Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Good and Evil', 'Giordano Bruno and Hermetic Tradition' and 'Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

5 ideas

1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 4. Early European Thought
9291 The dating, in 1614, of the Hermetic writings as post-Christian is the end of the Renaissance [Yates]
     Full Idea: The dating by Isaac Casaubon in 1614 of the Hermetic writings as not the work of a very ancient Egyptian priest but written in post-Christian times, is a watershed separating the Renaissance world from the modern world.
     From: Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and Hermetic Tradition [1964], Ch.21)
     A reaction: I tend to place the end of the Renaissance with the arrival of the telescope in 1610, so the two dates coincide. Simply, magic was replaced by science. Religion ran alongside, gasping for breath. Mathematics was freed from numerology.
9288 The magic of Asclepius enters Renaissance thought mixed into Ficino's neo-platonism [Yates]
     Full Idea: The magic of Asclepius, reinterpreted through Plotinus, enters with Ficino's De Vita into the neo-platonic philosophy of the Renaissance, and, moreover, into Ficino's Christian Platonism.
     From: Frances A. Yates (Giordano Bruno and Hermetic Tradition [1964], Ch.4)
     A reaction: Asclepius is the source of 'Hermetic' philosophy. This move seems to be what gives the Renaissance period its rather quirky and distinctive character. Montaigne was not a typical figure. Most of them wanted to become gods and control the stars!
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
13965 Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames]
     Full Idea: There are two senses of 'semantic' - as theory of meaning or as truth-based theory of logical consequence, and they are very different.
     From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.78)
     A reaction: This subtle point is significant in considering the role of logic in philosophy. The logicians' semantics (based on logical consequence) is in danger of ousting the broader and more elusive notion of meaning in natural language.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 6. Truth-Conditions Semantics
13964 Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames]
     Full Idea: The semantic content of a sentence is not the set of circumstances supporting its truth. It is rather the semantic content of a structured proposition the constituents of which are the semantic contents of the constituents of the sentence.
     From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.74)
     A reaction: I'm not sure I get this, but while I like the truth-conditions view, I am suspicious of any proposal that the semantic content of something is some actual physical ingredients of the world. Meanings aren't sticks and stones.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good
22489 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot]
     Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'.
     From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro
     A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it.