6 ideas
| 21750 | Science is sympathetic to truth as correspondence, since it depends on observation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Science, thanks to its links with observation, retains some title to a correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.63) | |
| A reaction: I would describe what he is affirming as a 'robust' theory of truth. An interesting aside, given his usual allegiance to disquotational, and even redundancy, accounts of truth. You can hardly rely on observations if you think they contain no truth. |
| 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. |
| 21748 | More careful inductions gradually lead to the hypothetico-deductive method [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Our inductions become increasingly explicit and deliberate, and in the fulness of time we even rise above induction, to the hypothetico-deductive method. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.57) | |
| A reaction: This seems to defer to Hempel's account of scientific theorising. I wander what exactly 'rising above' means? |
| 21749 | Altruistic values concern other persons, and ceremonial values concern practices [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Altruistic values attach to satisfactions of other persons, without regard to ulterior satisfactions accruing to oneself. Ceremonial values attach to practices of one's society, without regard to satisfactions accruing to oneself. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.58) | |
| A reaction: An interesting distinction, but probably as blurred and circular as (according to Quine) the analytic/synthetic distinction. |
| 21751 | Love seems to diminish with distance from oneself [Quine] |
| Full Idea: One cannot reasonably be called upon to love even one's neighbour quite as oneself. Is love to diminish inversely as the square of the distance? Is it to extend to other species than one's own? | |
| From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.65) | |
| A reaction: Quine isn't actually saying that love is inherently egoistic, but that is the implication. The power of my love is at its most powerful when it is closest to home. |
| 6011 | There is a remote first god (the Good), and a second god who organises the material world [Numenius, by O'Meara] |
| Full Idea: Numenius argues that material reality depends on intelligible being, which depends on a first god - the Good - which is difficult to grasp, but which inspires a second god to imitate it, turning to matter and organizing it as the world. | |
| From: report of Numenius (fragments/reports [c.160]) by Dominic J. O'Meara - Numenius | |
| A reaction: The interaction problem comes either between the two gods, or between the second god and the world. The argument may have failed to catch on for long when people scented an infinite regress lurking in the middle of it. |