4 ideas
| 16861 | A false theory could hardly rival the explanatory power of natural selection [Darwin] |
| Full Idea: It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. | |
| From: Charles Darwin (The Origin of the Species [1859], p.476), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: More needs to be said, since the whims of God could explain absolutely everything (in a manner that would be somehow less that fully satisfying to the enquiring intellect). |
| 2605 | If everything uses mentalese, ALL concepts must be innate! [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Fodor concludes that every predicate that a brain could learn to use must have a translation into the computer language of that brain. So no "new" concepts can be acquired: all concepts are innate! | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (What is innate and why [1980], p.407) | |
| A reaction: Some misunderstanding, surely? No one could be so daft as to think that everyone has an innate idea of an iPod. More basic innate building blocks for thought are quite plausible. |
| 2606 | No machine language can express generalisations [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Computers have a built-in language, but not a language that contains quantifiers (that is, the words "all" and "some"). …So generalizations (containing "all") cannot ever be stated in machine language. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (What is innate and why [1980], p.408) | |
| A reaction: Computers are too sophisticated to need quantification (which is crude). Computers can work with very precise and complex specifications of the domain of a given variable. |
| 5845 | Niceratus learnt the whole of Homer by heart, as a guide to goodness [Xenophon] |
| Full Idea: Niceratus said that his father, because he was concerned to make him a good man, made him learn the whole works of Homer, and he could still repeat by heart the entire 'Iliad' and 'Odyssey'. | |
| From: Xenophon (Symposium [c.391 BCE], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: This clearly shows the status which Homer had in the teaching of morality in the time of Socrates, and it is precisely this acceptance of authority which he was challenging, in his attempts to analyse the true basis of virtue |