23 ideas
1606 | You have to be a Platonist to debate about reality, so every philosopher is a Platonist [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Everyone who enters into a debate about reality automatically becomes a Platonist. Since such debates are the essence of philosophy, every philosopher is a Platonist. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) | |
A reaction: This is correct |
1595 | Philosophy aims to satisfy the chief human desire - the articulation of beauty itself [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.120) | |
A reaction: A million miles away from modern philosophy, but still an ideal to be taken seriously. |
1572 | In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: In the seventeenth century only a certain type of logos was deemed legitimate, namely that identified with technical knowledge (or 'techné'). | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 15) |
1603 | Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Logos is not unconditionally good, but good contingent on there being some other person (out there) who is willing to talk with logos, to approach it even as an opponent. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.175) |
1573 | The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: What is supposed to identify the person of logos from the one without is the commitment to giving reasons explaining why one opinion is superior to another. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 17) |
1593 | Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.109) |
1571 | 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Logos can mean i) a thought or reasoning, ii) the word which expresses a thought, iii) a rational structure outside human thought. These meanings give 'logos' an extraordinary range. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], Intro. 12) |
1592 | Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Logos cannot refute the radical, consistent and self-conscious relativist. Therefore it must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false, and for others to agree. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.108) |
1598 | We prefer reason or poetry according to whether basics are intelligible or not [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Is the arché (basis) intelligible, or is it chaos? Upon this question hinges all, for answering it determines whether poetry or logos is the form of human speech that best does justice to the world. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.139) |
4262 | If the only aim was consistent beliefs then new evidence and experiments would be irrelevant [Goldman] |
Full Idea: If mere consistency is our aim in achieving a coherent set of beliefs, then new evidence and experiments are irrelevant. | |
From: Alvin I. Goldman (The Internalist Conception of Justification [1980], §VIII) | |
A reaction: An important reminder. What epistemic duty requires us to attend to anomalous observations, instead of sweeping them under the carpet? |
1584 | Modern science, by aiming for clarity about the external world, has abandoned rationality in the human world [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: The modern scientific world view, with all its hope for clarity and precision, has a flipside, …which is its abandonment of rationality in the world of human significance. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.74) |
1591 | Unfortunately for reason, argument can't be used to establish the value of argument [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Unfortunately for the logos there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.106) |
1599 | Attempts to suspend all presuppositions are hopeless, because a common ground must be agreed for the process [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: To debate about suspending all our presuppositions requires a common ground which, upon being established, immediately renders the debate superfluous. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.144) |
17884 | Mathematical set theory has many plausible stopping points, such as finitism, and predicativism [Koellner] |
Full Idea: There are many coherent stopping points in the hierarchy of increasingly strong mathematical systems, starting with strict finitism, and moving up through predicativism to the higher reaches of set theory. | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], Intro) |
17893 | 'Reflection principles' say the whole truth about sets can't be captured [Koellner] |
Full Idea: Roughly speaking, 'reflection principles' assert that anything true in V [the set hierarchy] falls short of characterising V in that it is true within some earlier level. | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 2.1) |
17894 | We have no argument to show a statement is absolutely undecidable [Koellner] |
Full Idea: There is at present no solid argument to the effect that a given statement is absolutely undecidable. | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 5.3) |
17890 | There are at least eleven types of large cardinal, of increasing logical strength [Koellner] |
Full Idea: Some of the standard large cardinals (in order of increasing (logical) strength) are: inaccessible, Mahlo, weakly compact, indescribable, Erdös, measurable, strong, Wodin, supercompact, huge etc. (...and ineffable). | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.4) | |
A reaction: [I don't understand how cardinals can have 'logical strength', but I pass it on anyway] |
17887 | PA is consistent as far as we can accept, and we expand axioms to overcome limitations [Koellner] |
Full Idea: To the extent that we are justified in accepting Peano Arithmetic we are justified in accepting its consistency, and so we know how to expand the axiom system so as to overcome the limitation [of Gödel's Second Theorem]. | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Each expansion brings a limitation, but then you can expand again. |
17891 | Arithmetical undecidability is always settled at the next stage up [Koellner] |
Full Idea: The arithmetical instances of undecidability that arise at one stage of the hierarchy are settled at the next. | |
From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.4) |
1605 | Reality can be viewed neutrally, or as an object of desire [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: There are two extremes: the Aristotelian views reality simply as reality, and the sophist or poet views reality only as an object of desire. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.199) | |
A reaction: Not sure about the second one. Does this express an actual desire, or just a hope? Could there be a mind for which its reality was only an aspiration? |
1577 | Relativism is a disease which destroys the possibility of rational debate [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Relativism is disease, is pollution, for it negates the efficacy of logos. It destroys the possibility of a complete rational debate of fundamental questions. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.41) |
1596 | Reasoning aims not at the understanding of objects, but at the desire to give beautiful speeches [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: Logos originates not in a cognitive capacity for the apprehension of objects, but in the desire to give birth to beautiful speeches. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.124) | |
A reaction: It is hard for us to grasp this, but it might be quite life-enhancing if we could return to that old way of thought. |
1578 | If relativism is the correct account of human values, then rhetoric is more important than reasoning [Roochnik] |
Full Idea: If relativism offers an accurate description of human values, then rhetoric replaces logos as the most fundamental human activity. | |
From: David Roochnik (The Tragedy of Reason [1990], p.47) | |
A reaction: Or putting it another way, logos (reason) becomes meaningless. I suppose, though, that a relativist can conduct conditional reasoning (but must belief in some rules of reason). |