display all the ideas for this combination of texts
8 ideas
| 19648 | Since Kant we think we can only access 'correlations' between thinking and being [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The central notion of philosophy since Kant is 'correlation' - that we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux's charge is that philosophy has thereby completely failed to grasp the scientific revolution, which has used mathematics to make objectivity possible. Quine and Putnam would be good examples of what he has in mind. |
| 19674 | The Copernican Revolution decentres the Earth, but also decentres thinking from reality [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The Copernican Revolution is not so much the decentring of observers in the solar system, but (by the mathematizing of nature) the decentring of thought relative to the world within the process of knowledge. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: In other words, I take it, the Copernican Revolution was the discovery of objectivity. That is a very nice addition to my History of Ideas collection. |
| 19657 | In Kant the thing-in-itself is unknowable, but for us it has become unthinkable [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The major shift that has occurred in the conception of thought from Kant's time to ours is from the unknowability of the thing-in-itself to its unthinkability. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux is making the case that philosophy is alienating us more and more from the triumphant realism of the scientific revolution. He says thinking has split from being. He's right. Modern American pragmatists are the worst (not Peirce!). |
| 5361 | Philosophers must get used to absurdities [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: He says this jokingly, but it is obviously true. Philosophy requires extreme imagination, and it also requires taking seriously possibilities that are dismissed by others. It would be a catastrophe if we all dismissed the truth as self-evidently false. |
| 5368 | Philosophy verifies that our hierarchy of instinctive beliefs is harmonious and consistent [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy should show us the hierarchy of our instinctive beliefs, ..and show that they do not clash, but form a harmonious system. There is no reason to reject an instinctive belief, except that it clashes with others. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This is open to the standard objections to the coherence theory of truth (as explained by Russell!), but I like this view of philosophy. Somewhere behind it is the rationalist dream that the final set of totally consistent beliefs will have to be true. |
| 5432 | Metaphysics cannot give knowledge of the universe as a whole [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It would seem that knowledge concerning the universe as a whole is not to be obtained by metaphysics. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: Although Russell is strongly attracted to rationalism and platonism, this remark puts him firmly in the camp of Hume, and makes him godfather to the logical positivists. I regard metaphysics as extremely speculative attempts at explanation. |
| 19675 | Since Kant, philosophers have claimed to understand science better than scientists do [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Ever since Kant, to think science as a philosopher has been to claim that science harbours a meaning other than the one delivered by science itself. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point is that science discovered objectivity (via the mathematising of nature), and Kant utterly rejected objectivity, by enmeshing the human mind in every possible scientific claim. This makes Meillassoux and I very cross. |
| 5434 | Philosophy is similar to science, and has no special source of wisdom [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical knowledge does not differ essentially from scientific knowledge; there is no special source of wisdom which is open to philosophy but not to science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I take Plato's Theory of Forms, for example, to be a scientific theory, for which no one can devise an empirical test (just like string theory). Personally I consider philosophy to be the senior partner, and regard scientists as servants. |