Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Changes in Events and Changes in Things', 'Letters to Oldenburg' and 'On Medical Experience'

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6 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / b. Types of fact

15201	That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b
	A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism

4867	Whether nature is beautiful or orderly is entirely in relation to human imagination [Spinoza]
	Full Idea: I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused.
	From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1665?)
	A reaction: This is clearly a statement of Hume's famous later opinion that there are no values ('ought') in nature ('is'). It is a rejection of Aristotelian and Greek teleology. It is hard to argue with, but I have strong sales resistance, rooted in virtue theory.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / f. The Mean

7453	Galen's medicine followed the mean; each illness was balanced by opposite treatment [Galen, by Hacking]
	Full Idea: Galen ran medicine on the principle of the mean; afflictions must be treated by contraries; hot diseases deserve cold medicine and moist illnesses want drying agents. (Paracelsus rebelled, treating through similarity).
	From: report of Galen (On Medical Experience [c.169]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.5
	A reaction: This must be inherited from Aristotle, with the aim of virtue for the body, as Aristotle wanted virtue for the psuché. In some areas Galen is probably right, that natural balance is the aim, as in bodily temperature control.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series

22899	'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive'
	A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein?

28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections

4866	God is a being with infinite attributes, each of them infinite or perfect [Spinoza]
	Full Idea: I define God as a being consisting in infinite attributes, whereof each is infinite or supremely perfect.
	From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1661)
	A reaction: This seems to me the glorious culmination of the hyperbolic conception of God that expands steadily from wood spirits through Zeus, to eventually mop up everything in nature, and then everything that can be imagined beyond nature. All very silly.

28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / e. Miracles

4868	Trying to prove God's existence through miracles is proving the obscure by the more obscure [Spinoza]
	Full Idea: Those who endeavour to establish God's existence and the truth of religion by means of miracles seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure.
	From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1675?)
	A reaction: Nicely put. On the whole this has to be right, but one must leave open a possibility. If there is a God, and He seeks to prove Himself by a deed, are we saying this is impossible? Divine intervention might be the best explanation of something.