But under Donald Trump, a man of few if any discernible principles beyond a desire for self-aggrandizement, he would be a dangerous choice because his role will be not just to implement policy but — more than most previous secretaries of State — to shape..
He will be beholden to a Party that has simply plunged off the deep end and since he has no discernible principles of his own -- other than ensuring that wealthy people like himself benefit from every tax break imaginable -- there would simply be no reason for him to meaningfully stem the tide of the House Republicans who are now the heart and soul of the party.
"Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making".
In a famous passage Hume writes: "Whether we consider mankind according to the difference of sexes, ages, governments, conditions, or methods of education; the same uniformity and regular operation of natural principles are discernible.
What is perhaps more important, Wittgenstein gives no discernible explanation of why in principle all the "logical properties" of the world should be susceptible of being reflected in an adequate notation.
The rationalistic agnosticism of Kant and the Enlightenment only accepts knowledge deduced with human rationality; this form of atheism holds that gods are not discernible as a matter of principle, and therefore cannot be known to exist.
Indeed, this follows almost inevitably if the supposition is correct that all the Sophists were attempting to explain the phenomenal world from within itself, while excluding all principles or entities not discernible in phenomena.
Throughout the process leading up to Rio+20, indeed up to the entry of the Brazilian government, there had been a discernible regression around rights and equity principles, led by the richest countries and reflected in attempts to delete or "bracket" -- leave un-agreed -- 20-year-old Earth Summit principles.
This is easily shown, they say, by an appeal to Leibniz's Law (the principle of the non-identity of discernibles).
Although his jazz recordings sometimes now feature laptops and samplers, and his New Series documents the notated music of such contemporary composers as Erkki-Sven Tuur, Betty OliverandValentin Silvestrov and Giya Kancheli alongside that of Bach, Tallis and Beethoven, somehow the guiding principle – in this case, the founder's taste – seems ever more discernible.
