5 ideas
| 15045 | The big issue since the eighteenth century has been: what is Reason? Its effect, limits and dangers? [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: I think the central issue of philosophy and critical thought since the eighteenth century has always been, still is, and will, I hope, remain the question: What is this Reason that we use? What are its historical effects? What are its limits and dangers? | |
| From: Michel Foucault (Space, Knowledge and Power (interview) [1982], p.358) | |
| A reaction: One can hardly deny the fairness of the question, but I hope that won't prevent us from trying to be rational. Maybe logicians do a better job of clarifying reason than the political and historical speculations of Foucault? |
| 10801 | Either reference really matters, or we don't need to replace it with substitutions [Quine] |
| Full Idea: When we reconstrue quantification in terms of substituted expressions rather than real values, we waive reference. ...but if reference matters, we cannot afford to waive it as a category; and if it does not, we do not need to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Reply to Professor Marcus [1962], p.183) | |
| A reaction: An odd dilemma to pose. Presumably the substitution account is an attempt to explain how language actually works, without mentioning dubious direct ontological commitment in the quantifiers. |
| 4304 | Descartes says there are two substance, Spinoza one, and Leibniz infinitely many [Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Descartes was a dualist about substance, Spinoza was a monist, and Leibniz was a pluralist (an infinity of substances). | |
| From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.76) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza is appealing. We posit a substance, as the necessary basis for existence, but it is unclear how more than one substance can be differentiated. If mind is a separate substance, why isn't iron? Why aren't numbers? |
| 4303 | The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics [Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics. | |
| From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.75) | |
| A reaction: The idea of 'substance' has had an interesting revival in modern philosophy (though not, obviously, in physics). Maybe physics and philosophy have views of reality which are not complementary, but are rivals. |
| 4306 | For rationalists, it is necessary that effects be deducible from their causes [Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The rationalist view of causation takes it that to make effects intelligible, it must be shown that they are in principle deducible from their causes. | |
| From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.92) | |
| A reaction: This has intuitive appeal, but deduction is only possible with further premises, such as the laws of physics. The effects of human behaviour look a bit tricky, even if we cause them. |