18084
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When successive variable values approach a fixed value, that is its 'limit' [Cauchy]
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Full Idea:
When the values successively attributed to the same variable approach indefinitely a fixed value, eventually differing from it by as little as one could wish, that fixed value is called the 'limit' of all the others.
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From:
Augustin-Louis Cauchy (Cours d'Analyse [1821], p.19), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.4
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A reaction:
This seems to be a highly significan proposal, because you can now treat that limit as a number, and adds things to it. It opens the door to Cantor's infinities. Is the 'limit' just a fiction?
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8044
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Goffman sees the self as no more than a peg on which to hang roles we play [Goffman, by MacIntyre]
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Full Idea:
Erving Goffman has liquidated the self into its role-playing, arguing that the self is no more than 'a peg' on which the clothes of the role are hung.
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From:
report of Erving Goffman (Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [1959]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.3
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A reaction:
A rather unsympathetic expression of his view, but it seems to be a widely held view among students of sociology. But then sociologists are almost committed a priori to a social and relativist view of truth, persons, knowledge, religion etc.
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