display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
5 ideas
| 23461 | Kant thought worldly necessities are revealed by what maths needs to make sense [Kant, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: It struck Kant (to put it crudely) that there are some things which are necessarily true of the world, revealed when we consider what is required for mathematics - indeed, thinking in general - to make sense. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Intro | |
| A reaction: This is given as background the Wittgenstein's Tractatus. He disagrees with Kant because logic is not synthetic. I see a strong connection with the stoic belief that the natural world is intrinsically rational. |
| 14710 | Necessity is always knowable a priori, and what is known a priori is always necessary [Kant, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: The Kantian rationalist view is that what is necessary is always knowable a priori, and what is knowable a priori is always necessary. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: Nice to get a clear spelling out of the two-way relationship here. Why couldn't Kant put it as clearly as this? See Kripke for the first big challenges to Kant's picture. I like aposteriori necessities. |
| 16256 | For Kant metaphysics must be necessary, so a priori, so can't be justified by experience [Kant, by Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintained that metaphysics must be a body of necessary truths, and that necessary truths must be a priori, so metaphysical claims could not be justified by experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics 3 | |
| A reaction: I'm coming to the view that there is no a priori necessity, and that all necessities are entailments from the nature of reality. The apparent a priori necessities are just at a very high level of abstraction. |
| 5524 | Maths must be a priori because it is necessary, and that cannot be derived from experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical propositions are always a priori judgments and are never empirical, because they carry necessity with them, which cannot be derived from experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B014) | |
| A reaction: Personally I like the idea that maths is the 'science of patterns', but then I take it that the features of patterns will be common to all possible worlds. Presumably a proposition could be contingent, and yet true in all possible worlds. |
| 14039 | Above and below us will never appear to be the same, because it is inconceivable [Epicurus] |
| Full Idea: What is over our heads ...or what is below any point which we think of ...will never appear to us as being at the same time and in the same respect both up and down. For it is impossible to conceive of this. | |
| From: Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 60) | |
| A reaction: Note that he says it will 'never appear to us' as both - not that it absolutely cannot be both. Both Aristotle and Epicurus are much more focused on how our humanity shapes our metaphysics than the modern pure metaphysicians are. |