3 ideas
| 19440 | How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility. | |
| From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this. |
| 11003 | The best version of reductionist actualism around is Armstrong's combinatorial account [Armstrong, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong's combinatorial theory of possibility is perhaps the most sophisticated and best worked out reductionist version of actualism to date. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (The Nature of Possibility [1986]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.4 |
| 20956 | Ultimately, all being is willing. The nature of primal being is the same as the nature of willing [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: In the last and highest instance there is no other being but willing. Willing is primal being, and all the predicates of primal being only fit willing: groundlessness, eternity, being independent of time, self-affirmation. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (On the Essence of Human Freedom [1809], I.7.350), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 5 'Reason' | |
| A reaction: Insofar as this says that 'primal being' must be active in character, I love this idea. Not the rest of the idea though! Bowie says this essay clearly influenced Schopenhauer. It looks as if Nietzsche must be read it too. |