Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Truth' and 'De modo distinguendi phaenomena'

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6 ideas

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth

10835	True sentences says the appropriate descriptive thing on the appropriate demonstrative occasion [Austin,JL]
	Full Idea: A sentence is said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the demonstrative conventions (the one to which it 'refers') is of a type with which the sentence used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions.
	From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], §3)
	A reaction: This is correspondence by convention rather than correspondence by mapping. Personally I prefer some sort of mapping account, despite all the difficulty and vagueness of specifying what maps onto what.

3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 3. Correspondence Truth critique

10836	Correspondence theorists shouldn't think that a country has just one accurate map [Austin,JL]
	Full Idea: Correspondence theorists too often talk as one would who held that every map is either accurate or inaccurate; that every country can have but one accurate map.
	From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], n 24)
	A reaction: A well-made point, for those who intuitively hang on to correspondence as not only good common sense, but also some sort of salvation for a realist view of the world which might give us certainty in epistemology.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism

12741	If experience is just a dream, it is still real enough if critical reason is never deceived [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Even if this whole life were said to be only a dream, and the visible world only a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough if we were never deceived by it when we make good use of reason.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
	A reaction: I find this response more satisfactory than his response in Idea 12740. As a supporter of the coherence account of justification, I take the closest we get to knowledge to be when our full critical faculties and experience are brought to bear, and shared.

12740	The strongest criterion that phenomena show reality is success in prediction [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The most powerful criterion of the reality of phenomena, sufficient even by itself, is success in predicting future phenomena from past and present ones.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
	A reaction: I would say that this is clutching at straws, as there is no reason at all to deny that dreams could be thoroughly coherent and predictable in their events. We must just live with these doubts, not try to defeat them.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 2. Qualities in Perception / e. Primary/secondary critique

12721	Light, heat and colour are apparent qualities, and so are motion, figure and extension [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Concerning bodies I can demonstrate that not merely light, heat, color, and similar qualities are apparent but also motion, figure, and extension.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1504), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
	A reaction: Leibniz is not consistent on this. Here he is flirting with idealism, but he often backs away from that. In Discourse §12 he makes secondary qualities certainly subjective, and primary qualities possibly so. He admits the primaries contain eternal truths.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

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?