Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'There is No A Priori (and reply)' and '68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus''

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4 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities

19565	How could the mind have a link to the necessary character of reality? [Devitt]
	Full Idea: What non-experiential link to reality could support insights into its necessary character?
	From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 4)
	A reaction: The key to it, I think, is your theory of mind. If you are a substance dualist, then connecting to such deep things looks fine, but if you are a reductive physicalist then it looks absurdly hopeful.

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori

19564	Some knowledge must be empirical; naturalism implies that all knowledge is like that [Devitt]
	Full Idea: It is overwhelmingly plausible that some knowledge is empirical. The attractive thesis of naturalism is that all knowledge is; there is only one way of knowing.
	From: Michael Devitt (There is No A Priori (and reply) [2005], 1)
	A reaction: How many ways for us to know seems to depend on what faculties we have. We lump our senses together under a single heading. The arrival of data is not the same as the arrival of knowledge. I'm unconvinced that naturalists like me must accept this.

18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 3. Emotions / f. Emotion and reason

5963	Some say emotion is a sort of reason, and others say virtue concerns emotion [Plutarch]
	Full Idea: Some philosophers make the emotions varieties of reason, on the ground that all desire and grief and anger are judgments, while others declare that the virtues have to do with emotions, as when fear is the province of courage.
	From: Plutarch (68: Generation of the soul in 'Timaeus' [c.85], 1025d)
	A reaction: The second idea comes from Aristotle, but the second is interesting, and corresponds to the views coming from modern neuroscience, where even the most basic thought seems to involve emotion. What could be the motivation for 'pure' reason?

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

7903	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').