7 ideas
9390 | Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt] |
Full Idea: Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking. | |
From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13) | |
A reaction: There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy. |
9389 | Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt] |
Full Idea: Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept. | |
From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5) | |
A reaction: I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy. |
19355 | The soul doesn't understand many of its own actions, if perceptions are confused and desires buried [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The soul does many things without knowing how it does them - when it does them by means of confused perceptions and unconscious inclinations or appetites. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [L]) | |
A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as a wonderful and important insight for its time. He's really paid attention to his own mind, and given up the simplistic view that derives from Descartes. Are birds conscious? Yes or no! Silly. |
19350 | We should say that body is mechanism and soul is immaterial, asserting their independence [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: I think we should keep both sides: we should be more Democritean and make all actions of bodies mechanical and independent of souls, and we should also be more than Platonic and hold that all actions of souls are immaterial and independent of mechanism. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [C]) | |
A reaction: This is about as dualist as it is possible to get. It certainly looks as if many of Leibniz's doctrines are rebellions against Spinoza (in this case his 'dual aspect monism'). I take Leibniz to be utterly but heroically wrong. |
19356 | Minds unconsciously count vibration beats in music, and enjoy it when they coincide [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: In music, the soul counts the beats of the vibrating object which makes the sound, and when these beats regularly coincide at short intervals, it finds them pleasing. Thus it counts without knowing it. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Note L to Bayle's 'Rorarius' [1705], [L]) | |
A reaction: Only a mathematician would see music this way! He is defending his account of the unconscious mind. The proposal that we unconsciously count sounds highly implausible. He needs to recognise the patterns that ground mathematics. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |