5 ideas
| 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. |
| 22304 | Truth is conceivability, or the systematic coherence of a significant whole [Joachim] |
| Full Idea: Truth is in its essence conceivability or systematic coherence. ...[p.78] It is the systematic coherence which characterises a significant whole. | |
| From: Harold Joachim (The Nature of Truth [1906], p.68), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 35 'coh' | |
| A reaction: We obviously need to know when a whole becomes 'significant'. Potter says mystical idealists liked this because it contributed to their teleological view of the whole of reality. Presumably its roots are in Hegel. |
| 594 | Speusippus suggested underlying principles for every substance, and ended with a huge list [Speussipus, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Speusippus suggested principles for each substance, including principles for numbers, magnitude and the soul. He thus arrived at no mean list of substances. | |
| From: report of Speussipus (thirty titles (lost) [c.367 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1028b |
| 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. |
| 2632 | Speusippus said things were governed by some animal force rather than the gods [Speussipus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Speusippus, following his uncle Plato, held that all things were governed by some kind of animal force, and tried to eradicate from our minds any notion of the gods. | |
| From: report of Speussipus (thirty titles (lost) [c.367 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.33 |