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16415
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Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
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Full Idea:
Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
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From:
Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
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A reaction:
He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.
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22132
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Species and genera are individual concepts which naturally signify many individuals [William of Ockham]
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Full Idea:
In his mature nominalism, species and genera are identified with certain mental qualities called concepts or intentions of the mind. Ontologically they are individuals too, like everthing else, ...but they naturally signify many different individuals.
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From:
William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Claude Panaccio - William of Ockham p.1056
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A reaction:
'Naturally' is the key word, because the concepts are not fictions, but natural responses to encountering individuals in the world. I am an Ockhamist.
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19542
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It is nonsense that understanding does not involve knowledge; to understand, you must know [Dougherty/Rysiew]
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Full Idea:
The proposition that understanding does not involve knowledge is widespread (for example, in discussions of what philosophy aims at), but hardly withstands scrutiny. If you do not know how a jet engine works, you do not understand how it works.
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From:
Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.24)
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A reaction:
This seems a bit disingenuous. As in 'Theaetetus', knowing the million parts of a jet engine is not to understand it. More strongly - how could knowledge of an infinity of separate propositional truths amount to understanding on their own?
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19541
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Rather than knowledge, our epistemic aim may be mere true belief, or else understanding and wisdom [Dougherty/Rysiew]
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Full Idea:
If we say our cognitive aim is to get knowledge, the opposing views are the naturalistic view that what matters is just true belief (or just 'getting by'), or that there are rival epistemic goods such as understanding and wisdom.
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From:
Dougherty,T/Rysiew,P (Experience First (and reply) [2014], p.17)
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A reaction:
[compressed summary] I'm a fan of understanding. The accumulation of propositional knowledge would relish knowing the mass of every grain of sand on a beach. If you say the propositions should be 'important', other values are invoked.
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19381
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The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham]
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Full Idea:
Time is composed of non-entities, because it is composed of the past which does not exist now, although it did exist, and of the future, which does not yet exist; therefore time does not exist.
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From:
William of Ockham (works [1335], 6:496), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist'
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A reaction:
I've a lot of sympathy with this! I favour Presentism, so the past is gone and the future is yet to arrive. But we have no coherent concept of a present moment of any duration to contain reality. We are just completely bogglificated by it all.
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