5 ideas
| 4867 | Whether nature is beautiful or orderly is entirely in relation to human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or deformed, ordered or confused. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1665?) | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a statement of Hume's famous later opinion that there are no values ('ought') in nature ('is'). It is a rejection of Aristotelian and Greek teleology. It is hard to argue with, but I have strong sales resistance, rooted in virtue theory. |
| 18678 | Maybe final value rests on the extrinsic property of being valued by a rational agent [Korsgaard, by Orsi] |
| Full Idea: Korsgaard argues for the ultimate dependence of final value on the extrinsic property of being valued by a rational agent. | |
| From: report of Christine M. Korsgaard (Creating the Kingdom of Ends [1992]) by Francesco Orsi - Value Theory 2.3 n4 | |
| A reaction: This hyper-Kantian view doesn't strike me as very plausible. Not philosophical theory which entirely cuts animals out of the story has much appeal for me. |
| 9425 | Lewis later proposed the axioms at the intersection of the best theories (which may be few) [Mumford on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Later Lewis said we must choose between the intersection of the axioms of the tied best systems. He chose for laws the axioms that are in all the tied systems (but then there may be few or no axioms in the intersection). | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Subjectivist's Guide to Objective Chance [1980], p.124) by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature |
| 4866 | God is a being with infinite attributes, each of them infinite or perfect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I define God as a being consisting in infinite attributes, whereof each is infinite or supremely perfect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1661) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me the glorious culmination of the hyperbolic conception of God that expands steadily from wood spirits through Zeus, to eventually mop up everything in nature, and then everything that can be imagined beyond nature. All very silly. |
| 4868 | Trying to prove God's existence through miracles is proving the obscure by the more obscure [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who endeavour to establish God's existence and the truth of religion by means of miracles seek to prove the obscure by what is more obscure. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Oldenburg [1665], 1675?) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put. On the whole this has to be right, but one must leave open a possibility. If there is a God, and He seeks to prove Himself by a deed, are we saying this is impossible? Divine intervention might be the best explanation of something. |