'For the person or persons that hold dominion, can no more combine with the keeping up of majesty the running with harlots drunk or naked about the streets, or the performances of a stage player, or the open violation or contempt of laws passed by themselves than they can combine existence with non-existence'.

- Benedict de Spinoza. Political Treatise. 1677.




Tuesday, January 26, 2010

on certainty 255


255.  Doubting has certain characteristic manifestations, but they are only characteristic of it in particular circumstances. If someone said that he doubted the existence of his hands, kept looking at them from all sides, tried to make sure it wasn’t all ‘done with mirrors’, etc. we should not be sure whether to call that doubting. We might describe this way of behaving as like the behaviour of doubt, but his game would not be ours.



so there is doubt about doubt


© greg t. charlton. 2010.