4 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. |
10245 | One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré] |
Full Idea: One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. | |
From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Method [1908], p.65), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
A reaction: This is the culminating view after new geometries were developed by tinkering with Euclid's parallels postulate. |
19565 | How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality? [Devitt] |
Full Idea: What non-experiential link to reality could support insights into its necessary character? | |
From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 4) | |
A reaction: The key to it, I think, is your theory of mind. If you are a substance dualist, then connecting to such deep things looks fine, but if you are a reductive physicalist then it looks absurdly hopeful. |
19564 | Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that [Devitt] |
Full Idea: It is overwhelmingly plausible that some knowledge is empirical. The attractive thesis of naturalism is that all knowledge is; there is only one way of knowing. | |
From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 1) | |
A reaction: How many ways for us to know seems to depend on what faculties we have. We lump our senses together under a single heading. The arrival of data is not the same as the arrival of knowledge. I'm unconvinced that naturalists like me must accept this. |