8 ideas
9100 | Our intellect only assents to what we believe to be true [William of Ockham] |
Full Idea: Our intellect does not assent to anything unless we believe it to be true. | |
From: William of Ockham (Prologue to Ordinatio [1320], Q 1 N sqq) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being a much more accurate and commonsense view of belief than that of Hume, who simply views it phenomenologically. ...But then the remark appears to be circular. Belief requires a belief that it is true. Hm. |
9101 | Abstractive cognition knows universals abstracted from many singulars [William of Ockham] |
Full Idea: Abstractive cognition (in one sense) relates to something abstracted from many singulars; and in this sense abstractive cognition is nothing else but cognition of a universal which can be abstracted from many things. | |
From: William of Ockham (Prologue to Ordinatio [1320], Q 1 N sqq) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as being correct common sense, even though it has become deeply unfashionable since Frege. We may not be able to see quite how the mind manages to see universals in a bunch of objects, but there is no better story. |
9086 | The idea of abstract objects is not ontological; it comes from the epistemological idea of abstraction [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: The notion of an abstract object comes from the notion of abstraction; it is in origin an epistemological rather than an ontological category. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.232) | |
A reaction: Etymology doesn't prove anything. However, if you define abstract objects as not existing in space or time, you must recognise that this may only be because that is how humans imaginatively created them in the first place. |
9087 | Theists may see abstract objects as really divine thoughts [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Theists may find attractive a view popular among medieval philosophers from Augustine on: that abstract objects are really divine thoughts. More exactly, propositions are divine thoughts, properties divine concepts, and sets divine collections. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.233) | |
A reaction: Hm. I pass this on because we should be aware that there is a theological history to discussions of abstract objects, and some people have vested interests in keeping them outside of the natural world. Aren't properties natural? Does God gerrymander sets? |
9085 | If propositions are concrete they don't have to exist, and so they can't be necessary truths [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: Someone who believes propositions are concrete cannot agree that some propositions are necessary. For propositions are contingent beings, and could have failed to exist. But if they fail to exist, then they fail to be true. | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.230) | |
A reaction: [compressed] He implies the actual existence of an infinity of trivial, boring or ridiculous necessary truths. I suspect that he is just confusing a thought with its content. Or we might just treat necessary propositions as hypothetical. |
9084 | Propositions can't just be in brains, because 'there are no human beings' might be true [Plantinga] |
Full Idea: If propositions are brain inscriptions, then if there had been no human beings there would have been no propositions. But then 'there are no human beings' would have been true, so there would have been at least one truth (and thus one proposition). | |
From: Alvin Plantinga (Why Propositions cannot be concrete [1993], p.229) | |
A reaction: This would make 'there are no x's' true for any value of x apart from actual objects, which implies an infinity of propositions. Does Plantinga really believe that these all exist? He may be confusing propositions with facts. |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |