Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Changes in Events and Changes in Things', 'Hymn to Perfect Wisdom' and 'works'

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

---

4 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom

7911	Theory vanishes when one has obtained wisdom [Rahulabhadra]
	Full Idea: As the drops of dew in contact/ With the sun's rays disappear,/ So all theorizings vanish,/ Once one has obtained wisdom.
	From: Rahulabhadra (Hymn to Perfect Wisdom [c.150], v 10)
	A reaction: I suspect that the western view is that wisdom is good theory. This sounds like the sort of thing Wittgenstein would have said. Remarks like this encourage people to skip study, with the illusion that they can go straight to wisdom.

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.

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test

3178	A fast machine could pass all behavioural tests with a vast lookup table [Block, by Rey]
	Full Idea: Ned Block proposes a machine (a 'blockhead') which could pass the Turing Test just by looking up responses in a vast look-up table.
	From: report of Ned Block (works [1984]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 5.3
	A reaction: Once you suspected you were talking to a blockhead, I think you could catch it out in a Turing Test. How can the lookup table keep up to date with immediate experience? Ask it about your new poem.

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?