22028
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Unity emerges from understanding particulars, so understanding is prior to seeing unity [Schleiermacher]
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Full Idea:
We only gradually arrive at the knowledge of the inner unity via the understanding of individual utterances, and therefore the art of explication is also presupposed if the inner unity is to be found....The task is infinite, and can never be accomplished.
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From:
Friedrich Schleiermacher (works [1825], p.235), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06
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A reaction:
[p.235 in ed Bowie 1998] This is the first statement of the hermeneutic circle, which needs whole to grasp parts, and parts to grasp whole. Personally I think the dangers of circles in philosophy are greatly exaggerated.
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9390
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Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt]
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Full Idea:
Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking.
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From:
Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13)
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A reaction:
There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy.
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9389
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Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt]
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Full Idea:
Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept.
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From:
Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5)
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A reaction:
I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy.
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