Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works (fragments)', 'Truth and Meaning' and 'Against the Physicists (two books)'

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31 ideas

2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 9. Limits of Reason
All reasoning endlessly leads to further reasoning (Mode 12) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
Proofs often presuppose the thing to be proved (Mode 15) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
Reasoning needs arbitrary faith in preliminary hypotheses (Mode 14) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
All discussion is full of uncertainty and contradiction (Mode 11) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form
There is a huge range of sentences of which we do not know the logical form [Davidson]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus]
12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism
Some say motion is perceived by sense, but others say it is by intellect [Sext.Empiricus]
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / a. Agrippa's trilemma
Agrippa's Trilemma: justification is infinite, or ends arbitrarily, or is circular [Agrippa, by Williams,M]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
Everything is perceived in relation to another thing (Mode 13) [Agrippa, by Diog. Laertius]
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 6. Idealisation
If we try to conceive of a line with no breadth, it ceases to exist, and so has no length [Sext.Empiricus]
17. Mind and Body / D. Property Dualism / 4. Emergentism
The incorporeal is not in the nature of body, and so could not emerge from it [Sext.Empiricus]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality
Compositionality explains how long sentences work, and truth conditions are the main compositional feature [Davidson, by Lycan]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 5. Fregean Semantics
Davidson thinks Frege lacks an account of how words create sentence-meaning [Davidson, by Miller,A]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 9. Indexical Semantics
You can state truth-conditions for "I am sick now" by relativising it to a speaker at a time [Davidson, by Lycan]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
Should we assume translation to define truth, or the other way around? [Blackburn on Davidson]
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement
A man walking backwards on a forwards-moving ship is moving in a fixed place [Sext.Empiricus]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / c. Tenses and time
Time doesn't end with the Universe, because tensed statements about destruction remain true [Sext.Empiricus]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / c. Intervals
Time is divisible, into past, present and future [Sext.Empiricus]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / e. Present moment
Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus]
If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
All men agree that God is blessed, imperishable, happy and good [Sext.Empiricus]
God must suffer to understand suffering [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 3. Divine Perfections
The Divine must lack the virtues of continence and fortitude, because they are not needed [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / B. Proving God / 1. Proof of God
God is defended by agreement, order, absurdity of denying God, and refutations [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / b. Ontological Proof critique
God's sensations imply change, and hence perishing, which is absurd, so there is no such God [Sext.Empiricus]
God without virtue is absurd, but God's virtues will be better than God [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
The original substance lacked motion or shape, and was given these by a cause [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity
The perfections of God were extrapolations from mankind [Sext.Empiricus]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Gods were invented as watchers of people's secret actions [Sext.Empiricus]
An incorporeal God could do nothing, and a bodily god would perish, so there is no God [Sext.Empiricus]
29. Religion / A. Polytheistic Religion / 1. Animism
It is mad to think that what is useful to us, like lakes and rivers, are gods [Sext.Empiricus]