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Truth-bearer
A truth-bearer is an entity that is said to be either true or false and nothing else. The thesis that some things are true while others are false has led to different theories about the nature of these entities. Since there is divergence of opinion on the matter, the term ''truth-bearer'' is used to be neutral among the various theories. Truth-bearer candidates include propositions, sentences, sentence-tokens, statements, beliefs, thoughts, intuitions, utterances, and judgements but different authors exclude one or more of these, deny their existence, argue that they are true only in a derivative sense, assert or assume that the terms are synonymous, or seek to avoid addressing their distinction or do not clarify it. Introduction Some distinctions and terminology as used in this article, based on Wolfram 1989 (Chapter 2 Section1) follow. ''It should be understood that the terminology described is not always used in the ways set out, and it is introduced solely for the pu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. It is a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. While there is no general agreement on how formal and informal logic are to be distinguished, one prominent approach associates their difference with whether the studied arguments are expressed in formal or informal languages. Logic plays a central role in multiple fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises together with a conclusion. Premises and conclusions are usua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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. Vario ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proposition
In logic and linguistics, a proposition is the meaning of a declarative sentence. In philosophy, " meaning" is understood to be a non-linguistic entity which is shared by all sentences with the same meaning. Equivalently, a proposition is the non-linguistic bearer of truth or falsity which makes any sentence that expresses it either true or false. While the term "proposition" may sometimes be used in everyday language to refer to a linguistic statement which can be either true or false, the technical philosophical term, which differs from the mathematical usage, refers exclusively to the non-linguistic meaning behind the statement. The term is often used very broadly and can also refer to various related concepts, both in the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic philosophy. It can generally be used to refer to some or all of the following: The primary bearers of truth values (such as "true" and "false"); the objects of belief and other propositional attitudes (i. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Formal Language
In logic, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics, a formal language consists of words whose letters are taken from an alphabet and are well-formed according to a specific set of rules. The alphabet of a formal language consists of symbols, letters, or tokens that concatenate into strings of the language. Each string concatenated from symbols of this alphabet is called a word, and the words that belong to a particular formal language are sometimes called ''well-formed words'' or '' well-formed formulas''. A formal language is often defined by means of a formal grammar such as a regular grammar or context-free grammar, which consists of its formation rules. In computer science, formal languages are used among others as the basis for defining the grammar of programming languages and formalized versions of subsets of natural languages in which the words of the language represent concepts that are associated with particular meanings or semantics. In computational compl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sybil Wolfram
Sybil Wolfram (born Sybille Misch; 1931–1993) was an English philosopher and writer, of German Jewish origin. She was a Fellow and Tutor in philosophy at Lady Margaret Hall at University of Oxford from 1964 to 1993. Work She published two books, ''Philosophical Logic: An Introduction'' (1989) and ''In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England'' (1987). She was the translator of Claude Lévi-Strauss's ''La pensée sauvage'' (''The Savage Mind''), but later disavowed the translation when she discovered the publisher had made changes to the translation that neither she nor Lévi-Strauss had authorized. She was the daughter of criminologist and psychoanalyst Kate Friedlander (1902–1949), an expert on the subject of juvenile delinquency, and the physician Walter Misch (1889–1943) who, together, wrote ''Die vegetative Genese der neurotischen Angst und ihre medikamentöse Beseitigung''. After the Reichstag fire in 1933, she emigrated from Berlin, Germany to England with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Type–token Distinction
The type–token distinction is the difference between naming a ''class'' (type) of objects and naming the individual ''instances'' (tokens) of that class. Since each type may be exemplified by multiple tokens, there are generally more tokens than types of an object. For example, the sentence " A rose is a rose is a rose" contains three word types: three word tokens of the type ''a'', three word tokens of the type ''rose'', and two word tokens of the type ''is''. The distinction is important in disciplines such as logic, linguistics, metalogic, typography, and computer programming. Overview The type–token distinction separates ''types'' (abstract descriptive concepts) from ''tokens'' (objects that instantiate concepts). For example, in the sentence "''the bicycle is becoming more popular''" the word ''bicycle'' represents the abstract concept of bicycles, and is thus a type, whereas in the sentence "''the bicycle is in the garage''", it represents a particular object, and is ther ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Use–mention Distinction
The use–mention distinction is a foundational concept of analytic philosophy, according to which it is necessary to make a distinction between a word (or phrase) and it.Devitt and Sterelny (1999) pp. 40–1W.V. Quine (1940) p. 24 Many philosophical works have been "vitiated by a failure to distinguish use and mention". The distinction can sometimes be pedantic, especially in simple cases where it is obvious. The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated with the word ''cheese'': * ''Use'': Cheese is derived from milk. * ''Mention'': 'Cheese' is derived from (the Anglian variant of) the Old English word ''ċēse'' (). The first sentence is a statement about the substance called "cheese": it ''uses'' the word 'cheese' to refer to that substance. The second is a statement about the word 'cheese' as a signifier: it ''mentions'' the word without ''using'' it to refer to anything other than itself. Note the quotation marks. Grammar In written language, ''mentio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophy
Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, Epistemology, knowledge, Ethics, values, Philosophy of mind, mind, and Philosophy of language, language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some sources claim the term was coined by Pythagoras ( BCE), although this theory is disputed by some. Philosophical methodology, Philosophical methods include Socratic questioning, questioning, Socratic method, critical discussion, dialectic, rational argument, and systematic presentation. in . Historically, ''philosophy'' encompassed all bodies of knowledge and a practitioner was known as a ''philosopher''."The English word "philosophy" is first attested to , meaning "knowledge, body of knowledge." "natural philosophy," which began as a discipline in ancient India and Ancient Greece, encompasses astronomy, medicine, and physics. For example, Isaac Newton, Newton's 1687 ''Phil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Explanation
An explanation is a set of statements usually constructed to describe a set of facts which clarifies the causes, context, and consequences of those facts. It may establish rules or laws, and may clarify the existing rules or laws in relation to any objects or phenomena examined. Explanation, in philosophy, is a set of statements that makes intelligible the existence or occurrence of an object, event, or state of affairs. Among its most common forms are: * Causal explanation * Deductive-nomological explanation, which involves subsuming the explanandum under a generalization from which it may be derived in a deductive argument (e.g., “All gases expand when heated; this gas was heated; therefore, this gas expanded”) * Statistical explanation, which involves subsuming the explanandum under a generalization that gives it inductive support (e.g., “Most people who use tobacco contract cancer; this person used tobacco; therefore, this person contracted cancer”). Explanation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Well-formed Formula
In mathematical logic, propositional logic and predicate logic, a well-formed formula, abbreviated WFF or wff, often simply formula, is a finite sequence of symbols from a given alphabet that is part of a formal language. A formal language can be identified with the set of formulas in the language. A formula is a syntactic object that can be given a semantic meaning by means of an interpretation. Two key uses of formulas are in propositional logic and predicate logic. Introduction A key use of formulas is in propositional logic and predicate logic such as first-order logic. In those contexts, a formula is a string of symbols φ for which it makes sense to ask "is φ true?", once any free variables in φ have been instantiated. In formal logic, proofs can be represented by sequences of formulas with certain properties, and the final formula in the sequence is what is proven. Although the term "formula" may be used for written marks (for instance, on a piece of paper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
