Browsing All Posts filed under »History of Philosophy«

The Gould (I) Files #2

March 9, 2019 by

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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 […]

Frege and Hume at Thanksgiving

October 2, 2018 by

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It’s almost Thanksgiving here in Canada, so here’s a thanksgiving themed post about concepts from Frege and Neo-logicism. In his Grundlagen (1884), Frege proposes that the number that belongs to two concepts is the same just in case the objects falling under those concepts can be correlated one-to-one (i.e. they’re equinumerous). The formalization of that claim is […]

It’s a Small World: The Leśniewski-Sobociński Theorem.

February 21, 2018 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (15)

February 16, 2018 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes 13

August 9, 2017 by

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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 […]

Cognitive Dissonance and Philosophy

April 5, 2017 by

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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, […]

Anti-colonialism, Kant, and modern academia

January 21, 2017 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (12)

July 24, 2016 by

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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 […]

Canadian Pragmatism?

November 9, 2015 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (7)

March 14, 2015 by

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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, […]

Grinworthy Quotes (6)

January 27, 2015 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (5)

January 7, 2015 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (4)

December 9, 2014 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (3)

October 30, 2014 by

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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 […]

A Defence of Philosophy

October 19, 2014 by

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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 […]

Grinworthy Quotes (1)

October 1, 2014 by

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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 […]

Peirce, Reid and Kant

October 1, 2014 by

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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 […]

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