Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn)', 'Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics' and 'Conceptions of Truth'

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6 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / b. Seventeenth century philosophy
Most philosophers start with reality and then examine knowledge; Descartes put the study of knowledge first [Lehrer]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers (e.g Plato) begin with an account of reality, and then appended an account of how we can know it, ..but Descartes turned the tables, insisting that we must first decide what we can know.
     From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.2)
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 4. Conceptual Analysis
You cannot demand an analysis of a concept without knowing the purpose of the analysis [Lehrer]
     Full Idea: An analysis is always relative to some objective. It makes no sense to simply demand an analysis of goodness, knowledge, beauty or truth, without some indication of the purpose of the analysis.
     From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.7)
     A reaction: Your dismantling of a car will go better if you know what a car is for, but you can still take it apart in ignorance.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 12. Paraphrase
The idea of 'making' can be mere conceptual explanation (like 'because') [Künne]
     Full Idea: If we say 'being a child of our parent's sibling makes him your first cousin', that can be paraphrased using 'because', and this is the 'because' of conceptual explanation: the second part elucidates the sense of the first part.
     From: Wolfgang Künne (Conceptions of Truth [2003], 3.5.2)
     A reaction: Fans of truth-making are certainly made uncomfortable by talk of 'what makes this a good painting' or 'this made my day'. They need a bit more sharpness to the concept of 'making' a truth.
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 2. Electrodynamics / b. Fields
Fields can be 'scalar', or 'vector', or 'tensor', or 'spinor' [Baggott]
     Full Idea: Fields can be 'scalar', with no particular direction (pointing, but not pushing or pulling); or 'vector', with a direction (like magnetism, or Newtonian gravity); or 'tensor' (needing further parameters); or 'spinor' (depending on spin orientation).
     From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 2 'Quantum')
     A reaction: [compressed] So the question is, why do they differ? What is it in the nature of each field the result in a distinctive directional feature?
A 'field' is a property with a magnitude, distributed across all of space and time [Baggott]
     Full Idea: A 'field' is defined in terms of the magnitude of some physical property distributed over every point in time and space.
     From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 2 'Quantum')
     A reaction: If it involves a 'property', normal usage entails that there is some entity which possesses the property. So what's the entity? Eh? Eh? You don't know! Disappointed...
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 4. Standard Model / b. Standard model
The current standard model requires 61 particles [Baggott]
     Full Idea: The current model requires 61 particles: three generations of two leptons and two flavours of quark, in three different colours (making 24); the anti-particles of all of these (48); 12 force particles (photon, W1, Z0, 8 gluons), and a Higgs boson.
     From: Jim Baggott (Farewell to Reality: fairytale physics [2013], 6 n)