3 ideas
13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points. | |
From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13 | |
A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry. |
14080 | Are causal descriptions part of the causal theory of reference, or are they just metasemantic? [Kaplan, by Schaffer,J] |
Full Idea: Kaplan notes that the causal theory of reference can be understood in two quite different ways, as part of the semantics (involving descriptions of causal processes), or as metasemantics, explaining why a term has the referent it does. | |
From: report of David Kaplan (Dthat [1970]) by Jonathan Schaffer - Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson 1 | |
A reaction: [Kaplan 'Afterthought' 1989] The theory tends to be labelled as 'direct' rather than as 'causal' these days, but causal chains are still at the heart of the story (even if more diffused socially). Nice question. Kaplan takes the meta- version as orthodox. |
20344 | Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim] |
Full Idea: Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression. | |
From: report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48 | |
A reaction: Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language. |