Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Anaxarchus, Georg W.F.Hegel and Willard Quine

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these philosophers


534 ideas

1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 1. Nature of Wisdom
Wisdom emerges at the end of a process [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of dusk.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref p.13), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: Hegel explains that this means that wisdom is the product of historical maturity, as the ideal emerges, and illuminates what is real. I think.
1. Philosophy / A. Wisdom / 3. Wisdom Deflated
Inspiration and social improvement need wisdom, but not professional philosophy [Quine]
     Full Idea: Professional philosophers have no peculiar fitness for inspirational and edifying writing, or helping to get society on an even keel (though we should do what we can). Wisdom may fulfil these crying needs: 'sophia' yes, but 'philosophia' not necessarily.
     From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.193)
     A reaction: This rather startlingly says that philosophy is unlikely to lead to wisdom, which is rather odd when it is defined as love of that very thing. Does love of horticulture lead to good gardening. I can't agree. Philosophy is the best hope of 'sophia'.
1. Philosophy / B. History of Ideas / 5. Later European Thought
Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran]
     Full Idea: Hegel is chiefly responsible for modern optimism. How could he have failed to see that consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by E.M. Cioran - A Short History of Decay 5
1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / d. Nineteenth century philosophy
Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida]
     Full Idea: Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Jacques Derrida - Positions p.64
     A reaction: Reference to 'the Book' connects this to the great religions which rely on one holy text. The implication is that Hegel was proposing one big solution to all problems. It is doubtful if many philosophers before Hegel dreamt of that either.
Hegel inserted society and history between the God-world, man-nature, man-being binary pairs [Hegel, by Safranski]
     Full Idea: Before Hegel, people thought in binary oppositions of God and the world, man and nature, man and being. After Hegel an intervening world of society and history was inserted between these pairs.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840]) by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 05
     A reaction: This is what Popper later called 'World Three'. This might be seen as the start of what we islanders call 'continental' philosophy, which we have largely ignored. Analytic philosophy only discovered this through philosophy of language.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy
Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Philosophy moves essentially in the element of universality.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 01)
     A reaction: I would take this to be uncontroversially correct. An interesting test case is applied ethics, which seems embedded in current cultural practices. I would always take it to be searching for what is universal in each situation.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 3. Philosophy Defined
Philosophy is exploration of the rational [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Philosophy is exploration of the rational.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref)
     A reaction: The only problem is that Hegel (like the Stoics) thought that nature is rational all the way down, so philosophy becomes the study of everything.
Philosophy is the conceptual essence of the shape of history [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Philosophy is the supreme blossom - the concept - of the entire shape of history, the consciousness and the spiritual essence of the whole situation, the spirit of the age as the spirit present and aware of itself in thought.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the History of Philosophy [1830], p.25), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This sees philosophy as intrinsically historical, which is a founding idea for 'continental' philosophy. Analysis is tied to science, in which the history of the subject is seen as irrelevant to its truth. Does this mean we can't go back to Aristotle?
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / b. Philosophy as transcendent
Philosophy aims to reveal the necessity and rationality of the categories of nature and spirit [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, philosophy's principal task is to disclose the enduring necessity and rationality of the categories and forms of nature and spirit that it examines.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 4 'Phenomenology'
     A reaction: The idea that a miserable little evolved and transient mammal on a tiny planet has direct insight into the necessities and categories of nature and spirit looks a shade optimistic to me. You have to admire the ambition, though.
True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity, where the understanding sees and accepts only separation.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213)
     A reaction: Puzzled by the role of 'understanding' here. I tend to cite that as the highest aspiration of philosophy. Hegel seems to offer a higher understanding of unity, and a weaker analytic understanding, which is part of our limited psychology.
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that it in turn assumes a rational aspect; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], p.29), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: What happens when I look at irrationality rationally?
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 6. Hopes for Philosophy
Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Thinking that is free is without presuppositions.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add1)
     A reaction: Fat chance, I would have thought. Hegel's project was indeed to try to get right to the bottom of the presuppositions. My picture is always of holding one thing presupposed while you examine another, and then switching to other presuppositions.
For a good theory of the world, we must focus on our flabby foundational vocabulary [Quine]
     Full Idea: Our traditional introspective notions - of meaning, idea, concept, essence, all undisciplined and undefined - afford a hopelessly flabby and unmanageable foundation for a theory of the world. Control is gained by focusing on words.
     From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.192)
     A reaction: A very nice statement of the aim of modern language-centred philosophy, though the task offered appears to be that of an under-labourer, when the real target, even according to Quine, is supposed to be a 'theory of the world'.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 1. Nature of Metaphysics
Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel]
     Full Idea: Hegel is a Johannes Climacus who does not storm the heavens, like the giants, by putting mountain upon mountain, but climbs aboard them by way of his syllogisms.
     From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Søren Kierkegaard - The Journals of Kierkegaard 2A
     A reaction: [Idea from SY] This appears to be an attempt at insulting Hegel for his timidity, but it seems to be describing the cautious approach which most modern philosophers take to be correct. [PG]
Quinean metaphysics just lists the beings, which is a domain with no internal structure [Schaffer,J on Quine]
     Full Idea: The Quinean task in metaphysics is to say what exists. What exists forms the domain of quantification. The domain is a set (or class, or plurality) - it has no internal structure. In other words, the Quinean task is to list the beings.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1
     A reaction: I really warm to this thesis. The Quinean version is what you get when you think that logic is the best tool for explicating metaphysics. Schaffer goes on to say that the only real aim for Quine is the cardinality of what exists!
The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Abstract identity (which is what here is also called 'concept') and being are the two moments that reason seeks to unify; this unification is the Ideal of reason.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §49)
     A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I connect it to Aristotle's approach to the problem of being, which was to abandon the head-on approach, and aim to understand the identities of particulars and kinds.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 2. Possibility of Metaphysics
Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The older metaphysics has the naïve presupposition that thinking grasps what things are in-themselves, that things only are what they genuinely are when they are captured in thought.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add)
     A reaction: His 'older' metaphysics is prior to Kant's critique. The less naïve version is more aware of antinomies and dialectical conflicts within thought.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems
For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell]
     Full Idea: The basis of Hegel's system is that what is incomplete must not be self-subsistent, and needs the support of other things; whatever has relations to things outside itself must contain some reference to those outside things in its own nature.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.14
     A reaction: This leads to the idealist doctrine of 'internal relations'. It has some plausibility if you think about the physicist's definition of mass, which has to refer to forces etc. Presumably there is one essence for all of reality, instead of separate ones.
Any statement can be held true if we make enough adjustment to the rest of the system [Quine]
     Full Idea: Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.43)
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 4. Metaphysics as Science
Quine rejects Carnap's view that science and philosophy are distinct [Quine, by Boulter]
     Full Idea: Quine rejects Carnap's view that the methods of science and philosophy are distinct.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 5
     A reaction: I can't decide this one. Leibniz agreed with Carnap, but rated philosophy more highly. I like the view of philosophy as continuous with science, but that doesn't make it a branch of science. I incline towards science being a branch of philosophy.
Philosophy is largely concerned with finding the minimum that science could get by with [Quine]
     Full Idea: Philosophy is in large part concerned with ...what science could get along with, could be reconstructed by means of, as distinct from what science has historically made us of.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
     A reaction: This nicely summarises the programme for the whole of the philosophy of David Lewis, who was Quine's pupil. If you start by asking what it could 'get by with', it is not surprising that simplicity is the top intellectual virtue for both of them.
Quine's naturalistic and empirical view is based entirely on first-order logic and set theory [Quine, by Mautner]
     Full Idea: Quine has aimed at a naturalistic and empirical world-view, and claims that first-order logic and set theory provide a framework sufficient for the articulation of our knowledge of the world.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.465
     A reaction: Consequently he is fairly eliminativist about meaning and mental states, and does without universals in his metaphysics. An impressively puritanical enterprise, taking Ockham's Razor to the limit, but I find it hard to swallow.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual
Enquiry needs a conceptual scheme, so we should retain the best available [Quine]
     Full Idea: No enquiry is possible without some conceptual scheme, so we may as well retain and use the best one we know.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §01)
     A reaction: This remark leads to Davidson's splendid paper 'On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme'. Quine's remark raises the question of how we know which conceptual scheme is 'best'.
We aren't stuck with our native conceptual scheme; we can gradually change it [Quine]
     Full Idea: We must not leap to the fatalistic conclusion that we are stuck with the conceptual scheme that we grew up in. We can change it bit by bit, plank by plank.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5)
     A reaction: This is an interesting commitment to Strawson's 'revisionary' metaphysics, rather than its duller cousin 'descriptive' metaphysics. Good for Quine. Remember, though, Davidson's 'On the Very Idea of Conceptual Scheme'.
If we start with indeterminate being, we arrive at being and nothing as a united pair [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Presuppositionless thinking which begins by thinking pure, indeterminate being must therefore come to think being and nothing in terms of one another.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate'
     A reaction: In Houlgate's account this seems to be the key Hegelian thought. Simply by confronting nothingness he gets the idea that one concept can lead to an alternative, and that the two can then be grasped together, which is his dialectic.
Thought about being leads to a string of other concepts, like becoming, quantity, specificity, causality... [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: In the course of (Hegel's) logic, we come to understand that to think being is to think becoming, quality, quantity, specificity, essence and existence, substance and causality, and, ultimately, self-determining reason itself.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: Extraordinary! Houlgate spells out nicely what some commentators seem to gloss over, the huge a priori ambitions of Hegel's thought. I find his entire programme utterly implausible.
We must start with absolute abstraction, with no presuppositions, so we start with pure being [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The beginning must be an absolute - an abstract beginning; and so it may not presuppose anything, must not be mediated by anything or have a ground; rather it is itself to be the ground of the entire science. ...The beginning therefore is pure being.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], p.70), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'Logic'
     A reaction: This is the 'presuppositionless' beginning of Hegel's metaphysics, which Houlgate emphasises. Hegel's logic is very obviously a direct descendent of Descartes' Cogito. But it is pure thought, with no mention of a Self.
Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'Logic'
     A reaction: Not a very clear definition, given that thinking about a table appears to be a 'thing grasped in thought'. Presumably it refers to things which can only be grasped in thought, which seems to make it entirely a priori.
Metaphysics is the lattice which makes incoming material intelligible [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Metaphysics means nothing other than the range of general determinations of thought, the diamond lattice, as it were, into which we bring all material and thereby first make it intelligible.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Nature (Encylopedia II) [1817], §3), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This sounds to me like a perfect summary of Kant's transcendental view. Metaphysics is the a priori deconstruction of our conceptual scheme. But for Kant it is fixed, and for Hegel it is dynamic.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 7. Against Metaphysics
On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel]
     Full Idea: In continental Europe it is widely believed that the metaphysical game was played out in Hegel.
     From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Intro
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 6. Logical Analysis
If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money... [Quine]
     Full Idea: If if time is money then if time is not money then time is money then if if if time is not money then time is money then time is money then if time is money then time is money.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.95)
     A reaction: Quine offers this with no hint of a smile. I reproduce it for the benefit of people who hate analytic philosophy, and get tired of continental philosophy being attacked for its obscurity.
Logicians don't paraphrase logic into language, because they think in the symbolic language [Quine]
     Full Idea: The logician does not even need to paraphrase the vernacular into his logical notation, for he has learned to think directly in his logical notation, or even (which is the beauty of the thing) to let it think for him.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
     A reaction: See Williamson's love of logic (and his book on modal metaphysics). This idea embodies the dream of hardcore Frege-Russellian analytic philosophers. I wish someone had told me when I studied logic that the target was to actually think symbolically.
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
Without philosophy, science is barren and futile [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Let other sciences try to argue as much as they like without philosophy - without it they can have in them neither life, Spirit, nor truth.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 67)
     A reaction: To be pinned up in every physics laboratory in the world. On the whole I agree with this. My slogan is 'science is the servant of philosophy'. An unphilosophical scientist is just a technologist, an artisan.
Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine]
     Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126)
     A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised.
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
Truth does not appear by asserting reasons and then counter-reasons [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is not difficult to see that the way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.28), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100
     A reaction: This is a pretty good description of the way Plato and Aristotle do philosophy, so this idea, which must be a founding idea for the 'continental school', is extremely radical. Personally I identify rationality with believing things for good reasons.
We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §80Z p.115), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: This sounds like a combination of Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein, and may be one of the ideas that launches 'continental' philosophy. Recent French thinkers talk continually of 'liberation'.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 1. On Reason
Highest reason is aesthetic, and truth and good are subordinate to beauty [Hegel]
     Full Idea: I am now convinced that the highest act of reason, which embraces all ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness are brothers only in beauty.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Oldest System Prog. of German Idealism [1796]), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Append
     A reaction: This seems to be the distinctive value framework of the romantic movement and the nineteenth century, where art is destined to replace religion. However, Plato in the Symposium is an interesting ally. Aim for beauty, and the rest follows?
The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally [Hegel]
     Full Idea: To him who looks at the world rationally, the world looks rationally back; the two exist in reciprocal relationship.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], Intro p.29), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: This is a nice variation on the stoic idea that nature is essentially rational. If we are capable of rationality, then nature has made us that way. Romantics seem to prefer looking at nature less rationally, so what do they see in nature?
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 3. Pure Reason
Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Let thought follow its own course; and I think badly whenever I add something of my own.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24 Add 2), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100
     A reaction: The idea that reason has a course of its own is a mega-assumption, which I would only accept after a lot of persuasion, which I doubt that Hegel can provide. The modern analytic idea of metaphysics as logic has a similar basis.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 5. Objectivity
Objectivity is not by correspondence, but by the historical determined necessity of Geist [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: What gives objectivity to a judgment about an object is not correspondence, but the way in which a judgement is located within a pattern of reasonng that is determined by the way in which Geist is historically determined as necessarily taking the object.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], Intro) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860
     A reaction: I quote this, but I'm blowed if I can make sense of how objectivity could be achieved in such a way. How can a historical process create a necessary judgement? Sorry, I'm fairly new to Hegel. Pinker says it is the practice of giving reasons.
Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is the categories that elevate mere perception into objectivity, into experience; but these concepts ...are conditioned by the given material. ...Hence the understanding, or cognition through categories, cannot become cognizant of things-in-themselves.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §43-4)
     A reaction: As one often fears with Hegel, this sounds like a deep insight, but is less persuasive when translated into simpler English (if I've got it right!). Being 'conditioned by the material' strikes me as just what is needed for good categories.
Subjective and objective are not firmly opposed, but merge into one another [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is usually believed that the subjective and objective are firmly opposed to one another. But this is not the case; they in fact pass over into one another.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 026 add)
     A reaction: I take this to mean that they are on a spectrum, rather than being binary opposites. This seems reasonable to me, since I take there to be degrees of objectivity.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 8. Naturalising Reason
The structure of reason is a social and historical achievement [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: The lesson of Hegel's Phenomenology was that the structure of reason was social, and was therefore a historical achievement.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 10
     A reaction: This must be one of the most influential ideas to have filtered into the modern world. It is a predecessor of Marxist sociology. The idea that stands against it is Frege's platonist view of logic, making it necessary, despite being historical.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 9. Limits of Reason
Truth does not come from giving reasons for and against propositions [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The way of asserting a proposition, adducing reasons for it, and in the same way refuting its opposite by reasons, is not the form in which truth can appear.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 48)
     A reaction: I can't see Plato or Aristotle agreeing with this. It is obviously the prelude to Hegel's dialectical account of reasoning. However, if we don't believe things because we have good reason to, I'm not sure where we shoud start.
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 2. Sufficient Reason
Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux]
     Full Idea: Hegel saw that the absolutization of the principle of sufficient reason (which marked the culmination of the belief in the necessity of what is) required the devaluation of the principle of non-contradiction.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812], 3) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 3
     A reaction: I pass this on without understanding it, though a joint study of my collection of ideas on sufficient reason and non-contradiction might make it clear. [Let me know if you can explain it!]
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 3. Non-Contradiction
If you say that a contradiction is true, you change the meaning of 'not', and so change the subject [Quine]
     Full Idea: Those who regard the conjunction p.not-p as true think they are talking about negation, 'not', but this ceases to be recognisable as negation. The deviant logician's predicament is when he tries to deny the doctrine he only changes the subject.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.6)
     A reaction: The charge of 'changing the subject' has become a classic move in modern discussions of non-standard logics. It is an important idea in discussions of arguments, and is found in Kant's account of the Ontological Argument.
To affirm 'p and not-p' is to have mislearned 'and' or 'not' [Quine]
     Full Idea: To affirm a compound of the form 'p and not-p' is just to have mislearned one or both of these particles.
     From: Willard Quine (From Stimulus to Science [1995], p.23), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1
     A reaction: Quoted by Fogelin. This summarises the view of logic developed by the young Wittgenstein, that logical terms are 'operators', rather than referring terms. Of course the speaker may have a compartmentalised mind, or not understand 'p' properly.
If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel]
     Full Idea: If truth were nothing more than lack of contradiction, one would have to examine first of all, with regard to each concept, whether it does not on its own account, contain an inner contradiction.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §33 Rem)
     A reaction: This is a very nice thought, which modern analytic philosophers, steeped in logic, should think about. It is always presumed that a contradiction is between a proposition and its negation, not some inner feature.
Being and nothing are the same and not the same, which is the identity of identity and non-identity [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Pure being and pure nothing are the same, ...but on the contrary they are not the same ...they are absolutely distinct. ...This is the identity of identity and non-identity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.i.1C p.82,74), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: Even Moore, who is very patient with Hegel, gets cross at this point, describing such talk as 'shocking'. He's not wrong. Moore later says that the reason in reality tolerates contradictions, but human understanding can't.
The so-called world is filled with contradiction [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The so-called world is never and nowhere without contradiction. (...but it is unable to endure it)
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.ii.2C(b)), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: [Second bit in Ency I §11] To clarify this one would need to understand 'so-called'. Note that his claim is not that the world contains occasional contradictions, but that the whole of reality is contradictory. I think this idea is nonsense.
2. Reason / B. Laws of Thought / 6. Ockham's Razor
Good algorithms and theories need many occurrences of just a few elements [Quine]
     Full Idea: The power and simplicity of an algorithm, or indeed of any theory, depend on there being many occurrences of few elements rather than few occurrences of many.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], III)
     A reaction: Not sure how this applies to a software function. One which produces a good result from a large number of input variables sounds particularly impressive to me. Many occurrences of a single variable sounds rather inefficient.
The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine]
     Full Idea: It is the quest for system and simplicity that has kept driving the scientist to posit further entities as values of his variables. By positing molecules, Boyles' law of gases could be assimilated into a general theory of bodies in motion.
     From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.262)
     A reaction: Interesting that a desire for simplicity might lead to multiplications of entities. In fact, I presume molecules had been proposed elsewhere in science, and were adopted in gas-theory because they were thought to exist, not because simplicity is nice.
In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine]
     Full Idea: In classical arithmetic, ratios were posited to make division generally applicable, negative numbers to make subtraction generally applicable, and irrationals and finally imaginaries to make exponentiation generally applicable.
     From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.263)
     A reaction: This is part of Quine's proposal (c.f. Idea 8207) that entities have to be multiplied in order to produce simplicity. He is speculating. Maybe they are proposed because they are just obvious, and the generality is a nice side-effect.
2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic
Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the domain of individual ethics, we find the consciousness of dialectic in those universally familiar proverbs 'pride goes before a fall' and 'too much wit outwits itself'. ...Joy relieves itself in tears, and melancholy can be revealed in a smile.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: 'Too clever by half' is the English version. Hegel's dialectic suggests that each concept somehow implies its opposite, rather than a mere mercurial drift from one extreme to the other. Most pride doesn't lead to a fall.
Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression, and it is the principle through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science. ..[Add 1] It is the principle of all motion, of all life.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81)
Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is in the Platonic philosophy that dialectic first occurs in a form which is freely scientific, and hence also objective. With Socrates, dialectical thinking still has a predominantly subjective shape, consistent with his irony.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81 Add1)
     A reaction: I don't understand how dialectic can be 'objective', given that it is a method rather than a belief. Plato certainly seems to elevate dialectic into something almost mystical, because of what is said to be within its power.
Hegel's dialectic is not thesis-antithesis-synthesis, but usually negation of negation of the negation [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
     Full Idea: The dialectic is often described in terms of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis - though this is not a Hegelian way of speaking. Hegel himself sometimes describes it in terms of negation and negation of the negation.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.i.C(c) p.150) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: A footnote says the first form of description only occurs once in Hegel's work. I am guessing that Marx is responsible for the standard misrepresentation.
Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The older metaphysics became dogmatism because, given the nature of finite determinations, it had to assume that of two opposed assertions (of the kind that those propositions were) one must be true and the other false.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §32)
     A reaction: While dialethism in logic looks very dubious to me, I have every sympathy with Hegel when it comes to the reasonings of ordinary language. There it is much harder to know whether you are addressing truly opposed assertions.
Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel's 'dialectic' is often characterised in terms of the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is, however, not the way he presents it. The core of the dialectic is rather what Hegel terms the 'negation of the negation'.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy
     A reaction: Interestingly, this connects it to debates about intuitionist logic, which denies that double-negation necessarily makes a positive. Presumably Marx emphasised the first reading.
Dialectic is the instability of thoughts generating their opposite, and then new more complex thoughts [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The dialectical principle, for Hegel, is the principle whereby apparently stable thoughts reveal their inherent instability by turning into their opposites and then into new, more complex thoughts (as being turns to nothing, and then becoming).
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: Houlgate says this is unique to Hegel, and is NOT the familiar thesis-antithesis-synthesis idea of dialectic, found in Kant and Engels. Hegelian idea shares the Greek idea of insights arising from oppositions.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 1. Definitions
Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it [Quine]
     Full Idea: Definition rests on synonymy, rather than explaining it.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.26)
2. Reason / D. Definition / 7. Contextual Definition
Contextual definition shifted the emphasis from words to whole sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Contextual definition precipitated a revolution in semantics. The primary vehicle of meaning is seen no longer as the word, but as the sentence.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.69)
     A reaction: I think the idea is that the term is now supported entirely by its surrounding language, and not by its denotation of something in the world.
Definition by words is determinate but relative; fixing contexts could make it absolute [Quine]
     Full Idea: A definition endows a word with complete determinacy of meaning relative to other words. But we could determine the meaning of a new word absolutely by specifying contexts which are to be true and contexts which are to be false.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.89)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of Quine's distinction between the interior of 'the web' and its edges. The attack on the analytic/synthetic distinction will break down the boundary between the two. Surprising to find 'absolute' anywhere in Quine.
Bentham's contextual definitions preserved terms after their denotation became doubtful [Quine]
     Full Idea: If Bentham found some term convenient but ontologically embarrassing, contextual definition enabled him in some cases to continue to enjoy the services of the term while disclaiming its denotation.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.68)
     A reaction: In Quine's terms this would be to withdraw the term from the periphery of the theory, where it has to meet the world, and make it part of the inner connections of the theory. He suggests that Bentham invented this technique.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 12. Paraphrase
Russell offered a paraphrase of definite description, to avoid the commitment to objects [Quine]
     Full Idea: Russell's theory involved defining a term not by presenting a direct equivalent of it, but by 'paraphrasis', providing equivalents of the sentences. In this way, reference to fictitious objects can be simulated without our being committed to the objects.
     From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.75)
     A reaction: I hadn't quite grasped that the modern strategy of paraphrase tracks back to Russell - though it now looks obvious, thanks to Quine. Paraphrase is a beautiful way of sidestepping ontological problems. See Frege on the moons of Jupiter.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 1. Fallacy
The Struthionic Fallacy is that of burying one's head in the sand [Quine]
     Full Idea: The Struthionic Fallacy is that of burying one's head in the sand [which I name from the Greek for 'ostrich']
     From: Willard Quine (Lecture on Nominalism [1946], §4)
     A reaction: David Armstrong said this is the the fallacy involved in a denial of universals. Quine is accusing Carnap and co. of the fallacy.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 2. Defining Truth
Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something is. This is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare correctness.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213)
     A reaction: I would translate this idea as saying that bare correctness is conscious awareness of the truthmaker for some statement. Hegel then offers a 'deeper' account of the nature of truth. I would say awareness is quite separate from the concept of truth.
Genuine truth is the resolution of the highest contradiction [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The highest truth, truth as such, is the resolution of the highest opposition and contradiction.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 99), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Art'
     A reaction: Uneasy about the word 'highest', and the general Hegelian dream of 'resolving' contradictions, rather than just eliminating at least one component of them. No one else uses the word 'truth' like this. I suppose this Truth has a capital 'T'.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 3. Value of Truth
What I hold true must also be part of my feelings and character [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Whatever I hold as true, whatever ought to be valid for me, must also be in my feeling, must belong to my being and character.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], I: 97), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Philosophy'
     A reaction: I can see that truths do tend to become part of our character, but not that they ought to do so. I suppose I try to live my life enmeshed in the many truths which I have personally selected from the maelstrom of possibilities that engulf us.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: The terms of Hegel's logic are not judgements or propositions, but rather concepts: and it is concepts, in this view, that are true or false.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: Quite alien to normal studies of logic, but I can make sense of a correspondence theory of truth for concepts, which might be more interesting than normal propositional or predicate logic. Does the concept of, say, a 'natural law' correspond to anything?
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 7. Falsehood
In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When truth is viewed in the deeper sense, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, and man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213)
     A reaction: See Idea 19071 for the 'deeper sense'. This seems to confirm that Hegel's deeper concept of truth resembles authenticity. I guess it will be something fulfilling the essence of the thing. Doctors must be proper doctors. Gold must be true gold?
3. Truth / C. Correspondence Truth / 1. Correspondence Truth
The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Truth in the deeper sense is the identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of a true state or work of art. These are true if they are as they ought to be (their reality corresponds to their notion).
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213)
     A reaction: This seems to be a correspondence theory, but not as we know it, Jim. He seems to have a value built into truth, which sounds to me like existentialist 'authenticity'. I like what he is saying, but I would analyse it into two or more components.
Science is sympathetic to truth as correspondence, since it depends on observation [Quine]
     Full Idea: Science, thanks to its links with observation, retains some title to a correspondence theory of truth.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.63)
     A reaction: I would describe what he is affirming as a 'robust' theory of truth. An interesting aside, given his usual allegiance to disquotational, and even redundancy, accounts of truth. You can hardly rely on observations if you think they contain no truth.
3. Truth / D. Coherence Truth / 1. Coherence Truth
The true is the whole [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The true is the whole.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 20)
     A reaction: This is the full idealist coherence view of truth, that one only approaches the Truth (capital T) as one builds up a more and more coherent picture. It makes truth unattainable, and that strikes me as a bit silly.
3. Truth / F. Semantic Truth / 2. Semantic Truth
Talk of 'truth' when sentences are mentioned; it reminds us that reality is the point of sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: The truth predicate has its utility in places where we are compelled to mention sentences. It then serves to point through the sentence to the reality; it serves as a reminder that though sentences are mentioned, reality is still the whole point.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: A sensible interpretation of the Tarskian account of truth as disquotation. Quine neatly combines a common sense correspondence with a sophisticated logicians view of the role of truth. So what does "I want the truth here" mean?
3. Truth / H. Deflationary Truth / 1. Redundant Truth
Truth is redundant for single sentences; we do better to simply speak the sentence [Quine]
     Full Idea: Rather than speak of truth, we do better simply to say the sentence and so speak not about language but about the world. Of singly given sentences, the perfect theory of truth is the 'disappearance theory of truth' (Sellars).
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: Quine defends truth as the crucial link between language and reality, but only for large groups of sentences. If someone accuses you of lying or being incorrect, you can respond by repeating your sentence in a firmer tone of voice.
4. Formal Logic / B. Propositional Logic PL / 2. Tools of Propositional Logic / a. Symbols of PL
The logician's '→' does not mean the English if-then [Quine]
     Full Idea: The logician drops 'if-then' in favour of '→' without ever entertaining the mistaken idea that they are synonymous.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
     A reaction: [Quine uses the older horseshoe symbol] The conditional in English is not well understood, whereas the symbol is unambiguous. A warning to myself, since I have a tendency to translate symbols into English all the time. [p.156 'implies' is worse!]
4. Formal Logic / B. Propositional Logic PL / 2. Tools of Propositional Logic / e. Axioms of PL
We can eliminate 'or' from our basic theory, by paraphrasing 'p or q' as 'not(not-p and not-q)' [Quine]
     Full Idea: The construction of 'alternation' (using 'or') is useful in practice, but superfluous in theory. It can be paraphrased using only negation and conjunction. We say that 'p or q' is paraphrased as 'not(not-p and not-q)'.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: Quine treats 'not' and 'and' as the axiomatic logical connectives, and builds the others from those, presumably because that is the smallest number he could get it down to. I quite like it, because it seems to mesh with basic thought procedures.
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 1. Modal Logic
Maybe we can quantify modally if the objects are intensional, but it seems unlikely [Quine]
     Full Idea: Perhaps there is no objection to quantifying into modal contexts as long as the values of any variables thus quantified are limited to intensional objects, but they also lead to disturbing examples.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §3)
     A reaction: [Quine goes on to give his examples] I take it that possibilities are features of actual reality, not merely objects of thought. The problem is that they are harder to know than actual objects.
Quine says quantified modal logic creates nonsense, bad ontology, and false essentialism [Melia on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine charges quantified modal systems of logic with giving rise to unintended sense or nonsense, committing us to an incomprehensible ontology, and entailing an implausible or unsustainable Aristotelian essentialism.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by Joseph Melia - Modality Ch.3
     A reaction: A nice summary. Personally I like essentialism in accounts of science (see Nature|Laws of Nature|Essentialism), so would like to save it in metaphysics. Possible worlds ontology may be very surprising, rather than 'incomprehensible'.
Quantified modal logic collapses if essence is withdrawn [Quine]
     Full Idea: The whole of quantified modal logic collapses if essence is withdrawn.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121)
     A reaction: Quine offers an interesting qualification to this crushing remark in Idea 13590. The point is that objects must retain their identity in modal contexts, as if I say 'John Kennedy might have been Richard Nixon'. What could that mean?
4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 6. Temporal Logic
It is important that the quantification over temporal entities is timeless [Quine]
     Full Idea: It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of recognising the timelessness of quantification over temporal entities.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], IV)
     A reaction: 'Some moments in this cricket match were crucial'. The domain is not timeless, but consists of moments in this match. Can you say the quantifier is timeless but its domain is not? Only in the sense that 'very' is a timeless word, I think.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 1. Set Theory
Set theory is full of Platonist metaphysics, so Quine aimed to keep it separate from logic [Quine, by Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Quine has showed us how set theory - now recognised to be positively awash in Platonistic metaphysics - can and should be prevented from infecting logic proper.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Intro
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / a. Axioms for sets
NF has no models, but just blocks the comprehension axiom, to avoid contradictions [Quine, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Quine's New Foundations system of set theory, devised with no model in mind, but on the basis of a hunch that a purely formal restriction on the comprehension axiom would block all contradictions.
     From: report of Willard Quine (New Foundations for Mathematical Logic [1937]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.18
     A reaction: The point is that Quine (who had an ontological preference for 'desert landscapes') attempted to do without an ontological commitment to objects (and their subsequent models), with a purely formal system. Quine's NF is not now highly regarded.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / o. Axiom of Constructibility V = L
Quine wants V = L for a cleaner theory, despite the scepticism of most theorists [Quine, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Quine suggests that V = L be accepted in set theory because it makes for a cleaner theory, even though most set theorists are skeptical of V = L.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch.1
     A reaction: Shapiro cites it as a case of a philosopher trying to make recommendations to mathematicians. Maddy supports Quine.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 4. Axioms for Sets / p. Axiom of Reducibility
Reducibility undermines type ramification, and is committed to the existence of functions [Quine, by Linsky,B]
     Full Idea: Quine charges that the axiom of Reducibility both undoes the effect of the ramification, and commits the theory to a platonist view of propositional functions (which is a theory of sets, once use/mention confusions are cleared up).
     From: report of Willard Quine (Set Theory and its Logic [1963], p.249-58) by Bernard Linsky - Russell's Metaphysical Logic 6.1
The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if true, it isn't needed [Quine]
     Full Idea: The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if it is true, the ramification it is meant to cope with was pointless to begin with.
     From: Willard Quine (Introduction to Russell's Theory of Types [1967], p.152), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1
     A reaction: Maddy says the rejection of Reducibility collapsed the ramified theory of types into the simple theory.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 5. Conceptions of Set / d. Naïve logical sets
The set scheme discredited by paradoxes is actually the most natural one [Quine]
     Full Idea: Each proposed revision of set theory is unnatural, because the natural scheme is the unrestricted one that the antinomies discredit.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.16)
     A reaction: You can either takes this free-far-all version of set theory, and gradually restrain it for each specific problem, or start from scratch and build up in safe steps. The latter is (I think) the 'iterated' approach.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 7. Natural Sets
Russell's antinomy challenged the idea that any condition can produce a set [Quine]
     Full Idea: In the case of Russell's antinomy, the tacit and trusted pattern of reasoning that is found wanting is this: for any condition you can formulate, there is a class whose members are the things meeting the condition.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.11)
     A reaction: This is why Russell's Paradox is so important for set theory, which in turn makes it important for the foundations of mathematics.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 8. Critique of Set Theory
Two things can never entail three things [Quine, by Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Two things can never entail three things.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.17
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic
My logical grammar has sentences by predication, then negation, conjunction, and existential quantification [Quine]
     Full Idea: We chose a standard grammar in which the simple sentences are got by predication, and all further sentences are generated from these by negation, conjunction, and existential quantification.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.3)
     A reaction: It is interesting that we 'choose' our logic, apparently guided by an imperative to achieve minimal ontology. Of these basic ingredients, negation and predication are the more mysterious, especially the latter. Quine is a bit of an 'ostrich' about that.
In order to select the logic justified by experience, we would need to use a lot of logic [Boghossian on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine ends up with the logic that is maximally justified by experience, ...but a large number of the core principles of logic will have to be used to select the logic that is maximally justified by experience.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Paul Boghossian - Knowledge of Logic p.233
     A reaction: In order to grasp some core principles of logic, you will probably need a certain amount of experience. I take logic to be an abstracted feature of reality (unless it is extended by pure fictions). Some basic logic may be hard wired in us.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 3. Value of Logic
Maybe logical truth reflects reality, but in different ways in different languages [Quine]
     Full Idea: Perhaps the logical truths owe their truth to certain traits of reality which are reflected in one way by the grammar of our language, in another way by the grammar of another language, and in a third way by the grammar and lexicon of a third language.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.7)
     A reaction: This explains Quine's subsequent interest in translation, and the interest of his pupil Davidson in charity, and whether there could actually be rival conceptual schemes. I like the link between logical truths and reality, which follows Russell.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 6. Classical Logic
Elementary logic requires truth-functions, quantifiers (and variables), identity, and also sets of variables [Quine]
     Full Idea: Elementary logic, as commonly systematized nowadays, comprises truth-function theory (involving 'or', 'and', 'not' etc.), quantifiers (and their variables), and identity theory ('='). In addition, set theory requires classes among values of variables.
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II)
     A reaction: Quine is famous for trying to squeeze properties out of the picture, which would then block higher-order logics (which quantify over properties). Quine's list gives a nice programme for a student of the philosophy of logic to understand.
5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 7. Second-Order Logic
Quine says higher-order items are intensional, and lack a clearly defined identity relation [Quine, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Quine (in 1941) attacked 'Principia Mathematica' because the items in the range of higher-order variables (attributes etc) are intensional and thus do not have a clearly defined identity relation.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic [1941]) by Stewart Shapiro - Foundations without Foundationalism 1.3
Various strategies try to deal with the ontological commitments of second-order logic [Hale/Wright on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine said higher-order logic is 'set theory in sheep's clothing', and there is concern about the ontology that is involved. One approach is to deny quantificational ontological commitments, or say that the entities involved are first-order objects.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by B Hale / C Wright - Logicism in the 21st Century 8
     A reaction: [compressed] The second strategy is from Boolos. This question seems to be right at the heart of the strategy of exploring our ontology through the study of our logic.
Quine rejects second-order logic, saying that predicates refer to multiple objects [Quine, by Hodes]
     Full Idea: Quine is unwilling to suppose second-order logic intelligible. He holds to Mill's account of the referential role of a predicate: it multiply denotes any and all objects to which it applies, and there is no need for a further 'predicative' entity.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970]) by Harold Hodes - Logicism and Ontological Commits. of Arithmetic p.130
     A reaction: If we assume that 'quantifying over' something is a commitment to its existence, then I think I am with Quine, because you end up with a massive commitment to universals, which I prefer to avoid.
Quantifying over predicates is treating them as names of entities [Quine]
     Full Idea: To put the predicate letter 'F' in a quantifier is to treat predicate position suddenly as name position, and hence to treat predicates as names of entities of some sort.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.5)
     A reaction: It is tricky to distinguish quantifying over predicates in a first-order way (by reifying them), and in a second-order way (where it is not clear whether you are quantifying over a property or a unified set of things.
5. Theory of Logic / B. Logical Consequence / 1. Logical Consequence
Logical consequence is marked by being preserved under all nonlogical substitutions [Quine, by Sider]
     Full Idea: Quine's view of logical consequence is that it is when there is no way of uniformly substituting nonlogical expressions in the premises and consequences so that the premises all remain true but the consequence now becomes false.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], p.103) by Theodore Sider - Logic for Philosophy 1.5
     A reaction: One might just say that the consequence holds if you insert consistent variables for the nonlogical terms, which looks like Aristotle's view of the matter.
5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 1. Ontology of Logic
Whether a modal claim is true depends on how the object is described [Quine, by Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Quine says if ∃x□(x>7) makes sense, then for which object x is the condition rendered true? Specify it as '9' and it is apparently rendered true, specify it as 'the number of planets' and it is apparently rendered false.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953]) by Kit Fine - Quine on Quantifying In p.105
     A reaction: This is normally characterised as Quine saying that only de dicto involvement is possible, and not de re involvement. Or that that all essences are nominal, and cannot be real.
Logical languages are rooted in ordinary language, and that connection must be kept [Quine]
     Full Idea: A logical language is not independent of ordinary language. It has its roots in ordinary language, and these roots are not to be severed.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
     A reaction: Music to my ears. When you study logic, no one has to teach you what the words 'or' and 'if-then' mean, but they are disambiguated by the symbolism. The roots of logic are in ordinary talk of 'and', 'or' and 'not', which is the real world.
5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 3. If-Thenism
Quine quickly dismisses If-thenism [Quine, by Musgrave]
     Full Idea: Quine quickly dismisses If-thenism.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.327) by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §5
     A reaction: [Musgrave quotes a long chunk of Quine which is hard to compress!] Effectively, he says If-thenism is cheating, or begs the question, by eliminating whole sections of perfectly good mathematics, because they cannot be derived from axioms.
5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 4. Logic by Convention
Logic needs general conventions, but that needs logic to apply them to individual cases [Quine, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Quine argues that logic could not be established by conventions, since the logical truths, being infinite in number, must be given by general conventions rather than singly; and logic is needed in the meta-theory, to apply to individual cases.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935]) by Georges Rey - The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction 3.4
     A reaction: A helpful insight into Quine's claim. If only someone would print these one sentence summaries at the top of classic papers, we would all get far more out of them at first reading. Assuming Rey is right!
Claims that logic and mathematics are conventional are either empty, uninteresting, or false [Quine]
     Full Idea: If logic and mathematics being true by convention says the primitives can be conventionally described, that works for anything, and is empty; if the conventions are only for those fields, that's uninteresting; if a general practice, that is false.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.102)
     A reaction: This is Quine's famous denial of the traditional platonist view, and the new Wittgensteinian conventional view, preparing the ground for a more naturalistic and empirical view. I feel more sympathy with Quine than with the other two.
Logic isn't conventional, because logic is needed to infer logic from conventions [Quine]
     Full Idea: If logic is to proceed mediately from conventions, logic is needed for inferring logic from the conventions. Conventions for adopting logical primitives can only be communicated by free use of those very idioms.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.104)
     A reaction: A common pattern of modern argument, which always seems to imply that nothing can ever get off the ground. I suspect that there are far more benign circles in the world of thought than most philosophers imagine.
If a convention cannot be communicated until after its adoption, what is its role? [Quine]
     Full Idea: When a convention is incapable of being communicated until after its adoption, its role is not clear.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.106)
     A reaction: Quine is discussing the basis of logic, but the point applies to morality - that if there is said to be a convention at work, the concepts of morality must already exist to get the conventional framework off the ground. What is it that comes first?
5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 1. Bivalence
Bivalence applies not just to sentences, but that general terms are true or false of each object [Quine]
     Full Idea: It is in the spirit of bivalence not just to treat each closed sentence as true or false; as Frege stressed, each general term must be definitely true or false of each object, specificiable or not.
     From: Willard Quine (What Price Bivalence? [1981], p.36)
     A reaction: But note that this is only the 'spirit' of the thing. If you had (as I do) doubts about whether predicates actually refer to genuine 'properties', you may want to stick to the whole sentence view, and not be so fine-grained.
5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 2. Excluded Middle
Excluded middle has three different definitions [Quine]
     Full Idea: The law of excluded middle, or 'tertium non datur', may be pictured variously as 1) Every closed sentence is true or false; or 2) Every closed sentence or its negation is true; or 3) Every closed sentence is true or not true.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.6)
     A reaction: Unlike many top philosophers, Quine thinks clearly about such things. 1) is the classical bivalent reading of excluded middle; 2) is the purely syntactic version; 3) leaves open how we interpret the 'not-true' option.
Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The law of excluded middle is ...the maxim of the definite understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in doing so falls into it.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.172), quoted by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.5
     A reaction: Not sure how this works, but he would say this, wouldn't he?
5. Theory of Logic / D. Assumptions for Logic / 4. Identity in Logic
Quantification theory can still be proved complete if we add identity [Quine]
     Full Idea: Complete proof procedures are available not only for quantification theory, but for quantification theory and identity together. Gödel showed that the theory is still complete if we add self-identity and the indiscernability of identicals.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.5)
     A reaction: Hence one talks of first-order logic 'with identity', even though, as Quine observes, it is unclear whether identity is actually a logical or a mathematical notion.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 1. Logical Form
Reduction to logical forms first simplifies idioms and grammar, then finds a single reading of it [Quine]
     Full Idea: Ordinary language is reduced to logical form in two ways: reduction of the variety of idioms and grammatical constructions, and reduction of each surviving idiom to one fixed and convenient interpretation.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], V)
     A reaction: Is there a conflict between a 'fixed' and a 'convenient' result? By 'fixed' I suppose he means it is a commitment (to not waver). What is the logical form of a sentence which is deliberately ambiguous?
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives
If logical truths essentially depend on logical constants, we had better define the latter [Hacking on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine said a logical truth is a truth in which only logical constants occur essentially, ...but then a fruitful definition of 'logical constant' is called for.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §02
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / c. not
Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the 'negation of negation' is negation that, as it were, doubles back on itself and 'relates itself to itself'.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 6 'Space'
     A reaction: [ref VNP 1823 p.108] Glad we've cleared that one up.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 4. Variables in Logic
We study bound variables not to know reality, but to know what reality language asserts [Quine]
     Full Idea: We look to bound variables in connection with ontology not in order to know what there is, but in order to know what a given remark or doctrine, ours or someone else's, says there is.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.15)
'Corner quotes' (quasi-quotation) designate 'whatever these terms designate' [Quine]
     Full Idea: A 'quasi-quotation' [corner quotes, Quine quotes] designates that (unspecified) expression which is obtained from the contents of the corners by replacing the Greek letters by the (unspecified) expressions which they designate.
     From: Willard Quine (Mathematical Logic (revised) [1940], 1.6)
     A reaction: Filed under 'variables', as they seem to be variables that can refer to actual expressions, like algebra. Quine was determined to distinguish clearly between 'mention' and 'use'. 'Half-hearted substitutional quantification', says Fine.
5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 6. Relations in Logic
All relations, apart from ancestrals, can be reduced to simpler logic [Quine]
     Full Idea: Much of the theory of relations can be developed as a virtual theory, in which we seem to talk of relations, but can explain our notation in terms {finally] of just the logic of truth-functions, quantification and identity. The exception is ancestrals.
     From: Willard Quine (Lecture on Nominalism [1946], §8)
     A reaction: The irreducibility of ancestrals is offered as a reason for treating sets as universals.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / a. Names
If we had to name objects to make existence claims, we couldn't discuss all the real numbers [Quine]
     Full Idea: Since one wants to say that real numbers exist and yet one cannot name each of them, it is not unreasonable to relinquish the connection between naming an object and making an existence claim about it.
     From: Willard Quine (works [1961]), quoted by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.2
     A reaction: One could say that same about people, such as 'the most recent citizen of Brazil'. Some sort of successful reference seems to be needed, such as 'the next prime beyond the biggest so far found'. Depends what your predicate is going to be.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / b. Names as descriptive
Failure of substitutivity shows that a personal name is not purely referential [Quine]
     Full Idea: Failure of substitutivity shows that the occurrence of a personal name is not purely referential.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §1)
     A reaction: I don't think I understand the notion of a name being 'purely' referential, as if it somehow ceased to be a word, and was completely transparent to the named object.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 1. Naming / f. Names eliminated
We might do without names, by converting them into predicates [Quine, by Kirkham]
     Full Idea: Quine suggests that we can have a language with just predicates and no names. Thus for 'Ralph is red' we say 'x Ralphises and x is red'.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Mathematical Logic (revised) [1940]) by Richard L. Kirkham - Theories of Truth: a Critical Introduction 5.6
     A reaction: Kirkham discusses this as a way of getting round the lack of names in Tarski's theory of truth (which just uses objects, predicates and quantifiers). Otherwise you must supplement Tarski with an account of what the names refer to.
Canonical notation needs quantification, variables and predicates, but not names [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Quine says that names need not be part of one's canonical notation; in fact, whatever scientific purposes are accomplished by names can be carried out just as well by the devices of quantification, variables and predicates.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.2
     A reaction: This is part of Quine's analysis of where the ontological commitment of a language is to be found. Kripke's notion that a name baptises an item comes as a challenge to this view.
Quine extended Russell's defining away of definite descriptions, to also define away names [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Quine extended Russell's theory for defining away definite descriptions, so that he could also define away names.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.2
     A reaction: Quine also gets rid of universals and properties, so his ontology is squeezed from both the semantic and the metaphysical directions. Quine seems to be the key figure in modern ontology. If you want to expand it (E.J. Lowe), justify yourself to Quine.
Quine's arguments fail because he naively conflates names with descriptions [Fine,K on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's logical argument against modality presupposes a naïve view of singular terms under which no significant distinction is to be drawn between the use of names and descriptions.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 6
     A reaction: See Idea 9201 for Quine's argument. The question is whether '9' and 'the number of planets' are names or descriptions. The 'number of planets' is not remotely descriptive of 9, so it must be referential. So '9' is a name? Hm.
Names are not essential, because naming can be turned into predication [Quine]
     Full Idea: Names are convenient but redundant, because Fa is equivalent to (an x)(a=x,Fx), so a need only occur in the context a=, but this can be rendered as a simple predicate A, so that Fa gives way to (an x)(Ax.Fx).
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: In eliminating names from analysis, Quine takes Russell's strategy a step further. It is probably this which provoked Kripke into going right back to Mill's view of names as basic labels. The name/description boundary is blurred. Mr Gradgrind.
5. Theory of Logic / F. Referring in Logic / 2. Descriptions / c. Theory of definite descriptions
Names can be converted to descriptions, and Russell showed how to eliminate those [Quine]
     Full Idea: I have shown that names can be converted to descriptions, and Russell has shown that descriptions can be eliminated.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.12)
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 1. Quantification
Quantifying into referentially opaque contexts often produces nonsense [Quine]
     Full Idea: If to a referentially opaque context of a variable we apply a quantifier, with the intention that it govern that variable from outside the referentially opaque context, then what we commonly end up with is unintended sense or nonsense.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §2)
Objects are the values of variables, so a referentially opaque context cannot be quantified into [Quine]
     Full Idea: The objects of a theory are not properly describable as the things named by the singular terms; they are the values, rather, of the variables of quantification. ..So a referentially opaque context is one that cannot properly be quantified into.
     From: Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953], p.174)
     A reaction: The point being that you cannot accurately pick out the objects in the domain
No sense can be made of quantification into opaque contexts [Quine, by Hale]
     Full Idea: Quine says that no good sense can be made of quantification into opaque contexts.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects Ch.2
     A reaction: This is because poor old Quine was trapped in a world of language, and had lost touch with reality. I can quantify over the things you are thinking about, as long as you are thinking about things that can be quantified over.
Finite quantification can be eliminated in favour of disjunction and conjunction [Quine, by Dummett]
     Full Idea: Quine even asserts that where we have no infinite domains, quantification can be eliminated in favour of finite disjunction and conjunction.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14
     A reaction: Thus ∃x is expressed as 'this or this or this...', and ∀ is expressed as 'this and this and this...' Dummett raises an eyebrow, but it sounds OK to me.
Universal quantification is widespread, but it is definable in terms of existential quantification [Quine]
     Full Idea: Universal quantification is prominent in logical practice but superfluous in theory, since (for all x)Fx obviously amounts to not(exists an x)not-Fx.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: The equivalence between these two works both ways, some you could take the universal quantifier as primitive instead, which would make general truths prior to particular ones. Is there something deep at stake here?
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 4. Substitutional Quantification
Quine thought substitutional quantification confused use and mention, but then saw its nominalist appeal [Quine, by Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Quine at first regarded substitutional quantification as incoherent, behind which there lurked use-mention confusions, but has over the years, given his nominalist dispositions, come to notice its appeal.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Ruth Barcan Marcus - Nominalism and Substitutional Quantifiers p.166
Either reference really matters, or we don't need to replace it with substitutions [Quine]
     Full Idea: When we reconstrue quantification in terms of substituted expressions rather than real values, we waive reference. ...but if reference matters, we cannot afford to waive it as a category; and if it does not, we do not need to.
     From: Willard Quine (Reply to Professor Marcus [1962], p.183)
     A reaction: An odd dilemma to pose. Presumably the substitution account is an attempt to explain how language actually works, without mentioning dubious direct ontological commitment in the quantifiers.
If quantification is all substitutional, there is no ontology [Quine]
     Full Idea: Ontology is meaningless for a theory whose only quantification is substitutionally construed.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.64), quoted by Thomas Hofweber - Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics 03.5.1 n18
     A reaction: Hofweber views it as none the worse for that, since clearly lots of quantification has no ontological commitment at all. But he says it is rightly called 'a nominalists attempt at a free lunch'.
You can't base quantification on substituting names for variables, if the irrationals cannot all be named [Quine]
     Full Idea: A customary argument against quantification based on substitution of names for variables refers to the theorem of set theory that irrational numbers cannot all be assigned integers. Although the integers can all be named, the irrationals therefore can't.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.6)
     A reaction: [He names Ruth Marcus as a source of substitutional quantification] This sounds like more than a mere 'argument' against substitutional quantification, but an actual disproof. Or maybe you just can't quantify once you run out of names.
Some quantifications could be false substitutionally and true objectually, because of nameless objects [Quine]
     Full Idea: An existential quantification could turn out false when substitutionally construed and true when objectually construed, because of there being objects of the purported kind but only nameless ones.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.6)
     A reaction: (Cf. Idea 9025) Some irrational numbers were his candidates for nameless objects, but as decimals they are infinite in length which seems unfair. I don't take even pi or root-2 to be objects in nature, so not naming irrationals doesn't bother me.
