Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'The Myth of Sisyphus' and 'Vagueness and Contradiction'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / e. Being and nothing
I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L]
     Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people."
     From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / c. Vagueness as ignorance
Vague words have hidden boundaries [Sorensen]
     Full Idea: Vague words have hidden boundaries. The subtraction of a single grain of sand might turn a heap into a non-heap.
     From: Roy Sorensen (Vagueness and Contradiction [2001], Intro)
     A reaction: The first sentence could be the slogan for the epistemic view of vagueness. The opposite view is Sainsbury's - that vague words are those which do not have any boundaries. Sorensen admits his view is highly counterintuitive. I think I prefer Sainsbury.