53 ideas
| 21955 | My dogmatic slumber was first interrupted by David Hume [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I freely admit that remembrance of David Hume was the very thing that many years ago first interrupted my dogmatic slumber. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 4:260), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 5.2 | |
| A reaction: A famous declaration. He realised that he had the answer the many scepticisms of Hume, and accept his emphasis on the need for experience. |
| 16931 | Metaphysics is generating a priori knowledge by intuition and concepts, leading to the synthetic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The generation of knowledge a priori, both according to intuition and according to concepts, and finally the generation of synthetic propositions a priori in philosophical knowledge, constitutes the essential content of metaphysics. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 274) | |
| A reaction: By 'concepts' he implies mere analytic thought, so 'intuition' is where the exciting bit is, and that is rather vague. |
| 10801 | Either reference really matters, or we don't need to replace it with substitutions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: When we reconstrue quantification in terms of substituted expressions rather than real values, we waive reference. ...but if reference matters, we cannot afford to waive it as a category; and if it does not, we do not need to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Reply to Professor Marcus [1962], p.183) | |
| A reaction: An odd dilemma to pose. Presumably the substitution account is an attempt to explain how language actually works, without mentioning dubious direct ontological commitment in the quantifiers. |
| 16918 | Mathematics cannot proceed just by the analysis of concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics cannot proceed analytically, namely by analysis of concepts, but only synthetically. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284) | |
| A reaction: I'm with Kant insofar as I take mathematics to be about the world, no matter how rarefied and 'abstract' it may become. |
| 16919 | Geometry rests on our intuition of space [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Geometry is grounded on the pure intuition of space. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284) | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that recent thinkers are coming round to this idea, having attempted purely algebraic or logical accounts of geometry. |
| 16930 | Geometry is not analytic, because a line's being 'straight' is a quality [Kant] |
| Full Idea: No principle of pure geometry is analytic. That the straight line beween two points is the shortest is a synthetic proposition. For my concept of straight contains nothing of quantity but only of quality. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 269) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what his authority is for calling straightness a quality rather than a quantity, given that it can be expressed quantitatively. It is a very nice example for focusing our questions about the nature of geometry. I can't decide. |
| 16920 | Numbers are formed by addition of units in time [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Arithmetic forms its own concepts of numbers by successive addition of units in time. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to imagine any modern philosopher of mathematics embracing this idea. It sounds as if Kant thinks counting is the foundation of arithmetic, which I quite like. |
| 16929 | 7+5 = 12 is not analytic, because no analysis of 7+5 will reveal the concept of 12 [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The concept of twelve is in no way already thought by merely thinking the unification of seven and five, and though I analyse my concept of such a possible sum as long as I please, I shall never find twelve in it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 269) | |
| A reaction: It might be more plausible to claim that an analysis of 12 would reveal the concept of 7+5. Doesn't the concept of two collections of objects contain the concept of their combined cardinality? |
| 16910 | Mathematics can only start from an a priori intuition which is not empirical but pure [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We find that all mathematical knowledge has this peculiarity, that it must first exhibit its concept in intuition, and do so a priori, in an intuition that is not empirical but pure. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 281) | |
| A reaction: Later thinkers had grave doubts about this Kantian 'intuition', even if they though maths was known a priori. Personally I am increasing fan of rational intuition, even if I am not sure how to discern whether it is rational on any occasion. |
| 16917 | All necessary mathematical judgements are based on intuitions of space and time [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Space and time are the two intuitions on which pure mathematics grounds all its cognitions and judgements that present themselves as at once apodictic and necessary. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284) | |
| A reaction: This unlikely proposal seems to be based on the idea that mathematics must arise from the basic categories of our intuition, and these two are the best candidates he can find. I would say that high-level generality is the basis of mathematics. |
| 16928 | Mathematics cannot be empirical because it is necessary, and that has to be a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical propositions are always judgements a priori, and not empirical, because they carry with them necessity, which cannot be taken from experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 268) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there are necessities in the physical world, and we might discern them by generalising about that world, so that mathematics is (by a tortuous abstract route) a posteriori necessary? Just a thought… |
| 11833 | The substance, once the predicates are removed, remains unknown to us [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It has long since been noticed that in all substances the subject proper, namely what is left over after all the accidents (as predicates) have been taken away and hence the 'substantial' itself, is unknown to us. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 333) | |
| A reaction: This is the terminus of the process of abstraction (though Wiggins says such removal of predicates is a myth). Kant is facing the problem of the bare substratum, or haecceity. |
| 21957 | 'Transcendental' concerns how we know, rather than what we know [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The word 'transcendental' signifies not a relation of our cognition to things, but only to the faculty of cognition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 4:293), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 5.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the annoying abduction of a word which is very useful in metaphysical contexts. |