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 5. Second-Order Quantification
Putting a predicate letter in a quantifier is to make it the name of an entity [Quine]
     Full Idea: To put the predicate letter 'F' in a quantifier is to treat predicate positions suddenly as name positions, and hence to treat predicates as names of entities of some sort.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.5)
     A reaction: Quine's famous objection to second-order logic. But Quine then struggles to give an account of predicates and properties, and hence is accused by Armstrong of being an 'ostrich'. Boolos 1975 also attacks Quine here.
5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 6. Plural Quantification
Plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether [Quine]
     Full Idea: By certain standardizations of phrasing the contexts that call for plurals can in principle be paraphrased away altogether.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §19)
     A reaction: Laycock, who quotes this, calls it 'unduly optimistic', but I presume that it was the standard view of plural reference until Boolos raised the subject.
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 3. Logical Truth
A sentence is logically true if all sentences with that grammatical structure are true [Quine]
     Full Idea: A sentence is logically true if all sentences with that grammatical structure are true.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.7)
     A reaction: Quine spends some time on the tricky question of deciding which parts of a sentence are grammatical structure ('syncategorematic'), and which parts are what he calls 'lexicon'. I bet there is a Quinean argument which blurs the boundary.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 3. Antinomies
The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The thought that the contradiction which is posited by the determinations of the understanding in what is rational is essential and necessary, has to be considered one of the most important and profound advances of the philosophy of modern times.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48)
     A reaction: This is the aspect of Kant's philosophy which launched the whole career of Hegel. Hegel is the philosopher of the antinomies. Graham Priest is his current representative on earth.
Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The solution to the antinomies is as trivial as they are profound; it consists merely in a tenderness for the things of this world. The stain of contradiction ought not to be in the essence of what is in the world; it must belong only to thinking reason.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem)
     A reaction: A rather Wittgensteinian remark. I love his 'tenderness for the things of this world'! I'm not clear why our thinking should be considered to be inescapably riddled with basic contradictions, as Hegel seems to imply. Just make more effort.
Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The main point that has to be made is that antinomy is found not only in Kant's four particular objects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts and ideas.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem)
     A reaction: I suppose Heraclitus and Empedocles, with their oppositional accounts of reality, are the ancestors of this worldview. I just don't feel that sudden flood of insight from this idea of Hegel that comes from some of the other great philsophical theories.
Antinomies contradict accepted ways of reasoning, and demand revisions [Quine]
     Full Idea: An 'antinomy' produces a self-contradiction by accepted ways of reasoning. It establishes that some tacit and trusted pattern of reasoning must be made explicit and henceforward be avoided or revised.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.05)
     A reaction: Quine treats antinomies as of much greater importance than mere paradoxes. It is often possible to give simple explanations of paradoxes, but antinomies go to the root of our belief system. This was presumably Kant's intended meaning.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 4. Paradoxes in Logic / a. Achilles paradox
Whenever the pursuer reaches the spot where the pursuer has been, the pursued has moved on [Quine]
     Full Idea: The Achilles argument is that (if the front runner keeps running) each time the pursuer reaches a spot where the pursuer has been, the pursued has moved a bit beyond.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.03)
     A reaction: Quine is always wonderfully lucid, and this is the clearest simple statement of the paradox.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 5. Paradoxes in Set Theory / a. Set theory paradoxes
Set theory was struggling with higher infinities, when new paradoxes made it baffling [Quine]
     Full Idea: Unlike elementary logic, the truths of set theory are not obvious. Set theory was straining at the leash of intuition ever since Cantor discovered higher infinites; and with the added impetus of the paradoxes of set theory the leash snapped.
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II)
     A reaction: This problem seems to have forced Quine into platonism about sets, because he felt they were essential for mathematics and science, but couldn't be constructed with precision. So they must be real, but we don't quite understand them.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 5. Paradoxes in Set Theory / d. Russell's paradox
A barber shaves only those who do not shave themselves. So does he shave himself? [Quine]
     Full Idea: In a certain village there is a barber, who shaves all and only those men in the village who do not shave themselves. So does the barber shave himself? The barber shaves himself if and only if he does not shave himself.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.02)
     A reaction: [Russell himself quoted this version of his paradox, from an unnamed source] Quine treats his as trivial because it only concerns barbers, but the full Russell paradox is a major 'antinomy', because it concerns sets.
Membership conditions which involve membership and non-membership are paradoxical [Quine]
     Full Idea: With Russell's antinomy, ...each tie the trouble comes of taking a membership condition that itself talks in turn of membership and non-membership.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.13)
     A reaction: Hence various stipulations to rule out vicious circles or referring to sets of the 'wrong type' are invoked to cure the problem. The big question is how strong to make the restrictions.
5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 6. Paradoxes in Language / a. The Liar paradox
If we write it as '"this sentence is false" is false', there is no paradox [Quine]
     Full Idea: If we supplant the sentence 'this sentence is false' with one saying what it refers to, we get '"this sentence is false" is false'. But then the whole outside sentence attributes falsity no longer to itself but to something else, so there is no paradox.
     From: Willard Quine (The Ways of Paradox [1961], p.07)
     A reaction: Quine is pointing us towards type theory and meta-languages to solve the problem. We now have the Revenge Liar, and the problem has not been fully settled.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry
Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine]
     Full Idea: Felix Klein's so-called 'Erlangerprogramm' in geometry involved characterizing the various branches of geometry by what transformations were irrelevant to each.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.137)
If analytic geometry identifies figures with arithmetical relations, logicism can include geometry [Quine]
     Full Idea: Geometry can be brought into line with logicism simply by identifying figures with arithmetical relations with which they are correlated thought analytic geometry.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.87)
     A reaction: Geometry was effectively reduced to arithmetic by Descartes and Fermat, so this seems right. You wonder, though, whether something isn't missing if you treat geometry as a set of equations. There is more on the screen than what's in the software.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / e. Ordinal numbers
Any progression will do nicely for numbers; they can all then be used to measure multiplicity [Quine]
     Full Idea: The condition on an explication of number can be put succinctly: any progression will do nicely. Russell once held that one must also be able to measure multiplicity, but this was a mistake; any progression can be fitted to that further condition.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §54)
     A reaction: [compressed] This is the strongest possible statement that the numbers are the ordinals, and the Peano Axioms will define them. The Fregean view that cardinality comes first is redundant.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 3. Axioms for Geometry
There are four different possible conventional accounts of geometry [Quine]
     Full Idea: We can construe geometry by 1) identifying it with algebra, which is then defined on the basis of logic; 2) treating it as hypothetical statements; 3) defining it contextually; or 4) making it true by fiat, without making it part of logic.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.99)
     A reaction: [Very compressed] I'm not sure how different 3 is from 2. These are all ways to treat geometry conventionally. You could be more traditional, and say that it is a description of actual space, but the multitude of modern geometries seems against this.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 6. Mathematics as Set Theory / a. Mathematics is set theory
Maths can be reduced to logic and set theory [Quine]
     Full Idea: Researches in the foundations of mathematics have made it clear that all of (interpreted) mathematics can be got down to logic and set theory, and the objects needed for mathematics can be got down to the category of classes (and classes of classes..).
     From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI)
     A reaction: This I take to be a retreat from pure logicism, presumably influenced by Gödel. So can set theory be reduced to logic? Crispin Wright is the one the study.
All the arithmetical entities can be reduced to classes of integers, and hence to sets [Quine]
     Full Idea: The arithmetic of ratios and irrational and imaginary numbers can all be reduced by definition to the theory of classes of positive integers, and this can in turn be reduced to pure set theory.
     From: Willard Quine (Vagaries of Definition [1972], p.53)
     A reaction: This summarises Quine's ontology of mathematics, which tries to eliminate virtually everything, but has to affirm the existence of sets. Can you count sets and their members, if the sets are used to define the numbers?
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 7. Mathematical Structuralism / a. Structuralism
I apply structuralism to concrete and abstract objects indiscriminately [Quine]
     Full Idea: My own line is a yet more sweeping structuralism (than David Lewis's account of classes), applying to concrete and abstract objects indiscriminately.
     From: Willard Quine (Structure and Nature [1992], p.6), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.9
     A reaction: Shapiro calls this 'breathtaking', and retreats from it, but it is something like my own view, starting from Mill's pebbles and working up.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 3. Mathematical Nominalism
Nominalism rejects both attributes and classes (where extensionalism accepts the classes) [Quine]
     Full Idea: 'Nominalism' is distinct from 'extensionalism'. The main point of the latter doctrine is rejection of properties or attributes in favour of classes. But class are universals equally with attributes, and nominalism in the defined sense rejects both.
     From: Willard Quine (Lecture on Nominalism [1946], §3)
     A reaction: Hence Quine soon settled on labelling himself as an 'extensionalist', leaving proper nominalism to Nelson Goodman. It is commonly observed that science massively refers to attributes, so they can't just be eliminated.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / a. Mathematical empiricism
Quine blurs the difference between knowledge of arithmetic and of physics [Jenkins on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine cannot deal with the intuition that there is a difference in kind between our knowledge of arithmetic and our knowledge of physics.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5
     A reaction: The endorses this criticism, which she says is widespread. I'm not convinced that there is a clear notion of 'difference in kind' here. Jenkins gets arithmetic from concepts and physics from the world. Is that a sharp distinction?
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 4. Mathematical Empiricism / b. Indispensability of mathematics
Nearly all of mathematics has to quantify over abstract objects [Quine]
     Full Idea: Mathematics, except for very trivial portions such as very elementary arithmetic, is irredeemably committed to quantification over abstract objects.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §55)
     A reaction: Personally I would say that we are no more committed to such things than actors in 'The Tempest' are committed to the existence of Prospero and Caliban (which is quite a strong commitment, actually).
Mathematics is part of science; transfinite mathematics I take as mostly uninterpreted [Quine]
     Full Idea: The mathematics wanted for use in empirical sciences is for me on a par with the rest of science. Transfinite ramifications are on the same footing as simplifications, but anything further is on a par rather with uninterpreted systems,
     From: Willard Quine (Review of Parsons (1983) [1984], p.788), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.2
     A reaction: The word 'uninterpreted' is the interesting one. Would mathematicians object if the philosophers graciously allowed them to continue with their transfinite work, as long as they signed something to say it was uninterpreted?
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / a. Early logicism
If mathematics follows from definitions, then it is conventional, and part of logic [Quine]
     Full Idea: To claim that mathematical truths are conventional in the sense of following logically from definitions is the claim that mathematics is a part of logic.
     From: Willard Quine (Truth by Convention [1935], p.79)
     A reaction: Quine is about to attack logic as convention, so he is endorsing the logicist programme (despite his awareness of Gödel), but resisting the full Wittgenstein conventionalist picture.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / b. Type theory
Russell confused use and mention, and reduced classes to properties, not to language [Quine, by Lackey]
     Full Idea: Quine (1941) said that Russell had confused use and mention, and thus thought he had reduced classes to linguistic entities, while in fact he reduced them only to Platonic properties.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Whitehead and the Rise of Modern Logic [1941]) by Douglas Lackey - Intros to Russell's 'Essays in Analysis' p.133
     A reaction: This is cited as the 'orthodox critical interpretation' of Russell and Whitehead. Confusion of use and mention was a favourite charge of Quine's.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 6. Logicism / d. Logicism critique
Logicists cheerfully accept reference to bound variables and all sorts of abstract entities [Quine]
     Full Idea: The logicism of Frege, Russell, Whitehead, Church and Carnap condones the use of bound variables or reference to abstract entities known and unknown, specifiable and unspecifiable, indiscriminately.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.14)
If set theory is not actually a branch of logic, then Frege's derivation of arithmetic would not be from logic [Quine]
     Full Idea: We might say that set theory is not really logic, but a branch of mathematics. This would deprive 'includes' of the status of a logical word. Frege's derivation of arithmetic would then cease to count as a derivation from logic: for he used set theory.
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], II)
     A reaction: Quine has been making the point that higher infinities and the paradoxes undermine the status of set theory as logic, but he decides to continue thinking of set theory as logic. Critics of logicism frequently ask whether the reduction is to logic.
Mathematics reduces to set theory (which is a bit vague and unobvious), but not to logic proper [Quine]
     Full Idea: Mathematics reduces only to set theory, and not to logic proper… but set theory cannot claim the same firmness and obviousness as logic.
     From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.69-70)
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 7. Formalism
Formalism says maths is built of meaningless notations; these build into rules which have meaning [Quine]
     Full Idea: The formalism of Hilbert keeps classical maths as a play of insignificant notations. Agreement is found among the rules which, unlike the notations, are quite significant and intelligible.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.15)
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 10. Constructivism / b. Intuitionism
Intuitionism says classes are invented, and abstract entities are constructed from specified ingredients [Quine]
     Full Idea: The intuitionism of Poincaré, Brouwer, Weyl and others holds that classes are invented, and accepts reference to abstract entities only if they are constructed from pre-specified ingredients.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.14)
For Quine, intuitionist ontology is inadequate for classical mathematics [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Quine feels that the intuitionist's ontology of abstract objects is too slight to serve the needs of classical mathematics.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
     A reaction: Quine, who devoted his life to the application of Ockham's Razor, decided that sets were an essential part of the ontological baggage (which made him, according to Orenstein, a 'reluctant Platonist'). Dummett defends intuitionism.
Intuitionists only admit numbers properly constructed, but classical maths covers all reals in a 'limit' [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Intuitionists will not admit any numbers which are not properly constructed out of rational numbers, ...but classical mathematics appeals to the real numbers (a non-denumerable totality) in notions such as that of a limit
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
     A reaction: (See Idea 8454 for the categories of numbers). This is a problem for Dummett.
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 10. Constructivism / c. Conceptualism
Conceptualism holds that there are universals but they are mind-made [Quine]
     Full Idea: Conceptualism holds that there are universals but they are mind-made.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.14)
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 2. Types of Existence
For Quine, there is only one way to exist [Quine, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Quine takes 'existence' to be univocal, with a single ontology for his entire 'web of belief'.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.9
     A reaction: Thus, there can be no 'different way of existing' (such as 'subsisting') for abstract objects such as those of mathematics. I presume that Quine's low-key physicalism is behind this.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / b. Being and existence
Philosophers tend to distinguish broad 'being' from narrower 'existence' - but I reject that [Quine]
     Full Idea: It has been fairly common in philosophy early and late to distinguish between being, as the broadest concept, and existence, as narrower. This is no distinction of mine; I mean 'exist' to cover all there is.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.100)
     A reaction: I sort of agree with Quine, but 'being' has a role in philosophy that is not required in science and daily life, as the name of the central problem of ontology, which probably has to be broken down before any progress can happen.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / d. Non-being
To grasp an existence, we must consider its non-existence [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: It is only to the extent that we can say that something is not, that we can say what it actually is.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate'
     A reaction: A key idea for Hegel, but it leaves me flat. Thinking about the non-being of something throws no light at all for me on the inexpressible actuality of its existence.
Nothing exists, as thinkable and expressible [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Nothing can be thought of, imagined, spoken of, and therefore it is.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], I.i.i.C.1 Rem 3 p.101), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: This sounds like Meinong on circular squares. Does this mean that the negation of every truth also somehow exists? I struggle with this idea. Lewis Carroll nailed it.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / e. Being and nothing
Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Thinking of nothing is not the same as simply not thinking. Thought that suspends all its presuppositions and so ends up thinking of nothing determinate still remains thought, albeit utterly indeterminate and inchoate thought.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate'
     A reaction: This is the very starting point of Hegel's dialectical inferences in his 'Logic'. It is hard to entirely disagree, though I wonder whether the exercise is actually possible. What are you aware of if you have a thought with no content?
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / g. Particular being
The idea of a thing and the idea of existence are two sides of the same coin [Quine, by Crane]
     Full Idea: According to Quine's conception of existence, the idea of a thing and the idea of existence are two sides of the same coin.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 1.5
     A reaction: I suspect that Quine's ontology is too dependent on language, but this thought seems profoundly right
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / h. Dasein (being human)
Personality overcomes subjective limitations and posits Dasein as its own [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Personality is that which overcomes the limitation of being merely subjective and gives itself reality - or, what amounts to the same thing, to posit that existence [Dasein] as its own.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 039)
     A reaction: This looks like the source for Heidegger's distinctive concept of Dasein. The emphasis in Hegel is on creating it out of subjectivity by an act of choice. For Heidegger Dasein seems to be a primitive concept.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 5. Reason for Existence
Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: It would not be unfair to say that Hegel's metaphysics consists of an ontological proof of the existence of everything.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: This is so gloriously far from David Hume that we must all find some appeal in it. The next question would be whether necessary existence has been proved. If so, given death, decay and entropy, what is it that has to exist? 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 6. Criterion for Existence
Absolute ontological questions are meaningless, because the answers are circular definitions [Quine]
     Full Idea: What makes ontological questions meaningless when taken absolutely is not universality but circularity. A question of the form "What is an F?" can only be answered with "An F is a G", which makes sense relative to the uncritical acceptance of G.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.53)
Quine rests existence on bound variables, because he thinks singular terms can be analysed away [Quine, by Hale]
     Full Idea: It is because Quine holds constant singular terms to be always eliminable by an extension of Russell's theory of definite descriptions that he takes the bound variables of first-order quantification to be the sole means by which we refer to objects.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Bob Hale - Necessary Beings 01.2
     A reaction: Hale defends a Fregean commitment to existence based on the reference of singular terms in true statements. I think they're both wrong. If you want to know what I am committed to, ask me. Don't infer it from my use of English, or logic.
All we have of general existence is what existential quantifiers express [Quine]
     Full Idea: Existence is what existential quantification expresses. …It is unreasonable to ask for an explication of (general) existence in simpler terms. …We may still ask what counts as evidence for existential quantifications.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.97)
     A reaction: This has been orthodoxy for the last 60 years, with philosophers talking of 'quantifying over' instead of 'exists'. But are we allowed second-order logic, and plural quantification, and vague domains?
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 2. Processes
A river is a process, with stages; if we consider it as one thing, we are considering a process [Quine]
     Full Idea: A river is a process through time, and the river stages are its momentary parts. Identification of the river bathed in once with the river bathed in again is just what determines our subject matter to be a river process as opposed to a river stage.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1)
     A reaction: So if we take a thing which has stages, but instead of talking about the stages we talk about a single thing that endures through them, then we are talking about a process. Sounds very good to me.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events
Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine]
     Full Idea: An account of events just in terms of physical bodies does not distinguish between events that happen to take up just the same portion of space-time. A man's whistling and walking would be identified with the same temporal segment of the man.
     From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.260)
     A reaction: We wouldn't want to make his 'walking' and his 'strolling' two events. Whistling and walking are different because different objects are involved (lips and legs). Hence a man is not (ontologically) a single object.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
The ground of a thing is not another thing, but the first thing's substance or rational concept [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel's logic reveals that the true ground of something is not something other than it is, but the substance of that thing itself, or the rational concept that makes the thing what it is.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: This seems to be classic Aristotelian essentialism, though Aristotle was also interested in dependence relations.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / a. Abstract/concrete
We can only see an alien language in terms of our own thought structures (e.g. physical/abstract) [Quine]
     Full Idea: We are prone to talk about physical and abstract objects. It is hard to know how else to talk, because we are bound to adapt any alien pattern to our own in the very process of understanding or translating the alien sentences.
     From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.I,p.1)
We don't say 'red' is abstract, unlike a river, just because it has discontinuous shape [Quine]
     Full Idea: 'Red' is surely not going to be opposed to 'Cayster' [name of a river], as abstract to concrete, merely because of discontinuity in geometrical shape?
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2)
     A reaction: I've been slow to grasp the truth of this. However, Quine assumes that 'red' is concrete because 'Cayster' is, but it is perfectly arguable that 'Cayster' is an abstraction, despite all that water.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 8. Stuff / a. Pure stuff
Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine]
     Full Idea: 'Yellow' and 'water' are mass terms, concerned only with spread; 'apple' and 'square' are terms of divided reference, concerned with both spread and individuation.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.124)
     A reaction: Would you like some apple? Pass me that water. It is helpful to see that it is a requirement of 'individuation' that is missing from terms for stuff.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 1. Ontologies
Quine's ontology is wrong; his question is scientific, and his answer is partly philosophical [Fine,K on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's approach to ontology asks the wrong question, a scientific rather than philosophical question, and answers it in the wrong way, by appealing to philosophical considerations in addition to ordinary scientific considerations.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Kit Fine - The Question of Ontology p.161
     A reaction: He goes on to call Quine's procedure 'cockeyed'. Presumably Quine would reply with bafflement that scientific and philosophical questions could be considered as quite different from one another.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Kant's thing-in-itself is just an abstraction from our knowledge; things only exist for us [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: For Hegel there is no thing-in-itself, because the thing only becomes a something by being for us. Kant's thing-in-itself is the result of abstracting from the thing everything we know about it.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 3
     A reaction: This seems to pinpoint why Hegel is an idealist philosopher. Frege objected to abstraction for similar reasons. I don't understand how the tree outside my window can only exist 'for me'. I have a much better theory about the tree.
Hegel believe that the genuine categories reveal things in themselves [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel believed, unlike Kant, that the categories of the understanding, when properly understood, disclose the nature of things in themselves and not just the character of things as they appear to us.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.101
     A reaction: 'Properly understood' sounds like 'no true Scotsman'. This is thoroughgoing idealism, because reality is determined by the activity of the mind, and not from outside. The Hegel story makes more sense if you see the categories as evolutionary.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Every worldly event, without exception, is a redistribution of microphysical states [Quine]
     Full Idea: Nothing happens in the world, not the flutter of an eyelid, not the flicker of a thought, without some redistribution of microphysical states.
     From: Willard Quine (on Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking' [1978], p.98)
     A reaction: Is this causation, identity, or baffling supervenience?
My ontology is quarks etc., classes of such things, classes of such classes etc. [Quine]
     Full Idea: My tentative ontology continues to consist of quarks and their compounds, also classes of such things, classes of such classes, and so on.
     From: Willard Quine (Structure and Nature [1992], p.9), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.9
     A reaction: I would call this the Hierarchy of Abstraction (just coined it - what do you think?). Unlike Quine, I don't see why its ontology should include things called 'sets' in addition to the things that make them up.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic
Terms learned by ostension tend to be vague, because that must be quick and unrefined [Quine]
     Full Idea: A term is apt to be vague if it is to be learned by ostension, since its applicability must admit of being judged on the spot and so cannot hinge of fine distinctions laboriously drawn.
     From: Willard Quine (What Price Bivalence? [1981], p.32)
     A reaction: [Quine cites C. Wright for this] Presumably precision can steadily increased by repeated ostension. After the first 'dog' it's pretty vague; after hundreds of them we are pretty clear about it. Long observation of borderline 'clouds' could do the same.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / a. Ontological commitment
What actually exists does not, of course, depend on language [Quine]
     Full Idea: Ontological controversy tends into controversy over language, but we must not jump to the conclusion that what there is depends on words.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.16)
     A reaction: An important corrective to my constant whinge against philosophers who treat ontology as if it were semantics, of whom Quine is the central villain. Quine was actually quite a sensible chap.
General terms don't commit us ontologically, but singular terms with substitution do [Quine]
     Full Idea: The use of general terms does not commit us to admitting a corresponding abstract entity into our ontology, but an abstract singular term, including the law of putting equals for equals, flatly commits us to an abstract entity named by the term.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4)
     A reaction: Does this mean that in 'for the sake of the children', I have to believe in 'sakes' if I can find a synonym which will substitute for it?
Names have no ontological commitment, because we can deny that they name anything [Quine]
     Full Idea: I think there is no commitment to entities through use of alleged names of them; other things being equal, we can always deny the allegation that the words in question are names.
     From: Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951], p.205)
     A reaction: Hm. So why can't you deny that variables actually refer to existing entities? If I say 'I just saw James', it's a bit cheeky to then deny that James refers to anyone. He uses Russell's technique to paraphrase names.
A logically perfect language could express all truths, so all truths must be logically expressible [Quine, by Hossack]
     Full Idea: Quine's test of ontological commitment says that anything that can be said truly at all must be capable of being said in a logically perfect language, so there must be a paraphrase of every truth into the language of logic.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Keith Hossack - Plurals and Complexes 2
     A reaction: A very nice statement of the Quinean view, much more persuasive than other statements I have encountered. I am suddenly almost converted to a doctrine I have hitherto despised. Isn't philosophy wonderful?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / b. Commitment of quantifiers
To be is to be the value of a variable, which amounts to being in the range of reference of a pronoun [Quine]
     Full Idea: To be assumed as an entity is to be reckoned as the value of a variable. This amounts roughly to saying that to be is to be in the range of reference of a pronoun.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.13)
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 7784.
We can use quantification for commitment to unnameable things like the real numbers [Quine]
     Full Idea: Through our variables of quantification we are quite capable of committing ourselves to entities which cannot be named individually at all in the resources of our language; witness the real numbers.
     From: Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951], p.205)
     A reaction: The real numbers are uncountable, and thus cannot all be named. This is quite an impressive point. I've always had doubts about the existence of real numbers, on the grounds that they could never all be named.
"No entity without identity" - our ontology must contain items with settled identity conditions [Quine, by Melia]
     Full Idea: Quine's well-known slogan "no entity without identity" means that no object should be admitted into our ontology unless its identity conditions, the conditions that say which object it is, have been settled.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960]) by Joseph Melia - Modality Ch.4
     A reaction: This invites science fiction scenarios, where we admit the existence of something before we have a clue what it is (whether it is physical, hallucination, divine..). Quine's slogan seems attractive but optimistic. How 'settled'?
Existence is implied by the quantifiers, not by the constants [Quine]
     Full Idea: In the quantification '(∃)(x=a)', it is the existential quantifier, not the 'a' itself, which carries the existential import.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.94)
     A reaction: The Fregean idea seems to be that the criterion of existence is participation in an equality, but here the equality seems not more than assigning a name. Why can't I quantify over 'sakes', in 'for the sake of the children'?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / c. Commitment of predicates
Quine says we can expand predicates easily (ideology), but not names (ontology) [Quine, by Noonan]
     Full Idea: The highly intuitive methodological programme enunciated by Quine says that as our knowledge expands we should unhesitatingly expand our ideology, our stock of predicables, but should be much more wary about ontology, the name variables.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Harold Noonan - Identity §3
     A reaction: I suddenly embrace this as a crucial truth. This distinction allows you to expand on truths without expanding on reality. I would add that it is also crucial to distinguish properties from predicates. A new predicate isn't a new property.
