Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Letters to Edward Stillingfleet', 'Universal Arithmetick' and 'True Believers'

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4 ideas

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / b. Greek arithmetic

17783	A number is not a multitude, but a unified ratio between quantities [Newton]
	Full Idea: By a Number we understand not so much a Multitude of Unities, as the abstracted Ratio of any Quantity to another Quantity of the same Kind, which we take for unity.
	From: Isaac Newton (Universal Arithmetick [1669]), quoted by John Mayberry - What Required for Foundation for Maths? p.407-2
	A reaction: This needs a metaphysics of 'kinds' (since lines can't have ratios with solids). Presumably Newton wants the real numbers to be more basic than the natural numbers. This is the transition from Greek to modern.

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.

18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content

23803	States have content if we can predict them well by assuming intentionality [Dennett, by Schulte]
	Full Idea: Dennett maintains that a system has states with representational content if we are able to predict its behaviour reliably and voluminously by adopting the intentional stance toward it.
	From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (True Believers [1981]) by Peter Schulte - Mental Content 5
	A reaction: Dennett himself seems happy to thereby attribute representational content to a chess-playing computer. This sounds like a test for content, rather than explaining what it is. Not promising, I think.