21982
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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]
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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."
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From:
Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
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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.
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12708
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The soul is not a substance but a substantial form, the first active faculty [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
The soul, properly and accurately speaking, is not a substance, but a substantial form, or the primitive form existing in substances, the first act, the first active faculty.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Fardella [1690], A6.4.1670), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2
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A reaction:
In all of Leibniz's many gropings towards what is at the heart of a unified object, I pounce on the phrase "the first active faculty" as the one that suits me. I take that to be a 'power'. It has two characteristics - it is active, and it is basic.
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4988
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Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM]
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Full Idea:
It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true.
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From:
comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9
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A reaction:
If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory.
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