17 ideas
| 8226 | A well-posed problem is a problem solved [Bergson, by Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Bergson said that a well-posed problem was a problem solved | |
| From: report of Henri Bergson (works [1910]) by G Deleuze / F Guattari - What is Philosophy? 1.3 | |
| A reaction: This is fairly well in tune with the logical positivist style of philosophising, which tends to ask "what exactly is the question?" rather more than it asks "what is the answer?". I thoroughly approve of both of them (e.g. on free will). |
| 18365 | If truths are just identical with facts, then truths will make themselves true [David] |
| Full Idea: According to the identity theory of truth, a proposition is true if and only if it is identical with a fact. ...This leads to the unacceptable claim that every true proposition makes itself true (because it is identical to its fact). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 14) |
| 18362 | Examples show that truth-making is just non-symmetric, not asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: That 'there is at least one proposition' ...is a case where something makes itself true, which generates a counterexample to the natural assumption that truth-making is asymmetric; truth-making, it seems, is merely non-symmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18360 | It is assumed that a proposition is necessarily true if its truth-maker exists [David] |
| Full Idea: Friends of the truth-maker principle usually hold that the following states a crucial necessary condition on truth-making: if x makes y true, then, necessarily, if x exists then y is true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: My objection is that the proposition y is taken to pre-exist, primly awaiting the facts that will award it 'truth'. An ontology that contains an infinity of propositions, most of which so far lack a truth-value, is incoherent. You can have x, but no y! |
| 18358 | Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker [David] |
| Full Idea: Two different propositions can have the same fact as truth-maker. For example, 'L is happy or L is hungry', and 'L is happy or L is thirsty', which are both made true by the fact that L is happy. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18355 | What matters is truth-making (not truth-makers) [David] |
| Full Idea: The term 'truthmaker' just labels whatever stands in the truth-making relation to a truth. The truth-making relation is crucial. It would have been just as well to refer to the truth-'maker' principle as the truth-'making' principle. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is well said. The commitment of this theory is to something which makes each proposition true. There is no initial commitment to any theories about what sorts of things do the job. |
| 18354 | Correspondence is symmetric, while truth-making is taken to be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence appears to be a symmetric relation while truth-making appears to be, or is supposed to be, an asymmetric relation. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], Intro) |
| 18356 | Correspondence is an over-ambitious attempt to explain truth-making [David] |
| Full Idea: Truth-maker theory says that the attempt by correspondence to fill in the generic truth-maker principle with something more informative fails. It is too ambitious, offering a whole zoo of funny facts that are not needed. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: A typical funny fact is a disjunctive fact, which makes 'he is hungry or thirsty' true (when it can just be made true by the simple fact that he is thirsty). |
| 18363 | Correspondence theorists see facts as the only truth-makers [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists are committed to the view that, since truth is correspondence with a fact, only facts can make true propositions true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 18364 | Correspondence theory likes ideal languages, that reveal the structure of propositions [David] |
| Full Idea: Correspondence theorists tend to promote ideal languages, ...which is intended to mirror perfectly the structure of the propositions it expresses. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], n 03) |
| 18357 | What makes a disjunction true is simpler than the disjunctive fact it names [David] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that 'L is happy or hungry' can be made true by the fact that L is happy. This does not have the same complexity or constituent structure as the proposition it makes true. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 18359 | One proposition can be made true by many different facts [David] |
| Full Idea: One proposition can be made true by many different facts (such as 'there are some happy dogs'). | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 1) |
| 13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points. | |
| From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13 | |
| A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry. |
| 21846 | Bergson was a rallying point, because he emphasised becomings and multiplicities [Bergson, by Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Bergson was a rallying point for all the opposition, …not so much because of the theme of duration, as of the theory and practice of becoming of all kinds, of coexistent multiplicities. | |
| From: report of Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory [1896]) by Gilles Deleuze - A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? I | |
| A reaction: The three heroes of Deleuze are Spinoza, Nietzsche and Bergson. All philosophers are either of Being, or of Becoming, I suggest. |
| 18361 | A reflexive relation entails that the relation can't be asymmetric [David] |
| Full Idea: An asymmetric relation must be irreflexive: any case of aRa will yield a reductio of the assumption that R is asymmetric. | |
| From: Marian David (Truth-making and Correspondence [2009], 4) |
| 21854 | Bergson showed that memory is not after the event, but coexists with it [Bergson, by Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Bergson has shown that memory is not an actual image which forms after the object has been perceived, but a virtual image coexisting with the actual perception of the object. | |
| From: report of Henri Bergson (Matter and Memory [1896]) by Gilles Deleuze - The Actual and the Virtual p.114 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me as plausible to say that all conscious life is memory. Perceiving the present instant is only possible because it endures for a tiny moment. |
| 22100 | Experienced time means no two mental moments are ever alike [Bergson] |
| Full Idea: If duration [experienced time] is what we say, deep-seated psychic states are radically heterogeneous to each other, and it is impossible that any two of them should be quite alike, since they are two different moments in a life-story. | |
| From: Henri Bergson (Time and Free Will [1889], p.220), quoted by Pete A.Y. Gunter - Bergson p.174 | |
| A reaction: This implies that we are intrinsically unpredictable, and there certainly can't be a regularity account of mental causation. The sense of time is said to make the self radically different from the rest of reality. Bergson later rejected dualism. |