Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Fear and Trembling', 'Nietzsche's System' and 'Philosophy and the Nature of Language'

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20 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson]
Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson]
Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson]
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / c. Theory of definite descriptions
If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE]
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE]
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE]
A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE]
17. Mind and Body / B. Behaviourism / 2. Potential Behaviour
Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 5. Meaning as Verification
I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE]
The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 6. Meaning as Use
'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE]
Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE]
Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE]
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 2. Analytic Truths
An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE]
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / a. Human distinctiveness
Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 7. Eliminating causation
A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson]
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / a. Divine morality
Either Abraham rises higher than universal ethics, or he is a mere murderer [Kierkegaard]
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 6. Divine Morality / d. God decrees morality
Abraham was willing to suspend ethics, for a higher idea [Kierkegaard]