Theories are committed to objects of which some of its predicates must be true [Quine]
     Full Idea: Another way of saying what objects a theory requires is to say that they are the objects that some of the predicates of the theory have to be true of, in order for the theory to be true.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.95)
     A reaction: The other was for the objects to be needed by the bound variables of the theory. This is the first-order approach, that predication is a commitment to an object. So what of predicates which have no application?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / d. Commitment of theories
Fictional quantification has no ontology, so we study ontology through scientific theories [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: In fiction, 'Once upon a time there was an F who...' obviously does not make an ontological commitment, so Quine says the question of which ontology we accept must be dealt with in terms of the role an ontology plays in a scientific worldview.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
     A reaction: This seems to invite questions about the ontology of people who don't espouse a scientific worldview. If your understanding of the outside world and of the past is created for you by storytellers, you won't be a Quinean.
An ontology is like a scientific theory; we accept the simplest scheme that fits disorderly experiences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Our acceptance of ontology is similar in principle to our acceptance of a scientific theory; we adopt the simplest conceptual scheme into which the disordered fragments of raw experience can be fitted and arranged.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.16)
     A reaction: Quine (who says he likes 'desert landscapes') is the modern hero for anyone who loves Ockham's Razor, and seeks extreme simplicity. And yet he finds himself committed to the existence of sets to achieve this.
Express a theory in first-order predicate logic; its ontology is the types of bound variable needed for truth [Quine, by Lowe]
     Full Idea: According to Quine, we find the ontological commitments of a theory by expressing it in first-order predicate logic, then determining what kind of entities must be admitted as bound variables if the theory is true.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by E.J. Lowe - A Survey of Metaphysics p.216
     A reaction: To me this is horribly wrong. The ontological commitments of our language is not the same as ontology. What are the ontological commitments of a pocket calculator?
Ontological commitment of theories only arise if they are classically quantified [Quine]
     Full Idea: I hold that the question of the ontological commitment of a theory does not properly arise except as that theory is expressed in classical quantificational form.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.106)
     A reaction: He is attacking substitutional quantification for its failure to commit. I smell circularity. If it must be quantified in the first-order classical manner, that restricts your ontology to objects before you've even started. Chicken/egg.
Ontology is relative to both a background theory and a translation manual [Quine]
     Full Idea: Ontology is doubly relative. Specifying the universe of a theory makes sense only relative to some background theory, and only relative to some choice of a manual of translation of one theory into another.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.54)
     A reaction: People tend to forget about the double nature of Quine's notion of ontological commitment, and usually only talk about the commitment of the theory being employed. Why is the philosophical community not devoting itself to the study of tranlation manuals?
For Quine everything exists theoretically, as reference, predication and quantification [Quine, by Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Theoretical entities (which is everything, according to Quine) are postulated by us in a threefold fashion as an object (1) to which we refer, (2) of which we predicate, and (3) over which we quantify.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.12
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 11. Ontological Commitment / e. Ontological commitment problems
If commitment rests on first-order logic, we obviously lose the ontology concerning predication [Maudlin on Quine]
     Full Idea: If Quine restricts himself to first-order predicate calculus, then the ontological implications concern the subjects of predicates. The nature of predicates, and what must be true for the predication, have disappeared from the radar screen.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics 3.1
     A reaction: Quine's response, I presume, is that the predicates can all be covered extensionally (red is a list of the red objects), and so a simpler logic will do the whole job. I agree with Maudlin though.
If to be is to be the value of a variable, we must already know the values available [Jacquette on Quine]
     Full Idea: To apply Quine's criterion that to be is to be the value of a quantifier-bound variable, we must already know the values of bound variables, which is to say that we must already be in possession of a preferred existence domain.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], Ch.6) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology
     A reaction: [A comment on Idea 1610]. Very nice to accuse Quine, of all people, of circularity, given his attack on analytic-synthetic with the same strategy! The values will need to be known extra-lingistically, to avoid more circularity.
Quine is hopeless circular, deriving ontology from what is literal, and 'literal' from good ontology [Yablo on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's advice is to countenance numbers iff the literal part of our theory quantifies over them; and to count the part of our theory that quantifies over numbers literal iff there turn out really to be numbers.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? XIII
     A reaction: This sounds a bit devastating. Presumably it is indeed the choice of a best theory which results in the ontological commitment, so it is not much help to then read off the ontology from the theory.
You can be implicitly committed to something without quantifying over it [Thomasson on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's test for ontological commitment ignores the fact that there are often implicit commitments to certain kinds of entities even where we are not yet quantifying over them.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 09.4
     A reaction: Put this with the obvious problem (of which Quine is aware) that we don't quantify over 'sakes' in 'for the sake of the children', and quantification and commitment have been rather clearly pulled apart.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 1. Categories
In formal terms, a category is the range of some style of variables [Quine]
     Full Idea: In terms of formalized quantification theory, each category comprises the range of some distinctive style of variable.
     From: Willard Quine (Existence and Quantification [1966], p.92)
     A reaction: I add this for those who dream of formalising everything, but be warned that even Quine thought it of little help in deciding on the categories. Presumably there would be some variable that ranged across tigers.
Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Categories, like 'being', or 'individuality', are already mingled into every proposition, even when it has a completely sensible content, such as "this leaf is green".
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §246 Add), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This is the source of the idea that observation is theory-laden (which tracks back to Kant). Not Duhem, who gets the credit among analytic philosophers. Quine obviously never read Hegel. But the idea is overrated.
Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel]
     Full Idea: As an activity of the particular, thinking has the categories as its only product and content.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62)
     A reaction: There seems to be an interesting implication in this remark (taken in isolation!) that one can somehow transcend the categories when one begins to think about the universal. Are the universal and the categories not connected?
7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed, eternal forms that remain unchanged throughout history, but are concepts that alter their meaning in history.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This results from a critique of Kant's rather rigid view of categories. This idea is very influential, and certainly counts among Hegel's better ideas.
Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts.
The quest for ultimate categories is the quest for a simple clear pattern of notation [Quine]
     Full Idea: The quest of a simplest, clearest overall pattern of canonical notation is not to be distinguished from a quest of ultimate categories, a limning of the most general traits of reality.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §33)
     A reaction: I won't disagree, as long as we recognise that reality calls the shots, not the notation, and that even animals must have some sort of system of categories, achieved without 'notation'.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel's disagreement with Kant is that categories are not unambiguously universal forms of human understanding, but are conceived in subtly different ways in different cultures and in different historical epochs.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This may be Hegel's most influential idea. Though he hoped that categories would contain truth, by arising untrammelled from reason, and thereby matching reality. His successors seem to have given up on that hope, and settled for relativism.
Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree [Quine]
     Full Idea: Discourse generally departmentalizes itself to some degree.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2)
     A reaction: I pick this out because I think it is important. There is a continually shifting domain in any conversation ('what we are talking about'), and speech cannot be understand if the shifting domain or department has not been grasped.
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 2. Internal Relations
The nature of each category relates itself to another [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the categories, something through its own nature relates itself to the other.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], p.125), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.99
     A reaction: This is the doctrine of internal relations rejected by Moore and Russell, and also the key idea in Hegel's logic - that ideas give rise to other ideas, without contribution by the thinker.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
The category of objects incorporates the old distinction of substances and their modes [Quine]
     Full Idea: The category of objects embraces indiscriminately what would anciently have been distinguished as substances and as modes or states of substances.
     From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §6)
     A reaction: This nicely captures Quine's elimination of properties, by presenting them as inseparable from their objects/substances. Armstrong calls this 'Ostrich Nominalism' (for refusing to address the universals problem) but Quineans are unshaken.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 10. Properties as Predicates
Quine says the predicate of a true statement has no ontological implications [Quine, by Armstrong]
     Full Idea: Quine's doctrine is that the predicate of a true statement carries no ontological implications.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by David M. Armstrong - Properties §1
     A reaction: Quine is ontologically committed to the subject of the statement (an object). The predicate seems to be an inseparable part of that object. Quine is, of course, a holist, so ontological commitment isn't judged in single statements.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 12. Denial of Properties
There is no proper identity concept for properties, and it is hard to distinguish one from two [Quine]
     Full Idea: The lack of a proper identity concept for attributes (properties) is a lack that philosophers feel impelled to supply; for, what sense is there in saying there are attributes when there is no sense in saying when there is one attribute and when two?
     From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], IV)
     A reaction: This strikes me as being a really crucial question. There is a mistaken tendency to take any possible linguistic predicate as implying a natural property. I sympathise with the sceptics here (see Ideas 4029, 3906, 3322). How to individuate properties?
Quine suggests that properties can be replaced with extensional entities like sets [Quine, by Shapiro]
     Full Idea: Quine doubts the existence of properties, and, trying to be helpful, suggests that variables ranging over properties be replaced with variables ranging over respectable extensional entities like sets, so we can 'identify' a property with a singleton set.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Stewart Shapiro - Higher-Order Logic 2.1
     A reaction: This strikes me as a classic modern heresy, a slippery slope that loses all grip on what a property is, replacing it with entities that mean nothing, but make the logic work.
Quine says that if second-order logic is to quantify over properties, that can be done in first-order predicate logic [Quine, by Benardete,JA]
     Full Idea: Quine assures us that if the specific mission of second-order logic is quantifying over properties, the task can readily be performed by first-order predicate logic, as in (Ex) x is a property, and (y) y has x.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10
Quine brought classes into semantics to get rid of properties [Quine, by McGinn]
     Full Idea: Quine brought classes into semantics in order to oust properties.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Colin McGinn - Logical Properties Ch.3
     A reaction: Quine's view has always struck me as odd, as I don't see how you can decide what set something belongs to if you haven't already decided its properties. But then I take it that nature informs you of most properties, and set membership is not arbitrary.
Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication [Quine]
     Full Idea: Predicates are not names; predicates are the other parties to predication.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: Does a wife only exist as party to a marriage? There's something missing here. We are taking predication to be primitive, but we then seem to single out one part of the process - the object - while ignoring the remainder. What are Quinean objects?
Don't analyse 'red is a colour' as involving properties. Say 'all red things are coloured things' [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Quine proposes that 'red is a colour' does not require analysis, such as 'there is an x which is the property of being red and it is a colour' which needs an ontology of properties. We can just say that all red things are coloured things.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.6
     A reaction: The question of the ontology of properties is here approached, in twentieth century style, as the question 'what is the logical form of property attribution sentences?' Quine's version deals in sets of prior objects, rather than abstract entities.
Because things can share attributes, we cannot individuate attributes clearly [Quine]
     Full Idea: No two classes have exactly the same members, but two different attributes may be attributes of exactly the same things. Classes are identical when their members are identical. ...On the other hand, attributes have no clear principle of individuation.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Individuation of Attributes [1975], p.100)
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
Dispositions are physical states of mechanism; when known, these replace the old disposition term [Quine]
     Full Idea: Each disposition, in my view, is a physical state or mechanism. ...In some cases nowadays we understand the physical details and set them forth explicitly in terms of the arrangement and interaction of small bodies. This replaces the old disposition.
     From: Willard Quine (The Roots of Reference [1990], p.11), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 01.3
     A reaction: A challenge to the dispositions and powers view of nature, one which rests on the 'categorical' structural properties, rather than the 'hypothetical' dispositions. But can we define a mechanism without mentioning its powers?
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / a. Dispositions
Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine]
     Full Idea: The further a disposition is from those that can confidently be pinned on molecular structure or something comparably firm, the more our talk of it tends to depend on a vague factor of 'caeteris paribus'
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: I approve of this. It is precisely the point of scientific essentialism, I take it. We are faced with innumerable uncertain dispositions, but once the underlying mechanisms are known, their role in nature becomes fairly precise.
Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine]
     Full Idea: Once we can legitimize a disposition term by defining the relevant similarity standard, we are apt to know the mechanism of the disposition, and so by-pass the similarity.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.135)
     A reaction: I love mechanisms, but can we characterise mechanisms without mentioning powers and dispositions? Quine's dream is to eliminate 'similarity'.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / d. Dispositions as occurrent
Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB]
     Full Idea: Quine claims that an unmanifested disposition is explicable in terms of an object having a structure similar to a structure of an object that has manifested the supposed disposition.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 07.4
     A reaction: This is probably the best account available for the firm empiricist who denies modal features in the actual world. In other words, a disposition is the result of an induction, not a conditional statement.
We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine]
     Full Idea: Intuitively, what qualifies a thing as soluble though it never gets into water is that it is of the same kind as the things that actually did or will dissolve; it is similar to them.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.130)
     A reaction: If you can judge that the similar things 'will' dissolve, you can cut to the chase and judge that this thing will dissolve.
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 1. Universals
Realism, conceptualism and nominalism in medieval universals reappear in maths as logicism, intuitionism and formalism [Quine]
     Full Idea: The three medieval views on universals (realism, conceptualism and nominalism) reappear in the philosophy of maths as logicism, intuitionism and formalism.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.14)
8. Modes of Existence / D. Universals / 2. Need for Universals
Universals are acceptable if they are needed to make an accepted theory true [Quine, by Jacquette]
     Full Idea: Abstract entities (universals) are admitted to an ontology by Quine's criterion if they must be supposed to exist (or subsist) in order to make the propositions of an accepted theory true.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Dale Jacquette - Abstract Entity p.3
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 1. Nominalism / b. Nominalism about universals
There is no entity called 'redness', and that some things are red is ultimate and irreducible [Quine]
     Full Idea: There is not any entity whatever, individual or otherwise, which is named by the word 'redness'. ...That the houses and roses and sunsets are all of them red may be taken as ultimate and irreducible.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.10)
     A reaction: This seems to invite the 'ostrich' charge (Armstrong), that there is something left over that needs explaining. If the reds are ultimate and irreducible, that seems to imply that they have no relationship at all to one another.
Commitment to universals is as arbitrary or pragmatic as the adoption of a new system of bookkeeping [Quine]
     Full Idea: One's hypothesis as to there being universals is at bottom just as arbitrary or pragmatic a matter as one's adoption of a new brand of set theory or even a new system of bookkeeping.
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], x)
     A reaction: This spells out clearly the strongly pragmatist vein in Quine's thinking.
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 3. Predicate Nominalism
Quine has argued that predicates do not have any ontological commitment [Quine, by Armstrong]
     Full Idea: Quine has attempted to bypass the problem of universals by arguing for the ontological innocence of predicates, since it is the application conditions of predicates which furnish the Realists with much of their case.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by David M. Armstrong - Universals p.503
     A reaction: Presumably this would be a claim that predicates appear to commit us to properties, but that properties are not natural features, and can be reduced to something else. Tricky..
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 4. Concept Nominalism
Understanding 'is square' is knowing when to apply it, not knowing some object [Quine]
     Full Idea: No more need be demanded of 'is square' than that our listener learn when to expect us to apply it to an object and when not; there is no need for the phrase itself to be the name in turn of a separate object of any kind.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 4)
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 5. Class Nominalism
Quine aims to deal with properties by the use of eternal open sentences, or classes [Quine, by Devitt]
     Full Idea: Quine is not an 'ostrich', because his strategy for dealing with property sentences is clear enough: all talk of attributes is to be dispensed with in favour of talk of eternal open sentences or talk of classes.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §43) by Michael Devitt - 'Ostrich Nominalism' or 'Mirage Realism'? p.100
     A reaction: [See p.209 'Word and Object'] The proposal seems to be that a property like being-human (a category) would be dealt with by classes, and qualitative properties would be dealt with simply as predicates. I like the split, and the first half, not the second.
Quine is committed to sets, but is more a Class Nominalist than a Platonist [Quine, by Macdonald,C]
     Full Idea: Armstrong dubs Quine an 'Ostrich Nominalist' (what problem??), but Quine calls himself a Platonist, because he is committed to classes or sets as well as particulars. He is not an extreme nominalist, and might best be called a Class Nominalist.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961], Ch.6 n15) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things
     A reaction: For someone as ontologically austere as Quine to show 'commitment' to sets deserves some recognition. If he wants to be a Platonist, I say that's fine. What on earth is a set, apart from its members?
You only know an attribute if you know what things have it [Quine]
     Full Idea: May we not say that you know an attribute only insofar as you know what things have it?
     From: Willard Quine (On the Individuation of Attributes [1975], p.106)
     A reaction: Simple, and the best defence of class nominalism (a very implausible theory) which I have encountered. Do I have to know all the things? Do I not know 'red' if I don't know tomatoes have it?
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 6. Mereological Nominalism
Red is the largest red thing in the universe [Quine]
     Full Idea: Red is the largest red thing in the universe - the scattered total thing whose parts are all the red things.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 3)
'Red' is a single concrete object in space-time; 'red' and 'drop' are parts of a red drop [Quine]
     Full Idea: Why not view 'red' as naming a single concrete object extended in space and time? ..To say a drop is red is to say that the one object, the drop, is a spatio-temporal part of the other, red, as a waterfall is part of a river.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2)
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
The notion of a physical object is by far the most useful one for science [Quine]
     Full Idea: In a contest of sheer systematic utility to science, the notion of physical object still leads the field.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §48)
     A reaction: A delightful circumlocution from someone who seems terrified to assert that there just are objects. Not that I object to Quine's caution. It would be disturbing if his researches had revealed that we could manage without objects. But compare Idea 6124.
If physical objects are a myth, they are useful for making sense of experience [Quine]
     Full Idea: The myth of physical objects is epistemologically superior to most in that it has proved more efficacious than other myths as a device for working a manageable structure into the flux of experience.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.44)
Treating scattered sensations as single objects simplifies our understanding of experience [Quine]
     Full Idea: By bringing together scattered sense events and treating them as perceptions of one object, we reduce the complexity of our stream of experience to a manageable conceptual simplicity.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.17)
     A reaction: If, however, our consideration of tricky cases, such as vague objects, or fast-changing objects, or spatially coinciding objects made it all seem too complex, then Quine's argument would be grounds for abandoning objects. See Merricks.
Physical objects in space-time are just events or processes, no matter how disconnected [Quine]
     Full Idea: Physical objects, conceived four-dimensionally in space-time, are not to be distinguished from events or concrete processes. Each comprises simply the content, however heterogeneous, of a portion of space-time, however disconnected and gerrymandered.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §36)
     A reaction: I very much like the suggestion that objects should be thought of as 'processes', but I dislike the idea that they can be gerrymandered. This is a refusal to cut nature at the joints (Idea 7953), which I find very counterintuitive.
A physical object is the four-dimensional material content of a portion of space-time [Quine]
     Full Idea: We might think of a physical object as simply the whole four-dimensional material content, however sporadic and heterogeneous, of some portion of space-time. If it is firm and coherent internally, we call it a body.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: An early articulation of one of the two standard views of objects in recent philosophy. I think I prefer the Quinean view, but I am still looking into that one...
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 2. Abstract Objects / b. Need for abstracta
Our conceptual scheme becomes more powerful when we posit abstract objects [Quine]
     Full Idea: There is no denying the access of power that accrues to our conceptual scheme through the positing of abstract objects.
     From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], §5)
     A reaction: This seems right, both in its use of the word 'posit', and in its general pragmatic claim. So why? If they enable us to grapple with the world better, it must be because of their power of generalisation. They are nets thrown over chunks of reality.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 4. Impossible objects
Definite descriptions can't unambiguously pick out an object which doesn't exist [Lycan on Quine]
     Full Idea: Meinong characteristically refers to his Objects using definite descriptions, such as 'the golden mountain'. But on his view there are many golden mountains, with different features. How can 'the golden mountain' then succeed in denoting a single Object?
     From: comment on Willard Quine (works [1961]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 01
     A reaction: Use of definite descriptions doesn't seem obligatory in this situation. 'Think of a golden mountain' - 'which one?' - 'never mind which one!'.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
I prefer 'no object without identity' to Quine's 'no entity without identity' [Lowe on Quine]
     Full Idea: To adapt Quine's famous slogan ('no entity without identity'), I prefer to say 'no object without identity'.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], p.52) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 7.1
     A reaction: Quine was trying to make us all more scientific, but Lowe is closer to common sense. The sky is an entity, most of us would say, but with very shaky identity-conditions. A wave of the sea is a good example.
No entity without identity (which requires a principle of individuation) [Quine]
     Full Idea: We have an acceptable notion of class, or physical object, or attribute, or any other sort of object, only insofar as we have an acceptable principle of individuation for that sort of object. There is no entity without identity.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Individuation of Attributes [1975], p.102)
     A reaction: Note that this is his criterion for an 'acceptable' notion. Presumably that is for science. It permits less acceptable notions which don't come up to the standard. And presumably true things can be said about the less acceptable entities.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance
The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel]
     Full Idea: As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, substance is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive substance of its own.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.215), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6
     A reaction: This seems to be an expression of idealism, since only what is conceptualised can exist.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The entire second part of the 'Logic', the doctrine of Essence, deals with the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §65)
     A reaction: He is referring to his book 'Science of Logic'. I don't really understand this, but that essence 'posits' the unity of a thing catches my attention.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 9. Essence and Properties
Aristotelian essentialism says a thing has some necessary and some non-necessary properties [Quine]
     Full Idea: What Aristotelian essentialism says is that you can have open sentences Fx and Gx, such that ∃x(nec Fx.Gx.¬nec Gx). For example, ∃x(nec(x>5). there are just x planets. ¬nec(there are just x planets)).
     From: Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953], p.176)
     A reaction: This is a denial of 'maximal essentialism', that all of a things properties might be essential. Quine is thus denying necessity, except under a description. He may be equivocating over the reference of 'there are just 9 planets'.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In genuine cognition ...an object determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in an external way. If we proceed by way of predication, the spirit gets the feeling that the predicates cannot exhaust what they are attached to.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add)
     A reaction: I take this to be a glimpse of Hegel's notoriously difficult account of essence. Place this alongside Locke's distinction between Nominal and Real essences. Once we have the predicates, we want to grasp their source.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
Aristotelian essence of the object has become the modern essence of meaning [Quine]
     Full Idea: The Aristotelian notion of essence was the forerunner of the modern notion of intension or meaning. ...Meaning is what essence becomes when it is divorced from the object of reference and wedded to the word.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1)
     A reaction: Quine first wants to jettison de re necessity (essence of the object), by shifting it to de dicto necessity (necessity in meaning), but he subsequently rejects that as well, presumably because he doesn't even believe in meanings.
Quantification into modal contexts requires objects to have an essence [Quine]
     Full Idea: A reversion to Aristotelian essentialism is required if quantification into modal contexts is to be insisted on. An object must be seen as having some of its traits necessarily.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §3)
     A reaction: This thought leads directly to Kripke's proposal of rigid designation of objects (and Lewis response of counterparts), which really gets modal logic off the ground. Quine's challenge remains - the modal logic entails a huge metaphysical commitment.
Mathematicians must be rational but not two-legged, cyclists the opposite. So a mathematical cyclist? [Quine]
     Full Idea: Mathematicians are necessarily rational, and not necessarily two-legged; cyclists are the opposite. But what of an individual who counts among his eccentricities both mathematics and cycling?
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §41)
     A reaction: Quine's view is that the necessity (and essence) depends on how this eccentric is described. If he loses a leg, he must give up cycling; if he loses his rationality, he must give up the mathematics. Quine is wrong.
Cyclist are not actually essentially two-legged [Brody on Quine]
     Full Idea: Cyclists are not essentially two-legged (a one-legged cyclist exists, but can't cycle any more), and mathematicians are not essentially rational (as they can lose rationality and continue to exist, though unable to do mathematics).
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §41.5) by Baruch Brody - Identity and Essence 5.1
     A reaction: Was Quine thinking of the nominal essence of this person - that 'cyclists' necessarily cylce, and 'mathematicians' necessarily do some maths? It is as bad to confuse 'necessary' with 'essential' as to confuse 'use' with 'mention'.
Essences can make sense in a particular context or enquiry, as the most basic predicates [Quine]
     Full Idea: The notion of essence makes sense in context. Relative to a particular enquiry, some predicates may play a more basic role than others, or may apply more fixedly; and these may be treated as essential.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121)
     A reaction: Quine has got a bad press on essentialism, and on modal logic, but I take this point seriously. If you give something a fixed identity by means of essence in some context, you can then go ahead and apply possible world reasoning in that context.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism
Four-d objects helps predication of what no longer exists, and quantification over items from different times [Quine]
     Full Idea: The four-dimensional view of objects aids relativity, and the grammar of tenses, but in logic it makes sense of applying a predicate to something that no longer exists, or of quantifying over objects that never coexisted at any one time.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: Since you can predicate of or quantify over hypothetical or fictional objects ('Hamlet is gloomy', 'phlogiston explained fire quite well', 'peace and quiet would be nice') I don't see the necessity for this bold ontological commitment, on these grounds.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 1. Concept of Identity
To unite a sequence of ostensions to make one object, a prior concept of identity is needed [Quine]
     Full Idea: The concept of identity is central in specifying spatio-temporally broad objects by ostension. Without identity, n acts of ostension merely specify up to n objects. ..But when we affirm identity of object between ostensions, they refer to the same object.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 1)
     A reaction: Quine says that there is an induction involved. On the whole, Quine seems to give a better account of identity than Geach or Wiggins can offer.
