3 ideas
| 20147 | Arguments that my finger does not exist are less certain than your seeing my finger [Moore,GE] |
| Full Idea: This really is a finger ...and you all know it. ...I can safely challenge anyone to give an argument that it is not true, which does not rest upon some premise which is less certain than is the proposition which it is designed to attack. | |
| From: G.E. Moore (Some Judgements of Perception [1922], p.228), quoted by John Kekes - The Human Condition 01.3 | |
| A reaction: [In Moore's 'Philosophical Studies'] This is a particularly clear statement from Moore of his famous claim. I'm not sure what to make of an attempt to compare a sceptical argument (dreams, demons) with the sight of a finger. |
| 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? |
| 4398 | An event causes another just if the second event would not have happened without the first [Lewis, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Lewis gives an account of causation in terms of counterfactual conditionals (roughly, an event c causes an event e iff if c had not happened then e would not have happened either). | |
| From: report of David Lewis (works [1973]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation Intro | |
| A reaction: This feels wrong to me. It is a version of Humean constant conjunction, but counterfactuals are too much a feature of our minds, and not sufficiently a feature of the world, to do this job. Tricky. |