5 ideas
14794 | Instead of seeking Truth, we should seek belief that is beyond doubt [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Your problems would be greatly simplified, if, instead of saying that you want to know the Truth, you were simply to say that you want to attain a state of belief unassailable beyond doubt. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) | |
A reaction: This is not the same as saying that belief beyond doubt IS truth. He is merely offering a strategy for scientists to side-step the sort of scepticism raised by Descartes and radical empiricists. |
3447 | All theory is against free will, and all experience is in favour of it [Johnson,S] |
Full Idea: All theory is against free will, and all experience is in favour of it. | |
From: Samuel Johnson (works [1770]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) |
14792 | A 'conception', the rational implication of a word, lies in its bearing upon the conduct of life [Peirce] |
Full Idea: The present writer framed the theory that a 'conception', that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) |
14793 | The definition of a concept is just its experimental implications [Peirce] |
Full Idea: If one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Essentials of Pragmatism [1905], I) | |
A reaction: Strictly, I would have thought you could only affirm or deny a complete proposition, rather than a concept. What should I do with the concept of a 'unicorn'? Note that all theories, such as empiricism or pragmatism, begin with an account of our concepts. |
20761 | If existence is absurd it can never have a meaning [Beauvoir] |
Full Idea: To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed. | |
From: Simone de Beauvoir (Ethics of Ambiguity [1948], p.129), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Bad' | |
A reaction: Absurdity precludes meaning, but being meaningless doesn't entail absurdity. Asteroids are meaningless. Presumably if existence is meaningless now (as in a depression), but it might possibly become meaningful, then it can't qualify as 'absurd'. |