3 ideas
| 22519 | Philosophers are revealed by their fears [Billington] |
| Full Idea: To understand any philosopher, ask 'What are they afraid of?'. | |
| From: Ray Billington (talk [2010]) | |
| A reaction: Yes! So... Plato - disorder. Aristotle - ignorance. Augustine - sin. Descartes - uncertainty. Spinoza - fragmentation. Leibniz - superficiality. Hume - speculation. Bentham - egotism. Kant - self-deception. Nietzsche - nihilism. Russell - imprecision. |
| 9141 | Abstraction theories build mathematics out of second-order equivalence principles [Cook/Ebert] |
| Full Idea: A theory of abstraction is any account that reconstructs mathematical theories using second-order abstraction principles of the form: §xFx = §xGx iff E(F,G). We ignore first-order abstraction principles such as Frege's direction abstraction. | |
| From: R Cook / P Ebert (Notice of Fine's 'Limits of Abstraction' [2004], 1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably part of the neo-logicist programme, which also uses such principles. The function § (extension operator) 'provides objects corresponding to the argument concepts'. The aim is to build mathematics, rather than the concept of a 'rabbit'. |
| 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. |