4 ideas
| 16210 | Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience says the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. We have a geometry of external relations of spatio-temporal distance between points, and local qualities at points. …In short: we have an arrangement of qualities. | |
| From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986], p.ix-x) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the key fundamental tenet of David Lewis's philosophy. He names it after Hume because it contains no necessary connections. It is 'supervenient' because all worldly truths reduce to and depend on the mosaic. His thesis is contingent. |
| 18278 | Kant showed that our perceptions are partly constructed from our concepts [Reichenbach] |
| Full Idea: It was Kant's great discovery that the object of knowledge is not simply given but constructed, and that it contains conceptual elements not contained in pure perception. | |
| From: Hans Reichenbach (The Theory of Relativity and A Priori Knowledge [1965], p.49), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap |
| 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? |
| 9426 | The world is just a vast mosaic of little matters of local particular fact [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another. | |
| From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986]) | |
| A reaction: Basing laws on this picture is what Lewis calls 'Humean Supervenience'. |