We know what things are by distinguishing them, so identity is part of ontology [Quine]
     Full Idea: We cannot know what something is without knowing how it is marked off from other things. Identity is thus of a piece with ontology.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.55)
     A reaction: Actually it is failure of identity which seems to raise questions of individuation. If I say 'this apple is [pause] identical to this apple', I don't see how that helps me to individuate apples.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 2. Defining Identity
We can paraphrase 'x=y' as a sequence of the form 'if Fx then Fy' [Quine]
     Full Idea: For general terms write 'if Fx then Fy' and vice versa, and 'if Fxz then Fyz'..... The conjunction of all these is coextensive with 'x=y' if any formula constructible from the vocabulary is; and we can adopt that conjunction as our version of identity.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §47)
     A reaction: [first half compressed] The main rival views of equality are this and Wiggins (1980:199). Quine concedes that his account implies a modest version of the identity of indiscernibles. Wiggins says identity statements need a sortal.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects
Identity of physical objects is just being coextensive [Quine]
     Full Idea: Physical objects are identical if and only if coextensive.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Individuation of Attributes [1975], p.101)
     A reaction: The supposed counterexample to this is the statue and the clay it is made of, which are said to have different modal properties (destroying the statue doesn't destroy the clay).
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects
We should just identify any items which are indiscernible within a given discourse [Quine]
     Full Idea: We might propound the maxim of the 'identification of indiscernibles': Objects indistinguishable from one another within the terms of a given discourse should be construed as identical for that discourse.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 2)
     A reaction: This increasingly strikes me as the correct way to discuss such things. Identity is largely contextual, and two things can be viewed as type-identical for practical purposes (e.g. teaspoons), but distinguished if it is necessary.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 2. Nature of Necessity
Necessity can attach to statement-names, to statements, and to open sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Three degrees necessity in logic or semantics: first and least is attaching a semantical predicate to the names of statements (as Nec '9>5'); second and more drastic attaches to statements themselves; third and gravest attaches to open sentences.
     From: Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953], p.158)
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 4. De re / De dicto modality
To be necessarily greater than 7 is not a trait of 7, but depends on how 7 is referred to [Quine]
     Full Idea: To be necessarily greater than 7 is not a trait of a number, but depends on the manner of referring to the number.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §2)
     A reaction: The most concise quotation of Quine's objection to 'de re' modality. The point is whether the number might have been referred to as 'the number of planets'. So many of these problems are solved by fixing unambiguous propositions first.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
Contrary to some claims, Quine does not deny logical necessity [Quine, by McFetridge]
     Full Idea: Nothing in Quine's argument seems to be said directly against the view that the propositions of logic are necessary truths, ..though Crispin Wright has represented him as saying this at the end of 'Two Dogmas'.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §3
     A reaction: Quine famously denies that logical truths are merely a matter of convention, so the question is, if he believes in logical necessity, what does he think is the basis of it? Answers, as always, on a postcard.
Frege moved Kant's question about a priori synthetic to 'how is logical certainty possible?' [Quine]
     Full Idea: When Kant's arithmetical examples of a priori synthetic judgements were sweepingly disqualified by Frege's reduction of arithmetic to logic, attention moved to the less tendentious and logically prior question 'How is logical certainty possible?'
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], I)
     A reaction: A nice summary of the story so far, from someone who should know. This still leaves the question open of whether any synthetic truths can be derived from the logical certainties which are available.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
Whether 9 is necessarily greater than 7 depends on how '9' is described [Quine, by Fine,K]
     Full Idea: Quine's metaphysical argument is that if 9 is 7+2 the number 9 will be necessarily greater than 7, but when 9 is described as the number of planets, the number will not be necessarily greater than 7. The necessity depends on how it is described.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 3
     A reaction: Thus necessity would be entirely 'de dicto' and not 'de re'. It sounds like a feeble argument. If I describe the law of identity (a=a) as 'my least favourite logical principle', that won't make it contingent. Describe 9, or refer to it? See Idea 9203.
Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction undermined necessary truths [Quine, by Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Quine's attack on the analytic-synthetic distinction sought to contract, if not to empty, the class of truths that are called necessary.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity I
     A reaction: The thought was that absolutely everything, including, for example, basic logic, became potentially revisable. See the last section of Quine's paper.
Necessity only applies to objects if they are distinctively specified [Quine]
     Full Idea: Necessity does not properly apply to the fulfilment of conditions by objects (such as the number which numbers the planets), apart from special ways of specifying them.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §3)
     A reaction: This appears to say that the only necessity is 'de dicto', and that there is no such thing as 'de re' necessity (of the thing in itself). How can Quine deny that there might be de re necessities? His point is epistemological - how can we know them?
Necessity is in the way in which we say things, and not things themselves [Quine]
     Full Idea: Necessity resides in the way in which we say things, and not in the things we talk about.
     From: Willard Quine (Three Grades of Modal Involvement [1953], p.176)
     A reaction: This is a culminating idea of Quine's thoroughgoing empiricism, as filtered through logical positivism. I would hardly dare to accuse Quine of a use/mention confusion (his own bête noir), but one seems to me to be lurking here.
There is no necessity higher than natural necessity, and that is just regularity [Quine]
     Full Idea: In principle I see no higher or more austere necessity than natural necessity; and in natural necessity, or our attribution of it, I see only Hume's regularities
     From: Willard Quine (Necessary Truth [1963], p.76)
     A reaction: Presumably this allows logical necessity as a 'lower' necessity, but denies 'metaphysical' necessity, in line with Hume and other tough empiricists. Personally I adore metaphysical necessities, but they are a bit hard to establish conclusively.
Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine]
     Full Idea: The need to add a note of necessity to 'all black crows are black' could be met by a generalisation over classes (what belongs to sets x and y belongs to y), or maybe be quantifying over possible particulars.
     From: Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.262)
     A reaction: He dislikes the second strategy because 'unactualized particulars are an obscure and troublesome lot'. The second is the strategy of Lewis. I think necessity starts to creep back in as soon as you ask WHY a generalisation holds true.
Necessity is relative to context; it is what is assumed in an inquiry [Quine]
     Full Idea: The very notion of necessity makes sense to me only relative to context. Typically it is applied to what is assumed in an inquiry, as against what has yet to transpire.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.121)
     A reaction: Lots of things are assumed by an inquiry without an assumption that they must be true. Quine is the greatest opponent of necessity in all of philosophy. Asserting necessities, though, is too much fun to give up. It would ruin philosophy.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 1. Possibility
Quine wants identity and individuation-conditions for possibilia [Quine, by Lycan]
     Full Idea: Quine notoriously demands identity and individuation-conditions for mere possibilia.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 01
     A reaction: Demanding individuation before speaking of anything strikes me as dubious. 'Whoever did this should own up'. 'There must be something we can do'. Obviously you need some idea of what you are talking about - but not much.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / b. Types of conditional
Some conditionals can be explained just by negation and conjunction: not(p and not-q) [Quine]
     Full Idea: Often the purpose of a conditional, 'if p, q', can be served simply by negation and conjunction: not(p and not-q), the so-called 'material conditional'.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.2)
     A reaction: Logicians love the neatness of that, but get into trouble elsewhere with conditionals, particularly over the implications of not-p.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / c. Truth-function conditionals
Normal conditionals have a truth-value gap when the antecedent is false. [Quine]
     Full Idea: In its unquantified form 'If p then q' the indicative conditional is perhaps best represented as suffering a truth-value gap whenever its antecedent is false.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: That is, the clear truth-functional reading of the conditional (favoured by Lewis, his pupil) is unacceptable. Quine favours the Edgington line, that we are only interested in situations where the antecedent might be true.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / e. Supposition conditionals
Conditionals are pointless if the truth value of the antecedent is known [Quine]
     Full Idea: The ordinary conditional loses its point when the truth value of its antecedent is known.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: A beautifully simple point that reveals a lot about what conditionals are.
Normally conditionals have no truth value; it is the consequent which has a conditional truth value [Quine]
     Full Idea: Ordinarily the conditional is not thought of as true or false at all, but rather the consequent is thought of as conditionally true or false given the antecedent.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], III)
     A reaction: At first this seems obvious, but a conditional asserts a relationship between two propositions, and so presumably it is true if that relationship exists. 'Is it actually true that if it is Monday then everyone in the office is depressed?'.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 9. Counterfactuals
We feign belief in counterfactual antecedents, and assess how convincing the consequent is [Quine]
     Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional depends, like indirect quotation and more so, on a dramatic projection: we feign belief in the antececent and see how convincing we then find the consequent.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: This seems accurate. It means that we are only interested in when the antecedent is true, and when it is false is irrelevant.
Counterfactuals are plausible when dispositions are involved, as they imply structures [Quine]
     Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional is seen at its most respectable in the disposition terms. ...The reason is that they are conceived as built-in, enduring structural traits.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: Surprisingly, this is very sympathetic to a metaphysical view that seems a long way from Quine, since dispositions seem to invite commitment to modal features of reality. But the structural traits are not, of course, modal, in any way!
Counterfactuals have no place in a strict account of science [Quine]
     Full Idea: The subjunctive conditional has no place in an austere canonical notation for science - but that ban is less restrictive than would at first appear.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: Idea 15723 shows what he has in mind - that what science aims for is accounts of dispositional mechanisms, which then leave talk of other possible worlds (in Lewis style) as unnecessary. I may be with Quine one this one.
What stays the same in assessing a counterfactual antecedent depends on context [Quine]
     Full Idea: The traits to suppose preserved in a counterfactual depend on sympathy for the fabulist's purpose. Compare 'If Caesar were in command, he would use the atom bomb', and 'If Caesar were in command, he would use catapults'.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46)
     A reaction: This seems to be an important example for the Lewis approach, since you are asked to consider the 'nearest' possible world, but that will depend on context.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 3. A Posteriori Necessary
For Quine the only way to know a necessity is empirically [Quine, by Dancy,J]
     Full Idea: Quine argues that no necessity can be known other than empirically.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 14.6
Quine's indispensability argument said arguments for abstracta were a posteriori [Quine, by Yablo]
     Full Idea: Fifty years ago, Quine convinced everyone who cared that the argument for abstract objects, if there were going to be one, would have to be a posteriori in nature; an argument that numbers, for example, are indispensable entities for 'total science'.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], §1) by Stephen Yablo - Apriority and Existence
     A reaction: This sets the scene for the modern debate on the a priori. The claim that abstractions are indispensable for a factual account of the physical world strikes me as highly implausible.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds
Possible worlds are a way to dramatise essentialism, and yet they presuppose essentialism [Quine]
     Full Idea: Talk of possible worlds is a graphic way of waging the essentialist philosophy, but it is only that; it is not an explication. Essence is needed to identify an object from one possible world to another.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.118)
     A reaction: He makes the proposal sound circular, but I take a commitment to essences to be prior to talk of possible worlds. Possible worlds are a tool for clarifying modalities, not for clarifying essential identities.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
Can an unactualized possible have self-identity, and be distinct from other possibles? [Quine]
     Full Idea: Is the concept of identity simply inapplicable to unactualized possibles? But what sense can be found in talking of entities which cannot meaningfully be said to be identical with themselve and distinct from one another.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.4)
     A reaction: Can he seriously mean that we are not allowed to talk about possible objects? If I design a house, it is presumably identical to the house I am designing, and distinct from houses I'm not designing.
We can't quantify in modal contexts, because the modality depends on descriptions, not objects [Quine, by Fine,K]
     Full Idea: 'Necessarily 9>7' may be true while the sentence 'necessarily the number of planets < 7' is false, even though it is obtained by substituting a coreferential term. So quantification in these contexts is unintelligible, without a clear object.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953]) by Kit Fine - Intro to 'Modality and Tense' p. 4
     A reaction: This is Quine's second argument against modality. See Idea 9201 for his first. Fine attempts to refute it. The standard reply seems to be to insist that 9 must therefore be an object, which pushes materialist philosophers into reluctant platonism.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / b. Rigid designation
A rigid designator (for all possible worlds) picks out an object by its essential traits [Quine]
     Full Idea: A rigid designator differs from others in that it picks out its object by essential traits. It designates the object in all possible worlds in which it exists.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.118)
     A reaction: This states the point more clearly than Kripke ever does, and I presume it is right. Thus when we say that we wish 'our' Hubert Humphrey had won the election, we can allow that his victory elation would change him a bit. Kripke is right.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / a. Beliefs
Beliefs can be ascribed to machines [Quine]
     Full Idea: Beliefs have been ascribed to machines, in support of a mechanistic philosophy, and I share this attitude.
     From: Willard Quine (Intensions Revisited [1977], p.123)
     A reaction: [He cites Raymond Nelson] One suspects that this is Quine's latent behaviourism speaking. It strikes me as a crass misuse of 'belief' to ascribe it to a simple machine like a thermostat.
11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / e. Belief holism
How do you distinguish three beliefs from four beliefs or two beliefs? [Quine]
     Full Idea: Suppose I say that I have given up precisely three beliefs since lunch. An over-coarse individuation could reduce the number to two, and an over-fine one could raise it to four.
     From: Willard Quine (Propositional Objects [1965], p.144)
     A reaction: Obviously if you ask how many beliefs I hold, it would be crazy to give a precise answer. But if I search for my cat, I give up my belief that it is in the kitchen, in the lounge and in the bathroom. That's precise enough to be three beliefs, I think.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 1. Certainty
In absolute knowing, the gap between object and oneself closes, producing certainty [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In absolute knowing ...the separation of the object from the certainty of oneself is completely eliminated: truth is now equated with certainty and this certainty with truth.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], p.49), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'Absolute'
     A reaction: I don't understand this, but I note it because Hegel is evidently not a fallibilist about knowledge. I take this idea to be Descartes' 'clear and distinct ideas', wearing a grand rhetorical uniform.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 4. The Cogito
I develop philosophical science from the simplest appearance of immediate consciousness [Hegel, by Hegel]
     Full Idea: In my 'Phenomenology of Spirit' the procedure adopted was to begin from the first and simplest appearance of the spirit, from immediate consciousness, and to develop the dialectic right up to the standpoint of philosophical science.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Logic (Encyclopedia I) §25 Rem
     A reaction: I take metaphysics to be either Parmenidean (starting from Being) or Cartesian (starting from mind), and this (surprisingly, given his lengthy talk of Being) shows Hegel to be a quintessentially Cartesian philosopher. Aristotle is the great Parmenidean.
The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The proposition 'Cogito Ergo Sum' stands at the very centre, so to speak, of the entire concern of modern philosophy.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §64 Rem)
     A reaction: I distinguish two approaches to philosophy: the Parmenidean (which starts from the nature of being), and the Cartesian (which starts from the fact of consciousness). This remark confirms that Hegel is firmly in the latter school.
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 2. Phenomenalism
We can never translate our whole language of objects into phenomenalism [Quine]
     Full Idea: There is no likelihood that each sentence about physical objects can actually be translated, however deviously and complexly, into the phenomenalistic language.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.18), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics III.2
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / d. Absolute idealism
Being is Thought [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Being is Thought.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 54)
     A reaction: You won't find a more succinct slogan for idealism than that. Speaking as what Tim Williamson (referring to himself) calls a 'rottweiler realist', I can't quite get the hang of Hegel's claim. What does he think thought is, if it isn't about the world?
Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Everything that exists stands in correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of existence.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.235 (1892)), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 23 'Abs'
The 'absolute idea' is when all the contradictions are exhausted [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: The point in philosophy at which the contradictions are exhausted is what Hegel means by the 'absolute idea'.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 4 'Questions'
     A reaction: {Can't think of a response to this one)
The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, but felt and intuited [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The Absolute is not supposed to be comprehended, it is to be felt and intuited.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 06)
     A reaction: Hegel was a rather romantic philosopher. Where does the 'supposed' come from? If the Absolute is only felt and intuited, can the resulting apprehensions be reported to others? Is this, in fact, mysticism?
In the Absolute everything is the same [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the Absolute everything is the same.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 16)
     A reaction: This is indistinguishable from the great spherical reality of Parmenides. It is not unreasonable to enquire about the epistemology of this claim. Is Hegel a seer, or can we all intuit this insight into reality?
Genuine idealism is seeing the ideal structure of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Genuine (as opposed to subjective) idealism, for Hegel, is the point of view that knows the world to have a rational, and therefore 'ideal', structure.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 04 'The Unhappy'
     A reaction: Compare Leibniz, whose monad theory is said to be a sort of idealism, because it places ideas at the heart of reality. Is Plato also this sort of 'genuine' idealism? Do we need different terms for 'genuine' and 'subjective' idealism? And 'transcendental'?
Hegel, unlike Kant, said how things appear is the same as how things are [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
     Full Idea: Hegel rejected the fundamental Kantian distinction between how things knowably appear and how they unknowably are in themselves. This was anathema to him. For Hegel how things knowably appear is how they manifestly are.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.2
     A reaction: We shouldn't assume that Hegel was therefore a realist, because Berkeley would agree with this idea. Hegel rejected transcendental idealism for this reason. Hegel wanted to get rid of the immanent/transcendent distinction
Hegel's non-subjective idealism is the unity of subjective and objective viewpoints [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: The unity of the two points of view (subjective and objective) constitutes Hegel's idealism. ...He kept emphasising that it was not 'subjective' idealism.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 10
     A reaction: Subjective idealism denies the objective point of view. [**20th June 2019, 10:49 am. This is the 20,000th idea in the database. The project was begun in 1997, as organised notes to help with teaching. For the last ten years today has been my target**].
Hegel claimed his system was about the world, but it only mapped conceptual interdependence [Pinkard on Hegel]
     Full Idea: In the view of the later Schelling, although Hegel's system only really laid out the ways in which the senses of various concepts depended on each other, it claimed to be a system about the world itself.
     From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860
     A reaction: I'm no expert, but I'm inclined to agree with Schelling. Since I am suspicious of the idea that each concept generates its own negation, I also doubt the accuracy of Hegel's map. I'm a hopeless case.
The Absolute is the primitive system of concepts which are actualised [Hegel, by Gardner]
     Full Idea: In Hegel the Absolute is the exhaustive, unconditioned and self-grounding system of concepts made concrete in actuality, the world of experience.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 10 'Absolute'
     A reaction: If I collect multiple attempts to explain what the Absolute is, I may one day drift toward a hazy understanding of it. Right now this idea means nothing to me, but I pass it on. His notion of 'concept' seems a long way from the normal modern one.
Authentic thinking and reality have the same content [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Thinking in its immanent determination and the true nature of things form one and the same content.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], p.45), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.101
     A reaction: This is not much use unless we have a crystal clear idea of 'immanent determination', because we need to eliminate errors.
The absolute idea is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and all truth [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The absolute idea alone is being, imperishable life, self-knowing truth, and is all truth. ....All else is error, confusion, opinion, endeavour, caprice, and transitoriness.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], II.iii.3 p.824), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: Hegel sounding a bit too much like an over-excited preacher here. The absolute idea seems to be the unified totality of all truths about reality. For Hegel human self-awareness is a big part of that. The idea is being because there is only one substance.
The absolute idea is the great unity of the infinite system of concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
     Full Idea: We can think of the absolute idea roughly as the entire infinite system of interrelated concepts, in their indissoluble unity, as exercised in the self-consciousness towards which the process [of thought] leads. It is the 'telos' of the process.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816], II.iii.3 p.825) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4
     A reaction: This expounds the quotation in Idea 21975. Moore emphasises concepts, where Hegel emphasises the truth. The connection is in Idea 5644.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 2. Self-Evidence
A sentence is obvious if it is true, and any speaker of the language will instantly agree to it [Quine]
     Full Idea: A sentence is obvious if (a) it is true and (b) any speaker of the language is prepared, for any reason or none, to assent to it without hesitation, unless put off by being asked so obvious a question.
     From: Willard Quine (Reply to Hellman [1975], p.206), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III
     A reaction: This comes from someone who is keen to deny a priori knowledge, but what are we to make of the expostulations "It's obvious, you idiot!", and "Now I see it, it's obvious!", and "It seemed obvious, but I was wrong!"?
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 5. A Priori Synthetic
Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H]
     Full Idea: Hegel is reputed to have claimed to have deduced on a priori grounds that the number of planets is exactly five.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Hartry Field - Recent Debates on the A Priori 1
     A reaction: Even if this is a wicked travesty of Hegel, it will do nicely to represent the extremes of claims to a priori synthetic knowledge. Field doesn't offer any evidence. I would love it to be true.
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 7. A Priori from Convention
Examination of convention in the a priori begins to blur the distinction with empirical knowledge [Quine]
     Full Idea: In trying to make sense of the role of convention in a priori knowledge, the very distinction between a priori and empirical begins to waver and dissolve.
     From: Willard Quine (Carnap and Logical Truth [1954], VI)
     A reaction: This is the next stage in the argument after Wittgenstein presents the apriori as nothing more than what arises from truth tables. The rationalists react by taking us back to the original 'natural light of reason' view. Then we go round again...
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 8. A Priori as Analytic
Metaphysical analyticity (and linguistic necessity) are hopeless, but epistemic analyticity is a priori [Boghossian on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine showed the vacuity of the metaphysical concept of analyticity and the futility of the underwritten project - the linguistic theory of necessity. But that doesn't effect the epistemic notion of analyticity needed for a priori knowledge.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered Concl
     A reaction: This summarise Boghossian's view, that a priori knowledge is still analytic, once we get clear about analyticity. See Idea 9368 for his two types of analyticity. Horwich attacks the view.
Quine challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori [Quine, by Kitcher]
     Full Idea: The last section of Quine's article challenges the claim that analytic truths are knowable a priori.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 04.5
     A reaction: That is, Quine does not deny that there are truths which rest entirely on meaning. It is a 'dogma of empiricism' that the a priori can be equated with the analytic (and the necessary).
12. Knowledge Sources / A. A Priori Knowledge / 11. Denying the A Priori
Quine's objections to a priori knowledge only work in the domain of science [Horwich on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's arguments provide no reason to doubt the existence of a priori knowledge outside the domain of science.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10
     A reaction: This rather ignores Quine's background view of thoroughgoing physicalism, so that the domain of science is the domain of nature, which is the domain of everything. See his naturalising of epistemology, for example. Maths is part of his science.
Science is empirical, simple and conservative; any belief can hence be abandoned; so no a priori [Quine, by Horwich]
     Full Idea: Quine says scientific beliefs follow empirical adequacy, simplicity and conservatism; science and rationality support this view; hence any hypothesis can be abandoned to increase simplicity; so no scientific belief is a priori.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §10
     A reaction: [Compressed] I just don't accept this claim. If science wants to drop simple arithmetic or the laws of thought, so much the worse for science - they've obviously taken a wrong turning somewhere. We must try to infer God's logic.
Logic, arithmetic and geometry are revisable and a posteriori; quantum logic could be right [Horwich on Quine]
     Full Idea: I think logic, arithmetic and geometry are subject to Quine's empirical revisability argument: quantum logic may turn out to be the best overall theory; so these things are justified a posteriori.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Horwich - Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority §11
     A reaction: Not much of an argument, because 'quantum logic' may also turn out to be a will-o'-the-whisp. Until it is established (which I doubt, because quantum theory is so poorly understood), I think we should be highly suspicious of the Quinean view.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 1. Perception
Experience is immediacy, unity, forces, self-awareness, reason, culture, absolute being [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Experience moves from 1) immediacy, to 2) united objects with properties, 3) its forces and laws, 4) self-consciousness in the process, 5) seeing a rational realm, 6) seeing a cultural realm, 7) seeing the absolute being of consciousness.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'From certainty'
     A reaction: [My summary of Houlgate's summary of the key sequence of ideas in The Phenomenology of Spirit]. I stare at it with bewilderment, but cannot decide whether or not Hegel is pursuing a worthwhile project. [also Houlgate p.77 and 102]
The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The distinction of the sensible from thought is to be located in that fact that the determination of the sensible is singularity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20 Rem)
     A reaction: Compare Idea 15608, where we find that thought concerns universals. What a very clear thinker Hegel was!
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / d. Sense-data problems
Sense-data are dubious abstractions, with none of the plausibility of tables [Quine]
     Full Idea: The notion of pure sense datum is a pretty tenuous abstraction, a good deal more conjectural than the notion of an external object, a table or a sheep.
     From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225)
     A reaction: This seems to sum up the view of sense-data held by the generation after Russell and Moore. Ayer still talks about them, but Russell had already given them up. The simple challenge is - what is the evidence for their existence? Cf innate ideas.
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 5. Interpretation
Hegel tried to avoid Kant's dualism of neutral intuitions and imposed concepts [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Hegel tried to avoid the untenable Kantian dualism between concepts and intuitions, and the Kantian mechanism of the 'imposition' of concepts on sensibility entailed by that dualism (with intuition having neutral content).
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09
     A reaction: [Pinker is describing the opening of Phenomenology] In modern discussions this concerns the idea of The Given, which is wholly uninterpreted raw experience. Sellars and MacDowell. Kant seems to split an agent into two (Master/Slave).
12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism
Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel]
     Full Idea: What can be perceived by the senses is really secondary and not self-standing, while thoughts, on the contrary, are what is genuinely independent and primitive.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add2)
     A reaction: Although this is post-Kant, it strikes me as a perfect slogan for rationalism. Personally I would say that such a dichotomy is becoming a historical relic, in the light of modern understanding of the brain. Experience and thought are inextricable.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 1. Empiricism
Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Empiricism resulted from a need for concrete content, as opposed to abstract theories that cannot advance from universal generalizations to the particular, and for a firm hold against the possibility of proving any claim at all in the field.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §37)
     A reaction: That sounds about right, and makes you wonder why Hegel wasn't an empiricist.
In scientific theories sentences are too brief to be independent vehicles of empirical meaning [Quine]
     Full Idea: We have come to recognise that in a scientific theory even a whole sentence is ordinarily too short a text to serve as an independent vehicle of empirical meaning.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.70)
Our outer beliefs must match experience, and our inner ones must be simple [Quine]
     Full Idea: The outer edge of our empirical system must be kept squared with experience; the rest, with all its elaborate myths and fictions, has as its objective the simplicity of laws.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.45)
Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel]
     Full Idea: We must recognise the important principle of freedom that lies in Empiricism; namely, that what ought to count in our human knowing, we ought to see for ourselves, and to know ourselves as present in it.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem)
     A reaction: Like Idea 15619, this is an interesting and perceptive remark, from a philosopher who seems a long way from empiricism. I presume he will be thinking mainly of Hume, via Kant. Personally I prefer Locke.
Empiricism makes a basic distinction between truths based or not based on facts [Quine]
     Full Idea: One dogma of empiricism is that there is some fundamental cleavage between truths that are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of facts, and truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.20)
Quine's empiricism is based on whole theoretical systems, not on single mental events [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: Traditional empiricism takes impressions, ideas or sense data as the basic unit of empirical thought, but Quine takes account of the theoretical as well as the observational; the unit of empirical significance is whole systems of belief.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.1
     A reaction: This invites either the question of what components make up the whole systems, or (alternatively) what sort of mental events decide to accept a system as a whole. Should Quine revert either to traditional empiricism, or to rationalism?
Empiricism improvements: words for ideas, then sentences, then systems, then no analytic, then naturalism [Quine]
     Full Idea: Since 1750 empiricism shows five turns for the better. First was a shift from ideas to words. Second a shift from terms to sentences. Third the shift to systems of sentences. Fourth the abandonment of analytic-synthetic dualism. Fifth was naturalism.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.67)
     A reaction: [compressed] Quine must be largely credited with the last two. The first four are almost entirely linguistic in character, which is characteristic of mid-twentieth-century empiricism. I would offer the recognition of explanation as central for the sixth.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 4. Pro-Empiricism
Empiricism says evidence rests on the senses, but that insight is derived from science [Quine]
     Full Idea: The crucial insight of empiricism is that any evidence for science has its end points in the senses. This insight remains valid, but it is an insight which comes after physics, physiology, and psychology, not before.
     From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225)
     A reaction: Interesting. I think Hume and co. were probably outlining essential presuppositions and contraints which must be accepted by science. Quine offers empiricism as more like a description of science (with success as its authority?).
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Empiricism operates without knowing that it contains a metaphysics and is engaged in it, and that it is using categories and their connections in a totally uncritical and unconscious manner.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem)
     A reaction: I doubt whether this is true of modern empiricists, who have been challenged so often from within their own ranks on so many things. I'm not even sure that it is true of Locke and Hume, apart from the way in which all philosophers are unaware of things.
Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Inasmuch as Empiricism restricts itself to what is finite, the consistent carrying through of its programme denies the supersensible altogether, ..and it leaves thinking with abstraction only, [i.e.] with formal universality and identity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem)
     A reaction: I'm not clear how a denial of empiricism allows you (with intellectual integrity) to embrace 'the supersensible'. The set theoretic account of higher levels of infinity looks like a nice test case.
The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The Humean standpoint proclaims the thinking of our perceptions to be inadmissible; i.e. the eliciting of the universal and necessary out of those perceptions.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §50)
     A reaction: Obviously Hume permits 'relations of ideas', but presumably the point is that his approach only legitimates a rather passive abstraction from experience, rather than an active application of a priori concepts to it. A fair criticism. See Bonjour.
The second dogma is linking every statement to some determinate observations [Quine, by Yablo]
     Full Idea: Quine's second dogma of empiricism is the reductionism that finds every statement to be linkable by fixed correspondence rules to a determinate range of confirming observations.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Stephen Yablo - Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? V
     A reaction: Quine's response to this is to embrace holism about theories, instead of precise connections with Humean impressions. I'm thinking that Lewis disagrees with Quine, when his Humean supervenience rests on a 'mosaic' of small qualities.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 3. Internal or External / a. Pro-internalism
Consciousness derives its criterion of knowledge from direct knowledge of its own being [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In what consciousness affirms from within itself as being-in-itself or the True we have the standard which consciousness itself sets up by which to measure what it knows.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.053), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'The Method'
     A reaction: This seems to be a very close relation of Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. This certainly places Hegel in the Rationalist camp.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / a. Coherence as justification
Hegel's 'absolute idea' is the interdependence of all truths to justify any of them [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel's system culminates in the 'absolute idea', the explanation of why all particular truths depend on the relationship to other truths for their justification.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 3
     A reaction: The 'hyper-coherence' theory of justification. The normal claim is that there must be considerable local coherence to provide decent support. Hegel's picture sounds like part of the Enlightenment Dream. Is the idea of 'all truths' coherent?
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 9. Naturalised Epistemology
You can't reduce epistemology to psychology, because that presupposes epistemology [Maund on Quine]
     Full Idea: There is something seriously misguided about Quine's project of reducing epistemology to psychology, since psychology, like any of the natural sciences, presupposes an epistemology.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1
     A reaction: I wonder if epistemology presupposes psychology? Belief, for example, is a category of folk psychology, which could be challenged. There is a quiet battle going on between philosophy and science.
We should abandon a search for justification or foundations, and focus on how knowledge is acquired [Quine, by Davidson]
     Full Idea: Quine is suggesting that philosophy should abandon the attempt to provide a foundation for knowledge, or otherwise justify it, and should instead give an account of how knowledge is acquired.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Donald Davidson - Epistemology Externalized p.193
     A reaction: If you are going to explain how 'knowledge' is acquired, you'd better know what knowledge is. My suspicion is that Quine would be quite happy (in the pragmatist tradition) to just focus on belief, and forget about knowledge entirely.
If we abandon justification and normativity in epistemology, we must also abandon knowledge [Kim on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine asks us to set aside the entire framework of justification-centered epistemology, ..and repudiate normativity. ..But then knowledge itself drops out of epistemology, for our concept of knowledge is inseparably tied to that of justification.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - What is 'naturalized epistemology'? p.305
     A reaction: Presumably this would not bother Quine, who wants to hand so-called 'epistemology' over to the psychologists. A psychological account of belief seems plausible. Presumably false beliefs could only be pragmatically characterised.
Without normativity, naturalized epistemology isn't even about beliefs [Kim on Quine]
     Full Idea: If normativity is wholly excluded from naturalized epistemology it cannot even be thought of as being about beliefs.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - What is 'naturalized epistemology'? p.306
     A reaction: And if it doesn't refer to beliefs, it certainly doesn't refer to knowledge. One might try to subsume normativity under evolutionary pragmatic 'drives', or something. Quine's project would then become wildly speculative, and hence boring.
Epistemology is a part of psychology, studying how our theories relate to our evidence [Quine]
     Full Idea: Epistemology falls into place as a chapter of psychology, and hence of natural science. ..We study meagre input and torrential output, to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what ways one's theory of nature transcends any available evidence.
     From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.83)
     A reaction: It depends what you are interested in. If you just want to know what makes humans tick, then Quine is your man, but if you want to know things in general, and want to know how to get it right, then the normative side of epistemology is unavoidable.
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 1. Scepticism
Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing.
     From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 2. Types of Scepticism
Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Humean scepticism should be very carefully distinguished from Greek scepticism. In Humean scepticism, the truth of the empirical, the truth of feeling and intuition is taken as basic. ..Greek scepticism turned itself against the sensible.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §39 Rem)
     A reaction: This seems right, and Hume himself was quite contemptuous of the sort of scepticism found in the ideas of Sextus Empiricus.
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 6. Scepticism Critique
It is a rejection of intellectual dignity to say that we cannot know the truth [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The assertion that human beings cannot know the truth, but have to do only with appearances …deprives the spirit of intellectual dignity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 132)
     A reaction: It is a relief to find Hegel making this assertion. His later followers seem to have slid into an extreme cultural relativism. I'm not sure that 'intellectual dignity' is a very secure foundation for his claim.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 4. Cultural relativism
To proclaim cultural relativism is to thereby rise above it [Quine, by Newton-Smith]
     Full Idea: Truth, says the cultural relativist, is culture-bound. But if it were, then he, within his own culture, ought to see his own culture-bound truth as absolute. He cannot proclaim cultural relativism without rising above it.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by W.H. Newton-Smith - The Rationality of Science VII.10
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
Two things are relative - the background theory, and translating the object theory into the background theory [Quine]
     Full Idea: Relativity has two components: to the choice of a background theory, and to the choice of how to translate the object theory into the background theory.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.67)
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 3. Experiment
Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine]
     Full Idea: Sciences differ from common sense only in the degree of methodological sophistication.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.129)
     A reaction: Science is normal thinking about the world, but it is teamwork, with the bar set very high.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory
Two theories can be internally consistent and match all the facts, yet be inconsistent with one another [Quine, by Baggini /Fosl]
     Full Idea: Duhem and Quine have maintained that it may be possible to develop two or more theories that are 1) internally consistent, 2) inconsistent with one another, and 3) perfectly consistent with all the data we can muster.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by J Baggini / PS Fosl - The Philosopher's Toolkit §1.06
     A reaction: Obviously this may be a contingent truth about our theories, but why not presume that this is because we are unable to collect the crucial data (e.g. about prehistoric biology), rather than denigrate the whole concept of a theory, and undermine science?
It seems obvious to prefer the simpler of two theories, on grounds of beauty and convenience [Quine]
     Full Idea: It is not to be wondered that theory makers seek simplicity. When two theories are equally defensible on other counts, certainly the simpler of the two is to be preferred on the score of both beauty and convenience.
     From: Willard Quine (On Simple Theories of a Complex World [1960], p.255)
     A reaction: A simple application of Ockham's Razor. Quine goes on to nicely deconstruct what is involved in simplicity, and identify a certain amount of dubious prejudice in the concept.
There are four suspicious reasons why we prefer simpler theories [Quine]
     Full Idea: We prefer simpler theories through wishful thinking, or a bias which slants the data, or a bias where the simpler hypothesis is more open to confirmation, or simpler hypotheses tolerating wider deviations in score-keeping.
     From: Willard Quine (On Simple Theories of a Complex World [1960], p.258)
     A reaction: [a compression of his summary of the paper] Quine is not dismissing our preference for simpler theories, but just very nicely inviting us to focus of aspects about which we should be cautious.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 3. Instrumentalism
For Quine, theories are instruments used to make predictions about observations [Quine, by O'Grady]
     Full Idea: Quine's epistemological position is instrumentalist. Our theories are instruments we use to make predictions about observations.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3
     A reaction: This is the pragmatist in Quine. It fits the evolutionary view to think that the bottom line is prediction. My theory about the Pelopponesian War seems an exception.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 6. Theory Holism
Statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience as a corporate body [Quine]
     Full Idea: My suggestion, following Carnap, is that our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.41)
14. Science / C. Induction / 1. Induction
Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine]
     Full Idea: Induction expresses our hopes that similar causes will have similar effects.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125)
     A reaction: Some top philosophers are also top teachers, and Quine was one of them, in his writings. He boils it down for the layman. Once again, he is pointing to the fundamental role of the similarity relation.
Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine]
     Full Idea: Induction is essentially only more of the same: animal expectation or habit formation.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125)
     A reaction: My working definition of induction is 'learning from experience', but that doesn't disagree with Quine. Lipton has a richer account of different types of induction. Quine's point is that it rests on resemblance.
14. Science / C. Induction / 2. Aims of Induction
More careful inductions gradually lead to the hypothetico-deductive method [Quine]
     Full Idea: Our inductions become increasingly explicit and deliberate, and in the fulness of time we even rise above induction, to the hypothetico-deductive method.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.57)
     A reaction: This seems to defer to Hempel's account of scientific theorising. I wander what exactly 'rising above' means?
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine]
     Full Idea: What makes Goodman's example a puzzle is the dubious scientific standing of a general notion of similarity, or of kind.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116)
     A reaction: Illuminating. It might be best expressed as revealing a problem with sortal terms, as employed by Geach, or by Wiggins. Grue is a bit silly, but sortals are subject to convention and culture. 'Natural' properties seem needed.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / b. Essence of consciousness
Consciousness is shaped dialectically, by opposing forces and concepts [Hegel, by Aho]
     Full Idea: In 'The Phenomenology of Spirit' Hegel offers a panoptic account of Western consciousness as a dialectical process shaped by opposing principles - such as subject/object, freedom/determinism, temporal/eternal, and particular/universal.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective'
     A reaction: A helpful pointer, for us poor analytic philosophers, who stare in bewilderment at Hegel's stuff, despite its apparent importance. At moment it is the politics that strikes me as most interesting in Hegel. This is cultured consciousness, pre-Marx.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / c. Parts of consciousness
Consciousness is both of objects, and of itself [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Consciousness is, on the one hand, consciousness of the object, and on the other, consciousness of itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.052), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 03 'The Method'
     A reaction: Hume challenges whether there is any knowledge of consciousness purely in itself. Schopenhauer flatly disagreed (Idea 4166) - but then he would, wouldn't he?
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 7. Seeing Resemblance
General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine]
     Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116)
     A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought.
To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine]
     Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122)
     A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction!
Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine]
     Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123)
     A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be.
Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine]
     Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134)
     A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable.
16. Persons / A. Concept of a Person / 4. Persons as Agents
Hegel claims knowledge of self presupposes desire, and hence objects [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: Hegel seems to argue that the immediate knowledge of self (the Cartesian premise) presupposes the activity that constitutes the self, and this presupposes desire, and hence the knowledge of objects.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: This hardly amounts to an argument, but I find it quite sympathetic as a claim. It fits comfortably with modern externalist accounts of thought. While solipsism seems a logical possibility, it hardly amounts to a coherent account of mental life.
A person is a being which is aware of its own self-directed and free subjectivity [Hegel]
     Full Idea: A person is a subject which is aware of its subjectivity, for as a person, I am completely for myself: the person is the individuality of freedom in pure being-for-itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 035 add)
     A reaction: Sartre's being 'pour-soi'. Presumably the freedom is for action as well as thought. He ignores Spinoza's claim that such freedom is just an illusion.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 2. Self as Social Construct
For Hegel knowledge of self presupposes objects, and also a public and moral social world [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: Hegel tries to show that knowledge of self as subject presupposes not just knowledge of objects, but knowledge of a public social world, in which there is moral order and civic trust.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: This is not far off Wittgenstein's private language argument. It is also Popper's 'World Three', of society and language. Human reality is incomprehensible without some recognition of the culture in which we immerse, like fish in water.
A human only become a somebody as a member of a social estate [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When we say that a human being must be somebody, we mean that he must belong to a particular estate. …A human being with no estate is merely a private person and does not possess universality.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 207 add)
     A reaction: The first rebellion in Europe against the rising individual liberalism which started with Descartes and was clarified in Kant. Hegel's idea is hugely influential, especially through Marx. I don't believe being a person is a wholly social matter.
Individuals attain their right by discovering their self-consciousness in institutions [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Individuals attain their essential right by discovering their essential self-consciousness in social institutions, as that universal aspect of their particular interests which has being in itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 264)
     A reaction: This is the source of the influential idea made famous by Marx. Hegel seems to have a rather rigid and deterministic view of society, which fixes self-consciousness. The modern view is that self-consciousness is endlessly malleable, by society.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 1. Nature of Free Will
A free will primarily wills its own freedoom [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the content or 'object' which any free will wills simply by virtue of being free is nothing other than its own freedom.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 027) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 8 'The Limits'
     A reaction: Personally I take the concept of a wholly 'free' will to be vacuous, but this is a very interesting idea. I would delete 'by virtue of being free', and say that what we mean by free will is the will's desperation to be as free as possible. Love it.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 2. Sources of Free Will
Freedom is produced by the activity of the mind, and is not intrinsically given [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Actual freedom is not something immediately existent in mindedness, but is something to be produced by the mind's own activity. It is thus as the producer of its freedom that we have to consider mindedness in philosophy.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III) [1817], §382, Zusatz), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
     A reaction: Pinkard glosses this as an agent being free by being the centre of a group of social responsibilities. Hence I presume small children have no freedom. Presumably we could deprive citizens of all responsibility, and hence of metaphysical freedom.
16. Persons / F. Free Will / 7. Compatibilism
In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Considered as abstractly confronting one another, freedom and necessity pertain to finitude only and are valid only on its soil. A freedom with no necessity in it, and a mere necessity without freedom, are determinations that are abstract and thus untrue.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §35 Add)
     A reaction: This is, presumably, the Hegelian dialectical nature of things, that contradictories are bound together. We must struggle hard to undestand a freedom bound by necessity, and a necessity which contains freedom. (Good luck).
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism
Geist is distinct from nature, not as a substance, but because of its normativity [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Hegel argued that it was the impossibility of a naturalistic account of normativity that distinguished Geist from nature, not Geist's being any kind of metaphysical substance.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Mind (Encylopedia III) [1817]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
     A reaction: Hegel always seems to want to have his cake and eat it. Without a mental substance, how can Geist not be part of nature? What is Geist made of? Is his view functionalist? But that is usually naturalistic. Is normativity magic?
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism [Quine, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Quine expresses the instrumental version of eliminativism.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 6. Conceptual Dualism
A hallucination can, like an ague, be identified with its host; the ontology is physical, the idiom mental [Quine]
     Full Idea: A physical ontology has a place for states of mind. An inspiration or a hallucination can, like the fit of ague, be identified with its host for the duration. It leaves our mentalistic idioms fairly intact, but reconciles them with a physical ontology.
     From: Willard Quine (The Scope and Language of Science [1954], §VI)
     A reaction: Quine is employing the same strategy that he uses for substances and properties (Idea 8461): take the predication as basic, rather than reifying the thing being predicated. The ague analogy suggests that Quine is an incipient functionalist.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 1. Thought
The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Thinking as an activity is the active universal, and indeed the self-actuating universal, since the act, or what is brought forth, is precisely the universal.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20)
     A reaction: One should contemplate animal thought in the light of this remark. Thought requires the recognition of types of things, and resemblances, and repetitions, and patterns. Language consists almost entirely of universals.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 2. Categories of Understanding
Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW]
     Full Idea: For Hegel the full system of concepts ...contains many more than Kant's twelve.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §60Z) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
     A reaction: This offers some sort of conceptual scheme, but not the structured one that Kant proposes. The sequence of dialectical mediation imposes some sort of shape on the concepts.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 1. Concepts / a. Nature of concepts
Every concept depends on the counter-concepts of what it is not [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel relies on the claim that every concept depends for its determinacy upon its relation to other concepts which it is not (so that even the concept of being depends, for example, upon the concept of nothing).
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 4 'Questions'
     A reaction: How does he know this? A question I keep asking about continental philosophers. The negation concepts must be entirely non-conscious. Which negation concepts are relevant to the concept 'tree'?
We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel]
     Full Idea: There is a saying that, when we have grasped a concept, we still do not know what to think with it. But there is nothing to be thought with a concept save the concept itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §03 Rem)
     A reaction: Analytic philosophers should read Hegel on concepts, because he approaches the matter so very differently, and seems to be the root of the continental approach to such things. He seems to me to talk more sense than Frege on the subject.
Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When thinking is taken as active with regard to ob-jects, as the thinking-over of something, then the universal - as the product of the activity - contains the value of the matter, what is essential, inner, true.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §21)
     A reaction: I prefer to talk of 'general terms' rather than 'universals'. If 'tiger' is coined for the first one, but must be applicable to subsequent tigers, it has to generalise what they all have in common. Locke's 'nominal' essence, I would say.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 5. Concepts and Language / b. Concepts are linguistic
Concepts are language [Quine]
     Full Idea: Concepts are language.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5)
     A reaction: Hm. This seems to mean that animals and pre-linguistic children have no concepts. I just don't believe that.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 1. Abstract Thought
Apply '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, to get second-level abstract singular terms [Quine]
     Full Idea: Applying the operator '-ness' or 'class of' to abstract general terms, we get second-level abstract singular terms.
     From: Willard Quine (Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis [1950], 5)
     A reaction: This is the derivation of abstract concepts by naming classes, rather than by deriving equivalence classes. Any theory which doesn't allow multi-level abstraction is self-evidently hopeless. Quine says Frege and Russell get numbers this way.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 1. Meaning
It is troublesome nonsense to split statements into a linguistic and a factual component [Quine]
     Full Idea: My present suggestion is that it is nonsense, and the root of much nonsense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.42)
     A reaction: I take the language and its subject matter to be obviously separate, but it is right that we can't separate these two components within a sample of language.
Inculcations of meanings of words rests ultimately on sensory evidence [Quine]
     Full Idea: All inculcation of meanings of words must rest ultimately on sensory evidence.
     From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.75)
     A reaction: This betrays Quine's behaviourist tendencies, and rules out introspection, definitions and inferences. Quine's conclusion is fairly total scepticism about meaning, but that is not surprising, given his external and meaningless starting point.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 4. Meaning as Truth-Conditions
If we understand a statement, we know the circumstances of its truth [Quine]
     Full Idea: We understand under what circumstances to say of any given statement that it is true, just as clearly as we understand the statement itself.
     From: Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953], II)
     A reaction: This probably shouldn't be taken as a theory of meaning (in which Quine doesn't really believe) but as a plausible statement of correlated facts. Hypothetical assertions might be a problem case. 'If only I could be in two places at once'?
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / a. Sentence meaning
Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine]
     Full Idea: The new freedom that Russell confers by paraphrasis (of definite descriptions) is our reward for recognising that the unit of communication is the sentence and not the word.
     From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.75)
     A reaction: Since many people hardly ever speak a properly formed sentence, I take propositions to be better candidates for this. However, I don't see how we can reject the compositional view (the meanings are assembled).
Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine]
     Full Idea: We can say that knowing words is knowing how to work out the meanings of sentences containing them. Dictionary definitions are mere clauses in a recursive definition of the meanings of sentences.
     From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.76)
     A reaction: Do you have to recursively define all the sentences that might contain the word, before you can fully know the meaning of the word? He seems to credit Russell with the holistic view of sentences (though I think that starts with Frege).
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / b. Language holism
There is an attempt to give a verificationist account of meaning, without the error of reducing everything to sensations [Dennett on Quine]
     Full Idea: This essay offered a verificationist account of language without the logical positivist error of supposing that verification could be reduced to a mere sequence of sense-experiences.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Daniel C. Dennett - works
     A reaction: This is because of Quine's holistic view of theory, so that sentences are not tested individually, where sense-data might be needed as support, but as whole teams which need to be simple, coherent etc.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 8. Synonymy
'Renate' and 'cordate' have identical extensions, but are not synonymous [Quine, by Miller,A]
     Full Idea: It is easy to see that intersubstitutability salva veritate is not a sufficient condition for synonymy. 'Renate' (with kidney) and 'cordate' (with heart) can be substituted in a purely extensional language, but are plainly not synonymous.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2
     A reaction: This seems to be a key example (along with Hesperus, and many others) in mapping out synonymy, meaning, analyticity, sense, reference, extension, intension, and all that stuff.
Single words are strongly synonymous if their interchange preserves truth [Quine]
     Full Idea: We can define, it would seem, a strong synonymy relation for single words by them being interchangeable salva veritate.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: This is a first step in Quine's rejection of synonymous sentences. He goes on to raise the problem of renate/cordate. Presumably any two word types can have different connotations, and hence not always be interchangeable - in poetry, for example.
19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 10. Denial of Meanings
Once meaning and reference are separated, meaning ceases to seem important [Quine]
     Full Idea: Once theory of meaning and of reference are separated it is a short step to recognising as the primary business of theory of meaning simply the synonymy of linguistic forms and analyticity of statements; meanings themselves may be abandoned.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.22)
     A reaction: I can't buy the abandonment of meaning, because when I introspect my own speech there is clearly what I want to say formulating in my mind before the words are settled.
Intensions are creatures of darkness which should be exorcised [Quine]
     Full Idea: Intensions are creatures of darkness and I shall rejoice with the reader when they are exorcised.
     From: Willard Quine (Quantifiers and Propositional Attitudes [1955], §II)
     A reaction: Quine seems to be in a diminshing minority with this view. For 'intensions' read 'meanings', presumably.
Meaning is essence divorced from things and wedded to words [Quine]
     Full Idea: Meaning is essence divorced from the thing and wedded to the word.
     From: Willard Quine (Vagaries of Definition [1972], p.51)
     A reaction: Quine's strategy is that a demolition of essences will be a definition of meaning. Personally I would like to defend essences, though I admit to finding meaning tricky. That is because essences are external, but meanings are in minds.
I do not believe there is some abstract entity called a 'meaning' which we can 'have' [Quine]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers construe meaningfulness as the having (in some sense of 'having') of some abstract entity which he calls a meaning, whereas I do not.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.11)
     A reaction: To call a meaning an 'entity' is to put a spin on it that makes it very implausible. Introspection shows us a gap between grasping a word and grasping its meaning.
The word 'meaning' is only useful when talking about significance or about synonymy [Quine]
     Full Idea: The useful ways in which ordinary people talk about meanings boil down to two: the having of meanings, which is significance, and sameness of meaning, or synonymy.
     From: Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948], p.11)
     A reaction: If the Fregean criterion for precise existence is participation in an identity relation, then synonymy does indeed pinpoint what we mean by 'meaning.
19. Language / B. Reference / 1. Reference theories
Quine says there is no matter of fact about reference - it is 'inscrutable' [Quine, by O'Grady]
     Full Idea: Quine holds the doctrine of the 'inscrutability of reference', which means there is no fact of the matter about reference.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3
     A reaction: Presumably reference depends on conventions like pointing, or the functioning of words like "that", or the ambiguities of descriptions. If you can't define it, it doesn't exist? I don't believe him.
Reference is inscrutable, because we cannot choose between theories of numbers [Quine, by Orenstein]
     Full Idea: For Quine, we cannot sensibly ask which is the real number five, the Frege-Russell set or the Von Neumann one. There is no arithmetical or empirical way of deciding between the two. Reference is inscrutable.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.3
     A reaction: To generalise from a problem of reference in the highly abstract world of arithmetic, and say that all reference is inscrutable, strikes me as implausible.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
Syntax and semantics are indeterminate, and modern 'semantics' is a bogus subject [Quine, by Lycan]
     Full Idea: Quine has argued tirelessly that syntax and 'semantics' are indeterminate, and linguistic semantics of the sort that is currently in favor is a pseudoscience and a pipe dream.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Methodological Reflections on Current Linguistic Theory [1972]) by William Lycan - The Trouble with Possible Worlds 02
     A reaction: I think the defence of such things is that they may not integrate into science very well (or even integrate at all), but semantics is intended to integrate into philosophy, and is motivated by philosophical concerns. Quine may be right!
