u/Scientific_Zealot

One of my copies of Hesiod's works (bought two bc they had different stuff in them, this is unimportant) has an introduction wherein the editor declared that the myth that Hesiod beat Homer in a poetry competition serves as a testament to the bad taste of the society that came up with that myth. That seems a little mean and unjustified, I thought as I read that introduction. Well, having almost finished the Works and Days, I think they were right. It starts off so very promising, the framing of it being an address to Hesiod's wayward brother Perses, the themes of Zeus as overseer of the universe and dispenser of justice, I thought it was all very interesting and a clever literary work. Then the farming advice started. And kept going. I must admit I fail to see any literary merit or cleverness to these elements. Is there some literary device or clever artistic metaphor/allegory/meaning/whatever working here that I'm not seeing? I saw a chiastic structure in the completion of the yearly cycle ending with the beginning he started with (though that's not a very hard thing to do, in fact it's probably harder not to do it), but I'm not seeing anything else. I am very much struggling to see why this was so popular. Defenders of the Works and Days, please, convince me with literary interpretation why this is a good poem!

Frege and Russell's conceptions of numbers are so similar that they are often lumped together and referred to as a singular position, the "Frege-Russell" conception of numbers. Which seems to me entirely justified, as both their positions ultimately identify numbers with equivalence classes composed of classes which are equinumerous (e.g. the number five is the equivalence class of classes with five members).

However, as far as I can tell when I read these figures, they seem to disagree about the ontological status of numbers. Frege seems to actually think there is such a thing as concept extensions which just. exist as part of the basic ontological furniture of the universe. He seems to view his positing of these classes in the Grundlagen (around sections... 65-80 I believe? Sadly this question leaped into my mind while I'm on vacation and I don't have my copy of the Grundlagen near me) to be a sort of... defining them into existence? Unfortunately I've always struggled to understand just what exactly he takes the ontological status of these entities to be. They seem to be legitimate entities with just as much existence as chairs or other physical beings.

Meanwhile Russell - at least, the Principia & post-Principia Russell, discounting the POM and intermediary between POM and PM Russell - takes his famous "no-class" view (of classes more generally, not just these number classes) wherein classes are logical fictions that are abbreviated ways of talking about the propositional function that defines (I must admit the specific terminology evades me) the class in question [much in the same way physical objects are analyzed as logical/linguistic fictions that are abbreviated ways of talking about certain sense perceptions in OKEW Chapters 3 & 4]. Thus, the number equivalence classes have a sort of "lesser" ontological status than the objects that are members of the classes. They are not an essential part of the ontological furniture of the universe (to borrow a turn of phrase from Quine, I believe).

Have I got this right? I personally consider the existence of numbers - or classes more generally - as actual entities with as much reality as physical objects to be so absurd a position that I hesitate to ascribe it to Frege without checking if I've made some horrific mistake in reading him.

I guess I think that people will come help/comfort me if I start vomiting in public whereas if I'm in private there'll be no one to save/rescue (and isn't it bad that those are the verbs my mind immediately leapt to) me if thing go south.

I've been trying to get into Euclid (not seriously just yet but starting to dip my toes in), and I've frequently heard that there is a hidden assumption/postulate in Euclid Book 1 Proposition 1. My issue is that I don't quite see why it's an assumption so ungrounded as to need an additional postulate.

Euclid Book 1 Proposition 1 is that, on any given line segment (let's call it AB), an equilateral triangle can be constructed. Given Postulate 3, we can construct a circle with center A and radius AB [call this circle 1]. Applying Postulate 3 once more, we can construct another circle with center B and radius BA [call this circle 2]. We are now to label a point where circles 1 and 2 intersect as point C.

The accusation is as follows: Euclid smuggles in the assumption that these circles intersect, which requires another postulate. But to my mind, it's necessary that these circles will have a point where they intersect (two actually but that's beyond the point) because:

1.) A line segment must always have a positive length [Not a postulate of Euclid's admittedly]

2.) The radii of circles 1 and 2 are the same line and thus have the same length [Reflexive Property of Euclid, again admittedly not explicitly stated in Euclid common notions]

3.) Circles 1 and 2 reside on the same plane [This is, admittedly, something also assumed by Euclid that's not stated when these circles were constructed]

4.) A circle is figure bounded by a non-rectilinear line [called the circumference] wherein all points on this line reside the distance of the radius from the center point [Definitions 15 & 16]

5.) Lines are continuous [Definition 2]

6.) Given one line from the center of a circle to a point on that circle, there must be another point on the circumference of that circle such that, when that second point is connected via a line to the center of that circle, it forms an angle. Now for every conceivable angle measurements, there must be a corresponding point on the circle where if a straight line was connected to that point, it would form that angle measurement when considered with the first line mentioned in the first sentence. [By points 4 & 5 that I've listed]

7.) Conclusion: there must be some point where Circles 1 and 2 intersect

Is there something wrong with the proof I've listed? I suspect there must be, because it smells rather fishy to me, but I can't quite say what it is that's wrong with it. What is the postulate that Euclid must have added so that he can claim that Circles 1 and 2 intersect at a point? Thanks

I've decided to finally read Descartes and settled on the Discourse on the Method as a starting point. However, after coming upon Parts 5 & 6, I'm pretty sure they're just expositions of Descartes' natural philosophy views. Is there any worth to reading these sections? Obviously they would be of interest to anyone doing work on Descartes' natural philosophy, and the secondary literature I'm reading has convinced me that Descartes' natural philosophy is incredibly important to what he's attempting in the Meditations and the rest of his philosophical project, but I've only so much time on this Earth, and I'm not sure reading antiquated and incorrect explanations of natural phenomena is really worth my time. Further, I'm worried that the incorrect explanations will scramble in my memory with the correct scientific explanations of these phenomena. Is there anything of real importance for understanding Descartes in sections 5 & 6 of Discourse on the Method, or, knowing in the background that his natural philosophy work is important to the Meditations and the rest of his philosophy, can I just skip knowing the particular details of his natural philosophy and not read these sections?

"In Carlos's brain?" Arnold asked, reluctantly donning his scuba gear.

I was thumbing through an introduction to Spinoza's Ethics and while skimming over the part where it mentions Spinoza's following of Descartes' Ontological Argument, it occured to me that while most of the early modern philosophers I'm familiar with discussed the Ontological Argument to some degree, I couldn't recall some place where Locke or Berkeley ever commented on it. Did they ever comment on the Ontological Argument, and if so, where?