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20110
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Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski]
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Full Idea:
The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit.,
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From:
Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07)
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A reaction:
[a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three).
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12154
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Are 'word token' and 'word type' different sorts of countable objects, or two ways of counting? [Geach, by Perry]
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Full Idea:
If we list the words 'bull', 'bull' and 'cow', it is often said that there are three 'word tokens' but only two 'word types', but Geach says there are not two kinds of object to be counted, but two different ways of counting the same object.
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From:
report of Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980]) by John Perry - The Same F II
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A reaction:
Insofar as the notion that a 'word type' is an 'object', my sympathies are entirely with Geach, to my surprise. Geach's point is that 'bull' and 'bull' are the same meaning, but different actual words. Identity is relative to a concept.
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12152
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Identity is relative. One must not say things are 'the same', but 'the same A as' [Geach]
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Full Idea:
Identity is relative. When one says 'x is identical with y' this is an incomplete expression. It is short for 'x is the same A as y', where 'A' represents some count noun understood from the context of utterance.
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From:
Peter Geach (Reference and Generality (3rd ed) [1980], p.39), quoted by John Perry - The Same F I
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A reaction:
Perry notes that Geach's view is in conscious opposition to Frege, who had a pure notion of identity. We say 'they are the same insofar as they are animals', but not 'they are the same animal'. Perfect identity involves all possible A's.
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8954
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Geometrical circles cannot identify a circular paint patch, presumably because they lack something [Szabó]
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Full Idea:
The vocabulary of geometry is sufficient to identify the circle, but could not be used to identify any circular paint patch. The reason must be that the circle lacks certain properties that can distinguish paint patches from one another.
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From:
Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Nominalism [2003], 2.2)
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A reaction:
I take this to be support for the traditional view, that abstractions are created by omitting some of the properties of physical objects. I take them to be fictional creations, reified by language, and not actual hidden entities that have been observed.
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8955
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Abstractions are imperceptible, non-causal, and non-spatiotemporal (the third explaining the others) [Szabó]
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Full Idea:
In current discussions, abstract entities are usually distinguished as 1) in principle imperceptible, 2) incapable of causal interaction, 3) not located in space-time. The first is often explained by the second, which is in turn explained by the third.
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From:
Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Nominalism [2003], 2.2)
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A reaction:
Szabó concludes by offering 3 as the sole criterion of abstraction. As Lewis points out, the Way of Negation for defining abstracta doesn't tell us very much. Courage may be non-spatiotemporal, but what about Alexander the Great's courage?
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