Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Saundaranandakavya', 'The Rationalists' and 'Assertion'

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8 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 2. Invocation to Philosophy

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.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / c. Types of substance

4304	Descartes says there are two substance, Spinoza one, and Leibniz infinitely many [Cottingham]
	Full Idea: Descartes was a dualist about substance, Spinoza was a monist, and Leibniz was a pluralist (an infinity of substances).
	From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.76)
	A reaction: Spinoza is appealing. We posit a substance, as the necessary basis for existence, but it is unclear how more than one substance can be differentiated. If mind is a separate substance, why isn't iron? Why aren't numbers?

12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism

4303	The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics [Cottingham]
	Full Idea: The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics.
	From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.75)
	A reaction: The idea of 'substance' has had an interesting revival in modern philosophy (though not, obviously, in physics). Maybe physics and philosophy have views of reality which are not complementary, but are rivals.

19. Language / F. Communication / 2. Assertion

18052	An assertion aims to add to the content of a context [Stalnaker, by Magidor]
	Full Idea: Stalnaker starts with the general thesis that the role of a successful assertion of s is to update the context by adding to it the content of s.
	From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Ofra Magidor - Category Mistakes 5.3.2
	A reaction: This is to be compared with criteria of meaningfulness, such as verificationism, and with Grice's rules of conversational implicature. Presumably if you assert what the context presupposes, you fail to assert, without being meaningless.

19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / b. Implicature

14718	An assertion is an attempt to rule out certain possibilities, narrowing things down for good planning [Stalnaker, by Schroeter]
	Full Idea: Stalnaker's guiding idea is that in making an assertion the speaker is trying to get the audience to rule out certain possibilities. ....If all goes well, further planning will proceed on the basis of a smaller and more accurate range of possibilities.
	From: report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Assertion [1978]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics
	A reaction: This sounds intuitively rather plausible, and is a nice original thought. This is what we pay clever chaps like Stalnaker to come up with. It seems to imply some notion of verisimilitude (qv. under 'truth'), depending on how much narrowing happens.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / d. Causal necessity

4306	For rationalists, it is necessary that effects be deducible from their causes [Cottingham]
	Full Idea: The rationalist view of causation takes it that to make effects intelligible, it must be shown that they are in principle deducible from their causes.
	From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.92)
	A reaction: This has intuitive appeal, but deduction is only possible with further premises, such as the laws of physics. The effects of human behaviour look a bit tricky, even if we cause them.

29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism

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.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / d. Heaven

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.