7 ideas
| 16567 | Scientists know everything about nothing, philosophers nothing about everything [Sagan,D] |
| Full Idea: The scientist learns more and more about less and less, until she knows everything about nothing, whereas a philosopher learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. | |
| From: Dorion Sagan (Cosmic Apprentice [2013]) | |
| A reaction: [Came via Twitter] Not sure if this is true, but it is too nice to miss. |
| 14779 | I reason in order to avoid disappointment and surprise [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I do not reason for the sake of my delight in reasoning, but solely to avoid disappointment and surprise. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: Hence Peirce places more emphasis on inductive and abductive reasoning than on deductive reasoning. I have to agree with him. Anyone account of why we reason must have an evolutionary framework. What advantage does reason bestow? It concerns the future. |
| 14777 | That a judgement is true and that we judge it true are quite different things [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Either J and the judgment 'I say that J is true' are the same for all judgments or for none. But if identical, their denials are identical. These are 'J is not true' and 'I do not say that J is true', which are different. No judgment judges itself true. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: If you are going to espouse the Ramseyan redundancy view of truth, you had better make sure you are not guilty of the error which Peirce identifies here. |
| 14780 | Only study logic if you think your own reasoning is deficient [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is foolish to study logic unless one is persuaded that one's own reasonings are more or less bad. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], II) |
| 14778 | Facts are hard unmoved things, unaffected by what people may think of them [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Facts are hard things which do not consist in my thinking so and so, but stand unmoved by whatever you or I or any man or generations of men may opine about them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Criterion of Validity in Reasoning [1903], I) | |
| A reaction: This is my view of facts, with which I am perfectly happy, for all the difficulties involved in individuating facts, and in disentangling them from our own modes of thought and expression. Let us try to establish the facts. |
| 14082 | No sortal could ever exactly pin down which set of particles count as this 'cup' [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Many decent candidates could the referent of this 'cup', differing over whether outlying particles are parts. No further sortal I could invoke will be selective enough to rule out all but one referent for it. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1 n8) | |
| A reaction: I never had much faith in sortals for establishing individual identity, so this point comes as no surprise. The implication is strongly realist - that the cup has an identity which is permanently beyond our capacity to specify it. |
| 14081 | Identities can be true despite indeterminate reference, if true under all interpretations [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: There can be determinately true identity claims despite indeterminate reference of the terms flanking the identity sign; these will be identity claims true under all admissible interpretations of the flanking terms. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: In informal contexts there might be problems with the notion of what is 'admissible'. Is 'my least favourite physical object' admissible? |