5 ideas
| 7081 | Philosophy is not separate from or above empirical science [Neurath] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as philosophy as a basic or universal science alongside or above the various fields of the one empirical science. | |
| From: Otto Neurath (works [1930]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This is what you get for becoming an empiricist. If philosophy is the quest for human wisdom, it seems to me highly unlikely that physical sciences will provide it. Human interests and values and understanding play absolutely no role in physics. |
| 14235 | Saying 'they can become a set' is a tautology, because reference to 'they' implies a collection [Cargile] |
| Full Idea: If the rule is asserted 'Given any well-determined objects, they can be collected into a set by an application of the 'set of' operation', then on the usual account of 'they' this is a tautology. Collection comes automatically with this form of reference. | |
| From: James Cargile (Paradoxes: Form and Predication [1979], p.115), quoted by Oliver,A/Smiley,T - What are Sets and What are they For? Intro | |
| A reaction: Is this a problem? Given they are well-determined (presumably implying countable) there just is a set of them. That's what set theory is, I thought. Of course, the iterative view talks of 'constructing' the sets, but the construction looks unstoppable. |
| 10486 | If we are rebuilding our ship at sea, we should jettison some cargo [Boolos on Neurath] |
| Full Idea: If we are sailors rebuilding our ship plank by plank on the open sea, then I know of some cargo we might want to jettison. | |
| From: comment on Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]) by George Boolos - Must We Believe in Set Theory? p.128 | |
| A reaction: This may just be an assertion of Ockham's Razor, but the interest is that the Neurath image demands internal standards of economy etc, whereas reality itself seems to be a right mess. |
| 8485 | We must always rebuild our ship on the open sea; we can't reconstruct it properly in dry-dock [Neurath] |
| Full Idea: We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship out on the open sea, never able to dismantle it in a dry-dock and reconstruct it there out of the best materials. | |
| From: Otto Neurath (Protocol Sentences [1932]), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: This is the classic statement of the anti-foundationalist picture of knowledge. It is often quoted by Quine. A tricky issue. I have a lot of sympathy with Bonjour's rationalist foundationalism. |
| 16861 | A false theory could hardly rival the explanatory power of natural selection [Darwin] |
| Full Idea: It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. | |
| From: Charles Darwin (The Origin of the Species [1859], p.476), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: More needs to be said, since the whims of God could explain absolutely everything (in a manner that would be somehow less that fully satisfying to the enquiring intellect). |