Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet', 'Introduction to Philosophical Papers I' and 'The Secret Connexion'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

21461	I tried to be unsystematic and piecemeal, but failed; my papers presuppose my other views [Lewis]
	Full Idea: I should have like to be a piecemeal, unsystematic philosopher, offering independent proposals on a variety of topics. It was not be. I succumbed too often to the temptation to presuppose my views on one topic when writing on another.
	From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers I [1983], p.1)
	A reaction: He particularly mentions his possible worlds realism as a doctrine which coloured all his other work. A charming insight into the mind of a systematic thinker (called by someone 'the most systematic metaphysician since Leibniz').

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences

15990	Every individual thing which exists has an essence, which is its internal constitution [Locke]
	Full Idea: I take essences to be in everything that internal constitution or frame for the modification of substance, which God in his wisdom gives to every particular creature, when he gives it a being; and such essences I grant there are in all things that exist.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 1), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: This is the clearest statement I have found of Locke's commitment to essences, for all his doubts about whether we can know such things. Alexander says (ch.13) Locke was reacting against scholastic essence, as pertaining to species.

11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty

15994	If it is knowledge, it is certain; if it isn't certain, it isn't knowledge [Locke]
	Full Idea: What reaches to knowledge, I think may be called certainty; and what comes short of certainty, I think cannot be knowledge.
	From: John Locke (Letters to Edward Stillingfleet [1695], Letter 2), quoted by Simon Blackburn - Quasi-Realism no Fictionalism
	A reaction: I much prefer that fallibilist approach offered by the pragmatists. Knowledge is well-supported belief which seems (and is agreed) to be true, but there is a small shadow of doubt hanging over all of it.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 9. General Causation / a. Constant conjunction

8338	A phenomenalist about objects has to be a regularity theorist about causation [Strawson,G]
	Full Idea: If you are a phenomenalist about objects, then there is an important sense in which you ought to be a Regularity theorist about what causation is, in such objects.
	From: Galen Strawson (The Secret Connexion [1989], App C)
	A reaction: Strawson is denying that Hume is a phenomenalist. One might go a little further, and say that a phenomenalist should abandon the idea of causation (as Russell did).