Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Commentary on 'De Anima'', 'Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong' and 'works'

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4 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle

15941	For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer]
	Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth.
	From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2
	A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11]

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / h. Reals from Cauchy

18247	Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro]
	Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities.
	From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6
	A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / f. Ethical non-cognitivism

4761	The 'error theory' of morals says there is no moral knowledge, because there are no moral facts [Mackie, by Engel]
	Full Idea: Mackie's 'error theory' of ethics says that if a fact is something that corresponds to a true proposition, there are actually no moral facts, hence no knowledge of what moral statements are about.
	From: report of J.L. Mackie (Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong [1977]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §4.2
	A reaction: Personally I am inclined to think that there are moral facts (about what nature shows us constitutes a good human being), based on virtue theory. Mackie is a good warning, though, against making excessive claims. You end up like a bad scientist.

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / e. Death

16764	The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus]
	Full Idea: Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted.
	From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5
	A reaction: A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763.