display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
15390 | Metaphysics attempts to give an account of everything, in terms of categories and principles [Simons] |
Full Idea: Metaphysics, the noblest of philosophic enterprises, is an attempt to give an account of everything. ...Its job is to provide a universal framework (of categories and principles) within which anything whatever can take its place. | |
From: Peter Simons (Whitehead: process and cosmology [2009], 'Speculative') | |
A reaction: Bravo! I take metaphysics to be entirely continuous with science, but operating entirely at the highest level of generality. See Westerhoff on categories, though. The enterprise may not be going too well. |
12865 | Analytic philosophers may prefer formal systems because natural language is such mess [Simons] |
Full Idea: The untidiness of natural language in its use of 'part' is perhaps one of the chief reasons why mereolologists have preferred to investigate formal systems with nice algebraic properties rather than get out and mix it with reality in all its messiness. | |
From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.4) | |
A reaction: [See Idea 12864 for the uses of 'part'] I am in the unhappy (and probably doomed) position of wanting to avoid both approaches. I try to operate as if the English language were transparent and we can just discuss the world. Very naïve. |
8349 | The best way to do ontology is to make sense of our normal talk [Davidson] |
Full Idea: I do not know any better way of showing what there is than looking at the assumptions needed to make sense of our normal talk. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Causal Relations [1967], §4) | |
A reaction: Davidson was a pupil of Quine. This I take to be the last flowering of twentieth century linguistic philosophy. The ontology we deduce from talk in a children's playground might be very bizarre, but we are unlikely to endorse it. 'Honest, it's true!' |