contrast to an inscrutable reality. My naturalistic view has no resemblance to this: I have forces that affect our nerve endings from real objects of the outside world.
- - -
III 57
Def Satisfiability/Quine: a sentence-logical scheme is called fulfillable if there is an interpretation of the letters it contains that makes the scheme true. Otherwise unattainable.
>Satisfaction, >Satisfiability.
- - -
I 425
Facts/Object/making true/Quine: one should not take facts as objects just to have something that makes sentences true.
>Facts.
I 426
Facts: Tendency (though not in those who perceive facts as true propositions) to imagine facts as something concrete. Facts are what makes sentences true.
For example, "The King's Boulevard is one kilometre long" and "The King's Boulevard is 50 metres wide" are true. In this case they describe two different facts, but the only physical object that plays a role here is the King's Boulevard. We do not want a quibble, but the fact that the meaning of concreteness in the facts is "concrete", does not make facts particularly appealing to us.

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