Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Good and Evil', 'Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks' and 'Frege on Apriority (with ps)'

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5 ideas

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry

16901	The equivalent algebra model of geometry loses some essential spatial meaning [Burge]
	Full Idea: Geometrical concepts appear to depend in some way on a spatial ability. Although one can translate geometrical propositions into algebraic ones and produce equivalent models, the meaning of the propositions seems to me to be thereby lost.
	From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 4)
	A reaction: I think this is a widely held view nowadays. Giaquinto has a book on it. A successful model of something can't replace it. Set theory can't replace arithmetic.

6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 4. Axioms for Number / d. Peano arithmetic

16902	Peano arithmetic requires grasping 0 as a primitive number [Burge]
	Full Idea: In the Peano axiomatisation, arithmetic seems primitively to involve the thought that 0 is a number.
	From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 5)
	A reaction: Burge is pointing this out as a problem for Frege, for whom only the logic is primitive.

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 1. Nature of the A Priori

16892	Is apriority predicated mainly of truths and proofs, or of human cognition? [Burge]
	Full Idea: Whereas Leibniz and Frege predicate apriority primarily of truths (or more fundamentally, proofs of truths), Kant predicates apriority primarily of cognition and the employment of representations.
	From: Tyler Burge (Frege on Apriority (with ps) [2000], 1)

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.

23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 5. Existence-Essence

20130	It is absurd to think you can change your own essence, like a garment [Nietzsche]
	Full Idea: Man is necessity down to his last fibre, and totally 'unfree', that is if one means by freedom the foolish demand to be able to change one's 'essentia' arbitrarily, like a garment.
	From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks [1873], p.7), quoted by Brian Leiter - Nietzsche On Morality 2 'Realism'
	A reaction: This is the big difference between the existentialism of Nietzsche and the more famous Sartrean approach, where the idea of being able to remake your essence is the most exciting and glamorous proposal. I'm with Nietzsche.