7 ideas
| 14767 | The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The demonstrations of the metaphysicians are all moonshine. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 14764 | I am saturated with the spirit of physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: I am saturated, through and through, with the spirit of the physical sciences. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.1) |
| 14768 | Infallibility in science is just a joke [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Infallibility in scientific matters seems to me irresistibly comical. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.3) |
| 14765 | Association of ideas is the best philosophical idea of the prescientific age [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of the association of ideas is, to my thinking, the finest piece of philosophical work of the prescientific ages. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 14766 | Duns Scotus offers perhaps the best logic and metaphysics for modern physical science [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The works of Duns Scotus have strongly influenced me. …His logic and metaphysics, torn away from its medievalism, …will go far toward supplying the philosophy which is best to harmonize with physical science. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Concerning the Author [1897], p.2) |
| 4871 | A thing is free if it acts only by the necessity of its own nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that a thing is free, which exists and acts solely by the necessity of its own nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letter to G.H. Schaller [1674], 1674.10) | |
| A reaction: Of course, this isn't 'freedom' at all, but it seems to exactly right as an account of so-called freedom. In the case of a human being the 'necessity of our own nature' is character, and virtue and vice are the expressions of the necessities of character. |
| 18033 | The meaning of a representation is its role in thought, perception or decisions [Block] |
| Full Idea: According to conceptual role semantics, the meaning of a representation is the role of that representation in the cognitive life of the agent, for example, in perception, thought and decision-making. | |
| From: Ned Block (Semantics, Conceptual Role [1998]) | |
| A reaction: I never believe theories of this kind, because I always find myself asking 'what is the nature of this representation which enables it to play this role?'. |