3 ideas
| 20947 | Thoughts are learnt through words, so language shows the limits and shape of our knowledge [Herder] |
| Full Idea: If it is true that we cannot think without thoughts, and that we learn to think through words: then language gives the whole of human knowledge its limits and outline. | |
| From: Johann Gottfried Herder (On Recent German Literature. Fragments [1767], p.373), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy | |
| A reaction: Deomonstrating that Frege's famous 1884 'linguistic turn', immortalised by Dummett, was actually the continuation of a long focus on language in German philosophy. Non-verbal animals very obviously think. |
| 22450 | If moral systems can't judge other moral systems, then moral relativism is true [Williams,B, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: If some societies with divergent moral systems merely confront each other, having no use for the assertion that their own systems are true and the others false except to mark the system to which they adhere, then relativism is a true theory of morality. | |
| From: report of Bernard Williams (The Truth in Relativism [1974]) by Philippa Foot - Moral Relativism p.3 | |
| A reaction: 'Having no use for' an assertion is not the same as the assertion being impossible. Some liberal cultures refuse to criticise others because their highest value is tolerance, even when the target culture wholly contradicts the critics' other values. |
| 19399 | Prime matter is nothing when it is at rest [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Primary matter is nothing if considered at rest. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Aristotle and Descartes on Matter [1671], p.90) | |
| A reaction: This goes with Leibniz's Idea 13393, that activity is the hallmark of existence. No one seems to have been able to make good sense of prime matter, and it plays little role in Aristotle's writings. |