19386
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Without the subject or the senses, space and time vanish, as their appearances disappear [Kant]
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Full Idea:
If we remove our own subject or even ....the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us.
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From:
Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B059/A42)
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A reaction:
This is as clear a statement of anti-realist idealism as I have ever found in Kant. You can interpret him as a thorough scientific realist, but you have to put a tricky spin on passages like this. Or maybe only the 'appearances' of space and time vanish?
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14048
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Astronomical movements are blessed, but they don't need the help of the gods [Epicurus]
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Full Idea:
Movements, turnings, risings, settings, and related phenomena occur without any god helping out and ordaining or being about to ordain things, and at the same time have complete blessedness and indestructibility.
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From:
Epicurus (Letter to Herodotus [c.293 BCE], 76)
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A reaction:
Epicurus is sometimes accused of atheism for remarks like these, but he is always trying to show piety in his attitudes. We might now call this attitude 'deism' (see alphabetical themes).
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14909
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Physicalism is 'part-whole' (all parts are physical), or 'supervenience/levels' (dependence on physical) [Ladyman/Ross]
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Full Idea:
There is part-whole physicalism, that everything is exhausted by basic constituents that are themselves physical, or supervenience or levels physicalism, that the putatively non-physical is dependent on the physical.
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From:
J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 1.3)
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A reaction:
The cite Hüttemann and Papineau 2005. I am not convinced by this distinction. Ladyman and Ross oppose the first one. I'm thinking the second one either collapses into the first one, or it isn't physicalism. Higher levels are abstractions.
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