display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
| 17174 | Outside the mind, there are just things and their properties [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Outside the intellect, there is nothing but substances and their affections. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 04) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close to the very sparse ontology espoused by modern philosophers who take their lead from the logic. |
| 17176 | The more reality a thing has, the more attributes it has [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more reality or being a thing possesses, the more attributes belong to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This commitment to degrees of existence (which I find baffling) is presumably to enable God to be the thing with infinite attributes, and an infinite degree of Being. What percentage of Being would you say you've got (on a good day)? |
| 17179 | There must always be a reason or cause why some triangle does or does not exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason or cause which hinders its existence or which negates it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Spinoza is setting up a defence of the ontological argument, which seems to require that he lower his normal high standards of argument. |
| 17186 | Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) |
| 21492 | Realism is basic to the scientific method [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental hypothesis of the method of science is this: There are real things, whose characters are entirely independent of our opinion of them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877]), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'method' | |
| A reaction: He admits later that this is only a commitment and not a fact. It seems to me that when you combine this idea with the huge success of science, the denial of realism is crazy. Philosophy has a lot to answer for. |
| 6949 | If someone doubted reality, they would not actually feel dissatisfaction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Nobody can really doubt that there are Reals, for, if he did, doubt would not be a source of dissatisfaction. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p.19) | |
| A reaction: This rests on Peirce's view that all that really matters is a sense of genuine dissatisfaction, rather than a theoretical idea. So even at the end of Meditation One, Descartes isn't actually worried about whether his furniture exists. |
| 20127 | Laws of nature are universal, so everything must be understood through those laws [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature's laws ....are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal laws and rules. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pref) | |
| A reaction: Leiter calls this Methodological Naturalism, which says that the procedures and findings of philosophy should conform to those of science. I think I'm also a Substantive Naturalist, who says 'that's all there is'. |