No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Descartes through the Looking–Glass: Is it Possible to Believe What is Contradictory?*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
Extract
My text for this paper is taken from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass. It is that well–known passage where Alice is having a frustrating conversation with the White Queen. Alice responds to some of the Queen's absurd statements by saying, ‘One can't believe impossible things.’ At which point the Queen snaps back: ‘I daresay you haven't had much practice. When I was your age, I always did it for half–an–hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985
References
page 169 note 1 Carroll, Lewis, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking–Glass (New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 174.Google Scholar
page 169 note 2 Miller, Leonard G., ‘Descartes, mathematics, and God’, Philosophical Review LXVI (10 1957), 464.Google Scholar
page 169 note 3 Frankfurt, Harry, ‘Descartes on the creation of the eternal truths’, Philosophical Review LXXXVI 01 1977), 54.Google Scholar
page 170 note 1 Gibson, A. Boyce, ‘The eternal verities and the will of God in the philosophy of Descartes’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society XXX (1929–1930), 46.Google Scholar
page 170 note 2 See Descartes: Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. Kenny, Anthony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 11.Google Scholar
page 170 note 3 Kenny, , pp. 150–1.Google Scholar
page 171 note 1 Reply to Objections VI in The Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane, Elizabeth S. and Ross, G. R. T. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), II, 2:251.Google Scholar
page 171 note 2 Descartes, , Reply to Objections VI, p. 248.Google Scholar
page 171 note 3 To Mersenne, 27 May 1930, Kenny, , op. cit. p. 15.Google Scholar
page 171 note 4 To Mersenne, 17 May 1938, ibid., p. 55.
page 171 note 5 To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, ibid., p. 236.
page 171 note 6 To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, ibid., p. 236.
page 171 note 7 To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, ibid., p. 237.
page 171 note 8 To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, ibid., p. 237.
page 171 note 9 To Arnauld, 29 July 1648, ibid., p. 237.
page 171 note 10 To More, 5 February 1649, ibid., p. 241.
page 172 note 1 St Anselm, Proslogium, chap. 1.
page 172 note 2 To Mersenne, 27 May 1930, ibid., pp. 14–15.
page 172 note 3 To Mersenne, 27 May 1930, ibid., p. 15.
page 172 note 4 Putnam, Hilary, ‘Meaning and reference’, Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds, ed. Schwartz, Stephen P. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), p. 126.Google Scholar
page 173 note 1 I have taken this term from Immerman, Leon A., ‘Must we know what we say?’, Religious Studies XV (09 1979).Google Scholar
page 175 note 1 Hall, James, Knowledge, Belief, and Transcendence (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1975), P. 84.Google Scholar
page 176 note 1 Cf. Harry Frankfurt's opposing opinion on this. Frankfurt, , pp. 47–50.Google Scholar
page 176 note 2 Descartes, , Reply to Objections VI, p. 248.Google Scholar
page 176 note 3 Quine, Willard Van Orman, ‘Two dogmas of empiricism’, From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 43.Google Scholar
page 177 note 1 Descartes, , Reply to Objections VI, p. 251.Google Scholar
page 177 note 2 Abbott, Edwin A., Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (New York: Harper & Row, 1963).Google Scholar
page 179 note 1 Shakespeare, William,Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5, lines 165 6.Google Scholar