Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Inventing Logical Necessity' and 'Presentation of Self in Everyday Life'

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4 ideas

10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
Logical necessity involves a decision about usage, and is non-realist and non-cognitive [Wright,C, by McFetridge]
     Full Idea: Wright espouses a non-realist, indeed non-cognitive account of logical necessity. Crucial to this is the idea that acceptance of a statement as necessary always involves an element of decision (to use it in a necessary way).
     From: report of Crispin Wright (Inventing Logical Necessity [1986]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §3
     A reaction: This has little appeal to me, as I take (unfashionably) the view that that logical necessity is rooted in the behaviour of the actual physical world, with which you can't argue. We test simple logic by making up examples.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 2. Self as Social Construct
Goffman sees the self as no more than a peg on which to hang roles we play [Goffman, by MacIntyre]
     Full Idea: Erving Goffman has liquidated the self into its role-playing, arguing that the self is no more than 'a peg' on which the clothes of the role are hung.
     From: report of Erving Goffman (Presentation of Self in Everyday Life [1959]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory Ch.3
     A reaction: A rather unsympathetic expression of his view, but it seems to be a widely held view among students of sociology. But then sociologists are almost committed a priori to a social and relativist view of truth, persons, knowledge, religion etc.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
Holism cannot give a coherent account of scientific methodology [Wright,C, by Miller,A]
     Full Idea: Crispin Wright has argued that Quine's holism is implausible because it is actually incoherent: he claims that Quine's holism cannot provide us with a coherent account of scientific methodology.
     From: report of Crispin Wright (Inventing Logical Necessity [1986]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.5
     A reaction: This sounds promising, given my intuitive aversion to linguistic holism, and almost everything to do with Quine. Scientific methodology is not isolated, but spreads into our ordinary (experimental) interactions with the world (e.g. Idea 2461).
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
There are two sides to men - the pleasantly social, and the violent and creative [Diderot, by Berlin]
     Full Idea: Diderot is among the first to preach that there are two men: the artificial man, who belongs in society and seeks to please, and the violent, bold, criminal instinct of a man who wishes to break out (and, if controlled, is responsible for works of genius.
     From: report of Denis Diderot (works [1769], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
     A reaction: This has an obvious ancestor in Plato's picture (esp. in 'Phaedrus') of the two conflicting sides to the psuché, which seem to be reason and emotion. In Diderot, though, the suppressed man has virtues, which Plato would deny.