164 ideas
| 16000 | Fixed ideas should be tackled aggressively [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Fixed ideas are like a cramp in your foot: the best remedy is to stomp on them. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], JP-III, 635) | |
| A reaction: Sound philosophical advice at any time. [SY] Does this apply in seminars, as well as in private meditation? [PG] |
| 7578 | I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Author') | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is like Socrates's image of himself as the 'gadfly' of Athens. The interesting question is always to see what the rest of society makes of having someone in their midst who sees it as their social role to 'create difficulties'. |
| 22087 | Philosophy fails to articulate the continual becoming of existence [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard criticise philosophy for its inability to grasp and to articulate the movement, the continual becoming, that characterises existence. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 2 | |
| A reaction: Heraclitus had a go, and Hegel's historicism focuses on dynamic thought, but this idea concerns the immediacy of individual life. |
| 22047 | Wherever there is painless contradiction there is also comedy [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Wherever there is contradiction, the comical is also present. ...The tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical is the painless contradiction. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.459), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 13 | |
| A reaction: He is not saying that this is the only source of comedy. I once heard an adult say that there is one thing that is always funny, and that is a fart. |
| 16012 | Philosophy can't be unbiased if it ignores language, as that is no more independent than individuals are [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: If the claim of philosophers to be unbiased were all it pretends to be, it would have to take account of language and its significance...Language is partly given and partly develops freely. As individuals cannot be truly independent, so too with language. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], 1840.07.18) | |
| A reaction: A surprisingly prophetic entry from Kierkegaard anticipating the linguistic turn. [SY] |
| 3811 | Entailment and validity are relations, but inference is a human activity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish between entailment and validity as logical relations on the one hand, and inferring as a voluntary human activity on the other. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 3822 | Theory involves accepting conclusions, and so is a special case of practical reason [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Theoretical reason is typically a matter of accepting a conclusion or hypothesis on the basis of argument or evidence, and is thus a special case of practical reason. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.VII) |
| 3806 | Rationality is built into the intentionality of the mind, and its means of expression [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Constraints of rationality are built into the structure of mind and language, specifically into the structure of intentionality and speech acts. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Int xiv) |
| 3812 | Rationality is the way we coordinate our intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The constraints of rationality ought to be thought of adverbially; they are a matter of the way in which we coordinate our intentionality. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 22092 | Kierkegaard's truth draws on authenticity, fidelity and honesty [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard offers a different interpretation of truth, which draws on the notions of authenticity, fidelity and honesty. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: This notion of truth, meaning 'the real thing' (as in 'she was a true scholar'), seems to begin with Hegel. I suggest we use the word 'genuine' for that, and save 'truth' for its traditional role. It is disastrous to blur the simple concept of truth. |
| 15999 | Pure truth is for infinite beings only; I prefer endless striving for truth [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the ever-striving drive for truth, even if erring forever, and he were to say Choose! I would humbly fall at his left hand and say Father, give! Pure truth is for infinite beings only. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.106) | |
| A reaction: A sobering realistic thought of our own limitations; Kierkegaard allows that there is no limit to how far we can strive for truth. Just that truth is comprehended by infinite beings (if any), not by mere mortals. [SY] |
| 22094 | Subjective truth can only be sustained by repetition [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: If subjective truth is to be more than momentary, it has to be repeated continually. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Repetition [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: This might apply to more traditional concepts of truth, if they are to be part of life, rather than remaining in books. |
| 16005 | I recognise knowledge, but it is the truth by which I can live and die that really matters [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The thing is to find a truth which is true for me - the idea for which I can live and die. I still recognise an imperative of knowledge, but it must be taken up into my life, which I now recognise as the most important thing. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund [1835], J-1A) | |
| A reaction: A quintessentially existential idea. Note that he still considers objective knowledge to be quite important, but how we act and relate to those ideas is what really matters for us human beings. [SY] |
| 5651 | Traditional views of truth are tautologies, and truth is empty without a subject [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard developed the idea of 'truth as subjectivity'; the traditional conceptions of truth - correspondence or coherence - he regarded as equally empty, not because false, but because tautologous; truth ceases to be empty when related to a subject. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that the correspondence theory of truth also involves a subject. If you become too obsessed with the subject, you lose the concept of truth. You need a concept of the non-subject too. Truth concerns the contents of thought. |
| 20313 | The highest truth we can get is uncertainty held fast by an inward passion [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing individual. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] Offered as a definition of truth, knowing how strange and paradoxical it sounds. If we view all life as subjectivity, then there can of course be nothing more to truth than passionate conviction. Personally I think thought can be objective. |
| 3508 | Correspondence to the facts HAS to be the aim of enquiry [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It does not matter whether "true" does mean corresponds to the facts, because "corresponds to the facts" does mean corresponds to the facts, and any discipline that aims to describe how the world is aims for this correspondence. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.V) |
| 3809 | If complex logic requires rules, then so does basic logic [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If you think you need a rule to infer q from 'p and (if p then q)', then you would also need a rule to infer p from p. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 7746 | We don't normally think of names as having senses (e.g. we don't give definitions of them) [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If Tully=Cicero is synthetic, the names must have different senses, which seems implausible, for we don't normally think of proper names as having senses in the way that predicates do (we do not, e.g., give definitions of proper names). | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.89) | |
| A reaction: It is probably necessary to prize apart the question of whether Tully 'has' (intrinsically) a sense, from whether we think of Tully in that way. Stacks of books have appeared about this one, since Kripke. |
| 7747 | How can a proper name be correlated with its object if it hasn't got a sense? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It seems that a proper name could not have a reference unless it did have a sense, for how, unless the name has a sense, is it to be correlated with the object? | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.91) | |
| A reaction: This might (just) be the most important question ever asked in modern philosophy, since it provoked Kripke into answering it, by giving a social, causal, externalist account of how names (and hence lots of language) actually work. But Searle has a point. |
| 7748 | 'Aristotle' means more than just 'an object that was christened "Aristotle"' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle being identical with an object that was originally christened will not suffice, for the force of "Aristotle" is greater than the force of 'identical with an object named "Aristotle"', for not just any object named "Aristotle" will do. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.93) | |
| A reaction: This anticipates Kripke's proposal to base reference on baptism. I remain unsure about how rigid a designation of Aristotle could be, in a possible world where his father died young, and he became an illiterate soldier who hates philosophy. |
| 7749 | Reference for proper names presupposes a set of uniquely referring descriptions [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To use a proper name referringly is to presuppose the truth of certain uniquely referring descriptive statements. ...Names are pegs on which to hang descriptions. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.94) | |
| A reaction: This 'cluster' view of Searle's has become notorious, but I think one could at least try to mount a defence. The objection to Searle is that none of the descriptions are necessary, unlike just being the named object. |
