5 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 22307 | Propositions don't name facts, because two opposed propositions can match one fact [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is perfectly evident that a proposition is not the name for a fact, from the mere circumstance that there are two propositions corresponding to each fact. 'Socrates is dead' and 'Socrates is not dead' correspond to the same fact. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Papers of 1918 [1918], VIII.136), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 42 'Prop' | |
| A reaction: He finally reaches in 1918 what now looks fairly obvious. The idea that a proposition is part of the world is absurd. We should call the parts of the world 'facts' (despite vagueness and linguistic dependence in such things). Propositions are thoughts. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |