display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
6 ideas
| 18794 | Logic has precise boundaries, and is the formal rules for all thinking [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The boundaries of logic are determined quite precisely by the fact that logic is the science that exhaustively presents and strictly proves nothing but the formal rules of all thinking. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B Pref ix) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it does not give the rules for ridiculous thinking, so more will be required. The interesting bit is the universality of the claim. |
| 22275 | Logic gives us the necessary rules which show us how we ought to think [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In logic the question is not one of contingent but of necessary rules, not how to think, but how we ought to think. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Wiener Logik [1795], p.16), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 02 'Trans' | |
| A reaction: Presumably it aspires to the objectivity of a single correct account of how we all ought to think. I'm sympathetic to that, rather than modern cultural relativism about reason. Logic is rooted in nature, not in arbitrary convention. |
| 23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Negation never proceeds from reasoning but from something much more obscure and old. Arguments come afterward, to justify and sustain it. Every no rises out of the blood. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (The Trouble with Being Born [1973], 02) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. In the Fregean era no one is allowed to talk about the origins of logical relations in the universal facts of physical existence. You can watch dogs saying no. |
| 5542 | There must be a general content-free account of truth in the rules of logic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Concerning the mere form of cognition (setting aside all content), it is equally clear that a logic, so far as it expounds the general and necessary rules of understanding, must present criteria of truth in these very rules. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B084/A59) | |
| A reaction: A vital point, used by Putnam (Idea 2332) in his critique of machine functionalism. It is hard to see how we can think of logic as pure syntax if the concept of truth is needed. We may observe one Venn circle inside another, but interpretaton is required. |
| 19632 | An axiom has no more authority than a frenzy [Cioran] |
| Full Idea: This earth is a place where can confirm anything with an equal likelihood: here axioms and frenzies are interchangeable. | |
| From: E.M. Cioran (A Short History of Decay [1949], 3) | |
| A reaction: A perceptive and poetic expression of the modern anti-Euclidean and anti-Fregean view of axioms, as purely formal features of a model or system. |
| 21454 | The battle of the antinomies is usually won by the attacker, and lost by any defender [Kant] |
| Full Idea: These sophistical assertions [the antinomies] open us a dialectical battlefield where each party will keep the upper hand as long as it is allowed to attack, and will certainly defeat that which is compelled to conduct itself merely defensively. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B450/A423) | |
| A reaction: This seems related to the interesting question of where the 'onus of proof' lies in a major dispute. Kant's implication is that the battles are not rational, if they are settled in such a fashion. |