| 7750 | Proper names are logically connected with their characteristics, in a loose way [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If asked whether or not proper names are logically connected with characteristics of the object to which they refer, the answer is 'yes, in a loose sort of way'. | |
| From: John Searle (Proper Names [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: It seems to be inviting trouble to assert that a connection is both 'logical' and 'loose'. Clearly Searle has been reading too much later Wittgenstein. This is probably the weakest point in Searle's proposal, which brought a landslide of criticism. |
| 3810 | In real reasoning semantics gives validity, not syntax [Searle] |
| Full Idea: In real-life reasoning it is the semantic content that guarantees the validity of the inference, not the syntactical rule. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 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. |
| 16007 | I assume existence, rather than reasoning towards it [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: I always reason from existence, not towards existence. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.40) | |
| A reaction: Kierkegaard's important premise to help show that theistic proofs for God's existence don't actually prove existence, but develop the content of a conception. [SY] |
| 3473 | Reduction can be of things, properties, ideas or causes [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I find at least five different senses of "reduction" in the literature - ontological (genes/DNA), property ontological (heat/mean molecular energy), theoretical (gas laws/statistics), logical/definitional (average plumber), and causal (solids/molecules). | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.II) | |
| A reaction: A useful pointer towards some much needed clearer thought about reduction. It is necessary to cross reference this list against reductions which are either ontological or epistemological or linguistic. |
| 5791 | Reduction is either by elimination, or by explanation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: One sense of 'reduction' is eliminative, in getting rid of a phenomenon by showing that it is really something else (as the earth's rotation eliminates 'sunsets'), but another sense does not get rid of it (as in the explanation of solidity by molecules). | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: These are bad analogies. You can't 'eliminate' a sunset - you just accept that the event is relative to a viewpoint. If we are discussing ontology, we will not admit the existence of sunsets, but we won't have an ontological category of 'solidity' either. |
| 5799 | Eliminative reduction needs a gap between appearance and reality, as in sunsets [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative reductions require a distinction between reality and appearance; for example, the sun appears to set but the reality is that the earth rotates. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.10) | |
| A reaction: A bad analogy. You don't 'eliminate' sunsets. It is just 'Galilean' relativity - you thought it was your train moving, then you discover it was the other one. You don't eliminate hallucinations when you show that they don't correspond to reality. |
| 3841 | Users of 'supervenience' blur its causal and constitutive meanings [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I am no fan of the concept of supervenience. Its uncritical use is a sign of philosophical confusion, because the concept oscillates between causal supervenience and constitutive supervenience. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.9 n5) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why you shouldn't assert the supervenience of one thing on another, while saying that you are not sure whether it is causal or constitutive. The confusion seems to me to be in understandings of the causal version. |
| 3532 | Solidity in a piston is integral to its structure, not supervenient [Maslin on Searle] |
| Full Idea: Searle's defence of causally efficacious supervenient mind won't work, because, unlike the mind, the solidity of a piston is not a distinct and separate phenomenon from its microstructure. | |
| From: comment on John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 7.6 | |
| A reaction: Searle struggles to find analogies for his position - and that, in my view, is highly significant in the philosophy of mind. If there is nothing else like your proposed theory, it is probably just human vainglory. |
| 3533 | Is supervenience just causality? [Searle, by Maslin] |
| Full Idea: For Searle the supervenience relation is just causality. | |
| From: report of John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 7.6 | |
| A reaction: 'Supervenience' seems, in that case, to be an irrelevant word, which was only used when the mind-body connection was a bit loose and mysterious. Mind is identical to brain, or a property of the brain. I like 'process of the brain'. |
| 3454 | Reality is entirely particles in force fields [Searle] |
| Full Idea: One can accept the obvious facts of physics, that the world consists entirely of physical particles in fields of force. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this proposal, with the cautious proviso that physics may discover further basic aspects to reality. The only obstacles to this view are possible divine and mental substances, neither of which is supported by adequate evidence. |
| 5790 | A property is 'emergent' if it is caused by elements of a system, when the elements lack the property [Searle] |
| Full Idea: An emergent property of a system is causally explained by elements of the system, but it is not a property of the elements, and cannot be explained by a summation of their properties. The behaviour of H2O explains liquidity, but molecules aren't liquid. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The genie is 'emergent' from the lamp, and so (in Searle's meaning) is the lamp's solidity. I agree that the mind is 'emergent' in Searle's very weak sense, if that only means that one neuron can't be conscious, but lots together can. |
| 3471 | Some properties depend on components, others on their relations [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Some system features cannot be figured out just from the composition of the elements of the system and environmental relations; they have to be explained in terms of causal relations among the elements. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.I) | |
| A reaction: One must explain at the molecular level why an apple skin is both red and smooth. In the brain one must explain the movement of glucose and the contents of thoughts by their causal relations (I say). |
| 3472 | Fully 'emergent' properties contradict our whole theory of causation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The existence of any fully 'emergent' properties (that have a life of their own) violates even the weakest principle of the transitivity of causation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.I) | |
| A reaction: When Searle talks like this, he sounds like a thoroughgoing reductive physicalist (but is he really?). Any philosopher of mind who uses the word 'emergence' must say EXACTLY what they mean by it. |
| 16013 | Nothing necessary can come into existence, since it already 'is' [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Can the necessary come into existence? That is a change, and everything that comes into existence demonstrates that it is not necessary. The necessary already 'is'. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Philosophical Fragments [1844], p.74) | |
| A reaction: [SY] |
| 3833 | A belief is a commitment to truth [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A belief is a commitment to truth. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.4.III) |
| 3837 | We can't understand something as a lie if beliefs aren't commitment to truth [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If I lie and say "It is raining", my utterance is intelligible to me as a lie precisely because I understand that the utterance commits me to the truth of a proposition I do not believe to be true. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.6.II) |
| 3816 | Our beliefs are about things, not propositions (which are the content of the belief) [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The terminology of "propositional attitudes" is confused, because it suggests that a belief is an attitude towards a propositions, …but the proposition is the content, not the object, of my belief. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.2) |
| 3491 | Beliefs are part of a network, and also exist against a background [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We need to postulate a network of beliefs, and also a background of capacities that are not themselves part of the network. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) |
| 3490 | Beliefs only make sense as part of a network of other beliefs [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To have one belief or desire, I have to have a whole network of other beliefs and desires. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) |
| 3828 | Thinking must involve a self, not just an "it" [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We should not say "It thinks" in preference to "I think". If thinking is an active, voluntary process, there must be a self who thinks. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.IX) |
| 3482 | Perception is a function of expectation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Psychologists have a lot of evidence to show that perception is a function of expectation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.7) |
| 3493 | Memory is mainly a guide for current performance [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We should think of memory as a mechanism for generating current performance, including conscious thoughts and actions, on the basis of past experience. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.III) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be falling into the fallacy of causal and functional theories, which Searle normally dislikes. If memory serves to aid current performance, that doesn't say what memory IS, any more than a foot is defined by walking. |
| 3831 | Reasons can either be facts in the world, or intentional states [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Both reasons and the things they are reasons for can be either facts in the world or intentional states such as beliefs, desires, and intentions. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.4.I) | |
| A reaction: One might point out that beliefs, desires and intentions are facts in the world too. Implicit dualism. One can ask, what turns a fact into a reason? |
| 3830 | In the past people had a reason not to smoke, but didn't realise it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: For a long time people had a reason not to smoke cigarettes, without knowing that they had such a reason. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: What does 'had' a reason mean here? If I wish you dead, there is a reason why you should be dead, but you don't 'have' the reason, and never will have. There's probably a reason why I should never have been born. |
| 3832 | Causes (usually events) are not the same as reasons (which are never events) [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Causes are typically events, reasons are never events. You can give a reason by stating a cause, but it does not follow that the reason and the cause are the same thing. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.4.I) | |
| A reaction: This is against Davidson. I'm with Searle here; my having a reason to do something is not the cause of my doing it. I don't, unlike Searle, believe in free will, but doing something for a reason is not just the operation of the reason. |
| 3463 | We don't have a "theory" that other people have minds [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Except when doing philosophy there is no "problem" of other minds, because we do not hold a "hypothesis" or "belief" or "supposition" that other people are conscious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: Our commitment to other minds is so deep-ingrained that it is a candidate for one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', or even (a step further) for an innate idea. Babies have an innate recognition of faces, so why can't an expectation of a mind be hard-wired? |
| 3457 | Other minds are not inferred by analogy, but are our best explanation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If we inferred other minds simply from behaviour, we would conclude that radios are conscious; it is rather the combination of behaviour with knowledge of the causal underpinnings of behaviour. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to think that Searle has said the last word on the fairly uninteresting problem of other minds. Dualism generates a deep privacy problem, and analogy is a flawed argument, but best explanation is exactly what we rely on. |
| 3480 | We experience unity at an instant and across time [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We experience 'horizontal unity' in the organisation of conscious experiences through short stretches of time, and 'vertical unity' in simultaneous awareness of diverse features of our experience. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.2) | |
| A reaction: See Betjeman's poem "On the Ninth Green at St Enedoc". The brain is an information-unification machine, and 'I' am located at the crossroads where these unifications meet. Analysis of mind is good for us, but so is reunification afterwards. |
| 5792 | Explanation of how we unify our mental stimuli into a single experience is the 'binding problem' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The 'binding problem' is how to explain how the brain binds all our different stimuli into a single unified experience of an object. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This may be the best way of expressing what philosophers call (after Chalmers) the 'Hard Question'. Large objects are held together by gravity, and small objects by electro-magnetism. We don't see a 'binding problem' in the function of a leaf. |
| 5786 | A system is either conscious or it isn't, though the intensity varies a lot [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A system is either conscious or it isn't, but within the field of consciousness there are states of intensity ranging from drowsiness to full awareness. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I think this all-or-nothing view is the last vestiges of Cartesian dualism, and is quite wrong. Heaps of neuroscience (about blindsight, subliminal awareness, neurosis etc.) says we will never understand the mind if we think it is only the conscious part. |
| 5794 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, which only exists from a subjective viewpoint [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology, by which I mean that conscious states only exist when experienced by a subject and they exist only from the first-person point of view of that subject. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.5 App) | |
| A reaction: I think this is nonsense, and I don't think Searle believes it. He ruthlessly attacks so-called 'eliminativists', but the definition he gives here would make him an eliminativist about other minds. There is no such thing as 'first-person' ontology. |
| 5795 | There isn't one consciousness (information-processing) which can be investigated, and another (phenomenal) which can't [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are not two kinds of consciousness, an information-processing consciousness that is amenable to scientific investigation and a phenomenal, what-it-subjectively-feels-like form of consciousness that will forever remain mysterious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl.1) | |
| A reaction: Fodor appears to be the main target of this remark. The view that we can explain intentionality but not qualia is currently very fashionable. I am sympathetic to Searle here. Consciousness isn't an epiphenomenon, it is essential to all thought. |
| 3479 | The mind experiences space, but it is not experienced as spatial [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Although we experience objects both spatially and temporally, our consciousness itself is not experienced as spatial, though it is experienced as temporally extended. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: This observation was made by Descartes. This seems to require that I experience objects spatially, AND experience my consciousness. Do I experience the time passing, as well as the river moving? Einstein says if it is in time, it must be in space. |
| 3470 | Conscious creatures seem able to discriminate better [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Apparently it is just a fact of biology that organisms that have consciousness have, in general, much greater powers of discrimination than those that do not. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.III) | |
| A reaction: This presupposes knowledge of which creatures are conscious. Clearly colour vision gives more information than monochrome vision. But presumably a computer could process more visual information than I could see. It doesn't have a fovea centralis. |
| 3486 | Unconscious thoughts are those capable of causing conscious ones [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The ontology of the unconscious consists in objective features of the brain capable of causing subjective conscious thoughts. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.7) | |
| A reaction: As it stands, this definition would fit a brain tumour. I think Searle is wrong. There is no sharp line between conscious and non-conscious brain events. Research has surely made it clear that dim brain events directly intrude into my conscious states. |
| 3503 | Consciousness results directly from brain processes, not from some intermediary like information [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are brain processes and consciousness, but nothing in between; no rule following, information processing, unconscious inferences, mental models, language of thought or universal grammar. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.II) | |
| A reaction: The core of Searle's view. He likes to call consciousness a 'property' of brains. Edelman says consciousness IS a brain process. Essentially I agree with Searle. An unusual physical object can produce consciousness, but mere 'rules' etc. cannot. |
| 3465 | Either there is intrinsic intentionality, or everything has it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If you deny the distinction between intrinsic and derived ('as-if') intentionality, then it follows that everything in the universe has intentionality (for example, stones seem to want to fall). | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: Searle makes this claim because he always takes mental phenomena like intentionality or consciousness to be all-or-nothing - and he's wrong. He refuses to acknowledge non-conscious intentional states - and he's wrong again. |
| 3484 | Water flowing downhill can be described as if it had intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Water flowing downhill can be described AS IF it had intentionality: it tries to get to the bottom by seeking the line of least resistance through information processing and calculation… | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.1) | |
| A reaction: John Searle could be described as if he had intentionality, as his neurons chart their way through the information and desires that flood them. I am wary of his all-or-nothing approach to intentionality. |
| 3489 | Intentional phenomena only make sense within a background [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Intentional phenomena such as meanings, understandings, interpretations, beliefs, desires, and experiences only function within a set of Background capacities that are not themselves intentional. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.I) | |
| A reaction: Why would the background not be intentional? Presumably the background is a set of beliefs about, or images of, how the world is taken to be. |
| 3494 | Intentionality is defined in terms of representation [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality is defined in terms of representation. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.III) | |
| A reaction: Sounds okay, but representation of a tree (say) can be understood in imagistic terms, whereas extremely abstract concepts are a bit baffling. Then we realise that we conceive trees in that way as well, not as images. |
| 3481 | Consciousness is essential and basic to intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I claim that only a being that could have conscious intentional states could have intentional states at all, and every unconscious intentional state is at least potentially conscious. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.I.5) | |
| A reaction: The alternative to this is that robots and lower animals might have non-conscious states which are about something, because they process useful information but are unaware of it. If so, parts of the human mind might do the same, as in blindsight. |
| 5788 | The use of 'qualia' seems to imply that consciousness and qualia are separate [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I am hesitant to use the word 'quale/qualia', because it gives the impression that there are two separate phenomena, consciousness and qualia. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is trying to resist going back to 'sense-data', sitting uneasily between reality and our experience of it. Personally I am quite happy with qualia as an aspect of consciousness - just as I am happy with consciousness as an 'aspect' of brain. |
| 4088 | Pain is not intentional, because it does not represent anything beyond itself [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If I am conscious of a pain, the pain is not intentional, because it does not represent anything beyond itself. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Crane quotes this to challenge it. Pain may be about apparent damage to the body. Pains are certainly informative. |
| 3823 | Being held responsible for past actions makes no sense without personal identity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I am held responsible now for things that I did in the distant past. But that only makes sense if there is some entity that is both the agent of the action in the past and me now. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.VII) | |
| A reaction: A possible response, of course, is that you are held responsible for your past deeds, but you shouldn't be. The idea that you are the same as when you committed the crime is a convenient fiction for people who desire revenge. Responsibility fades. |
| 3821 | Giving reasons for action requires reference to a self [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The requirement that I state reasons that I acted on requires a reference to the self. …Only for a self can something be a reason for an action. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.VII) | |
| A reaction: Why can't we just say that this reason, given this desire and this belief, led to this action, and never mention the self? Admittedly leaving out 'I' is an odd circumlocution, but I don't find this particular argument very convincing. |
| 3824 | A 'self' must be capable of conscious reasonings about action [Searle] |
| Full Idea: In order to be a self the entity that acts as an agent must also be capable of conscious reasoning about its actions. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.VIII) | |
| A reaction: I can't accept this all-or-nothing account. A chimpanzee is some sort of 'agent', and there are bad chimpanzees you wouldn't want in your colony. Why does Searle want to cut us off in some special compound where our actions are totally different? |
| 3834 | An intentional, acting, rational being must have a self [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Selfhood in my sense comes for free once you have a conscious intentional being capable of engaging in free actions on the basis of reasons. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.5.II) | |
| A reaction: The concept of an 'action' is probably the thing that most clearly needs a self, because it implies co-ordination and purpose, and there must be some item which benefits. Personally I think you can drop 'free actions' and still have a self. |
| 3825 | Action requires a self, even though perception doesn't [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It is a formal requirement on rational action that there must be a self who acts, in a way that it is not a formal requirement on perception that there be an agent or a self who perceives. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.IX) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this persuasive. I don't see how we can rule out a priori the possibility of a set of desires and reasons within an organism which generate an action, without any intervening 'self' to add something. Ockham's Razor. |
| 3829 | Selfs are conscious, enduring, reasonable, active, free, and responsible [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A self is conscious, persists through time, operates with reasons, carries out free actions, and is responsible. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.X) | |
| A reaction: Personally I would substitute 'makes decisions' for 'carries out free actions', but otherwise I agree, though he seems to miss a key aspect, which is that the self is in charge of the mind, and directs its focus and co-ordinates its inputs and outputs. |
| 3826 | A self must at least be capable of consciousness [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The first condition on the self is that it should be capable of consciousness. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.IX) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a stipulative definition. It raises the question of whether it is possible that a lizard (say) is not actually conscious, but has some sort of propriotreptic awareness, and a 'central controller' for its decision-making. |
| 20742 | The real subject is ethical, not cognitive [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The real subject is not the cognitive subject …the real subject is the ethically existing subject. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.281), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective' | |
| A reaction: Perhaps we should say the essence of the self is its drive to live, not its drive to know. Just getting through the day is top priority, and ethics don’t figure much for the solitary person. But each activity, such as cooking, has its virtues. |
| 16002 | The self is a combination of pairs of attributes: freedom/necessity, infinite/finite, temporal/eternal [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: A human being is essentially spirit, but what is spirit? Spirit is to be a self. But what is the Self? In short, it is a synthesis of the infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Sickness unto Death [1849], p.59) | |
| A reaction: The dense language of his first paragraph was to poke fun at fashionable Hegelian writing. The book gets very lucid afterwards! [SY] |
| 3827 | The self is neither an experience nor a thing experienced [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The self is not an experience, nor is it an object that is experienced. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.IX) | |
| A reaction: A nice dichotomy, that draws attention to the unique position of the self. Thanks to Descartes for focusing our attention on it. Personally I would say that the self is an object, which cannot be experienced by itself, but can be inferred by others. |
| 3820 | The bundle must also have agency in order to act, and a self to act rationally [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Agency must be added to the bundle to account for how embodied bundles engage in free actions, and selfhood must be added to account for how agents can act rationally. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.VII) | |
| A reaction: I don't buy much of this, but I am inclined to say that a will must be added to the bundle to explain why it acts consistently and coherently. It is certainly ridiculous to rest with the picture of a person as a completely unstructured bundle. |
| 3467 | Neither introspection nor privileged access makes sense [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We have the visual metaphor of introspection, and the spatial metaphor of privileged access, but neither one works because I am the thing being viewed, and I am the space being entered. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.II) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a good warning against reliance on analogies when dealing with the unique problem of self-knowledge, though the phrase 'hall-of-mirrors' draws assent from most people concerning that topic. |
| 3483 | Introspection is just thinking about mental states, not a special sort of vision [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If by "introspection" we mean simply thinking about our own mental states, then there is no objection to introspection, but if we mean a special capacity like vision of looking inwards, there is no such capacity. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 6.II.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question of how we can be aware of our mental states in order to think about them. One might image that some animals have mental states, but are quite unaware that they have them, because they are totally focused on content. |
| 3468 | I cannot observe my own subjectivity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I cannot observe my own subjectivity. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear what Searle is complaining about. He knows very clearly that there is a subjective aspect to his life - so how does he know that fact? There must be something supporting this widely held belief. |
| 3817 | Free will is most obvious when we choose between several reasons for an action [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The most dramatic manifestation of the free will gap is that when one has several reasons for performing an action, one may act on only one of them; one may select which reason one acts on. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.II) |
| 3808 | Rational decision making presupposes free will [Searle] |
| Full Idea: In order to engage in rational decision making we have to presuppose free will. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 3818 | We freely decide whether to make a reason for action effective [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Where free rational action is concerned, all effective reasons are made effective by the agent. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.3.II) |
| 3469 | Mind and brain don't interact if they are the same [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There is no "link" between consciousness and the brain, any more than there is a link between the liquidity of water and the H2O molecules. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.III) | |
| A reaction: We say of some properties that 'x is F', and of others that 'x has F', and of others that 'x is F because of y' (as in a knife having sharpness because it is thin and hard). Consciousness might fit the third case just as well as the first. |
| 3487 | Without internal content, a zombie's full behaviour couldn't be explained [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There could be no intentional zombie, because (unlike with a conscious agent) there simply is no fact of the matter as to exactly which aspectual shapes its alleged intentional states have. Is it seeking water or H2O? | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.III) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response to this is behaviourist talk of 'dispositions'. The dispositions of scientist when seeking water and when seeking H2O are different. Zombies behave identically to us, so their intentional states have whatever is needed to do the job. |
| 3458 | Mental states only relate to behaviour contingently, not necessarily [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I believe that the relation of mental states to behaviour is purely contingent. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree, though it will depend on where you draw the line between mental states and behaviour. Since there have never been two identical states since the beginning of time, it is a little hard to test this one. |
| 3485 | Wanting H2O only differs from wanting water in its mental component [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If a person exhibits water-seeking behaviour, they also exhibit H2O-seeking behaviour, so there is no way the behaviour itself, without reference to a mental component, can constitute wanting water rather than H2O. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 7.II.4) | |
| A reaction: What about the behaviour of responding to the discovery that this stuff isn't actually H2O? Or the disposition to choose the real thing rather than ersatz water? An interesting comment, though. |
| 3461 | Functionalists like the externalist causal theory of reference [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has been rejuvenated by being joined to externalist causal theories of reference. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 2.VIII) | |
| A reaction: This, however, seems to be roughly the reason why Putnam gave up his functionalist theory. See Ideas 2332 and 2071. However the causal network of mind can incorporate environmental features. |
| 2427 | Maybe understanding doesn't need consciousness, despite what Searle seems to think [Searle, by Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Searle originally directed the Chinese Room against machine intentionality rather than consciousness, arguing that it is "understanding" that the room lacks,….but on Searle's view intentionality requires consciousness. | |
| From: report of John Searle (Minds, Brains and Science [1984]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 4.9.4 | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether 'understanding' is a sufficiently clear and distinct concept to support Searle's claim. Understanding comes in degrees, and we often think and act with minimal understanding. |
| 7389 | A program won't contain understanding if it is small enough to imagine [Dennett on Searle] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing remotely like genuine understanding in any hunk of programming small enough to imagine readily. | |
| From: comment on John Searle (Minds, Brains and Science [1984]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1 | |
| A reaction: We mustn't hide behind 'complexity', but I think Dennett is right. It is important to think of speed as well as complexity. Searle gives the impression that he knows exactly what 'understanding' is, but I doubt if anyone else does. |
| 7390 | If bigger and bigger brain parts can't understand, how can a whole brain? [Dennett on Searle] |
| Full Idea: The argument that begins "this little bit of brain activity doesn't understand Chinese, and neither does this bigger bit..." is headed for the unwanted conclusion that even the activity of the whole brain won't account for understanding Chinese. | |
| From: comment on John Searle (Minds, Brains and Science [1984]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 14.1 | |
| A reaction: In other words, Searle is guilty of a fallacy of composition (in negative form - parts don't have it, so whole can't have it). Dennett is right. The whole shebang of the full brain will obviously do wonderful (and commonplace) things brain bits can't. |
| 3496 | A program for Chinese translation doesn't need to understand Chinese [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A computer, me for example, could run the steps in the program for some mental capacity, such as understanding Chinese, without understanding a word of Chinese. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.II) | |
| A reaction: I don't think this is true. I could recite a bit of Chinese without comprehension, but giving flexible answers to complex questions isn't plausible just by gormlessly implementing a procedure. |
| 5789 | I now think syntax is not in the physics, but in the eye of the beholder [Searle] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me now that syntax is not intrinsic to the physics of the system, but is in the eye of the beholder. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, in that whether strung beads are a toy or an abacus depends on the user. It doesn't follow that the 'beholder' stands outside the physics. A beholder is another physical system, of a particular type of high complexity. |
| 3499 | Computation presupposes consciousness [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Most of the works I have seen in the computational theory of the mind commit some variation on the homunculus fallacy. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: This will be because there is an unspoken user for the inner computer. But see Fodor's view (Idea 2506). The key idea here is Dennett's: that not all regresses are vicious. My mind controller isn't like all of me. |
| 3501 | If we are computers, who is the user? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If the brain is a digital computer, we are still faced with the question 'Who is the user?' | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question. Our whole current concept of a computer involves the unmentioned user. We don't have to go all mystical about persons, though. Robots aren't logically impossible. |
| 5798 | Consciousness has a first-person ontology, so it cannot be reduced without omitting something [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness has a first-person or subjective ontology and so cannot be reduced to anything that has third-person or objective ontology. If you try to reduce or eliminate one in favour of the other you leave something out. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.10) | |
| A reaction: Misconceived. There is no such thing as 'first-person' ontology, though there are subjective viewpoints, but then a camera has a viewpoint which is lost if you eliminate it. If consciousness is physical events, that leaves viewpoints untouched. |
| 3456 | Consciousness is a brain property as liquidity is a water property [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is a higher-level or emergent property of the brain, but only in the sense that solidity is an emergent property of water when it is ice, and liquidity when it melts. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to know which side Searle is on. These examples are highly reductive, and make him a thoroughgoing reductive physicalist (with which I agree). |
| 3453 | Property dualism is the reappearance of Cartesianism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Opponents of materialism tend to embrace "property dualism", thus accepting the Cartesian apparatus that I had thought long discredited. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be precisely the current situation. Cartesian dualism is thoroughly marginalised (but still whimpering in the corner), and the real battle is between physicalism and property dualism. The latter is daft. |
| 3455 | Property dualists tend to find the mind-body problem baffling [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Property dualists (e.g. Nagel and McGinn) think that the mind-body problem is frightfully difficult, perhaps altogether insoluble. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.I) | |
| A reaction: Nagel's problem is that our concepts aren't up to it; McGinn's is that the very structure of our minds isn't up to it. My view is that the difficulty is the complexity we are up against, not the ontology. |
| 3475 | Property dualism denies reductionism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: What is property dualism but the view that there are irreducible mental properties? | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.III) | |
| A reaction: Being red and being square are separate, but they are both entailed by the material basis, and hence are reducible. Properties may not link directly, but they must link indirectly. |
| 5787 | There is non-event causation between mind and brain, as between a table and its solidity [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The solidity of a table is explained causally by the behaviour of the molecules of which it is composed, but the solidity is not an extra event, it is just a feature of the table. This non-event causation models the relationship of mind and brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He calls it 'non-event' causation, while referring to the 'behaviour of molecules'. Ask a physicist what a 'feature' is. Better to think of it as one process 'emerging' as another process at the macro-level. |
| 3477 | If mind-brain supervenience isn't causal, this implies epiphenomenalism [Searle] |
| Full Idea: There are constitutive and causal notions of supervenience. Kim claims that mental events have no causal role, and merely supervene on brain events which do (which implies epiphenomenalism). But it seems obvious that mind is caused by brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think the whole discussion is doomed to confusion because it is riddled with a priori dualism. There is no all-or-nothing boundary between 'mind' and 'brain'. Kim's views have changed. |
