Tag Archives: Logic

Catching Criminals: Stopping Doing Philosophy

Posted on December 2, 2011 by

I had the great pleasure of attending Kelly Jolley’s final lecture in his intro course to philosophy today. In the last moments of the period he mentioned that the crux of the course as a whole had been the philosophical … Continue reading →

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Remembering Absolute Certainty: A Questionable Requiem

Posted on November 29, 2011 by

In what follows, I want to let all of Wittgenstein’s On Certainty stay in the background, as well as what is commonly said by him about the problems of philosophy. I hope the connections are clear.  While thumbing through the articles … Continue reading →

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For the Logicians and Mathematicians

Posted on November 28, 2011 by

Here’s an XKCD post from a few days ago that you might enjoy. It’s called “Set Theory”: The alternate text for this one is excellent, too: “Proof of Zermelo’s well-ordering theorem given the Axiom of Choice: 1: Take S to … Continue reading →

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Of Alterations: Leibniz, Frege, Wittgenstein

Posted on November 8, 2011 by

“The cottage fades before his sight, The garden and its lovely charms; The guests are scattered through the land —For the eye altering, alters all—; The senses roll themselves in fear, And the flat earth becomes a ball.” ~William Blake … Continue reading →

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The History Behind an Odd Question

Posted on October 24, 2011 by

Warning: I am about to try something dangerous at my meager level of familiarity with certain texts. Brace yourselves. Part I: A Deceptive Query. Effectively, the general form of my question concerning Wittgenstein’s Tractatus is “Why can this book be … Continue reading →

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On the Universality of Language

Posted on October 20, 2011 by

My recent interest in Leibniz has been influenced by a question concerning Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. This might sound odd. I promise it isn’t. You see, Leibniz had this crazy idea about language. He noted around 1677 that there was a … Continue reading →

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