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“On the Kantian conception logic as a whole is concerned with investigating the form of the understanding: that is, the form of the intellectual aspect of our overall cognitive faculty to represent objects. Pure general and transcendental logic, in turn, are each concerned with investigating a dimension of that form. On this conception, the source of logical form is not to be comprehended apart from the role of our capacity for thought in the achievement of forms of cognition that are not merely logical. And the source of the notion of mere form of which pure general logic treats is not to be comprehended apart from its internal relation to the full-blooded form of that unified general cognitive capacity - and hence to the forms of the understanding or the categories. This means that on a Kantian understanding of the order of explanatory priority, we must first comprehend the inner logical dimension of form of which transcendental logic treats if we wish to arrive at a proper appreciation of how, via an abstraction, we may arrive at a proper comprehension of the comparatively outer logical dimension of mere form of which pure logical treats - that dimension of form which the rationalist logician, in accordance with his logically thin conception of reason, takes to be self-standingly available.”

Quote by James Conant

Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics

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James Conant

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“Some bring up a sixth proof based on the third conclusion previously established, since they consider it somehow obvious that understanding, will, wisdom and love are pure perfections. However, it is not so clear that these can be inferred to be pure perfections any more than the nature of the first angel can. For if you take wisdom denominatively, it is better than every denominative characteristic that is incompatible with it and still you have not proven that the first being is wise. And if you grant that God is wise, I say that you are begging the question. You can only maintain that, apart from the first being, it is better to be wise than not. In this way the first angel is better than every being, considered denominatively, that is incompatible with it, God excepted. Indeed, the essence of the first angel in the abstract can be better than wisdom in an unqualified sense. You may object that [the nature of the first angel] is inconsistent with many things, and therefore not for everything is it better denominatively than its opposite. I answer that neither is wisdom better for everything; it is inconsistent with many things. You will say: "Wisdom would be best for everything if it could be present, for it would be better for a dog if the dog were wise." I reply: "The same could be said of the first angel. If the angel could be a dog, it would be better to be one; and it would be better for a dog if it could be the first angel." You will object: "No, that would destroy the nature of the dog and consequently it would not be good for the dog." I reply: "In the same way being wise destroys the dog's nature. There is no difference save that the angel destroys as a nature of the genus [viz. substance] whereas wise destroys as a different genus [viz. as a quality]. [Wisdom] is incompatible [with a dog], however, because it requires as its subject a nature which is repugnant [to a dog]. And to whatever the subject is primarily repugnant, to that the property of such will be essentially (though not primarily) repugnant. In ordinary speech about pure perfection there is frequently a failure to make this distinction. What is more, intellectual seems to express the supreme degree of a certain category, substance. How would you conclude from this that it is a pure perfection? The situation is different with the properties of being in general, for they are characteristic of every being either commonly or in disjunction. And how would you refute a contentious individual who claims that the first denominative of any of the supreme genera is a pure perfection? For he would say that any such is better than what is incompatible with it, if taken denominatively, since all things incompatible in this way denominate only their own genus, and it surpasses all of them. If it should be understood as referring to the denominated substances, qua denominated, a similar point could be made. Because if it is a substance that is determined, then this determines the most noble for itself. If not, at least every subject insofar as it is denominated by this, is better than everything insofar as it is denominated by something else incompatible with this.”

PhilosophyReligionSpiritualityLogicTheologyMetaphysicsOntology
Book:A Treatise on God as First Principle
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“Every day a jailor brought the prisoners their food, and as he laid down the dishes he would say a word to them. If their meal was flesh he would remind them that they were eating corpses, or give them some account of the slaughtering: or, if it was the inwards of some beast, he would read them a lecture in anatomy and show the likeness of the mess to the same parts in themselves—which was the more easily done because the giant’s eyes were always staring into the dungeon at dinner time. Or if the meal were eggs he would recall to them that they were eating the menstruum of a verminous fowl, and crack a few jokes with the female prisoners. So he went on day by day. Then I dreamed that one day there was nothing but milk for them, and the jailor said as he put down the pipkin: ‘Our relations with the cow are not delicate—as you can easily see if you imagine eating any of her other secretions.’ Now John had been in the pit a shorter time than any of the others: and at these words something seemed to snap in his head and he gave a great sigh and suddenly spoke out in a loud, clear voice: ‘Thank heaven! Now at last I know that you are talking nonsense.’ ‘What do you mean?’ said the jailor, wheeling round upon him. ‘You are trying to pretend that unlike things are like. You are trying to make us think that milk is the same sort of thing as sweat or dung.’ ‘And pray, what difference is there except by custom?’ ‘Are you a liar or only a fool, that you see no difference between that which Nature casts out as refuse and that which she stores up as food?’ ‘So Nature is a person, then, with purposes and consciousness,’ said the jailor with a sneer. ‘In fact, a Landlady. No doubt it comforts you to imagine you can believe that sort of thing;’ and he turned to leave the prison with his nose in the air. ‘I know nothing about that,’ shouted John after him. ‘I am talking of what happens. Milk does feed calves and dung does not.”

