3 ideas
| 7536 | If you hope to improve the world, all you can do is improve yourself [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When Wittgenstein was once asked what one can do to improve the world, he replied: 'Improve yourself; that is the only thing you can do to improve the world'. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (talk [1935]), quoted by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Ghost of Madness Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This is rather startlingly pessimistic about politics, and I don't really believe it. If anything has ever improved me, it has usually come from the world, and been created by other people. |
| 17722 | The concept 'red' is tied to what actually individuates red things [Peacocke] |
| Full Idea: The possession conditions for the concept 'red' of the colour red are tied to those very conditions which individuate the colour red. | |
| From: Christopher Peacocke (Explaining the A Priori [2000], p.267), quoted by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 2.5 | |
| A reaction: Jenkins reports that he therefore argues that we can learn something about the word 'red' from thinking about the concept 'red', which is his new theory of the a priori. I find 'possession conditions' and 'individuation' to be very woolly concepts. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |