4 ideas
| 22101 | Philosophy aims to know the truth about the way things are [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: The study of philosophy has as its purpose to know not what people have thought, but rather the truth about the way things are. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Sententia on 'De Caelo' [1268], I.22.228), quoted by Kretzmann/Stump - Aquinas, Thomas 05 | |
| A reaction: I agree with this deeply unfashionable opinion. Of course, modern investigations must be more sensitive to biases built into language, culture and conceptual schemes. But I am one of those sad old folks who still think truths can be stated. |
| 16285 | A possible world can be seen as a complete and consistent novel [Jeffrey] |
| Full Idea: A novel describes a possible world in as much detail as is possible without exceeding the resources of the agent's language. But if talk of possible worlds seems dangerously metaphysical, focus on the novels themselves, when complete and consistent. | |
| From: Richard Jeffrey (The Logic of Decision [1965], 12.8), quoted by David Lewis - On the Plurality of Worlds | |
| A reaction: Lewis seems to cite this remark from Jeffrey as the source of the idea that ersatz linguistic worlds are like novels. Why won't a novel with one tiny inconsistency count as a possible world? People seem to live in it. |
| 3214 | The models we use in reasoning may be more like perceptions than like language [Johnson-Laird] |
| Full Idea: The models that people use to reason are more likely to resemble perception or conception of the events (from a God's-eye view) than a string of symbols directly corresponding to the linguistic form of the premises and then applying rules of inference. | |
| From: P. Johnson-Laird (Mental Models [1983], p.53), quoted by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 10.1.2 | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that imagination is the single most important faculty in any conscious mind, and that even small animals have an inkling of the God's-eye view. Decisions need 'what-if' scenarios. |
| 19155 | Instead of gambling, Jeffrey made the objects of Bayesian preference to be propositions [Jeffrey, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Jeffrey produced a version of Bayesianism that made no direct use of gambling (as Ramsey had), but treats the objects of preference ...as propositions. | |
| From: report of Richard Jeffrey (The Logic of Decision [1965]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 3 | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that Jeffreys launched modern Bayesian theory with this idea. It suggest that one can consider degrees of truth, rather than mere winning or losing. |