Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Classical Cosmology (frags)', 'There is no a Priori' and 'On suicide'

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5 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 4. A Priori as Necessities

9354	Why should necessities only be knowable a priori? That Hesperus is Phosporus is known empirically [Devitt]
	Full Idea: Why should we accept that necessities can only be known a priori? Prima facie, some necessities are known empirically; for example, that water is necessarily H2O, and that Hesperus is necessarily Phosphorus.
	From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §2)
	A reaction: An important question, whatever your view. If the only thing we can know a priori is necessities, it doesn't follow that necessities can only be known a priori. It gets interesting if we say that some necessities can never be known a priori.

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 9. A Priori from Concepts

9353	We explain away a priori knowledge, not as directly empirical, but as indirectly holistically empirical [Devitt]
	Full Idea: We have no need to turn to an a priori explanation of our knowledge of mathematics and logic. Our intuitions that this knowledge is not justified in some direct empirical way is preserved. It is justified in an indirect holistic way.
	From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §2)
	A reaction: I think this is roughly the right story, but the only way it will work is if we have some sort of theory of abstraction, which gets us up the ladder of generalisations to the ones which, it appears, are necessarily true.

12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori

9356	The idea of the a priori is so obscure that it won't explain anything [Devitt]
	Full Idea: The whole idea of the a priori is too obscure for it to feature in a good explanation of our knowledge of anything.
	From: Michael Devitt (There is no a Priori [2005], §3)
	A reaction: I never like this style of argument. It would be nice if all the components of all our our explanations were crystal clear. Total clarity about anything is probably a hopeless dream, and we may have to settle for murky corners in all explanations.

25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 4. Suicide

4677	If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume]
	Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction.
	From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13
	A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not?

27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 1. Cosmology

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.