3 ideas
| 22818 | Liberals are not too individualistic, because people recognise and value social relations [Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: It is alleged that liberals fail to recognise that people are naturally social or communal. …But liberals believe that people form and join social relations in which they come to understand and pursue the good. | |
| From: Will Kymlicka (Liberal Individualism and Liberal Neutrality [1989], Conc) | |
| A reaction: This is particulary aimed at communitarians, who see liberalism as based on a distorted concept of people as isolated beings. Personally I am beginning to shift my views from Aristotelian communitarianism to modern liberalism, so I like this idea. |
| 20365 | We only see points in motion, and thereby infer movement [Rescher] |
| Full Idea: We perceive motion only as isolated points, and then infer it without actually seeing it. | |
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Scepticism [1980], §112) | |
| A reaction: Note how writing suddenly becomes readable as you slow down on entering a railway station. Is that points suddenly becoming unified? This is an empiricist endorsement of Russell's 'at-at' account of motion. |
| 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. |