display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
4 ideas
22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |
From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |
A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |
From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |
From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
6123 | Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks] |
Full Idea: Ontology is not empirical, but ontologists do make discoveries; empirical investigation won't discover that holes exist; we see that two things are the same colour, but a philosopher must resolve whether one universal is present in both. | |
From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], Pref) | |
A reaction: This is one of the best, simplest and clearest statements I have encountered of the autonomy of philosophy. One may, of course, respond by saying 'who cares?', but then who cares about quarks, or the economy of the Spanish Empire? |