Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Sign of Four', 'Nietzsche's System' and 'Morality and Human Sexuality'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

8 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

20349	Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson]
	Full Idea: The core of metaphysics is an account of the 'essence' or 'being' of things. ...And metaphysics needs system, to show how these primary truths reach out into all the other truths, to help us see that, and how, they are true.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: I like the phrase 'the essential nature' of things, because it doesn't invoke rather dodgy entities called 'essences', but everyone understands the idea of focusing on what is essential, and on things having a distinct 'nature'.

20351	Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson]
	Full Idea: Metaphysics makes system a virtue, contrary to the tendency of analysis, which breaks a problem into ever finer parts and then absorbs itself in these.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: I disagree, because it seems to rule out analytic metaphysics. I prefer Bertrand Russell's view. Admittedly analysis oftens gets stuck in the bog, especially if it hopes for salvation in logic, only to discover its certainties endlessly receding.

20350	Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson]
	Full Idea: The evidence lies at the periphery of the [metaphysical] system and runs in from there, through decreasingly specific accounts of the data, to the central ontology.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: Philosophy is the study of high level generalisations, IMHO. Studying them means studying the reasons for asserting them. Richardson puts it very nicely.

14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction

22200	If you eliminate the impossible, the truth will remain, even if it is weird [Conan Doyle]
	Full Idea: When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
	From: Arthur Conan Doyle (The Sign of Four [1890], Ch. 6)
	A reaction: A beautiful statement, by Sherlock Holmes, of Eliminative Induction. It is obviously not true, of course. Many options may still face you after you have eliminated what is actually impossible.

24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / a. Human distinctiveness

20356	Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson]
	Full Idea: In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966)
	A reaction: If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves.

25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 5. Sexual Morality

20890	Why do sexual relationships need permanence, if other relationships don't? [Punzo]
	Full Idea: What is the reason for demanding permanence in the relationship of sexual partners when we do not see such permanence as being importance to other human relationships?
	From: Vincent C. Punzo (Morality and Human Sexuality [1969], p.220)
	A reaction: The distinction may not be that simple. 'Loyalty' must certainly be mentioned. Friends can legitimately drift apart, but to desert a close friend at a time of great need might be as great a crime as adultery. When is loyalty particularly needed?

20891	Does engaging in sexual intercourse really need no more thought than playing tennis? [Punzo]
	Full Idea: It seems strange for a man and a woman to give no more thought to the question of whether they should engage in sexual intercourse than to the question of whether they shoud play tennis.
	From: Vincent C. Punzo (Morality and Human Sexuality [1969], p.221)
	A reaction: This strikes me as a reasonable point, but times have moved on since 1969, and for plenty of people nowadays playing tennis is a bigger issue than having sex, because of the time, equipment and effort involved.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 7. Eliminating causation

20366	A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson]
	Full Idea: An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux, and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §112)
	A reaction: Maybe we do see it as a continuum? The racket swings and the ball is propelled, but the contact is a unity, not two separate events.