7 ideas
14779 | I reason in order to avoid disappointment and surprise [Peirce] |
Full Idea: I do not reason for the sake of my delight in reasoning, but solely to avoid disappointment and surprise. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
A reaction: Hence Peirce places more emphasis on inductive and abductive reasoning than on deductive reasoning. I have to agree with him. Anyone account of why we reason must have an evolutionary framework. What advantage does reason bestow? It concerns the future. |
14777 | That a judgement is true and that we judge it true are quite different things [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Either J and the judgment 'I say that J is true' are the same for all judgments or for none. But if identical, their denials are identical. These are 'J is not true' and 'I do not say that J is true', which are different. No judgment judges itself true. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
A reaction: If you are going to espouse the Ramseyan redundancy view of truth, you had better make sure you are not guilty of the error which Peirce identifies here. |
14780 | Only study logic if you think your own reasoning is deficient [Peirce] |
Full Idea: It is foolish to study logic unless one is persuaded that one's own reasonings are more or less bad. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], II) |
14778 | Facts are hard unmoved things, unaffected by what people may think of them [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Facts are hard things which do not consist in my thinking so and so, but stand unmoved by whatever you or I or any man or generations of men may opine about them. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
A reaction: This is my view of facts, with which I am perfectly happy, for all the difficulties involved in individuating facts, and in disentangling them from our own modes of thought and expression. Let us try to establish the facts. |
2854 | Prescriptivism says 'ought' without commitment to act is insincere, or weakly used [Hooker,B] |
Full Idea: Prescriptivism holds that if you think one 'ought' to do a certain kind of act, and yet you are not committed to doing that act in the relevant circumstances, then you either spoke insincerely, or are using the word 'ought' in a weak sense. | |
From: Brad W. Hooker (Prescriptivism [1995], p.640) | |
A reaction: So that's an 'ought', but not a 'genuine ought', then? (No True Scotsman move). Someone ought to rescue that drowning child, but I can't be bothered. |
5655 | Happiness is not satisfaction of desires, but fulfilment of values [Bradley, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: For Bradley, the happiness of the individual is not to be understood in terms of his desires and needs, but rather in terms of his values - which is to say, in terms of those of his desires which he incorporates into his self. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Ethical Studies [1876]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.16 | |
A reaction: Good. Bentham will reduce the values to a further set of desires, so that a value is a complex (second-level?) desire. I prefer to think of values as judgements, but I like Scruton's phrase of 'incorporating into his self'. Kant take note (Idea 1452). |
2856 | Universal moral judgements imply the Golden Rule ('do as you would be done by') [Hooker,B] |
Full Idea: Prescriptivity is especially important if moral judgements are universalizable, for then we can employ golden rule-style reasoning ('do as you would be done by'). | |
From: Brad W. Hooker (Prescriptivism [1995], p.640) |