Combining Texts

Ideas for 'After Finitude', 'Categories' and 'works'

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4 ideas

2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
If we insist on Sufficient Reason the world will always be a mystery to us [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: So long as we continue to believe that there is a reason why things are the way they are rather than some other way, we will construe this world is a mystery, since no such reason will every be vouchsafed to us.
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4)
     A reaction: Giving up sufficient reason sounds like a rather drastic response to this. Put it like this: Will we ever be able to explain absolutely everything? No. So will the world always be a little mysterious to us? Yes, obviously. Is that a problem? No!
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 3. Non-Contradiction
Non-contradiction is unjustified, so it only reveals a fact about thinking, not about reality? [Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: The principle of non-contradiction itself is without reason, and consequently it can only be the norm for what is thinkable by us, rather than for what is possible in the absolute sense.
     From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2)
     A reaction: This is not Meillassoux's view, but describes the modern heresy of 'correlationism', which ties all assessments of how reality is to our capacity to think about it. Personally I take logical non-contradiction to derive from non-contradiction in nature.
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)