18933
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Not-Being obviously doesn't exist, and the five modes of Being are all impossible [Gorgias, by Diog. Laertius]
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Full Idea:
I. Nothing exists. a) Not-Being does not exist. b) Being does not exist as everlasting, as created, as both, as One, or as Many. II. If anything does exist, it is incomprehensible. III. If existence is comprehensible, it is incommunicable.
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From:
report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE], B03) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09
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A reaction:
[Also Sextus Empiricus, Against Logicians I.65-] For Part I he works through all the possible modes of being he can think of, and explains why none of them are possible. It is worth remembering that Gorgias loved rhetoric, not philosophy!
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16973
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Explain logical necessity by logical consequence, or the other way around? [Correia]
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Full Idea:
One view is that logical consequence is to be understood in terms of logical necessity (some proposition holds necessarily, if some group of other propositions holds). Alternatively, logical necessity is a logical consequence of the empty set.
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From:
Fabrice Correia (On the Reduction of Necessity to Essence [2012], 3)
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A reaction:
I think my Finean preference is for all necessities to have a 'necessitator', so logical necessity results from logic in some way, perhaps from logical consequence, or from the essences of the connectives and operators.
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9866
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Gorgias says rhetoric is the best of arts, because it enslaves without using force [Gorgias, by Plato]
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Full Idea:
Gorgias insists that the art of persuasion is superior to all others because it enslaves all the rest, with their own consent, not by force, and is therefore by far the best of all the arts.
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From:
report of Gorgias (fragments/reports [c.443 BCE]) by Plato - Philebus 58a
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A reaction:
A nice point, and it is not unreasonable to rank the arts in order of their power. To enchant, without achieving agreement, and to speak truth without persuading, are both very fine, but there is something about success that cannot be gainsaid.
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8364
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We can imagine controlling floods by controlling rain, but not vice versa [Wright,GHv]
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Full Idea:
Given our present knowledge of the laws of nature, we can imagine ways of controlling floods by controlling rainfall, but not the other way round. That is should be so, however, is contingent.
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From:
G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §8)
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A reaction:
Despite my objections to Idea 8363, this is a good example. It won't establish the metaphysics of the direction of causation, though, because God might control rainfall by controlling floods. Maybe causation is more like a motorway pile-up than dominoes.
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8360
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We must further analyse conditions for causation, into quantifiers or modal concepts [Wright,GHv]
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Full Idea:
We may be able to analyse causation into conditionship relations between events or states of affairs, ...but conditions cannot be regarded as logical primitives, ... and must be analysed into quantifiers, or modal concepts.
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From:
G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §2)
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A reaction:
[very compressed] A nice illustration of the aim of analytical philosophy - to analyse the elements of reality down to logical primitives. This is the dream of Descartes and Leibniz, continued by Russell and co. Do we still have this aspiration?
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8365
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Some laws are causal (Ohm's Law), but others are conceptual principles (conservation of energy) [Wright,GHv]
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Full Idea:
Not all laws are causal 'experimentalist' laws, such as those for falling bodies, or the Gas Law, or Ohm's Law. Some are more like conceptual principles, giving a frame of reference, such as inertia, or conservation of energy, or the law of entropy.
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From:
G.H. von Wright (Logic and Epistemology of Causal Relations [1973], §9)
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A reaction:
An interesting and important distinction, whenever one is exploring the links between theories of causation and of laws of nature. If one wished to attack the whole concept of 'laws of nature', this might be a good place to start.
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