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 3. Predicates
Quine relates predicates to their objects, by being 'true of' them [Quine, by Davidson]
     Full Idea: Quine relates predicates to the things of which they can be predicated ...and hence predicates are 'true of' each and every thing of which the predicate can be truly predicated.
     From: report of Willard Quine (On What There Is [1948]) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 5
     A reaction: Davidson comments that the virtue of Quine's view is negative, in avoiding a regress in the explanation of predication. I'm not sure about true 'of' as an extra sort of truth, but I like dropping predicates from ontology, and sticking to truths.
Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine]
     Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6)
     A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'?
19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / a. Propositions as sense
A 'proposition' is said to be the timeless cognitive part of the meaning of a sentence [Quine]
     Full Idea: A 'proposition' is the meaning of a sentence. More precisely, since propositions are supposed to be true or false once and for all, it is the meaning of an eternal sentence. More precisely still, it is the 'cognitive' meaning, involving truth, not poetry.
     From: Willard Quine (Propositional Objects [1965], p.139)
     A reaction: Quine defines this in order to attack it. I equate a proposition with a thought, and take a sentence to be an attempt to express a proposition. I have no idea why they are supposed to be 'timeless'. Philosophers have some very odd ideas.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 6. Propositions Critique
The problem with propositions is their individuation. When do two sentences express one proposition? [Quine]
     Full Idea: The trouble with propositions, as cognitive meanings of eternal sentences, is individuation. Given two eternal sentences, themselves visibly different linguistically, it is not sufficiently clear under when to say that they mean the same proposition.
     From: Willard Quine (Propositional Objects [1965], p.140)
     A reaction: If a group of people agree that two sentences mean the same thing, which happens all the time, I don't see what gives Quine the right to have a philosophical moan about some dubious activity called 'individuation'.
It makes no sense to say that two sentences express the same proposition [Quine]
     Full Idea: My objection to propositions is not parsimony, or disapproval of abstract entities, ..but that propositions induce a relation of synonymy or equivalence between sentences (expressing the same proposition), and this makes no objective sense.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: Personally I think propositions are unavoidable when you try to connect language to activities of the brain, and also when you consider animal thought. And also when you introspect about your own language processes. Mr Quine, he wrong.
There is no rule for separating the information from other features of sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: There is no evident rule for separating the information from the stylistic or other immaterial features of the sentences.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: There is no rule for deciding precisely when night falls, so I don't believe in night. I take a proposition, prima facie, as an answer to the question 'What exactly do you mean by that remark?' How do you extract logical form from sentences?
We can abandon propositions, and just talk of sentences and equivalence [Quine]
     Full Idea: Why not just talk of sentences and equivalence and let the propositions go? Propositions have been projected as shadows of sentences, but at best they will give us nothing the sentences will not give.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.1)
     A reaction: I don't understand how you decide that two sentences are equivalent. 'There's someone in that wood'; 'yes, there's a person amongst those trees'. Identical truth-conditions. We can formulate a non-linguistic fact about those truth-conditions.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 1. Analytic Propositions
Analytic statements are either logical truths (all reinterpretations) or they depend on synonymy [Quine]
     Full Idea: Analytic statements fall into two classes: 'no unmarried man is married' typifies the first class, of logical truths; it remains true under all reinterpretations. 'No bachelor is married' is analytic if synonyms replace synonyms, and there's the problem.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], §1)
     A reaction: Boghossian emphasises this passage. In other papers Quine argues that logical truths also cannot be purely analytic, although he does not deny that there are logical truths.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 3. Analytic and Synthetic
Without the analytic/synthetic distinction, Carnap's ontology/empirical distinction collapses [Quine]
     Full Idea: If there is no proper distinction between analytic and synthetic, then no basis at all remains for the contrast which Carnap urges between ontological statements and empirical statements of existence. Ontology then ends up on a par with natural science.
     From: Willard Quine (On Carnap's Views on Ontology [1951], p.211)
     A reaction: Carnap says ontology is relative to a linguistic framework. 'External' ontology is empty. This quotation gives Quine's main motivation for denying the analytic/synthetic distinction.
19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique
Did someone ever actually define 'bachelor' as 'unmarried man'? [Quine]
     Full Idea: How do we find that 'bachelor' is defined as unmarried man? Who defined it thus, and when? Not the lexicographer, who is a scientist recording antecedent facts.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.24)
     A reaction: All mid-20th C philosophy of language is too individualistic in its strategy. Eventually later Wittgenstein sank in, and socially agreed meanings for 'water' and 'elm'.
When we explicate the category of being, we watch a new category emerge [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, by explicating the indeterminate category of being, we do not merely restate in different words what is obviously 'contained' in it; we watch a new category emerge.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Science of Logic [1816]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method'
     A reaction: This is obviously a response to Kant's view of analyticity, as merely explicating the contents of the subject of the sentence, without advancing knowledge or conceptual resources. A key idea of Hegel's, which I find unconvincing.
Quine's attack on analyticity undermined linguistic views of necessity, and analytic views of the a priori [Quine, by Boghossian]
     Full Idea: Quine's attack on analyticity devastated the philosophical programs that depend upon a notion of analyticity - specifically, the linguistic theory of necessary truth, and the analytic theory of a priori knowledge.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §I
     A reaction: Note that much more would be needed to complete Quine's aim of more or less eliminating both necessity and the a priori from his scientific philosophy. Quine was trying to complete a programme initiated by C.I. Lewis (q.v.).
Quine attacks the Fregean idea that we can define analyticity through synonyous substitution [Quine, by Thomasson]
     Full Idea: Quine's attack argues against the Fregean attempt to define 'analyticity' in terms of synonymy - where analytical truths are logical truths ('unmarried men are unmarried'), or become logical truths by synonymous replacement ('bachelors are unmarried').
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 02.1
     A reaction: This is a very helpful explanation of what is going on in Quine. Why won't philosophers explain clearly what they are attacking, before they attack it?
The last two parts of 'Two Dogmas' are much the best [Miller,A on Quine]
     Full Idea: The arguments of the final two sections of 'Two Dogmas' have received more acceptance than the arguments of the first four sections, which are now generally acknowledged to be unsuccessful.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4 Read
     A reaction: The early sections are the 'circular' argument against analyticity; the later parts are further discussions of the concept. We don't have to take Miller's word for this, but it is a useful pointer when reading the paper.
Erasing the analytic/synthetic distinction got rid of meanings, and saved philosophy of language [Davidson on Quine]
     Full Idea: Erasing the line between the analytic and the synthetic saved philosophy of language as a serious subject by showing how it could be pursued without what there cannot be: determinate meanings.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Donald Davidson - Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge p.158
     A reaction: Note that this comes from the most famous modern champion of one of the main theories of meaning (as truth-conditions). Did anyone ever believe in reified objects called 'meanings'?
The analytic needs excessively small units of meaning and empirical confirmation [Quine, by Jenkins]
     Full Idea: Quine rejects the analytic on the grounds that it assumes a smaller unit of meaning than a total theory, and he does not think it makes sense to talk about such smaller units of meaning because there are no smaller units of empirical confirmation.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953]) by Carrie Jenkins - Grounding Concepts 7.5
     A reaction: A very helpful account of the famous Quine argument, showing how it arises out of his particular holistic view of empiricism.
If we try to define analyticity by synonymy, that leads back to analyticity [Quine]
     Full Idea: In defining analyticity an appeal to meanings seems natural, but that reduces to synonymy or definition. Definition is a will-o'-the-wisp, and synonymy is best understood by a priori appeal to analyticity, so we are back at the problem of analyticity.
     From: Willard Quine (Two Dogmas of Empiricism [1953], p.32)
     A reaction: Quine is full of these over-neat sceptical arguments, saying everything is circular, or can never get started. Compare Aristotle's benign circle of virtuous people and virtuous actions.
In observation sentences, we could substitute community acceptance for analyticity [Quine]
     Full Idea: Perhaps the controversial notion of analyticity can be dispensed with, in our definition of observation sentences, in favour of the straightforward attitude of community-wide acceptance.
     From: Willard Quine (Epistemology Naturalized [1968], p.86)
     A reaction: That might be a reasonable account of 'bachelors'. If the whole community accepts 'God exists', does that make it analytic? If a whole (small!) community claims to actually observe a ghost or a flying saucer, is that then analytic?
The distinction between meaning and further information is as vague as the essence/accident distinction [Quine]
     Full Idea: The distinction between what belongs to the meaning of a word and what counts as further information is scarcely clearer than the distinction between the essence of a thing and its accidents.
     From: Willard Quine (Vagaries of Definition [1972], p.51)
     A reaction: In lots of cases the distinction between essence and accident strikes me as totally clear. Tricky borderline cases don't destroy a distinction. That bachelors are married is clearly not 'further information'.
Holism in language blurs empirical synthetic and empty analytic sentences [Quine]
     Full Idea: Holism blurs the supposed contrast beween the synthetic sentence, with its empirical content, and the analytic sentence, with its null content.
     From: Willard Quine (Five Milestones of Empiricism [1975], p.71)
     A reaction: This spells out nicely that Quine's rejection of the distinction is completely tied to his holistic view of language. The obvious phenomenon of compositionality (building sentence meaning in steps) counts against holism.
I will even consider changing a meaning to save a law; I question the meaning-fact cleavage [Quine]
     Full Idea: I am not concerned even to avoid the trivial extreme of sustaining a law by changing a meaning; for the cleavage between meaning and fact is part of what ...I am questioning.
     From: Willard Quine (Letters [1962], 1962.06.01)
     A reaction: [Letter to Adolf Grünbaum. Found on Twitter] A strikingly helpful expression of his position by Quine. We should take about the 'meaning/fact distinction' in order to understand clearly what is going on here.
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / a. Contextual meaning
A good way of explaining an expression is saying what conditions make its contexts true [Quine]
     Full Idea: A reasonable way of explaining an expression is by saying what conditions make its various contexts true.
     From: Willard Quine (Philosophy of Logic [1970], Ch.3)
     A reaction: I like the circumspect phrasing of this, which carefully avoids any entities such as 'meanings' or 'truth conditions'. Maybe the whole core of philosophy of language should shift from theories of meaning to just trying to 'explain' sentences.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / a. Translation
Translation is too flimsy a notion to support theories of cultural incommensurability [Quine]
     Full Idea: Translation is a flimsy notion, unfit to bear the weight of the theories of cultural incommensurability that Davidson effectively and justly criticises.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma [1981], p.42)
     A reaction: I presume he means that a claim to accurately translate something is false, because there is no clear idea of what a good translation looks like it. I just don't believe him. The practice of daily life belies Quine's theories on this.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / b. Indeterminate translation
Indeterminacy of translation also implies indeterminacy in interpreting people's mental states [Dennett on Quine]
     Full Idea: Quine's thesis of the indeterminacy of radical translation carries all the way in, as the thesis of the indeterminacy of radical interpretation of mental states and processes.
     From: comment on Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Daniel Dennett on himself p.239
     A reaction: Strong scepticism seems wrong here. Davidson's account of charity in interpretation, and the role of truth, seems closer.
The firmer the links between sentences and stimuli, the less translations can diverge [Quine]
     Full Idea: The firmer the direct links of a sentence with non-verbal stimulation, the less drastically its translations can diverge from one another from manual to manual.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §07)
     A reaction: This implies (plausibly) that talk about farming will have fairly determinate translations into foreign languages, but talk of philosophy will not. An interesting case is logic, where we might expect tight translation with little non-verbal stimulation.
We can never precisely pin down how to translate the native word 'Gavagai' [Quine]
     Full Idea: There is no evident criterion whereby to strip extraneous effects away and leave just the meaning of 'Gavagai' properly so-called - whatever meaning properly so-called may be.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §09)
     A reaction: Quine's famous assertion that translation is ultimately 'indeterminate'. Huge doubts about meaning and language and truth follow from his claim. Personally I think it is rubbish. People become fluent in very foreign languages, and don't have breakdowns.
Stimulus synonymy of 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee they are coextensive [Quine]
     Full Idea: Stimulus synonymy of the occasion sentences 'Gavagai' and 'Rabbit' does not even guarantee that 'gavagai' and 'rabbit' are coextensive terms, terms true of the same things.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §12)
     A reaction: Since this scepticism eventually seems to result in the reader no longer knowing what they mean themselves by the word 'rabbit', I doubt Quine's claim. Problems after hearing one word of a foreign language disappear after years of residence.
Dispositions to speech behaviour, and actual speech, are never enough to fix any one translation [Quine]
     Full Idea: Rival systems of analytical hypotheses can fit the totality of speech behaviour to perfection, and can fit the totality of dispositions to speech behaviour as well, and still specify mutually incompatible translations of countless sentences.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §15)
     A reaction: This is Quine's final assertion of indeterminacy, having explored charity, bilingual speakers etc. It seems to me that he is a victim of his underlying anti-realism, which won't allow nature to dictate ways of cutting up the world.
You could know the complete behavioural conditions for a foreign language, and still not know their beliefs [Quine]
     Full Idea: We could know the necessary and sufficient stimulatory conditions of every possible act of utterance, in a foreign language, and still not know how to determine what objects the speakers of that language believe in.
     From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.III,p.11)
     A reaction: I just don't believe this, because the same scepticism then creeps into discussions of native speakers of a single language, and all communcation is blighted - which is nonsense.
Translation of our remote past or language could be as problematic as alien languages [Quine]
     Full Idea: Translation of our remote past or future discourse into the terms we now know could be about as tenuous and arbitrary a projection as translation of a heathen language was seen to be.
     From: Willard Quine (Speaking of Objects [1960], pt.V,p.25)
     A reaction: Is he seriously saying that we can't understand Shakespeare, because holism implies that we would have to be Elizabethans? So scholarship is in vain? Is yesterday the 'past'?
Indeterminacy translating 'rabbit' depends on translating individuation terms [Quine]
     Full Idea: The indeterminacy between 'rabbit', 'rabbit stage' and the rest depended only on a correlative indeterminacy of translation of the English apparatus of individuation - pronouns, plurals, identity, numerals and so on.
     From: Willard Quine (Ontological Relativity [1968], p.35)
     A reaction: This spells out the problem a little better than in 'Word and Object'. I just don't believe these problems are intractable. Quine is like a child endlessly asking 'why?'.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
We should be suspicious of a translation which implies that a people have very strange beliefs [Quine]
     Full Idea: The more absurd or exotic the beliefs imputed to a people, the more suspicious we are entitled to be of the translations.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §15)
     A reaction: Quine is famous for his relativist and indeterminate account of translation, but he gradually works his way towards the common sense which Davidson later brought out into the open.
Weird translations are always possible, but they improve if we impose our own logic on them [Quine]
     Full Idea: Wanton translation can make natives sound as queer as one pleases; better translation imposes our logic upon them.
     From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §13)
     A reaction: This begins to point towards the principle of charity, on which Davidson is so keen, and even on doubts whether two different conceptual schemes are possible. Personally I think there is only one logic (deep down), and the natives will have it.
The principle of charity only applies to the logical constants [Quine, by Miller,A]
     Full Idea: Quine takes to the principle of charity to apply only to the translation of the logical constants.
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 8.7
     A reaction: Given how weird some people's view of the world seems to be, this very cautious approach has an interesting rival appeal to Davidson't much more charitable view, that people mostly speak truth. It depends whether you are discussing lunch or the gods.
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
The concept of the will is the free will which wills its freedom [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The abstract concept of the Idea of the will is in general the free will which wills the free will.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 027)
     A reaction: Since Hegel thinks we only have free will because we will to have it, it makes sense that that will precedes the free will. But I don't understand how the will which wills that freedom is itself free. No doubt Hegelians understand this.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism
Evil enters a good will when we believe we are doing right, but allow no criticism of our choice [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The evil Hegel finds at the heart of the good will is not simply the criminal violation of rights, but the evil which lies in believing oneself to be doing what is truly good, while allowing no one but oneself to determine what the good actually is.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Problem'
     A reaction: That is not intellectualism, but the implication that intellectualism is a potential source of evil. The interesting thought is that Hegel is contributing a social dimension to the weakness of will problem.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics
Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: Only In the course of the nineteenth century, and in the wake of Hegel's posthumously published lectures on aesthetics, did the topic of art come to replace that of natural beauty as the core subject-matter of aesthetics.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], 5) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
Hegel largely ignores aesthetic pleasure, taste and beauty, and focuses on the meaning of artworks [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Unlike his predecessors (including Kant), Hegel does not focus on aesthetic pleasure, nor on good taste, nor even on the nature and criteria for beauty. Instead he focuses on the meaning of artworks and their role in forming mankind's self-consciousness.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
     A reaction: Personally I dislike over-intellectualising art. The aim of a work of art is to give a certain experience, not to generate an ensuing sequence of theorising. I doubt whether Vermeer had any 'meaning' in mind in his obsessive work.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty
Natural beauty is unimportant, because it doesn't show human freedom [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Hegel thinks that natural beauty is of no real significance since it cannot display our freedom to us; nature per se is meaningless.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
     A reaction: Presumably freedom is in the creation, and so creativity is what matters in aesthetics. But what are the criteria of good creativity?
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 6. Art as Institution
For Hegel the importance of art concerns the culture, not the individual [Hegel, by Eldridge]
     Full Idea: Hegel locates the significance of art in its role in cultural life in general, not in relation to the psychological needs of individuals.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1
     A reaction: I'm beginning to see that art is a wonderful focus and test case for political attitudes. Roughly, liberalism focuses on individual responses, but more societal views (from right and left) see it in terms of role in the community. Which are you?
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 6. Value of Art
The purpose of art is to reveal to Spirit its own nature [Hegel, by Davies,S]
     Full Idea: According to Hegel, the goal of art was to serve as a phase in a process by which Spirit would come to understand its own nature.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 2.7
     A reaction: I try very hard to understand ideas like this. Really really hard. However, since I see little sign of 'Spirit' really understanding its own nature, I'm guessing that the project is not going well.
The main purpose of art is to express the unity of human life [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Art's primary function, for Hegel, is to give expression to the unity and wholeness of life - especially human life - that the contingencies of everyday existence frequently conceal.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826]), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 09 'Beauty'
     A reaction: I don't find the view that human life is 'unified' and 'whole' vary illuminating, and I have no objection to art which reflects the fragmentary and unstable aspects of life. I suspect Hegel would just prefer it if life were a unity.
Art forms a bridge between the sensuous world and the world of pure thought [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Spirit generates out of itself works of fine art as the first reconciling middle term between pure thought and what is merely external, sensuous and transient - between finite natural reality and the infinite freedom of conceptual thinking.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], p.8), quoted by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics)
     A reaction: This apparently says that there is necessarily an intellectual and conceptual component in art. This means little to me. Does he include portraits? Dutch domestic scenes? Would photography qualify?
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / c. Ethical intuitionism
Conscience is the right of the self to know what is right and obligatory, and thus make them true [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Conscience is the expression of the absolute title of subjective self-consciousness to know in itself and from within itself what is right and obligatory, to recognise only what it knows as good, and that what is thus known is right and obligatory.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 137), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Problem'
     A reaction: [compressed] This is the sort of rabbit-out-of-the-hat move that Hegel loves, and I find implausible. Mill made the key point about conscience.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / e. Human nature
Man is God if he raises himself, by denying his nature and finitude [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Man is only God in so far as he negates the natural existence and finitude of his spirit and raises himself to God.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (The Philosophy of History [1840], p.324), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'God'
     A reaction: I suspect that it was ideas like this which motivated Nietzsche - denial of what we are, in the name of some idle daydream. I personally have no idea how to negate my natural existence or my finitude.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / a. Nature of value
Altruistic values concern other persons, and ceremonial values concern practices [Quine]
     Full Idea: Altruistic values attach to satisfactions of other persons, without regard to ulterior satisfactions accruing to oneself. Ceremonial values attach to practices of one's society, without regard to satisfactions accruing to oneself.
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.58)
     A reaction: An interesting distinction, but probably as blurred and circular as (according to Quine) the analytic/synthetic distinction.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / g. Love
Love seems to diminish with distance from oneself [Quine]
     Full Idea: One cannot reasonably be called upon to love even one's neighbour quite as oneself. Is love to diminish inversely as the square of the distance? Is it to extend to other species than one's own?
     From: Willard Quine (On the Nature of Moral Values [1978], p.65)
     A reaction: Quine isn't actually saying that love is inherently egoistic, but that is the implication. The power of my love is at its most powerful when it is closest to home.
Love is ethical life in its natural form [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Love is a feeling, that is, ethical life in its natural form.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 158 add)
     A reaction: For Hegel the less natural forms are more abstract - such as the categorical imperative. Does this imply that intellectual beings should extend the feeling of love into more abstract forms, such as virtues or principles or ideals?
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
World history has no room for happiness [Hegel]
     Full Idea: World history is not the place for happiness. Periods of happiness are empty pages in history.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: Clearly, Hegel thinks the progress of world history is much more important than happiness. This idea gives backing to those who don't care much about the casualties on either side in a major war.
23. Ethics / D. Deontological Ethics / 3. Universalisability
You can't have a morality which is supplied by the individual, but is also genuinely universal [Hegel, by MacIntyre]
     Full Idea: Hegel attacks doctrines which are attempts by the individual to supply his own morality, and at one and the same time, to claim for it a genuine universality.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.15
     A reaction: Hegel clearly has Kant in mind. It is a penetrating criticism. Of course, there is no reason why a universal mathematical proof shouldn't be 'provided' by the individual. The Kantian seeks agreement. See Contractualism.
23. Ethics / D. Deontological Ethics / 4. Categorical Imperative
Be a person, and respect other persons [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The commandment of right is: be a person, and respect other persons
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 036)
     A reaction: This seems to be presented as a categorical imperative. He implies that you can choose whether to be a person, which seems wrong. I love making 'respect other persons' the supreme command - but I prefer 'respect everything'.
The categorical imperative lacks roots in a historical culture [Hegel, by Bowie]
     Full Idea: Hegel criticised the categorical imperative for lacking any roots in the moral habits and practices which develop in actual historical communities.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 1
     A reaction: This is the gist of Alasdair MacIntyre's defence of virtue theory, against rational Enlightenment ethics. Charles Taylor made the link to Hegel.
The categorical imperative is fine if you already have a set of moral principles [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The proposition 'Consider whether your maxim can be asserted as a universal principle' would be all very well if we already had determinate principles concerning how to act.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 135 add)
     A reaction: Excellent! I have always taken this to be the overwhelming problem with Kant's theory. Kant's examples always presume a set of unquestioned conventional values. Kant offers a framework for moral thought, but values are what matter.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 1. Existentialism
The good is realised freedom [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The good is realised freedom, the absolute and ultimate end of the world.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 129)
     A reaction: This remark could have been made by Sartre. On its own I find it baffling, and can make no sense of an account of ethics that gives no guidance on behaviour at all, other than that freedom should be asserted.
Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the absolute truth of humanity is that human beings have no fixed, given identity, but rather determine and produce their own identity and their world in history, and that they gradually come to the recognition of this fact in history.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This quintessentially existentialist idea, most obvious in Sartre, seems to have originated with this view of Hegel's.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 6. Authentic Self
The in-itself must become for-itself, which requires self-consciousness [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The in-itself has to express itself outwardly and become for itself, and this means simply that it has to posit self-consciousness as one with itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 26)
     A reaction: This famous distinction seems to be at the core of idealism, but also to be the germ of existentialism (prior to Kierkegaard), which builds on this view of what it means to exist as an individual. Self-consciousness in nature is inevitable?
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / b. The natural life
The state of nature is one of untamed brutality [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The 'state of nature' is not an ideal condition, but a condition of injustice, of violence, of untamed natural drives, inhuman acts and emotions.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: He agrees with Hobbes, and disagrees with Rousseau. Hobbes's solution is authoritarian monarchy, but Hegel's solution is the unified and focused state, in which freedom can be realised.
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / c. A unified people
Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge]
     Full Idea: We may take Hegel's Absolute Spirit to be the union of collective, human rational activity at a historical moment with its proper object, the forms of social and individual life that the rational activity is devoted to understanding and sustaining.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1
     A reaction: From this formulation it sounds as if the whole human race might have momentary union, but presumably it is more local 'peoples' that can exhibit this.
The family is the first basis of the state, but estates are a necessary second [Hegel]
     Full Idea: While the family is the primary basis of the state, the estates are second. The latter are of special importance, because private persons, despite their selfishness, must have recourse to others.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 201 add)
     A reaction: He mentions agriculture as an estate. The implication is that interactions between families requires state institutions, but in simpler societies families can obviously interact and help one another directly. He wants the state to be indispensable.
The soul of the people is an organisation of its members which produces an essential unity [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The soul [of the people] exists only insofar as it is an organisation of its members, which - by taking itself together in its simple unity - produce the soul. Thus the people is one individuality in its essence.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: Hegel is seen (e.g. by Charles Taylor) as the ancestor of a rather attractive communitarianism, but I think Popper is more accurate in seeing him as the first stage of modern totalitarianism. The people seen as one individual terrifies me.
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 3. Natural Values / c. Natural rights
We cannot assert rights which are unnatural [Hegel]
     Full Idea: No one can assert a right against nature.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 244 add)
     A reaction: Although the existence of natural rights is dubious (or nonsense, for Bentham), this is a vague but sensible constraint on what can plausibly be asserted as a right. The rights we create in society must respond to natural needs.
We are only free, with rights, if we claim our freedom, and there are no natural rights [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel says we are only truly free, and so bearers of rights, in so far as we claim our freedom. ...So there are no merely natural rights, and animal's have no rights.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Right [1819], p.78) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'
     A reaction: If there are no natural rights, then it is hard to see how claiming a right will create it. I can't create a right to drink the best champagne. It seems particularly unjust to deny rights to people so enslaved that freedom has never occurred to them.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 1. Purpose of a State
I aim to portray the state as a rational entity [Hegel]
     Full Idea: This treatise is an attempt to comprehend and portray the state as an inherently rational entity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], Pref)
     A reaction: Right now I see very little sign of that being the case. States contain many institutions which are fairly rational, because they focus efficiently on a clear object, but a state can only be rational if there is a wide consensus on its objective.
