No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
1. An epistemological integration. Any proposition which is entertained in any mind will be represented by four points, one located on each of four scales, symbolizing truth, belief, probability, and conviction.
This paper is an expansion of some topics which I discussed in an earlier article in Philosophical Review, July 1938, pp. 414–419. There I diagramed the four scales and in some measure explained them.
2 Let us use fact to mean reality or actuality, and let us not speak of a real or actual potential, for then real and actual would mean what I am here using objective to mean.
3 Absolute may also mean (1) independent, (2) ultimate, or (3) unrelated.
4 Speaking of the same proposition as being entertained by two minds is strictly inaccurate unless we accept Platonic universals. Traditional English has embraced and accepted these, but I do not. Two minds may entertain two propositions or subjective meanings which are exactly similar except that they are located in different minds which, being tied down to separate biological organisms, cannot overlap. Such truths will have one identical objective meaning. They will both refer to the same objective situation. They cannot be the same identical subjective meaning.
But we need not always speak strictly. Bishop Berkeley said that vulgar language is sometimes permissible. Theories which are supposed to be true should not be based upon it, but it is often good enough for ordinary communication. Since this paper is not an exposition of my theory of conceptualism I shall capitulate to the vulgar inaccuracies of popular Anglo-Platonic speech, and call two such similar propositions the same proposition. They are really members of the same class of propositions. What the logical positivists call ‘a proposition’ is often a class of propositions.
5 James however is unreliable in his interpretations of these things.
6 See my papers in the Journal of Philosophy:
Dec. 18, 1941, Vol.38, #26
Aug. 13, 1942, Vol. 39, #17
Mar. 29, 1945, Vol. 42, # 7
7 See my paper in Philosophical Review, Nov. 1939, where I have explained this terminology.