Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Why Reason Can't be Naturalized' and 'Phil of Mathematics: why nothing works'

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3 ideas

3. Truth / E. Pragmatic Truth / 1. Pragmatic Truth
Truth is rational acceptability [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Truth, in the only sense in which we have a vital and working notion of it, is rational acceptability.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Why Reason Can't be Naturalized [1981])
     A reaction: I smell a circularity somewhere in there, probably in 'rational', though it could be in 'acceptable'. Putnams's views on truth tend to shift a lot. He denies that evolutionary survival is a criterion.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 1. Mathematical Platonism / b. Against mathematical platonism
How can you contemplate Platonic entities without causal transactions with them? [Putnam]
     Full Idea: Platonism has the attendant problem of how we can succeed in thinking about and referring to entities we can have no causal transactions with.
     From: Hilary Putnam (Phil of Mathematics: why nothing works [1979], Modalism)
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').