PhilosophyLogicAllegoryLogical Fallacy
Author:CS Lewis
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“There is certainly something to the thought that certain classic papers of Putnam and Quine offer perhaps the closest thing to be found in twentieth-century philosophy to an attempt to rehabilitate Descartes's claim that it would be hubris for us to assert of an omnipotent God that He would be inexorably bound by the laws of logic - those laws which happen to bind our finite minds. In a move which is characteristic of much of contemporary naturalistic thought (both in and out of the academy), science is substituted for God. Cartesianism in the philosophy of logic, freed of its theological trappings, becomes the view that it would be hubris for us to assert of the ongoing activity of scientific inquiry that it will be forever bound by the laws of classical logic - those principles which happen to be most fundamental to our present conceptual scheme. The contrast is now no longer, as in Descartes, between the infinite powers of man and the infinite powers of God, but rather between the limits of present scientific thought and the infinite possibilities latent in the future of science as such ... If Descartes is led by a sense of theological piety to insist that God can do anything - no matter how inconceivably it may be to us - the contemporary ultra-empiricist is led by an equally fervent sense of naturalistic piety to insist that the science of the future might require a revision of any of our present axioms of thought - no matter how unacceptable such a revision might seem by our present lights. The exploration of the contours of possibility belongs to the business of the physicists. In this regard, we philosophers must issue them a blank check - it would compromise our standing as underlaborers to put a ceiling on how much they can spend. To paraphrase Descartes on God: we must not conclude that there is a positive limit to the power of science on the basis of the limits of our own (present) powers of conception. All of its hostility to theology notwithstanding, this contemporary form of piety is, in a sense, no less religious (in its unconditional deference to a higher authority) than Descartes's - it has simply exchanged one Godhead for another. But, unlike Descartes, precisely because it is overly hostile to theology, it is able easily to blind itself to the fact that it is a form of piety.”

ScienceReligionLogicTheologyPietyLawsDescartes
Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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“Charles Kahn offers the following summary of how a new metaphysics takes shape in Islamic philosophy: 'My general view of the historical development is that existence in the modern sense becomes a central concept in philosophy only in the period when Greek ontology is radically revised in the light of a metaphysics of creation; that is to say, under the influence of biblical religion. As far as I can see, this development did not take place with Augustine or with the Greek Church Fathers, who remained under the sway of classical ontology. The new metaphysics seems to have taken shape in Islamic philosophy, in the form of a radical distinction between necessary and contingent existence: between the existence of God on the one hand, and that of the created world on the other.' The new metaphysics that takes shape in Islamic philosophy proves fateful for subsequent philosophy in various ways. What will interest us immediately below is how it plays a role in triggering a debate about how to conceive divine creation. What will be of implicit interest later in these replies is how a remarkably unvarnished version of this new metaphysics comes to be detached from its original theological context. The ensuing detheologized modal metaphysics remains in force in some quarters of analytic philosophy, even though it takes its point of departure from a topic (how to understand the act of divine creation) that is no longer of much interest to most analytic philosophers. For the new metaphysics introduces concepts and ways of thinking that, once divested of their theological garb, continually resurface in the history of philosophy up to the present day.”

PhilosophyExistenceHistoryModernCreationLogicTheologyIslamicContingencyNecessary
Book:The Logical Alien: Conant and His Critics
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“Carrero’s Third Law of Landscape Mathematics The moment you start to recognize and understand that mathematics is the language of nature, and see the unseen laws of this beautiful world of numbers, and mimic its logic to create original systems, you are a Landscape Mathematician.”

NatureNumbersBeautyDesignLogicCivil EngineerLandscape MathematicianLandscape MathematicsDesign With Numbers
Book:Landscape Mathematics, Design with Numbers
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“Without divine revelation, human beings have no capacity to have true premises with which to conclude anything about what they observe. Schools instead are teaching students that they merely need to agree on the premises. They don’t need to prove that the premises are true since they can’t possibly prove that the premises are true without divine revelation. They teach students to base all their thinking on made-up stuff.”

TeachingLogicInsanityIrrationalSchoolsDivine Revelation
Book:Exposing the REAL Creation-Evolution Debate: The Absolute Proof of the Biblical Account
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“Are you gonna talk to her after the game?” Hollis asks expectantly. “Or do we need to bring out a shotgun and—” “Relax, you don’t have to make me talk to her at gunpoint,” I say with a chuckle. “What?” His expression is puzzled. “I was going to say we’d clock you in the back of the head with the shotgun, knock some sense into you.” I turn to Fitzgerald, who shrugs and says, “His brain operates on a level us mortals can’t comprehend.”

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Book:The Risk
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