Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Richard Polt, Richard Price and Leopold Kronecker

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 3. Hermeneutics
15575 Knowledge is not a static set of correct propositions, but a continuing search for better interpretations [Polt]
     Full Idea: Thanks to Heidegger, hermeneutics has gained wider acceptance - that knowledge is not a static set of correct propositions, but a continuing search for better interpretations.
     From: Richard Polt (Heidegger: an introduction [1999], 3.§7)
     A reaction: I am not sure if I understand the notion of a search that has a refusal to actually find anything as one of its basic principles.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 1. Mathematics
12427 All of mathematics is properties of the whole numbers [Kronecker]
     Full Idea: All the results of significant mathematical research must ultimately be expressible in the simple forms of properties of whole numbers.
     From: Leopold Kronecker (works [1885], Vol 3/274), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 09.5
     A reaction: I've always liked Kronecker's line, but I'm beginning to realise that his use of the word 'number' is simply out-of-date. Natural numbers have a special status, but not sufficient to support this claim.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / c. Priority of numbers
10091 God made the integers, all the rest is the work of man [Kronecker]
     Full Idea: God made the integers, all the rest is the work of man.
     From: Leopold Kronecker (works [1885]), quoted by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Intro
     A reaction: This famous remark was first quoted in Kronecker's obituary. A response to Dedekind, it seems. See Idea 10090. Did he really mean that negative numbers were the work of God? We took a long time to spot them.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 1. Possibility
15568 When we consider possibilities, there must be something we are considering [Polt]
     Full Idea: We would hardly want to say that a possibility is nothing, since surely we are considering something when we consider possibilities.
     From: Richard Polt (Heidegger: an introduction [1999], 1)
     A reaction: A nice contribution to the issue of whether modality is a feature of actuality. I would prefer to say that we can self-evidently utter truths and falsehoods about what is or is not possible, in nature, in logic, and maybe in metaphysics.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / c. Ethical intuitionism
7258 The forefather of modern intuitionism is Richard Price [Price,R, by Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: The forefather of modern intuitionism is Richard Price.
     From: report of Richard Price (works [1760]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intuitionism