5 ideas
| 19695 | The devil was wise as an angel, and lost no knowledge when he rebelled [Whitcomb] |
| Full Idea: The devil is evil but nonetheless wise; he was a wise angel, and through no loss of knowledge, but, rather, through some sort of affective restructuring tried and failed to take over the throne. | |
| From: Dennis Whitcomb (Wisdom [2011], 'Argument') | |
| A reaction: ['affective restructuring' indeed! philosophers- don't you love 'em?] To fail at something you try to do suggests a flaw in the wisdom. And the new regime the devil wished to introduce doesn't look like a wise regime. Not convinced. |
| 18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws' | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead. |
| 1394 | Can the mental elements of a 'bundle' exist on their own? [Carruthers] |
| Full Idea: If the mind is merely a bundle of states and events, it must be logically possible for the various elements of the bundle to exist on their own. | |
| From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (A)) | |
| A reaction: Depends how literally you take the bundle metaphor, and how much you are worried about 'logical' possibility (which only seems to mean imaginable). The answers to these questions do not have to be all-or-nothing. |
| 1395 | Why would a thought be a member of one bundle rather than another? [Carruthers] |
| Full Idea: What makes it true that a particular thought or experience is a member of one bundle rather than another? | |
| From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (B)) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if you can answer this nice question without mentioning values. The mental events in are in my bundle because they matter to me (because they are related to my body, for which I am responsible). Compare picking my possessions out of a pile. |
| 1396 | We identify persons before identifying conscious states [Carruthers] |
| Full Idea: We can have no conception of the particularity of conscious states prior to, and independently of, a conception of a particularity of persons. | |
| From: Peter Carruthers (Introducing Persons [1986], 2.iii (C)) | |
| A reaction: agrees with Butler |