8 ideas
10735 | Abstraction from objects won't reveal an operation's being performed 'so many times' [Geach] |
Full Idea: For an understanding of arithmetic the grasp of an operation's being performed 'so many times' is quite indispensable; and abstraction of a feature from groups of nuts cannot give us this grasp. | |
From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.170) | |
A reaction: I end up defending the empirical approach to arithmetic because remarks like this are so patently false. Geach seems to think we arrive ready-made in the world, just raring to get on with some counting. He lacks the evolutionary perspective. |
10732 | If concepts are just recognitional, then general judgements would be impossible [Geach] |
Full Idea: If concepts were nothing but recognitional capacities, then it is unintelligible that I can judge that cats eat mice when neither of them are present. | |
From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.164) | |
A reaction: Having observed the importance of recognition for the abstractionist (Idea 10731), he then seems to assume that there is nothing more to their concepts. Geach fails to grasp levels of abstraction, and cross-reference, and generalisation. |
10731 | For abstractionists, concepts are capacities to recognise recurrent features of the world [Geach] |
Full Idea: For abstractionists, concepts are essentially capacities for recognizing recurrent features of the world. | |
From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.163) | |
A reaction: Recognition certainly strikes me as central to thought (and revelatory of memory, since we continually recognise what we cannot actually recall). Geach dislikes this view, but I see it as crucial to an evolutionary view of thought. |
10733 | The abstractionist cannot explain 'some' and 'not' [Geach] |
Full Idea: The abstractionist cannot give a logically coherent account of the features that are supposed to be reached by discriminative attention, corresponding to the words 'some' and 'not'. | |
From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.167) | |
A reaction: I understand 'some' in terms of mereology, because that connects to experience, and 'not' I take to derive more from psychological experience than from the physical world, building on thwarted expectation, which even animals experience. |
10734 | Only a judgement can distinguish 'striking' from 'being struck' [Geach] |
Full Idea: To understand the verb 'to strike' we must see that 'striking' and 'being struck' are different, but necessarily go together in event and thought; only in the context of a judgment can they be distinguished, when we think of both together. | |
From: Peter Geach (Abstraction Reconsidered [1983], p.168) | |
A reaction: Geach seems to have a strange notion that judgements are pure events which can precede all experience, and are the only ways we can come to understand experience. He needs to start from animals (or 'brutes', as he still calls them!). |
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 |
16712 | Atheism is an atrocious and intolerable crime in any country [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Atheism is the most atrocious crime, and should be tolerated in no republic, however free. | |
From: René Descartes (Letters to Voetius [1640], VIIIB:174), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
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 |