9 ideas
7910 | Pursue truth with the urgency of someone whose clothes are on fire [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: As though your turban or your clothes were on fire, so with a sense of urgency should you apply your intellect to the comprehension of the truths. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: The best philosophers need no such urging. I retain a romantic view that we should be 'natural' in these things. See Plato's views in Idea 2153 and 1638. However, maybe I should be confronted with this quotation every morning when I awake. |
19494 | Fictionalism allows that simulated beliefs may be tracking real facts [Yablo] |
Full Idea: The fictionalist offers the option that your simulated beliefs and assertions may be tracking a realm of genuine facts, or a realm of what you take to be facts. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 13) | |
A reaction: This means that fictionalism does not have to be an error theory. That is, we aren't mistakenly believing something that we actually made up. Instead we are sensibly believing something we know to be not literally true. Love it. |
15538 | Semantic indecision explains vagueness (if we have precisifications to be undecided about) [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Semantic indecision will suffice to explain the phenomenon of vagueness. [note] Provided that there exist the many precisifications for us to be undecided between. If you deny this, you will indeed have need of vague objects. | |
From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'Two solutions') | |
A reaction: [He mentions Van Inwagen 1990:213-83] There seem to be three solutions to vague objects: that they really are vague, that they are precise but we can't know precisely, or Lewis's view. I like Lewis's view. Do animals have any problem with vagueness? |
15537 | If cats are vague, we deny that the many cats are one, or deny that the one cat is many [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To deny that there are many cats on the mat (because removal of a few hairs seems to produce a new one), we must either deny that the many are cats, or else deny that the cats are many. ...I think both alternatives lead to successful solutions. | |
From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'The paradox') | |
A reaction: He credits the problem to Geach (and Tibbles), and says it is the same as Unger's 'problem of the many' (Idea 15536). |
15536 | We have one cloud, but many possible boundaries and aggregates for it [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Many surfaces are equally good candidates to be boundaries of a cloud; therefore many aggregates of droplets are equally good candidates to be the cloud. How is it that we have just one cloud? And yet we do. This is Unger's (1980) 'problem of the many'. | |
From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'The problem') | |
A reaction: This is the problem of vague objects, as opposed to the problem of vague predicates, or the problem of vague truths, or the problem of vague prepositions (like 'towards'). |
19493 | Governing possible worlds theory is the fiction that if something is possible, it happens in a world [Yablo] |
Full Idea: The governing fiction of possible worlds theory says that whenever something is possible, there is a world where it happens. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Go Figure: a Path through Fictionalism [2001], 05) | |
A reaction: This sounds like the only sensible attitude to possible worlds I can think of. |
15539 | Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The cardinal principle of pragmatics is that the right way to take what is said, if at all possible, is the way that makes sense of the message. | |
From: David Lewis (Many, but almost one [1993], 'A better solution') | |
A reaction: Thus when someone misuses a word, suggesting nonsense, we gloss over it, often without even mentioning it, because the underlying sense is obvious. A good argument for the existence of propositions. Lewis doesn't mention truth. |
7909 | The Eightfold Path concerns morality, wisdom, and tranquillity [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: The Eightfold Path has three steps concerning morality - right speech, right bodily action, and right livelihood; three of wisdom - right views, right intentions, and right effort; and two of tranquillity - right mindfulness and right concentration. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: Most of this translates quite comfortably into the aspirations of western philosophy. For example, 'right effort' sounds like Kant's claim that only a good will is truly good (Idea 3710). The Buddhist division is interesting for action theory. |
7908 | At the end of a saint, he is not located in space, but just ceases to be disturbed [Ashvaghosha] |
Full Idea: When an accomplished saint comes to the end, he does not go anywhere down in the earth or up in the sky, nor into any of the directions of space, but because his defilements have become extinct he simply ceases to be disturbed. | |
From: Ashvaghosha (Saundaranandakavya [c.50], XVI) | |
A reaction: To 'cease to be disturbed' is the most attractive account of heaven I have encountered. It all sounds a bit dull though. I wonder, as usual, how they know all this stuff. |