Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Between Facts and Norms' and 'The Strangest Man'

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5 ideas

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
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?
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Actions norms are only valid if everyone possibly affected is involved in the discourse [Habermas]
     Full Idea: Only those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourse.
     From: Jürgen Habermas (Between Facts and Norms [1996], p.107), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.6:79
     A reaction: This remark stands somewhere between Kant and Rawls. The Holocaust stands behind Habermas's philosophy. The thought, I suppose, is that it would never have happened if everybody had been fully involved in the original discourse about it.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / d. Gravity
Instead of gravitational force, we now have a pervasive gravitational field [Farmelo]
     Full Idea: Physics replaced the notion that bodies exert gravitational force on each other by the more effective picture that the bodies in the universe give rise to a pervasive gravitational field which exerts a force on each particle.
     From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 08)
     A reaction: This still uses the word 'force'. I sometimes get the impression that gravity is the curvature of space, but gravity needs more. Which direction along the curvature are particles attracted? The bottom line is the power of the bodies.
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 2. Electrodynamics / d. Quantum mechanics
The Schrödinger waves are just the maths of transforming energy values to positions [Farmelo]
     Full Idea: Dirac showed that the Schrödinger waves were simply the mathematical quantities involved in transforming the description of a quantum based on its energy values to one based on possible values of its position.
     From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 08)
     A reaction: Does this eliminate actual physical 'waves' from the theory?
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 4. Standard Model / c. Particle properties
Experiments show that fundamental particles of one type are identical [Farmelo]
     Full Idea: It is an established experimental fact ...that every single fundamental particle in the universe is the same and identical to all other particles of the same type.
     From: Graham Farmelo (The Strangest Man [2009], 07)
     A reaction: A loud groan is heard from the tomb of Leibniz. I'm unclear how experiments can establish this. If electrons have internal structure (which is not ruled out) then uniformity is highly unlikely.