19 ideas
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
| A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
| A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
| A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
| A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
| A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
| A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
| 13445 | Descartes showed a one-one order-preserving match between points on a line and the real numbers [Descartes, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: Descartes founded analytic geometry on the assumption that there is a one-one order-preserving correspondence between the points on a line and the real numbers. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 1 |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
| A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
| 16774 | Descartes thinks distinguishing substances from aggregates is pointless [Descartes, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Descartes thinks it is a pointless relic of scholastic metaphysics to dispute over the boundaries between substances and mere aggregates. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.6 | |
| A reaction: This is Pasnau's carefully considered conclusion, with which others may not agree. It presumably captures the attitude of modern science generally to such issues. |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general…..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
| A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
| 7400 | Descartes said images can refer to objects without resembling them (as words do) [Descartes, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: Descartes argued (in 'The World') that just as words refer to objects, but they do not resemble them, in the same way, visual images or other sensory inputs relate to objects without depicting them. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a rather significant and plausible claim, which might contain the germ of the idea of a language of thought. It is also the basis for the recent view that language is the best route to understanding the mind. |
| 4310 | We have inner awareness of our freedom [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: We have inner awareness of our freedom. | |
| From: René Descartes (works [1643]) | |
| A reaction: This begs a few questions. I may be directly aware that I have not been hypnotised, but no one would accept it as proof. |
| 6553 | Descartes discussed the interaction problem, and compared it with gravity [Descartes, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Descartes himself was well aware of the interaction problem, and corresponded uncomfortably with Princess Elizabeth on the matter; …he pointed out that gravity is causal despite not being a physical object. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by William Lycan - Consciousness n1.3 | |
| A reaction: Lycan observes that at least gravity is in space-time, unlike the Cartesian mind. Pierre Gassendi had pointed out the problem to Descartes in the Fifth Objection to the 'Meditations' (see Idea 3400). |
| 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? |
| 19676 | Nature is devoid of thought [Descartes, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: It is Descartes who ratifies the idea that nature is devoid of thought. | |
| From: report of René Descartes (works [1643]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 5 | |
| A reaction: His dualism is crucial, along with his ontological argument, because they make all mentality supernatural. Remember, for Descartes animals are mindless machines. |
| 6518 | Matter can't just be Descartes's geometry, because a filler of the spaces is needed [Robinson,H on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Notoriously, the Cartesian idea that matter is purely geometrical will not do, for it leaves no distinction between matter and empty volumes: a filler for these volumes is required. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (works [1643]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.3 | |
| A reaction: Descartes thinks of matter as 'extension'. Descartes's error seems so obvious that it is a puzzle why he made it. He may have confused epistemology and ontology - all we can know of matter is its extension in space. |