23294
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It is common to doubt truth when discussing it, but totally accept it when discussing knowledge [Davidson]
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Full Idea:
You are following Plato's lead if you worry about the concept of truth when it is the focus of your attention, but you pretend you understand it when trying to cope with knowledge (or belief, memory, perception etc.).
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From:
Donald Davidson (The Folly of Trying to Define Truth [1999], p.20)
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A reaction:
Nice to find someone pointing out this absurdity. He says Hume does the same with doubts about the external world, which he ignores when discussing other minds. Belief is holding true; only truths are actually remembered….
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20363
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Leaves are unequal, but we form the concept 'leaf' by discarding their individual differences [Nietzsche]
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Full Idea:
Every concept arises through the setting equal of the unequal. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never wholly equal to another, so it is certain that the concept leaf is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences.
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From:
Friedrich Nietzsche (On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense [1872]), quoted by John Richardson - Nietzsche's System 2.1.1 n28
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A reaction:
Nietzsche adds an interesting aspect to psychological abstraction, of abstracting away the differences between things, which we might label as the (further) capacity for Equalisation. If two cars differ only in a blemish, we abstract away the blemish.
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15877
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The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré]
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Full Idea:
In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose.
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From:
report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2
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A reaction:
I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts.
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