8 ideas
| 18270 | Choice suggests that intensions are not needed to ensure classes [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The axiom of choice was an assumption that implicitly questioned the necessity of intensions to guarantee the presence of classes. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'Log') | |
| A reaction: The point is that Choice just picks out members for no particular reason. So classes, it seems, don't need a reason to exist. |
| 18263 | The semantic tradition aimed to explain the a priori semantically, not by Kantian intuition [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The semantic tradition's problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kantian pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base that theory on a development of semantics. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 2 Intro) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that intuition, in the modern sense, has been unnecessarily demonised. I would define it as 'rational insights which cannot be fully articulated'. Sherlock Holmes embodies it. |
| 18272 | Platonism defines the a priori in a way that makes it unknowable [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The trouble with Platonism had always been its inability to define a priori knowledge in a way that made it possible for human beings to have it. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'What') | |
| A reaction: This is the famous argument of Benacerraf 1973. |
| 18266 | Mathematics generalises by using variables [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: The instrument of generality in mathematics is the variable. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 4 'The conc') | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that there are variables in ordinary speech, pronouns being the most obvious example. 'Cats' is a variable involving quantification over a domain of lovable fluffy mammals. |
| 1757 | The Electra: she knows this man, but not that he is her brother [Eucleides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The 'Electra': Electra knows that Orestes is her brother, but not that this man is Orestes, so she knows and does not know her brother simultaneously. | |
| From: report of Eucleides (fragments/reports [c.410 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Eu.4 | |
| A reaction: Hence we distinguish 'know of', 'know that' and 'know how'. Hence Russell makes 'knowledge by acquaintance' fundamental, and descriptions come later. |
| 3028 | The chief good is unity, sometimes seen as prudence, or God, or intellect [Eucleides] |
| Full Idea: The chief good is unity, which is known by several names, for at one time people call it prudence, at another time God, at another intellect, and so on. | |
| From: Eucleides (fragments/reports [c.410 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.9.2 | |
| A reaction: So the chief good is what unites and focuses our moral actions. Kant calls that 'the will'. |
| 1743 | The greatest deterrence for injustice is if uninjured parties feel as much indignation as those who are injured [Solon, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Men can be most effectively deterred from committing injustice if those who are not injured feel as much indignation as those who are. | |
| From: report of Solon (reports [c.600 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 01.So.10 |
| 18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
| Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space. | |
| From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991]) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity. |