| 3531 | Mental events can cause even though supervenient, like the solidity of a piston [Searle] |
| Full Idea: That mental features supervene on neuronal features in no way diminishes their causal efficacy. The solidity of the piston is supervenient on its molecular structure, but this does not make solidity epiphenomenal. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: Searle's examples never seem to quite fit what he is saying. Molecules and solidity are supervenient because they are identical (solidity is the presence of certain molecules). Solidity doesn't have causal powers that molecules lack. |
| 3476 | Mind and brain are supervenient in respect of cause and effect [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Mind is supervenient on brain in the following respect: type-identical neurophysiological causes have type-identical mentalistic effects. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: An interesting statement of what might be meant by 'supervenience'. Searle's version implies necessity in the link (but not identity). I take him to imply that a zombie is impossible. |
| 3478 | Upwards mental causation makes 'supervenience' irrelevant [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Once you recognise the existence of bottom-up, micro to macro forms of causation, the notion of supervenience no longer does any work in philosophy. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if the notion of supervenience ever did any work. Davidson only fished up the word because none of the normal relationships between things seemed to apply (and he was wrong about that). |
| 3466 | Consciousness seems indefinable by conditions or categories [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We can't define "consciousness" by necessary and sufficient conditions, or by the Aristotelian method of genus and differentia. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 4.I) | |
| A reaction: We may not be able to 'define' it, but we can 'characterise' it. The third approach to definition is a catalogue of essential properties, which might tail off rather vaguely. |
| 5797 | The pattern of molecules in the sea is much more complex than the complexity of brain neurons [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The pattern of molecules in the ocean is vastly more complex than any pattern of neurons in my brain. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice warning for anyone foolish enough to pin their explanatory hopes simply on 'complexity', but we would not be so foolish. A subtler account of complexity (e.g. by Edelman and Tononi) might make brains much more complex than oceans. |
| 3500 | Can the homunculus fallacy be beaten by recursive decomposition? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The idea (of Dennett and others) is that recursive decomposition will eliminate the homunculi. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.VI) | |
| A reaction: Lycan is the best exponent of this view, which I like. My brain clearly has a substantial homunculus which I call my PA; it regularly reminds of what I have to do in an hour's time. I am sure it is composed of smaller brain components working as a team. |
| 9317 | Searle argues that biology explains consciousness, but physics won't explain biology [Searle, by Kriegel/Williford] |
| Full Idea: Searle appears to argue that phenomenal consciousness is explained in biological terms, but that biological properties are irreducible to purely (micro)physical ones. | |
| From: report of John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992]) by U Kriegel / K Williford - Intro to 'Self-Representational Consciousness' n1 | |
| A reaction: Searle is very hard to pin down, and this account suggests the reason very clearly - because he is proposing something which is bizarrely implausible. The reduction of biology-to-physics looks much more likely than consciousness-to-biology. |
| 3474 | If mind is caused by brain, does this mean mind IS brain? [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I hold a view of mind/brain relations that is a form of causal reduction (mental features are caused by biological processes), but does this imply ontological reduction? (…No!) | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 5.II.5) | |
| A reaction: What exactly is his claim? Presumably 'causal reduction' implies identity of (philosophical) substance. This seems to imply 'emergence' in a rather old-fashioned and dramatic way, though elsewhere Searle denies this. |
| 5796 | If tree rings contain information about age, then age contains information about rings [Searle] |
| Full Idea: You could say that tree-rings contain information about the age of a tree, but you could as well say that the age of a tree in years contains information about the number of rings in a tree stump. ..'Information' is not a real causal feature of the world. | |
| From: John Searle (The Mystery of Consciousness [1997], Concl 2.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice point for fans of 'information' to ponder. However, you cannot deny the causal connection between the age and the rings. Information has a subjective aspect, but you cannot, for example, eliminate the role of DNA in making organisms. |
| 3497 | If mind is multiply realisable, it is possible that anything could realise it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The same principle that implies multiple realisability would seem to imply universal realisability. …Any object whatever could have syntactical ascriptions made to it. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.V) | |
| A reaction: This leads to rather weak reductio objections to functionalism. Logically there may be no restriction on how to implement a mind, but naturally there are very tight restrictions. Stick to neurons seems the best strategy. |
| 3462 | We don't postulate folk psychology, we experience it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: We do not postulate beliefs and desires to account for anything; we simply experience conscious beliefs and desires. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 2 App) | |
| A reaction: Searle is too fond of reporting what we 'simply' know. Beliefs and desires are pushed forward by a cultural tradition. What I actually experience is a confusion, always laced with emotion. |
| 3498 | Computation isn't a natural phenomenon, it is a way of seeing phenomena [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Computational states are not discovered within the physics, they are assigned to the physics. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 9.V) | |
| A reaction: The key idea in Searle's later thinking, with which I have some sympathy. There always seems to be a sneaky dualism buried deep in Searle's physicalism. Computation is very high-level physics. |
| 3492 | Content is much more than just sentence meaning [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Sentence meaning radically underdetermines the content of what is said. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.II) | |
| A reaction: We have body language, and we have tone, and we have context, and we have speaker's and listener's meanings. I take sentence meaning to be the basis which makes the rest possible. |
| 3464 | There is no such thing as 'wide content' [Searle] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe in the existence of 'wide content'. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 3.IV) | |
| A reaction: I sort of agree, but if I accept the rulings of experts (e.g. that water is really H2O), I am admitting that what I mean may not be in my head. |
| 3506 | We explain behaviour in terms of actual internal representations in the agent [Searle] |
| Full Idea: In intentional explanations of behaviour patterns in the behaviour are explained by the fact that the agent has a representation of that very pattern in its intentional apparatus, which functions causally in the production of the behaviour. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.IV) | |
| A reaction: Problem cases would be where someone's behaviour doesn't come out quite as planned (e.g. the sentence spoken failed to match the proposition intended), and panic behaviour. |
| 3451 | Meaning is derived intentionality [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Meaning is derived intentionality. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: That still leaves something very difficult to explain - how the intentionality of mental events can be 'transferred' to symbolic forms which can exist outside the mind. |
| 3450 | Philosophy of language is a branch of philosophy of mind [Searle] |
| Full Idea: On my view, the philosophy of language is a branch of the philosophy of mind. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Inclined to agree with this. Intentionality and meaning are virtually the same thing. The role of language in thought has been grossly overrated in modern philosophy. |
| 3507 | Universal grammar doesn't help us explain anything [Searle] |
| Full Idea: No further predictive or explanatory power is added by saying that there is in addition a level of deep unconscious rules of universal grammar. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.IV) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that neuroscientists would be very interested in this prediction, if it were convincing enough. Nothing to stop us from trying to infer the nature of something which is beyond our reach. |
| 3495 | Shared Background makes translation possible, though variation makes it hard [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Difference in local Backgrounds make translation from one language to another difficult; the commonality of deep Background makes it possible at all. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 8.V) | |
| A reaction: That is a very good observation about what is normally swept under the one umbrella of the 'principle of charity'. Quine exaggerated the local, and Davidson exaggerated the deep. |
| 22098 | Socrates neglects the gap between knowing what is good and doing good [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental weakness in Socrates, that he does not take into account the gap between knowing what is good and actually putting this into action. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: This rejects Socrates's intellectualism about weakness of will. It is perhaps a better criticism that Aristotle's view that desires sometimes overcome the will. It is also the problem of motivation in Kantian deontology. Or utilitarianism. |
