8 ideas
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There is no history from the viewpoint of nomads, although everything passes through them, to the point that they are like the noumena or the unknowable of history. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.107) | |
| A reaction: Nomads have the same place in society that indeterminate 'stuff' has in an object-orientated metaphysics. Deleuze seems to be romanticising nomads the way the late Victorians romanticised gypsies. |
| 14779 | I reason in order to avoid disappointment and surprise [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I do not reason for the sake of my delight in reasoning, but solely to avoid disappointment and surprise. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: Hence Peirce places more emphasis on inductive and abductive reasoning than on deductive reasoning. I have to agree with him. Anyone account of why we reason must have an evolutionary framework. What advantage does reason bestow? It concerns the future. |
| 14777 | That a judgement is true and that we judge it true are quite different things [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Either J and the judgment 'I say that J is true' are the same for all judgments or for none. But if identical, their denials are identical. These are 'J is not true' and 'I do not say that J is true', which are different. No judgment judges itself true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: If you are going to espouse the Ramseyan redundancy view of truth, you had better make sure you are not guilty of the error which Peirce identifies here. |
| 14780 | Only study logic if you think your own reasoning is deficient [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is foolish to study logic unless one is persuaded that one's own reasonings are more or less bad. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], II) |
| 14778 | Facts are hard unmoved things, unaffected by what people may think of them [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Facts are hard things which do not consist in my thinking so and so, but stand unmoved by whatever you or I or any man or generations of men may opine about them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: This is my view of facts, with which I am perfectly happy, for all the difficulties involved in individuating facts, and in disentangling them from our own modes of thought and expression. Let us try to establish the facts. |
| 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? |
| 21853 | We are currently extending capitalism to the whole of society [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: What characterises our situation is ….the extension of capitalism to the whole social body. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.110) | |
| A reaction: This is driven by the naïve people who think all problems can be solved by market forces, and that to everything that goes bankrupt we should just say 'good riddance'. |
| 21851 | The State requires self-preservation, but the war-machine desires destruction [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There will always be a tension between the State apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation, and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State, and even to destroy itself. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.106) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit WWI quite well, but the desire of the war-machine to destroy the State which pays for it sounds unlikely. Nevertheless war is appalling for the state, but it is the whole point of the war-machine, which gets restless. |