6 ideas
| 19086 | Does the pragmatic theory of meaning support objective truth, or make it impossible? [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: Peirce and Sellars takes Peirce's conception of meaning, on which pragmatism is founded, to support an adequate account of objective truth; James, Dewey and Rorty say it forecloses all possibility of such an account. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.169) | |
| A reaction: Ah. Very helpful. I thought there was a pragmatic theory of truth, then began to think that it was just a denial of truth. I've long suspected that Peirce is wonderful, and James is not very good (on this topic). |
| 19093 | Greek mathematics is wholly sensory, where ours is wholly inferential [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: Ancient mathematical concepts were essentially sensory; they were not mathematical in our sense - that is, wholly constituted by their inferential potential. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.187) | |
| A reaction: The latter view is Frege's, though I suppose it had been emerging for a couple of centuries before him. I like the Greek approach, and would love to see that reunited with the supposedly quite different modern view. (Keith Hossack is attempting it). |
| 19091 | Seeing reality mathematically makes it an object of thought, not of experience [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: As mathematically understood, the world is not an object of experience but instead an object of thought. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.183) | |
| A reaction: Since I am keen on citing biology to show that science does not have to be mathematical, this nicely shows that there is something wrong with a science which places a large gap between itself and the world. |
| 19088 | For pragmatists a concept means its consequences [Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: In the pragmatist view, the meaning of a concept is exhausted by its consequences. | |
| From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.173) | |
| A reaction: I'm unclear why the concept of a volcanic eruption only concerns its dire consequences, and is supposed to contain nothing of its causes. Pragmatists seem to be all future, and no past. Very American. |
| 18555 | The beautiful is that from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added [Alberti] |
| Full Idea: The beautiful is that from which nothing can be taken away and to which nothing can be added but for the worse. | |
| From: Leon Battista Alberti (De Re Aedificatoria [1485]), quoted by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 9 | |
| A reaction: Scruton rejects this Platonic tradition of beauty as organic wholeness, because you can't say how it would be 'worse' without invoking beauty, which makes it circular. Scruton appears to be correct. |
| 19941 | Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself [Anon (Leviticus)] |
| Full Idea: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. | |
| From: Anon (Lev) (03: Book of Leviticus [c.700 BCE], 19.18) | |
| A reaction: Most Christians think Jesus originated this thought. Interestingly, this precedes Socrates, who taught a similar idea. |