Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Comments on a Certain Broadsheet' and 'Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism'

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6 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities

2602	What experience could prove 'If a=c and b=c then a=b'? [Descartes]
	Full Idea: Please tell me what the corporeal motion is that is capable of forming some common notion to the effect that 'things which are equal to a third thing are equal to each other'.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.366)

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 6. Contextual Justification / a. Contextualism

19508	Contextualism needs a semantics for knowledge sentences that are partly indexical [Schiffer,S]
	Full Idea: Contextualist semantics must capture the 'indexical' nature of knowledge claims, the fact that different utterances of a knowledge sentence with no apparent indexical terms can express different propositions.
	From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.325), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5
	A reaction: Schiffer tries to show that this is too difficult, and DeRose defends contextualism against the charge.

19509	The indexical aspect of contextual knowledge might be hidden, or it might be in what 'know' means [Schiffer,S]
	Full Idea: One might have a 'hidden-indexical' theory of knowledge sentences: they contain constituents that are not the semantic values of any terms; ...or 'to know' itself might be indexical, as in 'I know[easy] I have hands' or 'I know[tough] I have hands'.
	From: Stephen Schiffer (Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism [1996], p.326-7), quoted by Keith DeRose - The Case for Contextualism 1.5
	A reaction: [very compressed] Given the choice, I would have thought it was in 'know', since to say 'either you know p or you don't' sounds silly to me.

18. Thought / D. Concepts / 2. Origin of Concepts / c. Nativist concepts

2600	The mind's innate ideas are part of its capacity for thought [Descartes]
	Full Idea: I have never written or taken the view that the mind requires innate ideas which are something distinct from its own faculty of thinking.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)

2601	Qualia must be innate, because physical motions do not contain them [Descartes]
	Full Idea: The ideas of pains, colours, sounds etc. must be all the more innate if, on the occasion of certain corporeal motions, our mind is to be capable of representing them to itself, for there is no similarity between these ideas and the corporeal motions.
	From: René Descartes (Comments on a Certain Broadsheet [1644], p.365)
	A reaction: Simple and brilliant! We know perfectly well that there is no redness zooming through the air from a tomato (or the air would be pink!). Redness occurs when the light arrives, so we add the redness, so it is innate.

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').