Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'There is No A Priori (and reply)' and 'A world of truthmakers?'

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4 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 6. Making Negative Truths
15549 If it were true that nothing at all existed, would that have a truthmaker? [Lewis]
     Full Idea: If there was absolutely nothing at all, then it would have been true that there was nothing. Would there have been a truthmaker for this truth?
     From: David Lewis (A world of truthmakers? [1998], p.220)
     A reaction: This is a problem for Lewis's own claim that 'truth supervenes on being', as well as the more restricted truthmakers invoked by Armstrong.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities
19565 How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality? [Devitt]
     Full Idea: What non-experiential link to reality could support insights into its necessary character?
     From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 4)
     A reaction: The key to it, I think, is your theory of mind. If you are a substance dualist, then connecting to such deep things looks fine, but if you are a reductive physicalist then it looks absurdly hopeful.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori
19564 Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that [Devitt]
     Full Idea: It is overwhelmingly plausible that some knowledge is empirical. The attractive thesis of naturalism is that all knowledge is; there is only one way of knowing.
     From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 1)
     A reaction: How many ways for us to know seems to depend on what faculties we have. We lump our senses together under a single heading. The arrival of data is not the same as the arrival of knowledge. I'm unconvinced that naturalists like me must accept this.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
7903 The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').