Category: Philosophocastry

Comte on Logic

comte“[…] the laws of logic which ultimately govern the world of the mind are, by their nature, essentially unvariable; they are common not only to all periods and places but to all subjects of whatever kind, without any distinction even between those that we call the real and the chimerical; they are to be seen even in dream.”

РAuguste Comte, Cours de Philosophie positive, 52e le̤on.

argumentum ad verecundiam [Ø1]

I can empathize with the very human habit of imposing boundaries upon experience, and subsequent desire to appeal to these boundaries for all manner of quacksalvery. I recently found myself defending the case that (1) words can have meaning without having clear boundaries- that is, boundaries are not a necessary condition for two people to use the same word understandably between one another; and (2) that many meaningful words lacking clear boundaries do, in fact, exist. I brought forward the example ‘game’; the debate was born in the term ‘religion’.

“[…] how is the concept of a game bounded? What still counts as a game and what no longer does? Can you give the boundary? No. You can draw one; for none has so far ever been drawn. (But that never troubled you before when you used the word “game”.)”

“One might say that the concept ‘game’ is a concept with blurred edges.

– But is a blurred concept a concept at all?

Is an indistinct photograph a picture of a person at all? Is it even always an advantage to replace an indistinct picture by a sharp one? Isn’t the indistinct one often exactly what we need?

= Frege compares a concept to an area and says that an area with vague boundaries cannot be called an area at all. This presumably means that we cannot do anything with it.

But is it senseless to say: “Stand roughly there”? Suppose that I were standing with someone in a city square and said that. As I say it I do not draw any kind of boundary, but perhaps point with my hand – as if I were indicating a particular spot.”