15 ideas
| 14782 | Philosophy is an experimental science, resting on common experience [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, although it uses no microscopes or other apparatus of special observation, is really an experimental science, resting on that experience which is common to us all. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], I) | |
| A reaction: The 'experimental' either implies that thought-experiments are central to the subject, or that philosophers are discussing the findings of scientists, but at a high level of theory and abstraction. Peirce probably means the latter. I can't disagree. |
| 14787 | Self-contradiction doesn't reveal impossibility; it is inductive impossibility which reveals self-contradiction [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is an anacoluthon to say that a proposition is impossible because it is self-contradictory. It rather is thought so to appear self-contradictory because the ideal induction has shown it to be impossible. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], III) |
| 14783 | Logic, unlike mathematics, is not hypothetical; it asserts categorical ends from hypothetical means [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics is purely hypothetical: it produces nothing but conditional propositions. Logic, on the contrary, is categorical in its assertions. True, it is a normative science, and not a mere discovery of what really is. It discovers ends from means. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], II) |
| 14788 | Mathematics is close to logic, but is even more abstract [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The whole of the theory of numbers belongs to logic; or rather, it would do so, were it not, as pure mathematics, pre-logical, that is, even more abstract than logic. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], IV) | |
| A reaction: Peirce seems to flirt with logicism, but rejects in favour of some subtler relationship. I just don't believe that numbers are purely logical entities. |
| 14590 | If we accept scattered objects such as archipelagos, why not think of cars that way? [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In being willing to countenance archipelagos, one embraces scattered objects. Why not then embrace the 'archipelago' of my car and the Eiffel Tower? | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Three-Dimensionalism v Four-Dimensionalism [2008], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a beautifully simple and striking point. Language is full of embracing terms like 'the furniture', but that doesn't mean we assume the furniture is unified. The archipelago is less of an 'object' if you live on one of the islands. |
| 14591 | Four-dimensionalists say instantaneous objects are more fundamental than long-lived ones [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Self-proclaimed four-dimensionalists typically adopt a picture that reckons instantaneous objects (and facts about them) to be more fundamental than long-lived ones. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Three-Dimensionalism v Four-Dimensionalism [2008], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice elucidation. As in Idea 14588, this seems motivated by a desire for some sort of foundationalism or atomism. Why shouldn't a metaphysic treat the middle-sized or temporally extended as foundational, and derive the rest that way? |
| 14589 | A modal can reverse meaning if the context is seen differently, so maybe context is all? [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: One person says 'He can't dig a hole; he hasn't got a spade', and another says 'He can dig a hole; just give him a spade', and both uses of the modal 'can' will be true. So some philosophers say that all modal predications are thus context-dependent. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Three-Dimensionalism v Four-Dimensionalism [2008], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Quine is the guru for this view of modality. Hawthorne's example seems to me to rely too much on the linguistic feature of contrasting 'can' and 'can't'. The underlying assertion in the propositions says something real about the possibilities. |
| 14786 | Some logical possibility concerns single propositions, but there is also compatibility between propositions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Many say everything is logically possible which involves no contradiction. In this sense two contradictory propositions may be severally possible. In the substantive sense, the contradictory of a possible proposition is impossible (if we were omniscient). | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], III) |
| 14789 | Experience is indeed our only source of knowledge, provided we include inner experience [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: If Mill says that experience is the only source of any kind of knowledge, I grant it at once, provided only that by experience he means personal history, life. But if he wants me to admit that inner experience is nothing, he asks what cannot be granted. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898]) | |
| A reaction: Notice from Idea 14785 that Peirce has ideas in mind, and not just inner experiences like hunger. Empiricism certainly begins to look more plausible if we expand the notion of experience. It must include what we learned from prior experience. |
| 14785 | The world is one of experience, but experiences are always located among our ideas [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real world is the world of sensible experience, and it is part of the process of sensible experience to locate its facts in the world of ideas. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], III) | |
| A reaction: This is the neatest demolition of the sharp dividing line between empiricism and rationalism that I have ever encountered. |
| 14784 | Ethics is the science of aims [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Ethics is the science of aims. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Nature of Mathematics [1898], II) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing slogan. He is discussing the aims of logic. I think what he means is that ethics is the science of value. 'Science' may be optimistic, but I would sort of agree with his basic idea. |
| 21375 | Reason can be vicious, and great crimes have to be rational [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Reasonable and vicious are quite consistent with each other, in fact, only through their union are great and far-reaching crimes possible. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Basis of Morality [1841], p.83), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 7 'Against' | |
| A reaction: This is opposed to Kant, who always looks wildly optimistic in his hope that high rationality entails a morally good will. Good people seem to have a fairly irrational empathy with their fellow citizens. |
| 21379 | Man's three basic ethical incentives are egoism, malice and compassion [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Man's three fundamental ethical incentives, egoism, malice and compassion, are present in everyone in different and incredibly unequal proportions. In accordance with them, motives will operate on man and actions will ensue. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Basis of Morality [1841], p.192), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 7 'Egoism' | |
| A reaction: A well chosen trio. Kant would be shocked that he has left out duty, which is supposed to rise above such feelings. |
| 21376 | Philosophy treats animals as exploitable things, ignoring the significance of their lives [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: In philosophical morals animals are mere 'things', mere means to any end whatsoever. ...Shame on such a morality, that fails to recognise the eternal essence that lives in every living thing, and shines forth with inscrutable significance from all eyes. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (On the Basis of Morality [1841], p.96), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 7 'Against' | |
| A reaction: Good. I find Kant's theoretical indifference to animals very creepy (despite his kind attitude to them). And I also think the utilitarians are wrong to only value animals for their pain, as if any animal could be shredded for fun, if it felt no pain. |
| 14588 | Modern metaphysicians tend to think space-time points are more fundamental than space-time regions [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays it is common for metaphysicians to hold both that space-time regions are less fundamental than the space-time points that compose them, and that facts about the regions are less fundamental than facts about the points and their arrangements. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Three-Dimensionalism v Four-Dimensionalism [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure what a physicist would make of this. It seems to be motivated by some a priori preference for atomism, and for system-building from minimal foundations. |