Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity', 'Elements of Intuitionism (2nd ed)' and 'fragments/reports'

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / c. Classical philosophy
21336 Crates lived in poverty, and treated his whole life as a joke [Crates of Thebes, by Plutarch]
     Full Idea: Crates, with his bag and threadbare cloak, spent his whole life laughing and joking as though he were on holiday.
     From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Plutarch - 30: Quiet of Mind 266e
     A reaction: Crates sounds a little less alarming than Diogenes, while living a similar life. Was Crates the first ancestor of post-modernism?
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly
1767 Everyone should study philosophy until they see all people in the same light [Crates of Thebes, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: A man should study philosophy up to the point of looking on generals and donkey-drivers in the same light.
     From: report of Crates (Theb) (fragments/reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Cr.9
     A reaction: This seems to reject Aristote's idea that some people are clearly superior to others.
4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 2. Intuitionist Logic
18832 Mathematical statements and entities that result from an infinite process must lack a truth-value [Dummett]
     Full Idea: On an intuitionistic view, neither the truth-value of a statement nor any other mathematical entity can be given as the final result of an infinite process, since an infinite process is precisely one that does not have a final result.
     From: Michael Dummett (Elements of Intuitionism (2nd ed) [2000], p.41), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 7.3
     A reaction: This is rather a persuasive reason to sympathise with intuitionism. Mathematical tricks about 'limits' have lured us into believing in completed infinities, but actually that idea is incoherent.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind
13128 'Ultimate sortals' cannot explain ontological categories [Westerhoff on Wiggins]
     Full Idea: 'Ultimate sortals' are said to be non-subordinated, disjoint from one another, and uniquely paired with each object. Because of this, the ultimate sortal cannot be a satisfactory explication of the notion of an ontological category.
     From: comment on David Wiggins (Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity [1971], p.75) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §26
     A reaction: My strong intuitions are that Wiggins is plain wrong, and Westerhoff gives the most promising reasons for my intuition. The simplest point is that objects can obviously belong to more than one category.