16 January 2011

Random Quote: History of Philosophy

Henri Bergson, CREATIVE EVOLUTION (1913).

"There is, then, immanent in the philosophy of Ideas" [Platonism and its kin], "a particular conception of causality, which it is important to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things, he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect....The affirmation of a reality implies the affirmation of all the degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot affirm the existence of the number 10 without affirming the existence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, ... , etc., -- in short of the whole interval between 10 and zero."

Emphasis in the original.

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Knowledge is warranted belief -- it is the body of belief that we build up because, while living in this world, we've developed good reasons for believing it. What we know, then, is what works -- and it is, necessarily, what has worked for us, each of us individually, as a first approximation. For my other blog, on the struggles for control in the corporate suites, see www.proxypartisans.blogspot.com.