Society draws people, and requires their work, making them wholly dependent on it [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Civil society is the immense power which draws people to itself and requires them to work for it, to owe everything to it, and to do everything by its means.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 238 add)
     A reaction: This is the disturbing side of Hegel's quite attractive communitarian thinking. His general picture is of the state prescribing what is required of its citizens, with little scope for citizens to prescribe what they need from the state. See Popper.
The state is the march of God in the world [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The state consists of the march of God in the world, and its basis is the power of reason actualising itself as will.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 258)
     A reaction: The most notorious sentence in the whole book. See Wiki article on it. The hair-raising aspect of it is that God won't tell us where the state is going, so those in charge will decide that for us. God gives their preferences maximum authority.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 2. State Legitimacy / c. Social contract
Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, society cannot be founded on a contract, since contracts have no reality until society is in place.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 28.2
     A reaction: Interesting, and reminiscent of the private language argument, but contracts surely start as deals between individuals (on a desert island?).
Individuals can't leave the state, because they are natural citizens, and humans require a state [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The arbitrary will of individuals cannot break away from the state, because the individual is already by nature a citizen of it. It is the rational destiny of humans to live within a state, and if there is no state reason requires it to be established.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 075 add)
     A reaction: The Aristotelian view, in opposition to the social contract idea that individuals must choose to have a state. I agree with Hegel, but find his authoritarian tone disturbing. What else will I be told is my 'rational destiny'? We want liberal communiity.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 2. State Legitimacy / d. General will
A fully developed state is conscious and knows what it wills [Hegel]
     Full Idea: An essential part of the fully developed state is consciousness or thought; the state accordingly knows what it wills and knows this an a object of thought.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270 add)
     A reaction: The silliest idea by a famous philosopher anywhere in this database. I bet the criterion for being fully developed is being conscious, and the criterion for being conscious is being fully developed, whatever that means. General will run riot.
The people do not have the ability to know the general will [Hegel]
     Full Idea: To know what one wills, and even more to know what reason wills, is the fruit of profound cognition and insight, and this the very thing which 'the people' lack.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 301)
     A reaction: This is obviously directed at Rousseau, and seems to be specifically anti-democratic. Hegel sees the general will as a mystical fact, only knowable to some elite intellectual priesthood.
The great man of the ages is the one who reveals and accomplishes the will of his time [Hegel]
     Full Idea: He who expresses the will of his age, tells it what its will is, and accomplishes this will, is the great man of the age.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 318 add)
     A reaction: The great man of Hegel's age had obviously been Napoleon, who may have accomplished the will of part of the French people, but went massively against the will of the rest of Europe. For Hegel this seems to be the reality of the General Will.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 3. Constitutions
A constitution embodies a nation's rights and condition [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The constitution of a nation must embody the nation's feeling for its rights and present condition.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 274 add)
     A reaction: Most constitutions also specify the institutions needed to maintain its principles and values. If it specifies its 'present' condition, that is a licence to change it from time to time. Hegel endorses such flexibility.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 4. Citizenship
Individuals must dedicate themselves to the ethical whole, and give their lives when asked [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The individual person is a subordinate entity who must dedicate himself to the ethical whole. Consequently, if the state demands his life, the individual must surrender it.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 070 add)
     A reaction: The obvious problem is a war which is perceived to be unjust. Vietnam draft dodgers. We should always consider the common good, but 'dedicate himself to the ethical whole'? It depends whether the ethical whole is dedicated to us.
Social groups must focus on the state, which must in turn respect their inclusion and their will [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The interests of family and civil society must concentrate themselves on the state, although the universal end cannot be advanced without the personal knowledge and will of its particular members, whose own rights must be maintained.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 260), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom'
     A reaction: Hegel's emphasis on the state has sometimes allowed him to be presented as a proto-fascist, so the second half of this is important - especially the remark about citizens having 'knowledge' of what is going on. Is citizen commitment conditional on this?
People can achieve respect for their state by insight into its essence [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The best way for humans to achieve respect for the state as that whole of which they are branches is through philosophical insight into its essence.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270 add)
     A reaction: Although Hegel on the state can be quite alarming, I rather approve of this Aristotelian thought. States do not, of course, have ready made essences awaiting the insights of philosophers, but discussion can converge on a concept of what the state is.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 4. Changing the State / c. Revolution
All revolutions result from spirit changing its categories, to achieve a deeper understanding [Hegel]
     Full Idea: All revolutions ...originate solely from the fact that spirit, in order to understand and comprehend itself with a view to possessing itself, has changed its categories, comprehending itself more truly, more deeply, more intimately in unity with itself.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Philosophy of Nature (Encylopedia II) [1817], §246), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: Some Hegelian waffle here, but it focuses on what seems important, which is how societal thinking has shifted, so that what was previously tolerated now triggers a revolution.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 3. Conservatism
In the 1840s Hegel seemed to defend society being right as it is, as a manifestation of Mind [Hegel, by Singer]
     Full Idea: In the 1840s the orthodox interpretation of Hegel was that since human society is the manifestation of Mind [Geist] in the world, everything is right and rational as it is.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Peter Singer - Marx 2
     A reaction: This orthodoxy provoked the rebellion of Marx and the Young Hegelians. Modern Communitarians like Hegel, but that view seems to hover between right-wing authoritarianism and left-wing egalitarianism.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / b. Consultation
Majority rule means obligations can be imposed on me [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Majority decisions are at variance with the principle that I should be personally present in anything which imposes an obligation on me.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 309 add)
     A reaction: The big democratic problem of my time is sharp binary decisions made by a democracy, such as UK leaving the EU, or Scotland leaving the UK. A very large minority in such cases has their will entirely thwarted, whichever way it goes.
The state should reflect all interests, and not just popular will, or a popular party [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The best guarantee of freedom is for the state to be organised in such a way that the legislature reflects all the substantial interests within civil society, and not just the 'will of the majority', or the parties which happen to find popular support.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 311) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom'
     A reaction: In our first-past-the-post system innumerable interests fail to be represented, and parliament is crushed by dull plodders with ossified views who smugly hang on to safe seats. IMHO.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 5. Democracy / d. Representative democracy
Representatives by region ignores whether they care about the national interest [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Selecting representatives on the basis of geography means selecting people without any regard to whether they represent the basic and important interests of the 'whole' of society.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Right [1819]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 11
     A reaction: Proportional representation seems to get away from this, but that can still be arranged according to large regions. Some means is needed to prevent the whole nation from exploitation a regional minority (such as Welsh speakers).
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / d. Liberal freedom
In modern states an individual's actions should be their choice [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is inherent in the principle of the modern state that all of an individual's actions should be mediated by his will.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 299 add)
     A reaction: This is the liberal side of Hegel's thinking. It is a corrective to his reverential attitude to the state. He criticise Plato for assigning citizens their jobs.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / g. Liberalism critique
The human race matters, and individuals have little importance [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Individuals are of slight importance compared to the mass of the human race.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: A perfect statement of the anti-liberal viewpoint. Hegel is complex, but this is the strand that leads to ridiculous totalitarianism, where the highest ideal is to die for the glory of your nation. Importance can only start from individuals.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 7. Communitarianism / a. Communitarianism
Modern life needs individuality, but must recognise that human agency is social [Hegel, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Hegel argued that the modern world necessarily had to make space for individuals and their inviolable conscience, while not becoming so individualistic that it failed to acknowledge the deep sociality of human agency. ...Subjectivity became a right.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09
     A reaction: [at the end of the chapter on the history of Geist in the Phenomenology] Conservatives, revolutionaries and communitarians all claim Hegel as their own. The sociality is a matter of mutual law-giving, as in the Master/Slave.
Moral individuals become ethical when they see the social aspect of a matter [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The moral individual becomes an ethical individual when he recognises that his own voice need not always utter the last word on a given matter, but should be understood as participating in ongoing social and political practices.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom'
     A reaction: This is a key idea in Hegel, and is seen (by Charles Taylor etc) as the foundations of modern communitarianism.
For Hegel, the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community [Hegel, by MacIntyre]
     Full Idea: Hegel's final standpoint is that the moral life can only be led within a certain type of community.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.15
     A reaction: This (together with Aristotle) is the basis of modern communitarianism. There is the problem of saintly people who kept their integrity through the Nazi period. I agree with the proposal, in a loose sort of way.
Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Human nature only really exists in an achieved community of minds.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 69)
     A reaction: A lovely slogan, that makes Hegel the father of the communitarian movement. The politics of Hegel can, of course, be sinister, so one must proceed with care, and study history to see where it can all go wrong.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 12. Feminism
Even educated women are unsuited to science, philosophy, art and government [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Women may well be educated, but they are not made for the higher sciences, for philosophy and certain artistic productions which require a universal element. …When women are in charge of government the state is in danger.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 166 add)
     A reaction: This makes unpleasant reading. Women have recently played a leading role in creating the Covid vaccines which may well have saved millions of lives. There were plenty of good women novelists around in Hegel's time.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 14. Nationalism
In a good state the goal of the citizens and of the whole state are united [Hegel]
     Full Idea: A state is well constituted and internally strong if the private interest of the citizens is united in the universal goal of the state.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: The obvious question is who decides on the goals, and what to do with the citizens who don't accept them.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 1. Slavery
Slaves have no duties because they have no rights [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Slaves have no duties because they have no rights.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 261), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Freedom'
     A reaction: Does this correlation go all the way up society? Do I only have duties insofar as I have correlative rights? Monarchs seem to have maximum duties and maximum rights. Democratic leaders seem thereby to get a raw deal.
Slaves are partly responsible for their own condition [Hegel]
     Full Idea: If someone is a slave, his own will is responsible. The wrong of slavery is not only the fault of those who enslave people, but of the slaves themselves. …[66 add: The slave has an absolute right to free himself]
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 057 add)
     A reaction: He accepts that enslaving people is wrong. Are the slaves at fault for losing their struggle? Would Hegel approve of someone giving modern weapons to the slaves?
State slavery is a phase of education, moving towards a full culture [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Because slavery exists in states, it is a phase of advance from the merely isolated sensual existence - a phase of education - a mode of becoming participant in a higher morality and the culture connected with it.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (The Philosophy of History [1840], p.98), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'
     A reaction: [He adds that slavery should be removed slowly, not suddenly] A nicely provocative thought. Is it better to participate in something grand (like pyramid building) as a slave, or drift in dull isolation? How long should this 'phase' last?
Slavery is unjust, because humanity is essentially free [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Slavery is in and for itself an injustice, for the essence of humanity is freedom.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (The Philosophy of History [1840], p.99), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'
     A reaction: This is a corrective to Idea 12783, which offers a defence of the reality of historical slavery. That seemed to depend on some notion that each phase of history is necessary, which is implausible.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 5. Freedom of lifestyle
True liberal freedom is to pursue something, while being free to cease the pursuit [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: The third moment of liberal freedom for Hegel is the unity of the first two - the freedom to engage in some specific pursuit, but in so doing to preserve the sense that one is not irrevocably committed to that pursuit.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 005) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Limits'
     A reaction: Not too surprising, but Hegel is interesting for thinking that we shouldn't just rabbit on about having 'freedom', but should investigate more closely what this is exactly supposed to mean.
People assume they are free, but the options available are not under their control [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The ordinary man believes himself to be free ...to act as he wants, but this arbitrariness entails that he is not free, because what it is that he wills is not intrinsic to self-determining activity, ...and depends on a given content and material.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 015), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'The Limits'
     A reaction: [a bit compressed] I take this to be an extraordinarily influential idea (especially for Marx). Hitherto philosophers just wanted some vague metaphysical 'free will', making moral responsibility and pure reason possible. But who controls the options?
The goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness and enactment of freedom [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The final goal of the world is Spirit's consciousness of its freedom, and hence also the actualisation of that very freedom.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 3)
     A reaction: I have the impression that this ridiculous idea has been very influential in modern French philosophy, since they all seem to be dreaming of some perfect freedom at the end of the rainbow. Freedom is good, but this gives it a bad name.
25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 6. Political freedom
Freedom requires us to submit to a family, or a corporation, or a state [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel thinks that political and social freedom involves letting one's actions be guided by those institutional structures (such as the family, corporations and the state) which secure rights, welfare, and mutual respect.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel 102
     A reaction: Since there are some hideous families, corporations and states, we will need more than that. He may have a point, though, that the rights we desire can only exist in healthy examples of such institutions. Popper loved institutions.
25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 4. Economic equality
Money is the best way to achieve just equality [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The justice of equality can be achieved most effectively by money.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 299)
     A reaction: There are also important equalities such as access to education and to superior jobs. Money is more tangible, but you can fob poor people off with quite small sums of money.
25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 1. Basis of Rights
Rights imply duties, and duties imply rights [Hegel]
     Full Idea: A human being has rights in so far as he has duties, and duties in so far as he has rights.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 155)
     A reaction: I would express this as 'why we should we be loyal to the state if the state is not loyal to us'. The state must not only provide us with nominal rights, but must also enforce them. Without that the citizens are alienated, and the sense of duty fades.
The absolute right is the right to have rights [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The absolute right is the right to have rights.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Right [1819], p.127), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'
     A reaction: What a beautifully succinct and important idea! Does a foetus, or a dog, or a person in a vegetative state, or a slave, qualify?
25. Social Practice / C. Rights / 4. Property rights
Man has an absolute right to appropriate things [Hegel]
     Full Idea: A person has as his substantive end the right of putting his will into any and every thing and thereby making it his ...This is the absolute right of appropriation which man has over all things.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 044), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 08 'Rights'
     A reaction: Houlgate shows this is not a defence of theft. Hegel thinks the right to property stems from our freedom, not from our natural needs. Did Hegel know Locke? It is not obvious that if I pocket a stone I thereby 'own' it. Do birds own their nests?
Because only human beings can own property, everything else can become our property [Hegel]
     Full Idea: All things can become the property of human beings, because the human being is free will, and exists in and for himself, whereas that which confronts him does not have this quality.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 044 add)
     A reaction: Note that the human 'is' free will, rather than 'has' free will. He explicitly includes animals. From a modern ecological view this is a sinister idea. The default position is that if you own something you can do whatever you like with it.
A community does not have the property-owning rights that a person has [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Many states have rightly dissolved the monasteries, because a community does not ultimately have the same right to property as a person does.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 046)
     A reaction: Trinity College, Cambridge, owns vast amounts of land. A lot of property seems to be owned by legal trusts. Hegel sees the basis of property ownership in a person's will. He allows some exceptions.
The owner of a thing is obviously the first person to freely take possession of it [Hegel]
     Full Idea: That a thing belongs to a person who happens to be the first to take possession of it is immediately self-evident. …This is not because he is the first, but because he is a free will.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 050)
     A reaction: At this time they were very conscious of the native Americans. They seem to have lost their lands because they had no institution of private property, and had not asserted their ownership. I suspect Hegel of endorsing this.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 1. War / a. Just wars
Wars add strength to a nation, and cure internal dissension [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Not only do peoples emerge from wars with added strength, but nations troubled by civil dissension gain internal peace as a result of wars with their external enemies.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 324 add)
     A reaction: I suspect that Hegel quite likes wars because they accelerate the development of history. I don't think he would have written nonsense like this after WW1 and WW2. Leaders facing internal dissent like small external wars.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / a. Aims of education
Children need discipline, to break their self-will and eradicate sensuousness [Hegel]
     Full Idea: One of the chief moments in a child's upbringing is discipline, the purpose of which is to break the child's self-will in order to eradicate the merely sensuous and natural.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 174 add)
     A reaction: A standard view for his time, no doubt. No sensible parent doubts that children need to be civilised, and taught to recognise the needs of others. I hope the general aspiration in our society to 'break' a child's self-will has now faded away.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / d. Study of history
History is the progress of the consciousness of freedom [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The History of the World is none other than than the progress of the consciousness of freedom.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]), quoted by Peter Singer - Marx 2
     A reaction: [no ref given] Presumably there is an evolutionary view implicit in this. Presumably also later generations are hereby superior to previous generations. Since no one still has this view of history, does that invalidate Hegel?
We should all agree that there is reason in history [Hegel]
     Full Idea: We ought to have the firm and unconquerable belief that there is reason in history.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Introduction to the Philosophy of History [1840], 2)
     A reaction: This is a ridiculous but hugely influential idea, and I have no idea what makes Hegel believe it. It is the Stoic idea that nature is intrinsically rational, but extending it to human history is absurd. Human exceptionalism. Needs a dose of Darwin.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature
When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]), quoted by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.4
     A reaction: Sounds good, though I'm not sure what it means. The application of the word 'natural' seems a bit arbitrary to me. No objective joint exists between the natural and unnatural. The default position has to be that everything is natural.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 1. Natural Kinds
Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett]
     Full Idea: The concept of natural kinds was reintroduced by Quine, who may now regret the way it has become a stand-in for the dubious but covertly popular concept of essences.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.2 n2
     A reaction: He is right that Quine would regret it, and he is right that we can't assume that there are necessary essences just because there seem to be stable natural kinds, but personally I am an essentialist, so I'm not that bothered.
If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine]
     Full Idea: If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118)
     A reaction: [compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here.
Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine]
     Full Idea: With the triadic relation of comparative similarity, kinds can contain one another, as well as overlapping. Red and colored things can both count as kinds. Colored things all resemble one another, even though less than red things do.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.119)
     A reaction: [compressed] Quine claims that comparative similarity is necessary for kinds - that there be some 'foil' in a similarity - that A is more like C than B is.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 3. Knowing Kinds
You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine]
     Full Idea: If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120)
     A reaction: [ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation
Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When finite things are grasped according to the determinations of cause and effect they are known in their finitude. But objects of reason cannot be determined through such finite predicates, and the attempt to do this was the defect of older metaphysics.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add)
     A reaction: This sounds the launching point for a grand philosophical system which makes scientifically inclined philosophers feel very nervous indeed. I think I prefer the old (pre-Kantian) metaphysics.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata
Causal relata are individuated by coarse spacetime regions [Quine, by Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Quine's view is that causal relata are individuated by spacetime regions, which is even less fine-grained than Davidson's account of events.... He says fine-grained events are poorly individuated and unfamiliar.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Events and Reification [1985]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.2
     A reaction: [Schaffer cites Davidson 1985 as accepting this view] This is a nice suggestion, if we are looking for a naturalistic account of causal relata. It makes a minimum ontological commitment (a Quine trait), and I would supplement it with active 'powers'.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / a. Regularity theory
It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine]
     Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer.
     From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126)
     A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism
The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The movement of pure essences constitutes the nature of scientific method in general.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 34)
     A reaction: This would appear to be precisely the idea of scientific essentialism - if he is saying that science seeks to understand the movement (or power) of essences as they occur in nature.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / b. Scientific necessity
Science confronts the inner necessities of objects [Hegel]
     Full Idea: Scientific cognition demands surrender to the life of the object, or, what amounts to the same thing, confronting and expressing its inner necessity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], Pref 53)
     A reaction: This strikes me as being a much better account of what science tries to do than all the modern talk about laws and theories.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / e. Anti scientific essentialism
Essence gives an illusion of understanding [Quine, by Almog]
     Full Idea: Essence engenders a mere illusion of understanding
     From: report of Willard Quine (works [1961]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence Intro
     A reaction: [Almog quotes Quine, but doesn't give a reference] This is roughly the same as Popper's criticism of essentialism.
We can't say 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves' if we can't quantify modally [Quine]
     Full Idea: To say an object is soluble in water is to say that it would dissolve if it were in water,..which implies that 'necessarily if x is in water then x dissolves'. Yet we do not know if there is a suitable sense of 'necessarily' into which we can so quantify.
     From: Willard Quine (Reference and Modality [1953], §4)
     A reaction: This is why there has been a huge revival of scientific essentialism - because Krike seems to offer exacty the account which Quine said was missing. So can you have modal logic without rigid designation?
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 3. Points in Space
The concept of a 'point' makes no sense without the idea of absolute position [Quine]
     Full Idea: Unless we are prepared to believe that absolute position makes sense, the very idea of a point as an entity in its own right must be rejected as not merely mysterious but absurd.
     From: Willard Quine (Propositional Objects [1965], p.149)
     A reaction: The fact that without absolute position we can only think of 'points' as relative to a conceptual grid doesn't stop the grid from picking out actual locations in space, as shown by latitude and longitude.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / f. Tenseless (B) series
Quine holds time to be 'space-like': past objects are as real as spatially remote ones [Quine, by Sider]
     Full Idea: Quine's view is that time is 'space-like'. Past objects are as real as present ones; they're just temporally distant, just as spatially distant objects are just as real as the ones around here.
     From: report of Willard Quine (Mr Strawson on Logical Theory [1953]) by Theodore Sider - Logic for Philosophy 7.3.1
     A reaction: Something is a wrong with a view that says that a long-dead person is just as real as one currently living. Death is rather more than travelling to a distant place. Arthur Prior responded to Quine by saying 'tense operators' are inescapable.
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In earlier times, every type of so-called anthropomorphic representation was banished from God as finite, and hence unworthy of the Infinite; and as a result he had already grown into something remarkably empty.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62 Rem)
     A reaction: Hegel favoured Christianity, because of its human aspect. His description fits Islam, where indeed the concept of God seems so drain of particularity that there is little in it to doubt, which might explain the durability of that religion.
God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It is true that God ...is the absolute thing: he is however no less the absolute person. That he is the absolute person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.214), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6
     A reaction: Moore says Hegel was a Spinozist, in his commitment to a single substance, but his idea of God is very different, presumably because consciousness and concepts are so important to Hegel. Hegel needs a Lockean abstract notion of 'person' here.
If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel]
     Full Idea: When the concept of God is apprehended merely as that of the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God becomes for us a mere Beyond, and there can be no further talk of the cognition of God.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §36 Add)
28. God / B. Proving God / 1. Proof of God
The God of revealed religion can only be understood through pure speculative knowledge [Hegel]
     Full Idea: God is attainable in pure speculative knowledge alone and is only in that knowledge, and is only that knowledge itself, for He is Spirit; and this speculative knowledge is the knowledge of revealed religion.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807], p.461), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 04 'Absolute'
     A reaction: If you were hoping to find out why Hegel believed in God, I fear this is the best evidence available. He is evidently opposed to natural theology. Hegel's language makes it very hard to grasp how we sees the nature of God.
28. God / B. Proving God / 2. Proofs of Reason / a. Ontological Proof
We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel]
     Full Idea: One unification through which the Ideal is to be established starts from the abstraction of thinking and goes on to the determination for which being alone remains; this is the ontological proof that God is there.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §51)
     A reaction: It should come as no surprise that a philosopher who so passionately endorses pure thinking, in opposition to empiricism, should end up endorsing the highly implausible ontological argument for God's existence. Jacquette gets existence from reason.
Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel]
     Full Idea: Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof.
     From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Arthur Schopenhauer - Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' Ch.II
     A reaction: All massive a priori metaphysics is summed up in this argument, which is right at the core of philosophy.
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 4. God Reflects Humanity
God is the essence of thought, abstracted from the thinker [Hegel, by Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: In Hegel the essence of God is actually nothing other than the essence of thought, or thought abstracted from the ego, that is, from the one who thinks.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §23
     A reaction: Presumably Descartes' Cogito is the origin for this train of thought. This is Feuerbach's reading of Hegel, but the former was keen on the idea of God as idealised humanity.
29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / a. Christianity
Hegel made the last attempt to restore Christianity, which philosophy had destroyed [Hegel, by Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: The Hegelian philosophy is the last magnificent attempt to restore Christianity, which was lost and wrecked, through philosophy, and to restore Christianity (as usual in the modern era) by identifying it with the negation of Christianity.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Phenomenology of Spirit [1807]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §21
     A reaction: What is meant by the 'negation' of Christianity needs some untangling, but I suspect that a lot of 'continental' philosophy 1750-1950 is to do with Christianity, unlike British empiricism, which is intrinsically atheistic.
Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham]
     Full Idea: Hegel claimed that his philosophy was nothing less than an encyclopaedic rationalisation of the Christian religion.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.5
     A reaction: Why did he pick Christianity to rationalise? How can you reason properly if you start with a dogma?
To universalise 'give everything to the poor' leads to absurdity [Hegel]
     Full Idea: If everyone gave everything to the poor, then soon there would be no more poor to give anything to, or no more persons who would have anything to give.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1827], III: 152), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'Faith'
     A reaction: Matthew 5:8, 19:21. Beautifully clear. [I always believed that I had thought of this idea - but not so]. If the logic is that it is better to be poor than to be rich, then the implication is that all excess wealth should be thrown into the sea.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / a. Religious Belief
To have pagan beliefs and be a pagan are quite different [Hegel]
     Full Idea: To believe in pagan religion and to be a pagan are two different things.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 147)
     A reaction: A nice general truth about all religions, and one not often understood by atheists.
Some religions lead to harsh servitude and the debasement of human beings [Hegel]
     Full Idea: It should not be a forgotten that can take on a from which leads to the harshest servitude within the fetters of superstition, and to the debasement of human beings to a level below that of animals.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Elements of the Philosophy of Right [1821], 270)
     A reaction: Hegel was a Christian, though a very unorthodox one. He cities ancient Egypt and India as examples. If you want to assess a religion, see how it behaves when it has political power.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / a. Immortality
Immortality does not come at a later time, but when pure knowing Spirit fully grasps the universal [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The immortality of the soul must not be imagined as though it first emerges into actuality at some later time; rather it is a present quality. ...As pure knowing or as thinking, Spirit has the universal for its object - this is eternity.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1827], III: 208), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'Death'
     A reaction: An unusual view of immortality, which challenges orthodoxy. The idea seems to be that 'pure knowing' is a grasping of the pure reason which embodies nature, which in turn is the nature of God. You enter eternity, rather than reside in it?