12 ideas
6259 | Why can't a wise man doubt everything? [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: Why cannot a wise man dare to doubt anything and everything? | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0562) | |
A reaction: This question seems to be the start of the Enlightenment Project, of attempting to prove everything. MacIntyre warns of the dangers of this in ethical theory. The story of modern philosophy is the discovery of its impossibility. E.g. Davidson on truth. |
6263 | No wisdom could make us comfortably walk a wide beam if it was high in the air [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: Take a beam wide enough to walk along: suspend it between two towers: there is no philosophical wisdom, however firm, which could make us walk along it just as we would if we were on the ground. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0672) | |
A reaction: This proposes great scepticism about the practical application of philosophical wisdom, but if we talk in terms of the wise assessment of risk in any undertaking, our caution on the raised beam makes perfectly good sense. |
6258 | Virtue is the distinctive mark of truth, and its greatest product [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: The distinctive mark of the Truth we hold ought to be virtue, which is the most exacting mark of Truth, the closest one to heaven and the most worthy thing that Truth produces. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0493) | |
A reaction: A long way from Tarski and minimalist theories of truth! But not so far from pragmatism. Personally I think Montaigne is making an important claim, which virtue theorists should be attempting to incorporate into their theory. Aristotle would sympathise. |
6262 | We lack some sense or other, and hence objects may have hidden features [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: We may all lack some sense or other; because of that defect, most of the features of objects may be concealed from us. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0666) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as simple, straightforward common sense, and right. I cannot make sense of the claim that reality really is just the way it appears. We do not have a built-in neutrino detector, for example. |
9052 | Vague predicates lack application; there are no borderline cases; vague F is not F [Unger, by Keefe/Smith] |
Full Idea: In a slogan, Unger's thesis is that all vague predicates lack application ('nihilism', says Williamson). Classical logic can be retained in its entirety. There are no borderline cases: for vague F, everything is not F; nothing is either F or borderline F. | |
From: report of Peter Unger (There are no ordinary things [1979]) by R Keefe / P Smith - Intro: Theories of Vagueness §1 | |
A reaction: Vague F could be translated as 'I'm quite tempted to apply F', in which case Unger is right. This would go with Russell's view. Logic and reason need precise concepts. The only strategy with vagueness is to reason hypothetically. |
16070 | There are no objects with proper parts; there are only mereological simples [Unger, by Wasserman] |
Full Idea: Eliminativism is often associated with Unger, who defends 'mereological nihilism', that there are no composite objects (objects with proper parts); there are only mereological simples (with no proper parts). The nihilist denies statues and ships. | |
From: report of Peter Unger (There are no ordinary things [1979]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 4 | |
A reaction: The puzzle here is that he has a very clear notion of identity for the simples, but somehow bars combinations from having identity. So identity is simplicity? 'Complex identity' doesn't sound like an oxymoron. We're stuck if there are no simples. |
13768 | Validity can preserve certainty in mathematics, but conditionals about contingents are another matter [Edgington] |
Full Idea: If your interest in logic is confined to applications to mathematics or other a priori matters, it is fine for validity to preserve certainty, ..but if you use conditionals when arguing about contingent matters, then great caution will be required. | |
From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.2.1) |
13770 | There are many different conditional mental states, and different conditional speech acts [Edgington] |
Full Idea: As well as conditional beliefs, there are conditional desires, hopes, fears etc. As well as conditional statements, there are conditional commands, questions, offers, promises, bets etc. | |
From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.3.4) |
13764 | Are conditionals truth-functional - do the truth values of A and B determine the truth value of 'If A, B'? [Edgington] |
Full Idea: Are conditionals truth-functional - do the truth values of A and B determine the truth value of 'If A, B'? Are they non-truth-functional, like 'because' or 'before'? Do the values of A and B, in some cases, leave open the value of 'If A,B'? | |
From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.1) | |
A reaction: I would say they are not truth-functional, because the 'if' asserts some further dependency relation that goes beyond the truth or falsity of A and B. Logical ifs, causal ifs, psychological ifs... The material conditional ⊃ is truth-functional. |
13765 | 'If A,B' must entail ¬(A & ¬B); otherwise we could have A true, B false, and If A,B true, invalidating modus ponens [Edgington] |
Full Idea: If it were possible to have A true, B false, and If A,B true, it would be unsafe to infer B from A and If A,B: modus ponens would thus be invalid. Hence 'If A,B' must entail ¬(A & ¬B). | |
From: Dorothy Edgington (Conditionals [2001], 17.1) | |
A reaction: This is a firm defence of part of the truth-functional view of conditionals, and seems unassailable. The other parts of the truth table are open to question, though, if A is false, or they are both true. |
6260 | Sceptics say there is truth, but no means of making or testing lasting judgements [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: Pyrrhonians say that truth and falsehood exist; within us we have means of looking for them, but not of making any lasting judgements: we have no touchstone. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0564) | |
A reaction: This states the key difference between sceptics and relativists. The latter are more extreme as they say there is no such thing as truth. The former concede truth, and their scepticism is about the abilities of human beings. I am an anti-relativist. |
6261 | The soul is in the brain, as shown by head injuries [Montaigne] |
Full Idea: The seat of the powers of the soul is in the brain, as is clearly shown by the fact that wounds and accidents affecting the head immediately harm the faculties of the soul. | |
From: Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond [1580], p.0614) | |
A reaction: At last someone has finally got the facts clear. It seems surprising that the Greeks never clearly grasped this piece of irrefutable evidence - even those Greeks who speculated that the brain was the key. Here we have a fixed fact of philosophy of mind. |