|
12741
|
If experience is just a dream, it is still real enough if critical reason is never deceived [Leibniz]
|
|
Full Idea:
Even if this whole life were said to be only a dream, and the visible world only a phantasm, I should call this dream or phantasm real enough if we were never deceived by it when we make good use of reason.
|
|
From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
|
|
A reaction:
I find this response more satisfactory than his response in Idea 12740. As a supporter of the coherence account of justification, I take the closest we get to knowledge to be when our full critical faculties and experience are brought to bear, and shared.
|
|
12740
|
The strongest criterion that phenomena show reality is success in prediction [Leibniz]
|
|
Full Idea:
The most powerful criterion of the reality of phenomena, sufficient even by itself, is success in predicting future phenomena from past and present ones.
|
|
From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1502), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 7
|
|
A reaction:
I would say that this is clutching at straws, as there is no reason at all to deny that dreams could be thoroughly coherent and predictable in their events. We must just live with these doubts, not try to defeat them.
|
|
12721
|
Light, heat and colour are apparent qualities, and so are motion, figure and extension [Leibniz]
|
|
Full Idea:
Concerning bodies I can demonstrate that not merely light, heat, color, and similar qualities are apparent but also motion, figure, and extension.
|
|
From:
Gottfried Leibniz (De modo distinguendi phaenomena [1685], A6.4.1504), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4
|
|
A reaction:
Leibniz is not consistent on this. Here he is flirting with idealism, but he often backs away from that. In Discourse §12 he makes secondary qualities certainly subjective, and primary qualities possibly so. He admits the primaries contain eternal truths.
|
|
24008
|
Reference to a person's emotions is often essential to understanding their actions [Williams,B]
|
|
Full Idea:
The reference to a man's emotions has a significance for our understanding of his moral sincerity, not as a substitute for or addition to how he acts, but as, on occasion, underlying our understanding of how he acts.
|
|
From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.223)
|
|
A reaction:
Williams aims to rescue emotion from the emotivists, and replace it at the centre of traditional modes of moral judgement. I suppose we could assess one rogue robot as behaving 'badly' in a community of robots.
|
|
24009
|
Moral education must involve learning about various types of feeling towards things [Williams,B]
|
|
Full Idea:
If moral education does not revolve around what to fear, to be angry about, to despise, and where to draw the line between kindness and a stupid sentimentality - I do not know what it is. (Though there are principles, of truth-telling and justice).
|
|
From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.225)
|
|
A reaction:
He cites Aristotle as the obvious source of this correct idea. The examples of principle both require us to place a high value on truth and justice, and not just follow rules in the style of arithmetic.
|
|
24012
|
Kant's love of consistency is too rigid, and it even overrides normal fairness [Williams,B]
|
|
Full Idea:
There is a certain moral woodenness or even insolence in Kant's blank regard for consistency. It smacks of Keynes's Principle of Unfairness - that if you can't do a good turn to everybody, you shouldn't do it to anybody.
|
|
From:
Bernard Williams (Morality and the emotions [1965], p.226)
|
|
A reaction:
He says it also turns each of us into a Supreme Legislator, which deifies man. It is clearly not the case that morality consists entirely of rules and principles, but Williams recognises their role, in truth-telling for example.
|
|
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.
|