7 ideas
19086 | Does the pragmatic theory of meaning support objective truth, or make it impossible? [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: Peirce and Sellars takes Peirce's conception of meaning, on which pragmatism is founded, to support an adequate account of objective truth; James, Dewey and Rorty say it forecloses all possibility of such an account. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.169) | |
A reaction: Ah. Very helpful. I thought there was a pragmatic theory of truth, then began to think that it was just a denial of truth. I've long suspected that Peirce is wonderful, and James is not very good (on this topic). |
19093 | Greek mathematics is wholly sensory, where ours is wholly inferential [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: Ancient mathematical concepts were essentially sensory; they were not mathematical in our sense - that is, wholly constituted by their inferential potential. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.187) | |
A reaction: The latter view is Frege's, though I suppose it had been emerging for a couple of centuries before him. I like the Greek approach, and would love to see that reunited with the supposedly quite different modern view. (Keith Hossack is attempting it). |
19091 | Seeing reality mathematically makes it an object of thought, not of experience [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: As mathematically understood, the world is not an object of experience but instead an object of thought. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.183) | |
A reaction: Since I am keen on citing biology to show that science does not have to be mathematical, this nicely shows that there is something wrong with a science which places a large gap between itself and the world. |
19088 | For pragmatists a concept means its consequences [Macbeth] |
Full Idea: In the pragmatist view, the meaning of a concept is exhausted by its consequences. | |
From: Danielle Macbeth (Pragmatism and Objective Truth [2007], p.173) | |
A reaction: I'm unclear why the concept of a volcanic eruption only concerns its dire consequences, and is supposed to contain nothing of its causes. Pragmatists seem to be all future, and no past. Very American. |
468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
20168 | Blame usually has no effect if the recipient thinks it unjustified [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about blame is that in many cases it is effective only if the recipient thinks that it is justified. | |
From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
A reaction: The point of the blame might not be reform of the agent, but a public justification for punishment as deterrence, in which case who cares what the agent thinks? Is blame attribution of causes, or reasons to punish? |
20167 | Blame partly rests on the fiction that blamed agents always know their obligations [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Blame rests, in part, on a fiction; the idea that ethical reasons, in particular the special kind of ethical reasons that are obligations, must, really, be available to the blamed agent. | |
From: Bernard Williams (How free does the will need to be? [1985], 5) | |
A reaction: In blaming someone, you may be telling them that they should know their obligations, rather than assuming that they do know them. How else can we give children a moral education? |