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). |
13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points. | |
From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13 | |
A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry. |
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. |
7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |