timelets

Mon, 18 Nov 2024 07:33:50 GMT

when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

The basic trouble, you see, is that people think that "right" and "wrong" are absolute; that
everything that isn't perfectly and completely right is totally and equally wrong.

--- Asimov, The Relativity of Wrong. Source: The Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 14 No. 1, Fall 1989, pp. 35-44.

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Sat, 05 Dec 2020 06:29:42 GMT

As for the terms 
                 good 
                       and bad, 
they indicate 
             no positive quality 
in things 
           regarded in themselves, but

are merely modes 
                     of thinking, 
or notions 
           which we form 
                         from the comparison 
of things 
             one with another. 

Thus 
      one and the same 
                         thing 
can be 
        at the same time 
            
good, 
bad, 
and 
indifferent. 

For instance, music 
                  is good for him 
                              that is melancholy, 
bad for him 
            that mourns; 
for him 
          that is deaf, it is 

neither 
good
nor 
bad.

--- Spinoza, Ethics, Part IV, Preface.

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Sun, 04 Oct 2020 07:05:40 GMT

For, by substance, would be understood
that which is in itself,
and is conceived
through itself —

that is,
something of which
the conception requires not the conception of anything else;

whereas
modifications exist
in something external to themselves,

and a conception of them
is formed by means
of a conception of the thing
in which they exist.

Therefore,
we may have true ideas
of non—existent modifications;

for, although they may have no actual existence
apart from the conceiving intellect,

yet their essence
is so involved
in something external to themselves
that they may through it be conceived.

Whereas
the only truth substances can have,
external to the intellect,
must consist in their existence,

because
they are conceived
through themselves.

--- Benedictus de Spinoza. “Ethics.” Prop. VIII, Note II.

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Sat, 26 Sep 2020 16:01:44 GMT

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