| 16923 | I admit there are bodies outside us [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I do indeed admit that there are bodies outside us. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 289 n.II) | |
| A reaction: This is the end of a passage in which Kant very explicitly denies being an idealist. Of course, he says we can only know the representations of things, and not how they are in themselves. |
| 21441 | 'Transcendental' is not beyond experience, but a prerequisite of experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The word 'transcendental' does not mean something that goes beyond all experience, but something which, though it precedes (a priori) all experience, is destined only to make knowledge by experience possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 373 n) | |
| A reaction: One of two explanations by Kant of 'transcendental', picked out by Sebastian Gardner. I think the word 'prerequisite' covers the idea nicely, using a normal English word. Or am I missing something? |
| 16916 | A priori synthetic knowledge is only of appearances, not of things in themselves [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Through intuition we can only know objects as they appear to us (to our senses), not as they may be in themselves; and this presupposition is absolutely necessary if synthetic propositions a priori are to be granted as possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 283) | |
| A reaction: This idea is basic to understanding Kant, and especially his claim that arithmetic is a priori synthetic. |
| 16915 | A priori intuitions can only concern the objects of our senses [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Intuitions which are possible a priori can never concern any other things than objects of our senses. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 283) | |
| A reaction: Given the Kantian idea that what is known a priori will also be necessary, we might have had great hopes for big-time metaphysics, but this idea cuts it down to size. Personally, I don't think we are totally imprisoned in the phenomena. |
| 16914 | A priori intuition of objects is only possible by containing the form of my sensibility [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The only way for my intuition to precede the reality of the object and take place as knowledge a priori is if it contains nothing else than the form of sensibility which in me as subject precedes all real impressions through which I'm affected by objects. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 283) | |
| A reaction: This may be the single most famous idea in Kant. I'm not really a Kantian, but this is a powerful idea, the culmination of Descartes' proposal to start philosophy by looking at ourselves. No subsequent thinking can ignore the idea. |
| 21447 | I can make no sense of the red experience being similar to the quality in the object [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I can make little sense of the assertion that the sensation of red is similar to the property of the vermilion [cinnabar] which excites this sensation in me. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 290) | |
| A reaction: A sensible remark. In Kant's case it is probably a part of his scepticism that his intuitions reveal anything directly about reality. Locke seems to have thought (reasonably enough) that the experience contains some sort of valid information. |
| 16924 | I count the primary features of things (as well as the secondary ones) as mere appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I also count as mere appearances, in addition to [heat, colour, taste], the remaining qualities of bodies which are called primariae, extension, place, and space in general, with all that depends on it (impenetrability or materiality, shape etc.). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 289 n.II) | |
| A reaction: He sides with Berkeley and Hume against Locke and Boyle. He denies being an idealist (Idea 16923), so it seems to me that Kant might be described as a 'phenomenalist'. |
| 16913 | I can't intuit a present thing in itself, because the properties can't enter my representations [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It seems inconceivable how the intuition of a thing that is present should make me know it as it is in itself, for its properties cannot migrate into my faculty of representation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 282) | |
| A reaction: One might compare this with Locke's distinction of primary and secondary, where the primary properties seem to 'migrate into my faculty of representation', but the secondary ones fail to do so. I think I prefer Locke. This idea threatens idealism. |
| 16925 | Appearance gives truth, as long as it is only used within experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Appearance brings forth truth so long as it is used in experience, but as soon as it goes beyond the boundary of experience and becomes transcendent, it brings forth nothing but illusion. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 292 n.III) | |
| A reaction: This is the nearest I have found to Kant declaring for empiricism. It sounds something like direct realism, if experience itself can bring forth truth. |
| 16911 | Intuition is a representation that depends on the presence of the object [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Intuition is a representation, such as would depend on the presence of the object. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 282) | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctively Kantian view of intuition, which arises through particulars, rather than the direct apprehension of generalities. |
| 16912 | Some concepts can be made a priori, which are general thoughts of objects, like quantity or cause [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are of such a nature that we can make some of them ourselves a priori, without standing in any immediate relation to the object; namely concepts that contain the thought of an object in general, such as quantity or cause. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 282) | |
| A reaction: 'Quantity' seems to be the scholastic idea, of something having a magnitude (a big pebble, not six pebbles). |
| 16926 | Analytic judgements say clearly what was in the concept of the subject [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Analytic judgements say nothing in the predicate that was not already thought in the concept of the subject, though not so clearly and with the same consciousness. If I say all bodies are extended, I have not amplified my concept of body in the least. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 266) | |
| A reaction: If I say all bodies are made of atoms, have I extended my concept of 'body'? It would come as a sensational revelation for Aristotle, but it now seems analytic. |
| 16927 | Analytic judgement rests on contradiction, since the predicate cannot be denied of the subject [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Analytic judgements rest wholly on the principle of contradiction, …because the predicate cannot be denied of the subject without contradiction. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 267) | |
| A reaction: So if I say 'gold has atomic number 79', that is a (Kantian) analytic statement? This is the view of sceptics about Kripke's a posteriori necessity. …a few lines later Kant gives 'gold is a yellow metal' as an example. |
| 7222 | It is a crime for someone with a violent disposition to get drunk [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The making himself drunk, in a person whom drunkenness excites to do harm to others, is a crime against others. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This principle (based on knowing your own dispositions) is a very good account of the ethics drunkenness. We have a moral duty to know and remember our own dispositions. Violent people should avoid arguments as well as alcohol. |
| 7214 | Ethics rests on utility, which is the permanent progressive interests of people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: I regard utility as the ultimate appeal on all ethical questions; but it must be utility in the largest sense, grounded on the permanent interests of a man as a progressive being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Mill, writing in praise of personal liberty, is desperate to introduce a paternalistic element into his politics, and the 'maximisation of happiness' will justify such paternalism, while his basic liberal principle (Idea 7211) won't. Mill's Dilemma. |
| 7212 | Individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies and minds [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: If I should not even think about evil deeds, then neither should you. I would prevent you if I could. I would prevent you from drinking yourself to death, if I could. It is just that intrusions into private lives leads to greater trouble. |
| 7210 | The will of the people is that of the largest or most active part of the people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The will of the people practically means the will of the most numerous or the most active part of the people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Hence the nicely coined modern phrase 'the silent majority', on whose behalf certain politicians, usually conservative, offer to speak. It is unlikely that the silent majority are actually deeply opposed to the views of the very active part. |
| 7227 | It is evil to give a government any more power than is necessary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government interference should be restricted because of the great evil of adding unnecessarily to its power. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This would need justification, because it might be replied that individuals should not have unnecessary power either. The main problem is that governments have armies, police and money. |
| 7228 | Individuals often do things better than governments [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Government power should be restricted because things are often done better by individuals. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This contains some truth, but it is obvious that innumerable things can be done better by governments, and also (and more importantly) that innumerable other good things might be done by governments which individuals can't be bothered to do. |
| 7230 | Aim for the maximum dissemination of power consistent with efficiency [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The safest practical ideal is to aim for the greatest dissemination of power consistent with efficiency. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice principle, which I would think desirable within an institution as well as on the scale of the state. I am becoming a fan of Mill's politics. I still say that freedom is an overrated virtue, so efficiency must be underrated. |
| 20515 | Maximise happiness by an area of strict privacy, and an area of utilitarian interventions [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: For Mill the greatest happiness will be achieved by giving people a private sphere of interests where no intervention is permitted, while allowing a public sphere where intervention is possible, but only on utilitarian grounds. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Liberty' | |
| A reaction: This is probably standard liberal practice nowadays. Freely consenting adult sexual activity is agreed to be wholly private. At least some lip-service is paid to increasing happiness when government intervenes. |
| 7229 | People who transact their own business will also have the initiative to control their government [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A people accustomed to transacting their own business is certain to be free; it will never let itself be enslaved by any man or body of men because these are able to seize and pull the reins of the central administration. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes reference to Americans. This is an important idea, because it shows that democratic control is not just a matter of elections (which can be abolished or suborned), but is also a characteristic of a certain way of life. |
| 7211 | Prevention of harm to others is the only justification for exercising power over people [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others; his own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea in Mill's liberalism, though he goes on to offer some qualifications of this absolute prohibition. I don't disagree with this principle, but there may be a lot more indirect harm than we realise (eg. in allowing liberal sex or drugs). |
| 7231 | The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, opposed to any idea that we should abandon our own value to that of our state. I agree, but communitarians can subscribe to this too, while disagreeing that maximum freedom is the strategy to follow. |
| 7217 | The main argument for freedom is that interference with it is usually misguided [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The strongest of all the arguments against the interference of the public with purely personal conduct is that, when it does interfere, the odds are that it interferes wrongly, and in the wrong place. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also a well known objection to capital punishment. Generalised, well established, legal interferences are perhaps more likely to get it right than ad hoc decisions about individuals by individual officials. |
| 7213 | Liberty arises at the point where people can freely and equally discuss things [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a Victorian (and Enlightenment) optimism here which a glimpse of the freedoms of the early twenty-first century might dampen. I doubt if Mill expected British tabloid newspapers, or porn on cable TV. Education and freedom connect. |
| 20517 | Utilitarianism values liberty, but guides us on which ones we should have or not have [Mill, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Utilitarianism provides an account of what liberties we should and should not have. Mill argues we should be free to compete in trade, but not to use another's property without consent. Thus he sets limits to liberty, while paying it great respect. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' |
