The Roots Of Reference
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The Roots Of Reference
''The Roots of Reference'' is a 1974 book by the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine, in which the author expands on his earlier concepts about the inscrutability of reference and examines problems with traditional empiricism, arguing for a naturalized epistemology based on holism.Craig, Edward (Ed.) )1998). ''Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 10.'' Taylor & Francis US Background Quine's draft was initially developed in 1970 as an expansion of ideas presented in ''Word and Object'' (1960) about language acquisition.Quine, W.V. (1973). ''The Roots of Reference.'' The Paul Carus Lectures. Open Court, Summary The book is divided into three sections, one for each of the three Paul Carus Lectures he originally gave in 1971 at the American Philosophical Association conference. These three lectures were then revised and expanded for the book, with an introduction by Nelson Goodman. The first section is "Perceiving and learning," and it summarizes the psychology of percept ...
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Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century". From 1930 until his death 70 years later, Quine was continually affiliated with Harvard University in one way or another, first as a student, then as a professor. He filled the Edgar Pierce Chair of Philosophy at Harvard from 1956 to 1978. Quine was a teacher of logic and set theory. Quine was famous for his position that first order logic is the only kind worthy of the name, and developed his own system of mathematics and set theory, known as New Foundations. In philosophy of mathematics, he and his Harvard colleague Hilary Putnam developed the Quine–Putnam indispensability argument, an argument for the reality of mathematical entities.Colyvan, Mark"Indispensability Arguments in the Philosophy of Mathematics" The Stanford Encyclopedi ...
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Subsidiary Pronouns
A subsidiary, subsidiary company or daughter company is a company owned or controlled by another company, which is called the parent company or holding company. Two or more subsidiaries that either belong to the same parent company or having a same management being substantially controlled by same entity/group are called sister companies. The subsidiary can be a company (usually with limited liability) and may be a government- or state-owned enterprise. They are a common feature of modern business life, and most multinational corporations organize their operations in this way. Examples of holding companies are Berkshire Hathaway, Jefferies Financial Group, The Walt Disney Company, Warner Bros. Discovery, or Citigroup; as well as more focused companies such as IBM, Xerox, and Microsoft. These, and others, organize their businesses into national and functional subsidiaries, often with multiple levels of subsidiaries. Details Subsidiaries are separate, distinct legal entities fo ...
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Observational Statement
Logical positivism, later called logical empiricism, and both of which together are also known as neopositivism, is a movement in Western philosophy whose central thesis was the verification principle (also known as the verifiability criterion of meaning). This theory of knowledge asserted that only statements verifiable through direct observation or logical proof are meaningful in terms of conveying truth value, information or factual content. Starting in the late 1920s, groups of philosophers, scientists, and mathematicians formed the Berlin Circle and the Vienna Circle, which, in these two cities, would propound the ideas of logical positivism. Flourishing in several European centres through the 1930s, the movement sought to prevent confusion rooted in unclear language and unverifiable claims by converting philosophy into "scientific philosophy", which, according to the logical positivists, ought to share the bases and structures of empirical sciences' best examples, such as ...
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Abstract Objects
In metaphysics, the distinction between abstract and concrete refers to a divide between two types of entities. Many philosophers hold that this difference has fundamental metaphysical significance. Examples of concrete objects include plants, human beings and planets while things like numbers, sets and propositions are abstract objects. There is no general consensus as to what the characteristic marks of concreteness and abstractness are. Popular suggestions include defining the distinction in terms of the difference between (1) existence inside or outside space-time, (2) having causes and effects or not, (3) having contingent or necessary existence, (4) being particular or universal and (5) belonging to either the physical or the mental realm or to neither. Despite this diversity of views, there is broad agreement concerning most objects as to whether they are abstract or concrete. So under most interpretations, all these views would agree that, for example, plants are concrete ...
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Physical Body
In common usage and classical mechanics, a physical object or physical body (or simply an object or body) is a collection of matter within a defined contiguous boundary in three-dimensional space. The boundary must be defined and identified by the properties of the material. The boundary may change over time. The boundary is usually the visible or tangible surface of the object. The matter in the object is constrained (to a greater or lesser degree) to move as one object. The boundary may move in space relative to other objects that it is not attached to (through translation and rotation). An object's boundary may also deform and change over time in other ways. Also in common usage, an object is not constrained to consist of the same collection of matter. Atoms or parts of an object may change over time. An object usually meant to be defined by the simplest representation of the boundary consistent with the observations. However the laws of physics only apply directly to objects ...
