7 ideas
| 16901 | The equivalent algebra model of geometry loses some essential spatial meaning [Burge] |
| Full Idea: Geometrical concepts appear to depend in some way on a spatial ability. Although one can translate geometrical propositions into algebraic ones and produce equivalent models, the meaning of the propositions seems to me to be thereby lost. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a widely held view nowadays. Giaquinto has a book on it. A successful model of something can't replace it. Set theory can't replace arithmetic. |
| 16902 | Peano arithmetic requires grasping 0 as a primitive number [Burge] |
| Full Idea: In the Peano axiomatisation, arithmetic seems primitively to involve the thought that 0 is a number. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 5) | |
| A reaction: Burge is pointing this out as a problem for Frege, for whom only the logic is primitive. |
| 16892 | Is apriority predicated mainly of truths and proofs, or of human cognition? [Burge] |
| Full Idea: Whereas Leibniz and Frege predicate apriority primarily of truths (or more fundamentally, proofs of truths), Kant predicates apriority primarily of cognition and the employment of representations. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 1) |
| 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'). |
| 17371 | Some kinds are very explanatory, but others less so, and some not at all [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory significance, hence naturalness, comes in degrees: positing some kinds may be very explanatory, positing others, only a little bit explanatory, positing others still, not explanatory at all. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: He mentions 'cousin' as a natural kind that is not very explanatory of anything. It interests us as humans, but not at all in other animals, it seems. ...Nice thought, though, that two squirrels might be cousins... |
| 17372 | The higher categories are not natural kinds, so the Linnaean hierarchy should be given up [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: The signs are that the higher categories are not natural kinds and so the Linnaean hierarchy must be abandoned. ...This is not abandoning a hierarchy altogether, it is not abandoning a tree of life. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Devitt's underlying point is that the higher and more general kinds do not have an essence (a specific nature), which is the qualification to be a natural kind. They explain nothing. Essence is the hallmark of natural kinds. Hmmm. |
| 17373 | Species pluralism says there are several good accounts of what a species is [Devitt] |
| Full Idea: Species pluralism is the view that there are several equally good accounts of what it is to be a species. | |
| From: Michael Devitt (Natural Kinds and Biological Realism [2009], 7) | |
| A reaction: Devitt votes for it, and cites Dupré, among many other. Given the existence of rival accounts, all making good points, it is hard to resist this view. |