20349
|
Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson]
|
|
Full Idea:
The core of metaphysics is an account of the 'essence' or 'being' of things. ...And metaphysics needs system, to show how these primary truths reach out into all the other truths, to help us see that, and how, they are true.
|
|
From:
John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
|
|
A reaction:
I like the phrase 'the essential nature' of things, because it doesn't invoke rather dodgy entities called 'essences', but everyone understands the idea of focusing on what is essential, and on things having a distinct 'nature'.
|
20351
|
Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson]
|
|
Full Idea:
Metaphysics makes system a virtue, contrary to the tendency of analysis, which breaks a problem into ever finer parts and then absorbs itself in these.
|
|
From:
John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
|
|
A reaction:
I disagree, because it seems to rule out analytic metaphysics. I prefer Bertrand Russell's view. Admittedly analysis oftens gets stuck in the bog, especially if it hopes for salvation in logic, only to discover its certainties endlessly receding.
|
18823
|
To say there could have been people who don't exist, but deny those possible things, rejects Barcan [Stalnaker, by Rumfitt]
|
|
Full Idea:
Stalnaker holds that there could have been people who do not actually exist, but he denies that there are things that could have been those people. That is, he denies the unrestricted validity of the Barcan Formula.
|
|
From:
report of Robert C. Stalnaker (Counterparts and Identity [1987]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 6.2
|
|
A reaction:
And quite right too, I should have thought. As they say, Jack Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe might have had a child, but the idea that we should accept some entity which might have been that child but wasn't sounds like nonsense. Except as fiction…..
|
9390
|
Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt]
|
|
Full Idea:
Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking.
|
|
From:
Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13)
|
|
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.
|
9389
|
Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt]
|
|
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.
|
|
From:
Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5)
|
|
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.
|
20356
|
Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson]
|
|
Full Idea:
In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.
|
|
From:
John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966)
|
|
A reaction:
If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves.
|