| 3814 | Preferences can result from deliberation, not just precede it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: A well-ordered set of preferences is typically the result of successful deliberation, and is not its precondition. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 3840 | We don't accept practical reasoning if the conclusion is unpalatable [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If I desire to get rid of my flu symptoms, and believe the only way to do it is death, I am committed to desiring my death. …there is no plausible logic of practical reason. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.8.II) |
| 3815 | The essence of humanity is desire-independent reasons for action [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The single greatest difference between humans and other animals as far as rationality is concerned is our ability to create, recognise and act on desire-independent reasons for action. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 3839 | Only an internal reason can actually motivate the agent to act [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Only an internal reason can actually motivate the agent to act. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.6 App) |
| 22086 | The most important aspect of a human being is not reason, but passion [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard insisted that the most important aspect of a human being is not reason, but passion. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (works [1845]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed Intro | |
| A reaction: Hume comes to mind for a similar view, but in character Hume was far more rational than Kierkegaard. |
| 3835 | If it is true, you ought to believe it [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To say that something is true is already to say that you ought to believe it. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.5.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm sure what Einstein said is true, but I don't understand it. The truth is the thought of how things actually are, but why should I not prefer my private fantasies? I see the point, though. |
| 3836 | If this is a man, you ought to accept similar things as men [Searle] |
| Full Idea: From the fact that an object is truly described as "a man", it follows that you ought to accept relevantly similar objects as men. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.5.IV) | |
| A reaction: 'Similar' rather begs the question. Common speech distinguishes sharply between a man and a 'real man'. You only accept them as men if you see them as men, not as similar to something else. Interesting. |
| 3505 | The function of a heart depends on what we want it to do [Searle] |
| Full Idea: If the only thing that interested us about the heart was that it made a thumping noise, we would have a completely different conception of its "functioning", and correspondingly of heart disease. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.III) | |
| A reaction: Ditto if we were only interested in ears as support for earrings, but that would seriously miss the point of ears. The intrinsic function is the reason for its existence. |
| 16003 | If people marry just because they are lonely, that is self-love, not love [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: People despair about being lonely and therefore get married. But is this love? I should say it is self-love. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], JP-III, 40-41) | |
| A reaction: If you decide to marry someone because you don't want to be an old maid/bachelor in your elder years, try to actually love the person you're marrying. Not just for money or sex. [SY] |
| 15998 | Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158) | |
| A reaction: A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY] |
| 3838 | Promises hold because I give myself a reason, not because it is an institution [Searle] |
| Full Idea: The obligation to keep a promise does not derive from the institution of promising, ..but from the fact that in promising I freely and voluntarily create a reason for myself. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.6.IV) |
| 3813 | 'Ought' implies that there is a reason to do something [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To say that someone 'ought' to do something is to imply that there is a reason for him to do it. | |
| From: John Searle (Rationality in Action [2001], Ch.1.II) |
| 7579 | While big metaphysics is complete without ethics, personal philosophy emphasises ethics [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: While the Hegelian philosophy goes on and is finished without having an Ethics, the more simple philosophy which is propounded by an existing individual for existing individuals, will more especially emphasis the ethical. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of the Socratic revolution, which shifted philosophy from the study of nature to the study of personal virtue. However, if we look for ethical teachings in existentialism, there often seems to be a black hole in the middle. |
| 7581 | Speculative philosophy loses the individual in a vast vision of humanity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Being an individual man is a thing that has been abolished, and every speculative philosopher confuses himself with humanity at large, whereby he becomes infinitely great - and at the same time nothing at all. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4840. This is a beautiful statement of the motivation for existentialism. The sort of philosophers who love mathematics (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Russell) love losing themselves in abstractions. This is the rebellion. |
| 22090 | For me time stands still, and I with it [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Time flows, life is a stream, people say, and so on. I do not notice it. Time stands still, and I with it. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], I:26) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3 | |
| A reaction: This is from the spokesman for the aesthetic option in life, which is largely pleasure-seeking. No real choices ever occur. |
| 22096 | Anxiety is not a passing mood, but a response to human freedom [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: For Kierkegaard anxiety is not simply a mood or an emotion that certain people experience at certain times, but a basic response to freedom that is part of the human condition. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: Outside of Christianity, this may be Kierkegaard's most influential idea - since existential individualism is floating around in the romantic movement. But the Byronic hero experiences a sort of anxiety. If you can't face anxiety, become a monk or nun. |
| 22097 | The ultimate in life is learning to be anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Every human being must learn to be anxious in order that he might not perish either by never having been in anxiety or by succumbing in anxiety. Whoever has learned to be anxious in the right way has learnt the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.154), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 5 | |
| A reaction: I think this is the most existentialist quotation I have found in Kierkegaard. It sounds circular. You must be in anxiety because otherwise you won't be able to cope with anxiety? I suppose anxiety is facing up to his concept of truth. |
| 21909 | Ultimate knowledge is being anxious in the right way [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Whoever learns to be anxious in the right way has learned the ultimate. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.187), quoted by Alastair Hannay - Kierkegaard 06 | |
| A reaction: This shows us that Kierkegaard had a rather bizarre mental life which the rest of us have little chance of penetrating. I'll have a go at cataloguing my types of anxiety, but I'm not hopeful. |
| 20758 | Anxiety is staring into the yawning abyss of freedom [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: One may liken anxiety to dizziness. He whose eyes chance to look down into a yawning abyss becomes dizzy. Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom which is when freedom gazes down into its own possibility, grasping at finiteness to sustain itself. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Concept of Dread (/Anxiety) [1844], p.55), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Moods' | |
| A reaction: Most of us rapidly retreat from the thought of the infinity of things we might choose. Choosing bizarrely merely to assert one's freedom is simple stupidity. |
| 21910 | Our destiny is the highest pitch of world-weariness [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Our destiny in this life is to be brought to the highest pitch of world-weariness. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], 1855.09.25), quoted by Alastair Hannay - Kierkegaard 10 | |
| A reaction: The beginning of his last entry. Hardly a great general truth, but interesting. Should we aspire to exhaust life? |
| 9305 | The plebeians bore others; only the nobility bore themselves [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Those who bore others are the plebeians, the crowd, the endless train of humanity in general; those who bore themselves are the chosen ones, the nobility. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], Pt.1), quoted by Lars Svendsen - A Philosophy of Boredom Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: [p.288 in Princeton Edn] Stunningly elitist, but ask where boredom is most overtly found. "Boring" was once a very fashionable word among the English upper classes. Education and wealth seem to intensify boredom. |
| 5650 | Reason is just abstractions, so our essence needs a subjective 'leap of faith' [Kierkegaard, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Kierkegaard, reason, which produces only abstractions, negates our individual essence; this essence is subjectivity, and subjectivity exists only in the 'leap of faith', whereby the individual casts in his lot with eternity. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but this strikes me as a confusion of reason and logic. A logical life would indeed be a sort of death, and need faith as an escape, but a broad view of the rational life includes emotion, imagination and laughter. Blind faith is disaster. |
