8 ideas
21855 | Only in the 1780s did it become acceptable to read Spinoza [Lord] |
Full Idea: It was not until the 1780s that it became acceptable to read the works of Spinoza, and even then it was not without a frisson of danger. | |
From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], Intro 'Who?') | |
A reaction: Hence we hear of Wordsworth and Coleridge reading him with excitement. So did Kant read him? |
19553 | Commitment to 'I have a hand' only makes sense in a context where it has been doubted [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: If I utter 'I know I have a hand' then I can only be reckoned a cooperative conversant by my interlocutors on the assumption that there was a real question as to whether I have a hand. | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
A reaction: This seems to point to the contextualist approach to global scepticism, which concerns whether we are setting the bar high or low for 'knowledge'. |
19551 | How can we know the heavyweight implications of normal knowledge? Must we distort 'knowledge'? [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: Those who deny skepticism but accept closure will have to explain how we know the various 'heavyweight' skeptical hypotheses to be false. Do we then twist the concept of knowledge to fit the twin desiderata of closue and anti-skepticism? | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], Intro) | |
A reaction: [He is giving Dretske's view; Dretske says we do twist knowledge] Thus if I remember yesterday, that has the heavyweight implication that the past is real. Hawthorne nicely summarises why closure produces a philosophical problem. |
19552 | We wouldn't know the logical implications of our knowledge if small risks added up to big risks [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: Maybe one cannot know the logical consequences of the proposition that one knows, on account of the fact that small risks add up to big risks. | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: The idea of closure is that the new knowledge has the certainty of logic, and each step is accepted. An array of receding propositions can lose reliability, but that shouldn't apply to logic implications. Assuming monotonic logic, of course. |
19554 | Denying closure is denying we know P when we know P and Q, which is absurd in simple cases [Hawthorne] |
Full Idea: How could we know that P and Q but not be in a position to know that P (as deniers of closure must say)? If my glass is full of wine, we know 'g is full of wine, and not full of non-wine'. How can we deny that we know it is not full of non-wine? | |
From: John Hawthorne (The Case for Closure [2005], 2) | |
A reaction: Hawthorne merely raises this doubt. Dretske is concerned with heavyweight implications, but how do you accept lightweight implications like this one, and then suddenly reject them when they become too heavy? [see p.49] |
21866 | Hobbes and Spinoza use 'conatus' to denote all endeavour for advantage in nature [Lord] |
Full Idea: 'Conatus' [translated as 'striving' by Curley] is used by early modern philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes (a major influence of Spinoza), to express the notion of a thing's endeavour for what is advantageous to it. It drives all things in nature. | |
From: Beth Lord (Spinoza's Ethics [2010], p.88) | |
A reaction: I think it is important to connect conatus to Nietzsche's talk of a plurality of 'drives', which are an expression of the universal will to power (which is seen even in the interactions of chemistry). Conatus is also in Leibniz. |
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. |