6 ideas
7081 | Philosophy is not separate from or above empirical science [Neurath] |
Full Idea: There is no such thing as philosophy as a basic or universal science alongside or above the various fields of the one empirical science. | |
From: Otto Neurath (works [1930]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.6 | |
A reaction: This is what you get for becoming an empiricist. If philosophy is the quest for human wisdom, it seems to me highly unlikely that physical sciences will provide it. Human interests and values and understanding play absolutely no role in physics. |
19044 | Saying truths fit experience adds nothing to truth; nothing makes sentences true [Davidson] |
Full Idea: The notion of fitting the totality of experience ...adds nothing intelligible to the simple concept of being true. ....Nothing, ...no thing, makes sentences and theories true: not experience, not surface irritations, not the world. | |
From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.11), quoted by Willard Quine - On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma p.39 | |
A reaction: If you don't have a concept of what normally makes a sentence true, I don't see how you go about distinguishing what is true from what is false. You can't just examine the sentence to see if it has the 'primitive' property of truth. Holism is involved.... |
6400 | Without the dualism of scheme and content, not much is left of empiricism [Davidson] |
Full Idea: The third dogma of empiricism is the dualism of scheme and content, of organizing system and something waiting to be organized, which cannot be made intelligible and defensible. If we give it up, it is not clear that any distinctive empiricism remains. | |
From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.189) | |
A reaction: The first two dogmas were 'analyticity' and 'reductionism', as identified by Quine in 1953. Presumably Hume's Principles of Association (Idea 2189) would be an example of a scheme. A key issue is whether there is any 'pure' content. |
6398 | Different points of view make sense, but they must be plotted on a common background [Davidson] |
Full Idea: Different points of view make sense, but only if there is a common co-ordinate system on which to plot them. | |
From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184) | |
A reaction: This seems right to me. I am very struck by the close similarities between people from wildly differing cultural backgrounds, as seen, for example, at the Olympic Games. |
6399 | Criteria of translation give us the identity of conceptual schemes [Davidson] |
Full Idea: Studying the criteria of translation is a way of focusing on criteria of identity for conceptual schemes. | |
From: Donald Davidson (The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme [1974], p.184) | |
A reaction: This is why it was an inspired idea of Quine's to make translation a central topic in philosophy. We must be cautious, though, about saying that the language is the conceptual scheme, as that leaves animals with no scheme at all. |
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'. |