| 22095 | There are aesthetic, ethical and religious subjectivity [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard distinguishes three main types of subjectivity: aesthetic, ethical and religious. But are these types of people, or different phases of one person's life? | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: His picture of the religious mode holds no appeal for me. I also can't accept that the aesthetic and the moral are somewho distinct. People may discover they have slipped into one of these modes, but no one chooses them, do they? |
| 20314 | People want to lose themselves in movements and history, instead of being individuals [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Everything must attach itself so as to be part of some movement; men are determined to lose themselves in the totality of things, in world-history, fascinated and deceived by a magic witchery; no one wants to be an individual human being. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] I presume 'world-history' refers to the exhilerating ideas of Hegel. Right now [2017] I would say we have far too much of people only wanting to be individuals, with insufficient attention to our social nature. |
| 7582 | Becoming what one is is a huge difficulty, because we strongly aspire to be something else [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Striving to become what one already is is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all, because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: Presumably most people continually drift between vanity and low self-esteem, and between unattainable daydreams and powerless immediate reality. That creates the stage on which Kierkegaard's interesting battle would have to be fought. |
| 20747 | What matters is not right choice, but energy, earnestness and pathos in the choosing [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: In making a choice, it is not so much a question of choosing the right way as of the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], p.106), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: I'm struggling to identify with the experience he is describing. I can't imagine a more quintessentially existentialist remark than this. Reference to 'energy' in choosing strikes me as very romantic. Is 'the way not taken' crucial (in 'pathos')? |
| 16001 | Life may be understood backwards, but it has to be lived forwards [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is perfectly right in saying that life must be understood backwards. But then it forgets the other side - that it must be lived forwards. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], JP-III, 635) | |
| A reaction: Some of the best philosophers dwell too much on philosophy, history and the past, while forgetting to actually live and enjoy their lives. [SY] |
| 22093 | Life is a repetition when what has been now becomes [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: When one says that life is a repetition one affirms that existence which has been now becomes. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Repetition [1843], p.49), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems very close to Nietzsche's Eternal Recurrence. |
| 16009 | When we seek our own 'freedom' we are just trying to avoid responsibility [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: In all our own 'freedom' we actually seek one thing: to be able to live without responsibility. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Attack Upon Christendom [1855], p.290) | |
| A reaction: That's the plan when I win the lottery. [SY] |
| 22091 | Kierkegaard prioritises the inward individual, rather than community [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Whereas Hegel argues that individuals find fulfilment through participation in their community, Kierkegaard prioritises the inwardness of each person, which is shared only with God. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3 | |
| A reaction: Sounds like the protestant religion opposing the catholic religion (although Hegel was a protestant). Individual v community is the great debate of the last two centuries in Europe. |
| 3504 | Chemistry entirely explains plant behaviour [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Variable secretions of auxin account for a plant's behaviour in following the sun, without any extra hypothesis of purpose, teleology, or intentionality. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.II) |
| 3502 | Mind involves fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating [Searle] |
| Full Idea: Our conscious life involves the famous "four f's", fighting, fleeing, feeding and fornicating. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch.10.I) |
| 7586 | God does not think or exist; God creates, and is eternal [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: God does not think, He creates; God does not exist, he is eternal. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Thinker') | |
| A reaction: The sort of nicely challenging remarks we pay philosophers to come up with. I don't understand the second claim, but the first one certainly avoids all paradoxes that arise if God experiences all the intrinsic problems of thinking. |
| 3459 | You can only know the limits of knowledge if you know the other side of the limit [Searle] |
| Full Idea: To know the limits of knowledge, we would have to know both sides of the limit. | |
| From: John Searle (The Rediscovery of the Mind [1992], Ch. 1.V.6) |
| 16006 | Either Abraham rises higher than universal ethics, or he is a mere murderer [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Either Abraham was a murderer, or we confront a paradox higher than all mediation. His story therefore contains the teleological suspension of the ethical, and he becomes higher than the universal. If not, he is not a tragic hero or the father of faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], p.49) | |
| A reaction: A nice dilemma for Christian thinkers who want to reconcile reason and morality with religion. [SY] |
| 7577 | Abraham was willing to suspend ethics, for a higher idea [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The story of Abraham (and Isaac) contains a teleological suspension of the ethical. ...In his action he overstepped the ethical altogether, and had a higher idea outside it, in relation to which he suspended it. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Fear and Trembling [1843], Prob I) | |
| A reaction: My immediate response is to find this proposal very sinister. I can't remotely understand what Abraham's (or God's) 'higher' idea could be that could justify this crime. Maybe ethics is suspended if you are on the beach and a tidal wave arrives? |
| 20312 | God cannot be demonstrated objectively, because God is a subject, only existing inwardly [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Choosing the objective way enters upon the entire approximation-process by which it is proposed to bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible, because God is a subject, and therefore exist only for subjectivity in inwardness. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [pg in 711] This seems to have something like Wittgenstein's problem with a private language - that with no external peer-review it is unclear what the commitment is. |
| 7580 | Pantheism destroys the distinction between good and evil [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: So called pantheistic systems have often been characterised and challenged by the assertion that they abrogate the distinction between good and evil. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: He will have Spinoza in mind. Interesting. Obviously this criticism would come from someone who thought that the traditional deity was the only source of goodness. Good/evil isn't all-or-nothing. A monistic system could contain them. |
| 16008 | The best way to be a Christian is without 'Christianity' [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: One best becomes a Christian - without 'Christianity'. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], JP-1:214) | |
| A reaction: A very healthy attitude for followers of Jesus, given today's television evangelists, religious fundamentalist and zealots. [SY] |
| 20735 | We need to see that Christianity cannot be understood [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The problem is not to understand Christianity, but to understand that it cannot be understood. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (The Journals of Kierkegaard [1850], p.146), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 1 'Roots' | |
| A reaction: This seems to cut us intellectually adrift. We could say the same of supporting Real Madrid. There has to be some magnetism which holds our attention, and there must be something to say about that. |
| 22088 | Faith is like a dancer's leap, going up to God, but also back to earth [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard doesn't use the phrase 'leap of faith'. His metaphor of a dancer's leap expresses the way faith goes 'up' towards God, but also comes back down to earth, and is a way of living in the world. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 2 | |
| A reaction: This entirely contradicts what I was taught about this idea many years ago. Memes turn into Chinese whispers. |
| 7583 | Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: The word 'highest' should always ring alarm bells. The worst sort of religious fanatics seem to be in the grip of this 'high' passion. The early twenty-first century is an echo of eighteenth century England, with its dislike of religious 'enthusiasm'. |
| 7584 | Without risk there is no faith [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Without risk there is no faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Inwardness') | |
| A reaction: Remarks like this make you realise that Kierkegaard is just as much of a romantic as most of the other nineteenth century philosophers. Plunge into the dark unknown of the human psyche, in order to intensify and heighten human life. |