4 ideas
| 15382 | Paraconsistent reasoning can just mean responding sensibly to inconsistencies [Jago] |
| Full Idea: A practical application of paraconsistent reasoning is in large databases. It does not mean that contradictions could be true, but only that we sometimes need to draw sensible conclusions from inconsistent data. 'Dialethists' believe some contradictions. | |
| From: Mark Jago (Paraconsistent Logic [2010]) | |
| A reaction: Interesting as a more cautious and sensible attitude to the scandal of paraconsistency. |
| 12723 | The most primitive thing in substances is force, which leads to their actions and dispositions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Since everything that one conceives in substances reduces to their actions and passions and to the dispositions that they have for this effect, I don't see how one can find there anything more primitive than the principle of all of this, which is force. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Jacques Lenfant [1693], 1693.11.25), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 4 | |
| A reaction: This is an attempt to connect Aristotelian essentialism with the notion of force in the new physics, and strikes me as an improvement on the original, and as good a basis for metaphysics as any I have heard of. |
| 9111 | God is not wise, but more-than-wise; God is not good, but more-than-good [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: God is not wise, but more-than-wise; God is not good, but more-than-good. | |
| From: William of Ockham (Reportatio [1330], III Q viii) | |
| A reaction: [He is quoting 'Damascene'] I quote this for interest, but I very much doubt whether Damascene or William knew what it meant, and I certainly don't. There seems to have been a politically correct desire to invent super-powers for God. |
| 9112 | We could never form a concept of God's wisdom if we couldn't abstract it from creatures [William of Ockham] |
| Full Idea: What we abstract is said to belong to perfection in so far as it can be predicated of God and can stand for Him. For if such a concept could not be abstracted from a creature, then in this life we could not arrive at a cognition of God's wisdom. | |
| From: William of Ockham (Reportatio [1330], III Q viii) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of an important argument. Without the ability to abstract from what is experienced, we would not be able to apply general concepts to things which are beyond experience. It is a key idea for empiricism. |