Philosophy Concordance - online philosophical quotations

As the traditional conception of mind slowly gave way to the overwhelming campaign of natural sciences, so the idea that the concept of mind was something beyond the natural, causal order began to appear inherently problematic, and definitely incapable of serving as an 'unexplained explainer'.

A similar perspective had always been natural for all kinds of pragmatists; and in Wittgenstein's times it was revived by neopragmatist philosophers, especially W. V.

Quine's behaviorism accords with the undeniable successes of natural sciences in describing and explaining ever more parts and aspects of our world, and their subsequent ambition to describe everything whatsoever.

Wittgenstein's approach seems to indicate the idea of accounting for our linguistic practices neither wholly in the way of natural science, nor in terms of a set of specific and irreducible concepts: what we need is not new concepts, but rather a specific mode of speech; aside of the indicative, also the normative mode: 'this ought to be done thus and so'.

Can we see the talk about the rules of football, and about what ought or ought not to be done during a football game, as a mere metaphor (or shorthand, or loose talk) which could be translated into a talk about the movements of the players, or something else wholly susceptible to expression in terms of the language of natural science?

Many patterns of behavior are passed from generation to generation simply in force of natural selection: those individuals happening to have such patterns wired in their genes have outsmarted those without them.

The relevant patterns are forced upon us not (directly) by natural selection, but by the ongoing demands of our peers.

However, this weakness of spaces delimited by human rules rather than by natural laws is at the same time their strength: we can build them ourselves, change them and develop them according to our experience and finally reach incredibly impressive edifices.

To say that an expression means thus and so is essentially to say that it ought to be used in a certain way. Thus, meanings are 'beyond the natural, causal order', but, at the same time, are not 'supernatural' in any abstruse or esoteric sense.

On this supposition, I, in the first place, described this matter, and essayed to represent it in such a manner that to my mind there can be nothing clearer and more intelligible, except what has been recently said regarding God and the soul; for I even expressly supposed that it possessed none of those forms or qualities which are so debated in the schools, nor in general anything the knowledge of which is not so natural to our minds that no one can so much as imagine himself ignorant of it.