5 ideas
| 15789 | Lewis's distinction of 'existing' from 'being actual' is Meinong's between 'existing' and 'subsisting' [Lycan on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that Lewis's view in fact is just Meinong's view. ...Meinong distinguishes between 'existing' and merely 'subsisting', Lewis between 'being actual' and merely 'existing'. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Possible Worlds [1973]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 06 | |
| A reaction: Lewis attempts to make actuality purely 'indexical' in character, like distinguishing the world 'here' from the world 'elsewhere', but Lycan seems right that he is committed to more than that. |
| 21982 | I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L] |
| Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people." | |
| From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork. |
| 15790 | Lewis can't know possible worlds without first knowing what is possible or impossible [Lycan on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's knowledge of what possible worlds there are and of other general truths about worlds is posterior, not prior, to his knowledge of what things are possible and what things are impossible. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Possible Worlds [1973]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 07 | |
| A reaction: This elementary objection seems to me to destroy any attempt to explain modality in terms of possible worlds. It is a semantics for modal statements, but that doesn't make it an ontology. To assess possibilities, study actuality. |
| 15791 | What are the ontological grounds for grouping possibilia into worlds? [Lycan on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis must seek some ontological ground for the grouping of possibilia into disjoint worlds. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Possible Worlds [1973]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 07 | |
| A reaction: I do love people like Lycan who ask the simple commonsense questions about these highly sophisticated systems that students of philosophy are required to study. If a proposition is a 'set of worlds', understanding a proposition is beyond me. |
| 9807 | In pursuing truth, anything less certain than mathematics is a waste of time [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: In our search for the direct road towards truth we should busy ourselves with no object about which we cannot attain a certitude equal to that of the demonstrations of Arithmetic and Geometry. | |
| From: René Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind [1628], Rule II), quoted by Alain Badiou - Mathematics and Philosophy: grand and little p.8 | |
| A reaction: A beautiful statement of the way in which rationalist philosophy was founded on the model of mathematics (esp. Euclid), with all its concomitant problems. The most important concept of the last hundred years may well be fallibilist rationalism. |