What’s the ‘I’ for you ask? It’s Friday night. TGIF folks. I’d like to take this opportunity to discuss archival work because I’ve caught archive-fever, as it were. I recently read “Blue Years: An Ethnography of a Prison Archive” by Angela Garcia (Stanford University) published in Cultural Anthropology. Actually, I was fortunate enough to listen […]
February 21, 2018 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
The other day I was reading M. Resnik’s Frege and the Philosophy of Mathematics (1980). In discussing `Frege’s way out’, he mentions a proof by Leśniewski showing that Frege’s attempted fix to the system of the Grundgesetze is inconsistent, but gives a reference to a paper published by Sobociński in 1949. This intrigued me, as […]
February 16, 2018 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Frege on Euclidean geometry and axioms, but also astrology and alchemy. From his Nachlass*. Now the question is whether to strike Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry from the ranks of science and to put it alongside of Alchemy and Astrology as mummies. Where one only let himself toy with ideas, he need not take things so […]
August 9, 2017 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Avicenna and Gentile da Foligno, woodcut (extract), edition of the Canon and its commentary by Gentile da Foligno, Venice 1520. Public domain via Wikipedia Commons This gem: At Physics II.8, however, Avicenna had undertaken a detailed analysis and critique of the idea of void and found it empty… is on page 19 of Jon […]
April 5, 2017 by Mike Steiner
I want to first give credit to the authors of “Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)” – Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. Their talk of cognitive dissonance and the metaphor of the ‘pyramid of choice’ has inspired my comments below. Although the ideas in this book have obvious ramifications for psychology, psychotherapy, political science, […]
January 21, 2017 by Joshua Stein
Disclaimer: I should state, first and foremost, that though I am a student in the philosophy department at the University of Calgary, my opinions in no way represent or reflect those of my peers and supervisors. Lately, a great deal of ink has been spilled on a recent move by the University of London School […]
July 24, 2016 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here’s W. V. O. Quine discussing the fact that Frege didn’t adopt a type theoretic approach (like Russell and Whitehead’s) when faced with Russell’s paradox. Actually, it is not to be wondered that Frege did not think of this course, or, thinking of it, adopt it. It was by having all his classes at ground […]
Back in May and June I was at the annual meeting of the Canadian Philosophical Association, where I attended an excellent symposium, organized by Susan Dieleman, on “The Possibility of a Canadian Pragmatism”. The presentations and discussion made me think a lot about what it means to be a pragmatist who is Canadian, and whether or […]
March 14, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here is John Burgess’s amusing description of Quine’s view of mathematical ontology as motivated by the indispensability argument, from “Mathematics and the Bleak House” (Phil. Math. 12, 2004). Quine…urged a very different sort of reason for accepting the existence of numbers (or other abstract mathematical entities to which numbers could be “reduced”). According to Quine, […]
January 27, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
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Here is Pope Pius II (Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini) reporting, in his Commentaries, the response of (then Cardinal) Nicolas of Cusa to Pius unilaterally appointing cardinals (quoted in Watanabe, Concord and Reform, Ashgate, 2001, p. 10): The Cardinal of St. Peter (Cusanus)…Finally answered as follows: “…Now you ignore the ordinance of the synod and do ask […]
January 7, 2015 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
Here is a quote from Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed (M. Friedlaender trans., 1923, p. 263) that is particularly appropriate for the holiday season: Wine may be treated as food, if taken as such, but to form parties for the purpose of drinking wine together must be considered more disgraceful than the unrestrained conduct […]
December 9, 2014 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
I apologize for taking so long to post another one of these. Here is Nicholas of Cusa (a.k.a. Cusano, a.k.a. Nikolaus von Kues) (1401–1464) on the primacy of intelligent people from De Concordantia Catholica. (This was quoted in Paul Sigmund’s Nicholas of Cusa and Medieval Political Thought, Harvard University Press, 1963, p. 132). Almighty […]
October 30, 2014 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
Sorry for the gap between quotes. Here is Giovanni Boccaccio on philosophers and marriage from The early lives of Dante (New York: Frederick Unger, 1963, pp. 24–5): Philosopher’s should leave [marriage] to wealthy fools, to noblemen, and to peasants, while they themselves find delight in philosophy, a far better bride than any other. I doubt […]
October 19, 2014 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
There is a very nice article/interview in the Observer with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein about her latest book Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away, in which philosophy is defended very well. I particularly like the characterization of philosophy as `increasing coherence.’ I would very much like to see what people have to say […]
October 1, 2014 by Aaron Thomas-Bolduc
Justin Caouette suggested to me that I start posting some of the amusing, and sometimes shocking philosophical quotations that I come across, and often share with him. This will be an on going series, though it is a matter of what I happen to be reading at any given time. The reason I have been […]
It is known that C.S. Peirce had a Kantian bent. By his own description he had “devoted two hours a day to the study of Kant’s Critic of the Pure Reason for more than three years, until [he] almost knew the whole book by heart, and had critically examined every section of it.” However, in […]
March 9, 2019 by Alison K McConwell
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