5 ideas
| 10121 | Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor lack of contradiction a sign of truth [Pascal] |
| Full Idea: Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth. | |
| From: Blaise Pascal (works [1660]), quoted by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: [Quoted in Auden and Kronenberger's Book of Aphorisms] Presumably we would now say that contradiction is a purely formal, syntactic notion, and not a semantic one. If you hit a contradiction, something has certainly gone wrong. |
| 4055 | It isn't obviously wicked to destroy a potential human being (e.g. an ununited egg and sperm) [Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: A week-old embryo without a brain may be a potential human being, but so are a sperm and an ovum that are about to meet in a dish, and it wouldn't be wicked to keep those apart. | |
| From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.19) | |
| A reaction: Sounds fine, but it may be a slippery slope. Is it acceptable to deny a place at music school to a potentially great musician? |
| 4054 | I may exist before I become a person, just as I exist before I become an adult [Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: It makes perfectly good sense to say that I existed before I became a person, just as I existed before I became an adult, or a philosopher. | |
| From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.13) | |
| A reaction: The word 'I' needs thought here. I was once a non-adult, but was I ever a non-person? 'Person' is not a clear concept, despite what many philosophers since Locke may think. |
| 4056 | If the soul is held to leave the body at brain-death, it should arrive at the time of brain-creation [Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: Any Christian who feels that body and soul go their separate ways at brain death ought in consistency to hold that they come together only at the point when whatever is destroyed at brain death first came into being. | |
| From: Michael Lockwood (When Does a Life Begin? [1985], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Hence Christians probably focus less on brain-death than do doctors and the rest of us. |
| 4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Salmon argues that processes rather than events should be the basic entities in a theory of physical causation. | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causal Connections [1984]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.2 | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the concept of a 'process' ought to be ontologically basic. Edelman says the mind is a process. An 'event' is too loose, and a 'fact' too vague, and heaven knows what Hume meant by an 'object'. |