203 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2013
    1. But the further inference from the nerve stimulus to a cause outside of us is already the result of a false and unjustifiable application of the principle of sufficient reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation!

      Rhetoric cannot be escaped through rhetoric.

  2. Oct 2013
  3. Sep 2013
    1. An art I do not call it, but only an experience, because it is unable to explain or to give a reason of the nature of its own applications. And I do not call any irrational thing an art; but if you dispute my words, I am prepared to argue in defence of them.

      A pretty high bar Socrates is setting here. Is experience then not a "real" thing? Must all "real" things be able to be explained in a definite, rational way?