Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'The Varieties of Necessity' and 'Super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli'

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5 ideas

10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity

9216	Each area of enquiry, and its source, has its own distinctive type of necessity [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: The three sources of necessity - the identity of things, the natural order, and the normative order - have their own peculiar forms of necessity. The three main areas of human enquiry - metaphysics, science and ethics - each has its own necessity.
	From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6)
	A reaction: I would treat necessity in ethics with caution, if it is not reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Fine's proposal is interesting, but I did not find it convincing, especially in its view that metaphysical necessity doesn't intrude into nature.

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony

9214	Unsupported testimony may still be believable [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: I may have good reason to believe some testimony, for example, even though the person providing the testimony has no good reason for saying what he does.
	From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 5)
	A reaction: Thus small children, madmen and dreamers may occasionally get things right without realising it. I take testimony to be merely one more batch of evidence which has to be assessed in building the most coherent picture possible.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

6017	Nomos is king [Pindar]
	Full Idea: Nomos is king.
	From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
	A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism

9215	Causation is easier to disrupt than logic, so metaphysics is part of nature, not vice versa [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: It would be harder to break P-and-Q implying P than the connection between cause and effect. This difference in strictness means it is more plausible that natural necessities include metaphysical necessities, than vice versa.
	From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6)
	A reaction: I cannot see any a priori grounds for the claim that causation is more easily disrupted than logic. It seems to be based on the strategy of inferring possibilities from what can be imagined, which seems to me to lead to wild misunderstandings.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / a. Immortality

1863	If the soul achieves well-being in another life, it doesn't follow that I do [Aquinas]
	Full Idea: Even if soul achieves well-being in another life, that doesn't mean I do or any other human being does.
	From: Thomas Aquinas (Super Epistolam Pauli Apostoli [1272])