| 20516 | Mill defends freedom as increasing happiness, but maybe it is an intrinsic good [Wolff,J on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill has presented liberty as instrumentally valuable, as a way of achieving the greatest possible happiness in society. But perhaps he should have argued that liberty is an intrinsic good, good in itself. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 4 'Intrinsic' | |
| A reaction: If freedom is intrinsically good, does this leave us (as Wolff warned earlier) unable to defend its value? Freedom isn't an intrinsic good for infants, so why should it be so for adults? Good because it brings happiness, or fulfils our nature? |
| 7215 | True freedom is pursuing our own good, while not impeding others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This principle will probably lead up a Prisoner's Dilemma cul-de-sac. The only freedom which deserves the name is the collective agreed freedom of a whole community to live well, when citizens volunteer to restrict their individual freedoms. |
| 7218 | Individuals are not accountable for actions which only concern themselves [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My first maxim is that the individual is not accountable to society for his actions, in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of liberalism, and one which communitarians have doubts about (because it is almost impossible to perform an action which is of no interest, in the short or long term, to others). I share these doubts. |
| 7221 | Blocking entry to an unsafe bridge does not infringe liberty, since no one wants unsafe bridges [Mill] |
| Full Idea: An official could turn a person back from an unsafe bridge without infringeing their liberty; for liberty consists in doing what one desires, and he does not desire to fall into the river. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Seems fair enough, but it justifies paternalist interference. The tricky one is where the official and the citizen disagree over what the citizen 'truly' desires. Asking people may involve too much time, but it could also involve too much effort. |
| 7223 | Pimping and running a gambling-house are on the border between toleration and restraint [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A person being free to be a pimp, or to keep a gambling-house, lies on the exact boundary line between two principles, of toleration and of restraint. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Nothing illuminates a philosopher's principles more than for them to specify cases that lie on their borderlines. Both professions seem, unfortunately, to lead people into worse activities, such as violent bullying, or theft. Tricky.. |
| 7220 | Restraint for its own sake is an evil [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All restraint, qua restraint, is an evil. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The ultimate justification for this is (presumably) utilitarian, but that would mean that there was nothing wrong with restraint if the person did not mind, or was not aware of the restraint. What is intrinsically wrong with restraint? |
| 7219 | Society can punish actions which it believes to be prejudicial to others [Mill] |
| Full Idea: My second maxim is that for actions that are prejudicial to the interests of others, the individual is accountable, and subject to social or legal punishment, if society believes that this is requisite for its protection. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: (wording compressed). The trouble with this would seem to be the possible disagreement between the individual and the society over whether the actions actually are prejudicial to others. It would justify a conservative society in being repressive. |
| 7226 | Benefits performed by individuals, not by government, help also to educate them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is often desirable that beneficial things should be done by individuals, rather than by the government, as a means to their own mental education. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This raises the important danger, which even those on the political left must acknowledge, of the 'nanny state'. It offers a nicely paternalistic, and even patronising reason for giving people freedom, just as a parent might to a child. |
| 7224 | We need individual opinions and conduct, and State education is a means to prevent that [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Individuality of character, and diversity in opinions and modes of conduct, involves diversity of education; a general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being particularly true with the advent in Britain of the National Curriculum in the early 1990s. However, if there is a pressure towards conformity in state education, private education is dominated by class and money. |
| 7225 | It is a crime to create a being who lacks the ordinary chances of a desirable existence [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To bestow a life on someone which may be either a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is to be bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard utilitarian attitude to engendering people. I think I have to agree. It is no argument against this to say that we value people with poor life prospects, once they have arrived. Altruism towards children may disguise selfish parents. |
| 16922 | Space must have three dimensions, because only three lines can meet at right angles [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That complete space …has three dimensions, and that space in general cannot have more, is built on the proposition that not more than three lines can intersect at right angles in a point. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 285) | |
| A reaction: Modern geometry seems to move, via the algebra, to more than three dimensions, and then battles for an intuition of how that can be. I don't know how they would respond to Kant's challenge here. |
| 16921 | If all empirical sensation of bodies is removed, space and time are still left [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If everything empirical, namely what belongs to sensation, is taken away from the empirical intuition of bodies and their changes (motion), space and time are still left. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic [1781], 284) | |
| A reaction: This is an exercise in psychological abstraction, which doesn't sound like good evidence, though it is an interesting claim. Physicists want to hijack this debate, but I like Kant's idea. |
| 7216 | The ethics of the Gospel has been supplemented by barbarous Old Testament values [Mill] |
| Full Idea: To extract from the Gospel a body of ethical doctrine, has never been possible withouth eking it out from the Old Testament, that is, from a system elaborate indeed, but in many respects barbarous, and intended only for a barbarous people. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (On Liberty [1857], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Barbarous' has a quaint Victorian ring to it, but his point is that the surviving teachings of Jesus are very thin and generalised. Christians would do better to expand their implications, than to borrow from the Old Testament. |