4 ideas
9218 | Maybe what distinguishes philosophy from science is its pursuit of necessary truths [Sider] |
Full Idea: According to one tradition, necessary truth demarcates philosophical from empirical inquiry. Science identifies contingent aspects of the world, whereas philosophical inquiry reveals the essential nature of its objects. | |
From: Theodore Sider (Reductive Theories of Modality [2003], 1) | |
A reaction: I don't think there is a clear demarcation, and I would think that lots of generalizations about contingent truths are in philosophical territory, but I quite like this idea - even if it does make scientists laugh at philosophers. |
20076 | An intending is a judgement that the action is desirable [Davidson] |
Full Idea: We can identify an intentional action ...with an all-out conditional judgement that the action is desirable. ...In the case of pure intending, I now suggest that the intention simply is an all-out judgement. | |
From: Donald Davidson (Intending [1978], p.99), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 8 'Davidson's' | |
A reaction: 'Pure' intending seems to be what Stout calls 'prior' intending, which is clearer. This still strikes me as obviously false. I judge that it is desirable that I make a cup of coffee, but secretly I'm hoping someone else will make it for me. |
20024 | Davidson gave up reductive accounts of intention, and said it was a primitive [Davidson, by Wilson/Schpall] |
Full Idea: Later Davidson dropped his reductive treatment of intentions (in terms of 'pro-attitudes' and other beliefs), and accepted that intentions are irreducible, and distinct from pro-attitudes. | |
From: report of Donald Davidson (Intending [1978]) by Wilson,G/Schpall,S - Action 2 | |
A reaction: Only a philosopher would say that intentions cannot be reduced to something else. Since I have a very physicalist view of the mind, I incline to reduce them to powers and dispositions of physical matter. |
5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |
Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning. | |
From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out. |