Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'works' and 'Categories'

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5 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: Hegel saw that the absolutization of the principle of sufficient reason (which marked the culmination of the belief in the necessity of what is) required the devaluation of the principle of non-contradiction.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812], 3) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 3
     A reaction: I pass this on without understanding it, though a joint study of my collection of ideas on sufficient reason and non-contradiction might make it clear. [Let me know if you can explain it!]
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 4. Contraries
Both sides of contraries need not exist (as health without sickness, white without black) [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: With contraries it is not necessary if one exists for the other to exist too, for if everyone were well health would exist but not sickness, and if everything were white whiteness would exist but not black.
     From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 14a06)
The contrary of good is bad, but the contrary of bad is either good or another evil [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: What is contrary to a good thing is necessarily bad, as we see with health and sickness. But the contrary of bad is sometimes good, sometimes not, as we see with excess, opposed by both deficiency and moderation.
     From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 13b36)
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel's 'dialectic' is often characterised in terms of the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is, however, not the way he presents it. The core of the dialectic is rather what Hegel terms the 'negation of the negation'.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
     A reaction: Interestingly, this connects it to debates about intuitionist logic, which denies that double-negation necessarily makes a positive. Presumably Marx emphasised the first reading.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes
The differentiae of genera which are different are themselves different in kind [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The differentiae of genera which are different and not subordinate one to the other are themselves different in kind.
     From: Aristotle (Categories [c.331 BCE], 01b16)
     A reaction: This seems to be indicating a category mistake, as he warns us not to attribute the wrong kind of differentiae to something we are picking out.