3 ideas
| 14289 | There are some assertable conditionals one would reject if one learned the antecedent [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson came to realise that there are assertable conditionals which one would not continue to believe if one learned the antecedent, such as Lewis's "If Reagan worked for the KGB, I'll never find out". | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals [1987]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.2 | |
| A reaction: That pesky David Lewis made trouble for everybody. Edgington agrees that his earlier formulation (Idea 14288) holds good for nearly all cases. There is a self-referential element in Lewis's example. |
| 7295 | Maybe induction is only reliable IF reality is stable [Mitchell,A] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we should say that IF regularities are stable, only then is induction a reliable procedure. | |
| From: Alistair Mitchell (talk [2006]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very good proposal. In a wildly unpredictable reality, it is hard to see how anyone could learn from experience, or do any reasoning about the future. Natural stability is the axiom on which induction is built. |
| 7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
| From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |