4 ideas
10835 | True sentences says the appropriate descriptive thing on the appropriate demonstrative occasion [Austin,JL] |
Full Idea: A sentence is said to be true when the historic state of affairs to which it is correlated by the demonstrative conventions (the one to which it 'refers') is of a type with which the sentence used in making it is correlated by the descriptive conventions. | |
From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], §3) | |
A reaction: This is correspondence by convention rather than correspondence by mapping. Personally I prefer some sort of mapping account, despite all the difficulty and vagueness of specifying what maps onto what. |
10836 | Correspondence theorists shouldn't think that a country has just one accurate map [Austin,JL] |
Full Idea: Correspondence theorists too often talk as one would who held that every map is either accurate or inaccurate; that every country can have but one accurate map. | |
From: J.L. Austin (Truth [1950], n 24) | |
A reaction: A well-made point, for those who intuitively hang on to correspondence as not only good common sense, but also some sort of salvation for a realist view of the world which might give us certainty in epistemology. |
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'). |
23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. | |
From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288) | |
A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way? |