3 ideas
| 19440 | How do you know you have conceived a thing deeply enough to assess its possibility? [Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: The main issue with learning possibility from conceivability concerns how we can be confident that we have conceived things to the relevant level of depth required for the scenario to actually be a presentation or manifestation of a genuine possibility. | |
| From: Anand Vaidya (The Epistemology of Modality [2015], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Van Inwagen 1998 for this idea] The point is that ignorant imagination can conceive of all sorts of absurd things which are seen to be impossible when enough information is available. We can hardly demand a criterion for this. |
| 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'). |
| 22236 | The big question of the Renaissance was how to govern everything, from the state to children [Foucault] |
| Full Idea: How to govern was one of the fundamental question of the fifteenth and sixteenth century. ...How to govern children, the poor and beggars, how to govern the family, a house, how to govern armies, different groups, cities, states, and govern one's self. | |
| From: Michel Foucault (What is Critique? [1982], p.28), quoted by Johanna Oksala - How to Read Foucault 9 | |
| A reaction: A nice example of Foucault showing how things we take for granted (techniques of control) have been slowly learned, and then taught as standard. Of course, the Romans knew how to govern an army. |