'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.



Thursday, August 19, 2010

on certainty 595


595. But I can imagine someone making all these connections, and none of them corresponding with reality. Why shouldn’t I be in a similar case?”

If I imagine such a person I also imagine a reality, a world that surrounds him; and I imagine him as thinking (and speaking) in contradiction to this world.



what is real is what is proposed –

and whether a proposition functions or not –

whether it gains assent or not –

is uncertain


© greg t.charlton. 2010.
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