14 ideas
14775 | Numbers are just names devised for counting [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Numbers are merely a system of names devised by men for the purpose of counting. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: This seems a perfectly plausible view prior to the advent of Cantor, set theory and modern mathematical logic. I suppose the modern reply to this is that Peirce may be right about origin, but that men thereby stumbled on an Aladdin's Cave of riches. |
14776 | That two two-eyed people must have four eyes is a statement about numbers, not a fact [Peirce] |
Full Idea: To say that 'if' there are two persons and each person has two eyes there 'will be' four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: One eye for each arm of the people is certainly a fact. Frege uses this equivalence to build numbers. I think Peirce is wrong. If it is not a fact that these people have four eyes, I don't know what 'four' means. It's being two pairs is also a fact. |
15464 | The distinction between dispositional and 'categorical' properties leads to confusion [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To avoid the danger of claiming that dispositions are their own categorical bases, we do better to eschew the alleged distinction between dispositional and 'categorical' properties altogether. | |
From: David Lewis (Finkish dispositions [1997], II) | |
A reaction: Since I have been unable to form any intuitive notion of what a 'categorical' property is, I like this, though not necessarily for his reason. |
15463 | All dispositions must have causal bases [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Prior, Pargetter and Jackson have argued convincingly for the thesis that all dispositions must have causal bases. | |
From: David Lewis (Finkish dispositions [1997], II) | |
A reaction: [Their paper is 1982] This key thesis is tackled by modern defenders of powers. The question is not who has the best arguments, but who offers the most coherent picture. What is a 'causal basis'? What sort of thing could be primitive or fundamental? |
15461 | A 'finkish' disposition is real, but disappears when the stimulus occurs [Lewis] |
Full Idea: A disposition which would straight away vanish if put to the test is called 'finkish'. A finkishly fragile thing is fragile so long as it is not struck. But if it were struck, it would straight away cease to be fragile, and it would not break. | |
From: David Lewis (Finkish dispositions [1997], I) | |
A reaction: There are also 'antidotes'. Finks kill the disposition, antidotes kill the effect. These cases are problems for the simple conditional analysis of a disposition - because we never achieved the consequent. |
15462 | Backtracking counterfactuals go from supposed events to their required causal antecedents [Lewis] |
Full Idea: 'Backtracking' counterfactual reasoning runs from a counterfactually supposed event to the causal antecedents it would have to have had. | |
From: David Lewis (Finkish dispositions [1997], I) | |
A reaction: Why not call it a 'transcendental' counterfactual? Presumably you go thisworld>> counterfactualevent>> worldneededtocauseit. It conjures up two possible worlds instead of one. |
14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
Full Idea: All positive reasoning is judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Hence we can never hope to attain absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: This is the basis of Peirce's fallibilism - that all 'positive' reasoning (whatever that it?) is based on statistical induction. I'm all in favour of fallibilism, but find Peirce's claim to be a bit too narrow. He was too mesmerised by physical science. |
14774 | Innate truths are very uncertain and full of error, so they certainly have exceptions [Peirce] |
Full Idea: It seems to me there is the most historic proof that innate truths are particularly uncertain and mixed up with error, and therefore a fortiori not without exception. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14773 | A truth is hard for us to understand if it rests on nothing but inspiration [Peirce] |
Full Idea: A truth which rests on the authority of inspiration only is of a somewhat incomprehensible nature; and we can never be sure that we rightly comprehend it. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14772 | If we decide an idea is inspired, we still can't be sure we have got the idea right [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Even if we decide that an idea really is inspired, we cannot be sure, or nearly sure, that the statement is true. We know one of the commandments of the Bible was printed without a 'not' in it. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14771 | Only reason can establish whether some deliverance of revelation really is inspired [Peirce] |
Full Idea: We never can be absolutely certain that any given deliverance [of revelation] really is inspired; for that can only be established by reasoning. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
Full Idea: We can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], I) | |
A reaction: The importance of this is its connection between imagination and 'rational' understanding. This is an important corrective to a crude traditional picture of the role of imagination. I would connect imagination with counterfactuals and best explanation. |
541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |