Combining Texts

All the ideas for '67: Platonic Questions', 'Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics' and 'De Mundo (On the World)'

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4 ideas

3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
'It is true that this follows' means simply: this follows [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: The proposition: "It is true that this follows from that" means simply: this follows from that.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [1938], p.38), quoted by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 6
     A reaction: Presumably this remark is simply expressing Wittgenstein's later agreement with the well-known view of Ramsey. Early Wittgenstein had endorsed a correspondence view of truth.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / a. Early logicism
Two and one making three has the necessity of logical inference [Wittgenstein]
     Full Idea: "But doesn't it follow with logical necessity that you get two when you add one to one, and three when you add one to two? and isn't this inexorability the same as that of logical inference? - Yes! it is the same.
     From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics [1938], p.38), quoted by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 6
     A reaction: This need not be a full commitment to logicism - only to the fact that the inferential procedures in mathematics are the same as those of logic. Mathematics could still have further non-logical ingredients. Indeed, I think it probably does.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / a. Nature of Being
Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: A being cannot naturally go out of existence. For even if a ship or a plank ceases to be a ship or a plank, it never naturally ceases to be a being. For a being, unless it is annihilated, does not cease to be a being. To annihilate is a supernatural task.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Mundo (On the World) [1642], 12.5)
     A reaction: This idea was becoming an orthodoxy in Hobbes's time, and leads to the various conservation laws in physics.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 2. Psuche
When the soul is intelligent and harmonious, it is part of god and derives from god [Plutarch]
     Full Idea: The soul, when it has partaken of intelligence and reason and concord, is not merely a work but also a part of god and has come to be not by his agency but both from him as source and out of his substance.
     From: Plutarch (67: Platonic Questions [c.85], II.1001)
     A reaction: A most intriguing shift of view from earlier concepts of the psuché. How did this come about? This man is a pagan. The history is in the evolution of Platonism. See 'The Middle Platonists' by John Dillon. Davidson is also very impressed by reason.