4 ideas
18435 | Resemblance Nominalists say that resemblance explains properties (not the other way round) [Rodriquez-Pereyra] |
Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalists cannot explain the resemblance between particulars in terms of their properties, because they explain particulars' properties in terms of their resemblances. | |
From: Gonzalo Rodriguez-Pereyra (Resemblance Nominalism and Russell's Regress [2001], p.397), quoted by Douglas Edwards - Properties 5.5.1 | |
A reaction: While resemblance does seem to be a primitive fact of experience, and it points us towards the properties, to say that resemblance explains properties is obviously (as so often...) getting things the wrong way round. Properties ARE resemblances?? |
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. |
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. |
23996 | Akrasia is intelligible in hindsight, when we revisit our previous emotions [Blackburn] |
Full Idea: To make my emotion intelligible [in a weakness of will case] is to look back and recognise that my emotions and dispositions were not quite as I had taken them to be. It is quite useless in such a case to invoke a blanket diagnosis of 'irrationality'. | |
From: Simon Blackburn (Ruling Passions [1998], p.191) | |
A reaction: So Blackburn rejects the idea of akrasia, because there was never really a conflict. He says rational people always aim to maximise their utility (p.135), and if their own act surprises them, it is just a failure to understand their own rationality. |