Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Truth and the Past', 'Public Text and Common Reader' and 'fragments/reports'

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3 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 1. Nature of Existence
Anaximander saw the contradiction in the world - that its own qualities destroy it [Anaximander, by Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Anaximander discovers the contradictory character of our world: it perishes from its own qualities.
     From: report of Anaximander (fragments/reports [c.570 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Unpublished Notebooks 1872-74 19 [239]
     A reaction: A lovely gloss on Anaximander, though I am not sure that I understand what Nietzsche means.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett]
     Full Idea: The idea of 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east'.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5)
     A reaction: The phrase was coined in Oxford. It is a useful label with which realists can insult solipsists, idealists and other riff-raff. Four Dimensionalists seem to see time in this way. Events sit there, and we travel past them. But there are indexical events.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
I no longer think what a statement about the past says is just what can justify it [Dummett]
     Full Idea: In distinguishing between what can establish a statement about the past as true and what it is that that statement says, we are repudiating antirealism about the past.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3)
     A reaction: This is a late shift of ground from the champion of antirealism. If Dummett's whole position is based on a 'justificationist' theory of meaning, he must surely have a different theory of meaning now for statements about the past?