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All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Review of Frege's 'Grundlagen'' and 'Intro to 'Philosophical Essays''

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4 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
9786 Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: The notion that philosophy can be done cooperatively, in the manner of scientists or engineers engaged in a research project, seems to me absurd. And yet few philosophers can survive in isolation.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xxi)
     A reaction: This why Nietzsche said that philosophers were 'rare plants'.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined
23367 Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus]
     Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason.
     From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15)
     A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!).
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 6. Coherence
9784 A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R]
     Full Idea: You do not improve the truth value of a false proposition by calling attention to a coherent system of propositions of which it is one.
     From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xi)
     A reaction: We need to disentangle the truth-value from the justification here. If it is false, then we can safely assume that is false, but we are struggling to decide whether it is false, and we want all the evidence we can get. Falsehood tends towards incoherence.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / c. Fregean numbers
9992 The 'extension of a concept' in general may be quantitatively completely indeterminate [Cantor]
     Full Idea: The author entirely overlooks the fact that the 'extension of a concept' in general may be quantitatively completely indeterminate. Only in certain cases is the 'extension of a concept' quantitatively determinate.
     From: George Cantor (Review of Frege's 'Grundlagen' [1885], 1932:440), quoted by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind
     A reaction: Cantor presumably has in mind various infinite sets. Tait is drawing our attention to the fact that this objection long precedes Russell's paradox, which made the objection more formal (a language Frege could understand!).