display all the ideas for this combination of texts
8 ideas
| 2869 | Kant's only answer as to how synthetic a priori judgements are possible was that we have a 'faculty'! [Nietzsche on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant asked himself: how are synthetic judgements a priori possible? And what, really, did he answer? By means of a faculty! | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §011 |
| 5572 | Reason has logical and transcendental faculties [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason has logical and transcendental faculties. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B355/A299) | |
| A reaction: The notion of a transcendental faculty is not entirely clear (despite all Kant's efforts), but it is certainly vital to grasp that rationality extends way beyond logic. The clearest example is induction, which is rational, despite its shortage of logic. |
| 9346 | Judgements which are essentially and strictly universal reveal our faculty of a priori cognition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Empirical universality is an increase in validity from most cases to all cases (e.g. all bodies are heavy), whereas strict universality belongs to a judgement essentially; this points to a special faculty of a priori cognition for it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B004) | |
| A reaction: I would say that 'strict' universality arises not directly from some faculty, but from increasing degrees of refinement by abstraction. It is merely the iterations of a lower faculty, not the pure deliverances of a higher one. |
| 22443 | We are seldom aware of imagination, but we would have no cognition at all without it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Imagination - a blind though indispensable function of the soul, without which we would have no cognition at all, but of which we are seldom even conscious. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B103/A78) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why he calls it 'blind', since I can very deliberately control imagination. Neverthless, I applaud his recognition of imagination's central importance, even (I take it) in the simple act of looking out of the window. |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought. |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122) | |
| A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction! |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be. |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134) | |
| A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable. |