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Sensory Perception
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system.Goldstein (2009) pp. 5–7 Vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves. Perception is not only the passive receipt of these signals, but it is also shaped by the recipient's learning, memory, expectation, and attention. Gregory, Richard. "Perception" in Gregory, Zangwill (1987) pp. 598–601. Sensory input is a process that transforms this low-level information to higher-level information (e.g., extracts shapes for object recognition). The process that follows connects a person's concepts and expectations (or knowledge), restorative and selective mechanisms (such as ...
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Formal Proof
In logic and mathematics, a formal proof or derivation is a finite sequence of sentences (called well-formed formulas in the case of a formal language), each of which is an axiom, an assumption, or follows from the preceding sentences in the sequence by a rule of inference. It differs from a natural language argument in that it is rigorous, unambiguous and mechanically verifiable. If the set of assumptions is empty, then the last sentence in a formal proof is called a theorem of the formal system. The notion of theorem is not in general effective, therefore there may be no method by which we can always find a proof of a given sentence or determine that none exists. The concepts of Fitch-style proof, sequent calculus and natural deduction are generalizations of the concept of proof. The theorem is a syntactic consequence of all the well-formed formulas preceding it in the proof. For a well-formed formula to qualify as part of a proof, it must be the result of applying a rule of th ...
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Fallacious
A fallacy is the use of Validity (logic), invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning, or "wrong moves," in the construction of an argument which may appear stronger than it really is if the fallacy is not spotted. The term in the Western intellectual tradition was introduced in the Aristotle, Aristotelian ''Sophistical Refutations, De Sophisticis Elenchis''. Some fallacies may be committed intentionally to Psychological manipulation, manipulate or Persuasion, persuade by deception. Others may be committed unintentionally because of human limitations such as carelessness, Biases in judgement and decision making, cognitive or social biases and ignorance, or, potentially, as the inevitable consequence of the limitations of language and understanding of language. This includes ignorance of the right Psychology of reasoning, reasoning standard, but also ignorance of relevant properties of the Context (language use), context. For instance, the soundness of legal arguments depends on the con ...
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Truth
Truth is the property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth 2005 In everyday language, truth is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise correspond to it, such as beliefs, propositions, and declarative sentences. Truth is usually held to be the opposite of falsehood. The concept of truth is discussed and debated in various contexts, including philosophy, art, theology, and science. Most human activities depend upon the concept, where its nature as a concept is assumed rather than being a subject of discussion; these include most of the sciences, law, journalism, and everyday life. Some philosophers view the concept of truth as basic, and unable to be explained in any terms that are more easily understood than the concept of truth itself. Most commonly, truth is viewed as the correspondence of language or thought to a mind-independent world. This is called the correspondence theory of truth. Various theo ...
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Genetic Fallacy
The genetic fallacy (also known as the fallacy of origins or fallacy of virtue) is a fallacy of irrelevance in which arguments or information are dismissed or validated based solely on their source of origin rather than their content. In other words, a claim is ignored or given credibility based on its source rather than the claim itself. The fallacy therefore fails to assess the claim on its merit. The first criterion of a good argument is that the premises must have bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim in question. Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits. In ''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'' (1995) it is asserted that the term originated in Morris Raphael Cohen and Ernest Nagel's book ''Logic and Scientific Method'' (1934). However, in a book review published in ''The Nation'' in 1926, Mortimer J. Adler complained that ''The St ...
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Number
A number is a mathematical object used to count, measure, and label. The original examples are the natural numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. Numbers can be represented in language with number words. More universally, individual numbers can be represented by symbols, called ''numerals''; for example, "5" is a numeral that represents the number five. As only a relatively small number of symbols can be memorized, basic numerals are commonly organized in a numeral system, which is an organized way to represent any number. The most common numeral system is the Hindu–Arabic numeral system, which allows for the representation of any number using a combination of ten fundamental numeric symbols, called digits. In addition to their use in counting and measuring, numerals are often used for labels (as with telephone numbers), for ordering (as with serial numbers), and for codes (as with ISBNs). In common usage, a ''numeral'' is not clearly distinguished from the ''number'' th ...
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