Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Five Milestones of Empiricism' and 'The Ultimate Constituents of Matter'

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15 ideas

2. Reason / D. Definition / 7. Contextual Definition
19048 Contextual definition shifted the emphasis from words to whole sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Contextual definition precipitated a revolution in semantics. The primary vehicle of meaning is seen no longer as the word, but as the sentence.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.69)
     A reaction: I think the idea is that the term is now supported entirely by its surrounding language, and not by its denotation of something in the world.
19047 Bentham's contextual definitions preserved terms after their denotation became doubtful [Quine]
     Full Idea: If Bentham found some term convenient but ontologically embarrassing, contextual definition enabled him in some cases to continue to enjoy the services of the term while disclaiming its denotation.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.68)
     A reaction: In Quine's terms this would be to withdraw the term from the periphery of the theory, where it has to meet the world, and make it part of the inner connections of the theory. He suggests that Bentham invented this technique.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 8. Critique of Set Theory
7548 Classes, grouped by a convenient property, are logical constructions [Russell]
     Full Idea: Classes or series of particulars, collected together on account of some property which makes it convenient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125)
     A reaction: When does a construction become 'logical' instead of arbitrary? What is it about a property that makes it 'convenient'? At this point Russell seems to have built his ontology on classes, and the edifice was crumbling, thanks to Wittgenstein.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
7545 Visible things are physical and external, but only exist when viewed [Russell]
     Full Idea: I believe that common sense is right in regarding what we see as physical and (in one of several possible senses) outside the mind, but is probably wrong in supposing that it continues to exist when we are no longer looking at it.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.123)
     A reaction: This remark (in 1915) is a bit startling from a philosopher well known for his robustly realist stance. Just one of his phases! It seems very counterintuitive - that objects really exist externally, but only when viewed. Schrödinger's Cat?
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / b. Nature of sense-data
7553 Sense-data are purely physical [Russell]
     Full Idea: Sense-data are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.138)
     A reaction: Once this account of sense-data becomes fully clear, it also becomes apparent what a dualist theory it is. The mind is a cinema, I am the audience, and sense-data are the screen. There has to be a big logical gap between viewer and screen.
7549 If my body literally lost its mind, the object seen when I see a flash would still exist [Russell]
     Full Idea: My meaning may be made plainer by saying that if my body could remain in exactly the same state in which it is, though my mind had ceased to exist, precisely that object which I now see when I see a flash would exist, though I should not see it.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.126)
     A reaction: Zombies, 70 years before Robert Kirk! Sense-data are physical. It is interesting to see a philosopher as committed to empiricism, anti-spiritualism and the priority of science as this, still presenting an essentially dualist picture of perception.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
19049 In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine]
     Full Idea: We have come to recognise that in a scientific theory even a whole sentence is ordinarily too short a text to serve as an independent vehicle of empirical meaning.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.70)
19046 Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine]
     Full Idea: Since 1750 empiricism shows five turns for the better. First was a shift from ideas to words. Second a shift from terms to sentences. Third the shift to systems of sentences. Fourth the abandonment of analytic-synthetic dualism. Fifth was naturalism.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.67)
     A reaction: [compressed] Quine must be largely credited with the last two. The first four are almost entirely linguistic in character, which is characteristic of mid-twentieth-century empiricism. I would offer the recognition of explanation as central for the sixth.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
7546 A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell]
     Full Idea: The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124)
     A reaction: This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 2. Reduction of Mind
7550 We could probably, in principle, infer minds from brains, and brains from minds [Russell]
     Full Idea: It seems not improbable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.131)
     A reaction: This strikes me as being a very good summary of the claim that mind is reducible to brain, which is the essence of physicalism. Had he been born a little later, Russell would have taken a harder line with physicalism.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
19050 Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Holism blurs the supposed contrast beween the synthetic sentence, with its empirical content, and the analytic sentence, with its null content.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.71)
     A reaction: This spells out nicely that Quine's rejection of the distinction is completely tied to his holistic view of language. The obvious phenomenon of compositionality (building sentence meaning in steps) counts against holism.
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').
27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 4. Standard Model / a. Concept of matter
7551 Matter is a logical construction [Russell]
     Full Idea: We must regard matter as a logical construction.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.132)
     A reaction: A logical construction is a fancy way of saying a best explanation (but with Ockham's Razor hanging over it). A key component missing from Russell's account is that we can directly experience matter, because we are made of it.
7547 Matter requires a division into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles [Russell]
     Full Idea: A true theory of matter requires a division of things into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125)
     A reaction: The division of matter in space seems decidable by physicists, but the division in time seems a bit arbitrary (unless it is quanta of time?). Russell focuses on observable qualities, but are there also intrinsic qualities?
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
7552 Six dimensions are needed for a particular, three within its own space, and three to locate that space [Russell]
     Full Idea: The world of particulars is a six-dimensional space, where six co-ordinates will be required to assign the position of any particular, three to assign its position in its own space, and three to assign the position of its space among the other spaces.
     From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.134)
     A reaction: Not a proposal that has caught on. One might connect the idea with the notion of 'frames of reference' in Einstein's Special Theory. Inside a frame of reference, three co-ordinates are needed; but where is the frame of reference?