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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Lectures 1930-32 (student notes)' and 'Modal Logic'

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6 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 1. On Reason
When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato]
     Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e)
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 5. Opposites
Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato]
     Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a)
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato]
     Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic.
     From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71
     A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes
Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: 'Blue' and 'brown' are of the same kind, for the substitution of one for the other, though it may falsify the proposition, does not make nonsense of it.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4)
     A reaction: He chooses an easy example, because they are determinates of the determinable 'coloured'. What if I say 'the sky is blue', and then substitute 'frightening' for 'blue'?
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / b. Category mistake as syntactic
Talking nonsense is not following the rules [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: Talking nonsense is not following the rules.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C X)
     A reaction: He doesn't seem to distinguish between syntax and semantics, and makes it sound as if all nonsense is syntactic, which it isn't.
Grammar says that saying 'sound is red' is not false, but nonsense [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: If grammar says that you cannot say that a sound is red, it means not that it is false to say so but that it is nonsense - i.e. not a language at all.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B IX.6)
     A reaction: I am baffled as to why he thinks 'grammar' is what prohibits such a statement. Surely the world, the nature of sound and colour, is what makes the application of the predicate wrong. Sounds aren't coloured, so they can't be red. False, not nonsense.