7 ideas
17435 | Objects do not naturally form countable units [Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Objects do not by themselves naturally fall into countable units. | |
From: Kathrin Koslicki (Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division [1997], 2.2) | |
A reaction: Hm. This seems to be modern Fregean orthodoxy. Why did the institution of counting ever get started if the things in the world didn't demand counting? Even birds are aware of the number of eggs in their nest (because they miss a stolen one). |
17433 | We can still count squares, even if they overlap [Koslicki] |
Full Idea: The fact that there is overlap does not seem to inhibit our ability to count squares. | |
From: Kathrin Koslicki (Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division [1997], 2.2) | |
A reaction: She has a diagram of three squares overlapping slightly at their corners. Contrary to Frege, these seems to depend on a subliminal concept of the square that doesn't depend on language. |
17439 | There is no deep reason why we count carrots but not asparagus [Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Why do speakers of English count carrots but not asparagus? There is no 'deep' reason. | |
From: Kathrin Koslicki (Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division [1997]) | |
A reaction: Koslick is offering this to defend the Fregean conceptual view of counting, but what seems to matter is what is countable, and not whether we happen to count it. You don't need to know what carrots are to count them. Cooks count asparagus. |
17434 | We struggle to count branches and waves because our concepts lack clear boundaries [Koslicki] |
Full Idea: The reason we have a hard time counting the branches and the waves is because our concepts 'branches on the tree' and 'waves on the ocean' do not determine sufficiently precise boundaries: the concepts do not draw a clear invisible line around each thing. | |
From: Kathrin Koslicki (Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division [1997], 2.2) | |
A reaction: This is the 'isolation' referred to in Frege. |
17436 | We talk of snow as what stays the same, when it is a heap or drift or expanse [Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Talk of snow concerns what stays the same when some snow changes, as it might be, from a heap of snow to a drift, to an expanse. | |
From: Kathrin Koslicki (Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division [1997], 2.2) | |
A reaction: The whiteness also stays the same, but isn't stuff. |
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? |
19414 | Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702) | |
A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859. |