6 ideas
16415 | Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) | |
A reaction: He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up. |
16413 | Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do? | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good. |
16416 | The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: The inferential role of the existential quantifier in first order logic does not carry over to the existential quantifier in English (we have empty names, singular terms that are not even in the business of denoting, and so on). | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) |
8991 | Foucault can't accept that power is sometimes decent and benign [Foucault, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: It became impossible for Foucault to accept that power is sometimes decent and benign. | |
From: report of Michel Foucault (Power/Knowledge [1980]) by Roger Scruton - Upon Nothing: Swansea lecture p.12 | |
A reaction: Actually Idea 7425 suggests that Foucault has no dream of eliminating power, but he does seem to be utterly in favour of maximum autonomy, and to regard paternalism as inherently evil. What sort of parent would Foucault have been? |
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. |