28 ideas
8138 | Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy [Paul] |
Full Idea: Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy. | |
From: St Paul (12: Colossians [c.55], 2.8) | |
A reaction: The same might be said of preaching. The two sorts of spoiling seem to be fanaticism and wickedness. While reason can lead to fanaticism, I believe (with Socrates) that it is unlikely to corrupt morally. |
23766 | Don't be tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine, by cunning deceptive men [Paul] |
Full Idea: Henceforth be no more children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive. | |
From: St Paul (10: Ephesians [c.55], 4:14) | |
A reaction: One quoted to me by a learned religious friend, in response to Idea 23767. I sympathise. I find it extraordinary the nonsense that students of philosophy can be led into, when they swallow some specious argument. |
18405 | A 'teepee' argument has several mutually supporting planks to it [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: In a 'teepee' argument, a number of argumentative planks intersupport each other. No plank is sufficiently strong to establish the position, but each lends credibility to the others because there is the appearance of a unified phenomenon. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.5) | |
A reaction: To attack it, they say, you have to identify the separate planks of the argument. It is a moot point whether the teepee might be so imprecise that it is better described as 'coherence'. There is a background support, as well as the planks. |
5052 | When Gentiles follow the law, they must have the law written in their hearts [Paul] |
Full Idea: When the Gentiles which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which shew the works of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness. | |
From: St Paul (06: Epistle to the Romans [c.55], 02.15) | |
A reaction: This passage was used by theologians as proof of innate ideas, which are, of course, divinely implanted (in the guise of doing things 'by nature'). It is quoted by Leibniz. Thus Christians annexed credit for pagan morality to God. |
18422 | Prioprioception focuses on your body parts, not on your self, or indexicality [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Proprioception is not focused single-mindedly on the self, but is focused on a number of objects - the component bodily parts that belong to the self. There is no obvious need for a concept of the self, or of indexicality. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 07.2) |
18425 | We can acquire self-knowledge with mirrors, not just with proprioception and introspection [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Imagine a being that learns everything about itself by watching itself in mirrors, rather than by proprioception and introspection. Surely it can get wet in a storm, even though allegedly distinctive routes of self-knowledge are not available to it? | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 09.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] |
18421 | Proprioception is only immune from error if you are certain that it represents the agent [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: The guarantee of immunity from error in prioprioception is only as strong as the guarantee that proprioception only ever represents the proprioceiving agent. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 07.1) | |
A reaction: This is part of an interesting and sustained attack on the idea that self-knowledge is immune from error. They are thinking of science-fictiony situations where I am wired up to experience your leg movement. My experiences usually track me, that's all. |
18419 | Folk Functionalism is a Ramsification of our folk psychology [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: According to Folk Functionalism, mental states are theoretically defined by Ramsifying on our folk-psychological theory. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 06.2) |
18404 | It is assumed that indexical content is needed to represent the perspective of perception [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Because our perceptual states typically represent the world as seen from a perspective, it is sometimes thought that some distinctively indexical kind of content is needed to characterise those states. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.4) | |
A reaction: They are summarising this view precisely so that they can oppose it, and I think they are right. |
18407 | Indexicality is not significantly connected to agency [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: There are no interesting or distinctive explanatory connections between indexicality and agency. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.8) |
18427 | If some of our thought is tied to its context, it will be hard to communicate it [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: It is bad news if some of our contents are essentially tied to particular contexts. ...If information needs to be assessed relative to some ur-context, later recipients won't know what to do with it. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) |
18426 | All information is objective, and purely indexical information is not much use [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Fundamentally, all information is objective information. ...[176] What we want is fully portable information, and information that co-ordinates on the world, rather than on us, is best suited for the task. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
A reaction: I agree entirely with their thesis. We just pick up information about ourselves, such as who and where we are, which is just like equivalent information about other people. It is isn't a special type of information. |
18428 | You don't remember your house interior just from an experienced viewpoint [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: When you recall the look of the inside of your house ....where things are relative to one another is what persists in memory, not where they were relative to you when seen. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a very telling example, though you could postulate some system which converts perspectival input into objective information. But why bother? We seek objective information, not perspectives. |
18429 | Our beliefs and desires are not organised around ourselves, but around the world [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Our view on the world is not primarily a view from a perspective. Our beliefs and desires are not organized around us. They are instead organized around the world itself. Our view is a view from everywhere. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 10) | |
A reaction: Slipping in the claim that our desires are also organised around the world is not quite as persuasive as the claim about beliefs. If you want to draw a freehand straight line, focus on the far end of it. The world will guide your hand. |
18413 | Fregeans can't agree on what 'senses' are [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: There is little agreement among Fregeans about what senses are. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 04.5) | |
A reaction: I don't take this to be sufficient grounds for dismissing Fregean senses. When we look into the workings of the linguistic mind, there seems little prospect of clarity or agreement. |
18417 | Possible worlds accounts of content are notoriously coarse-grained [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Possible worlds accounts of content are notoriously coarse-grained. They fail to distinguish between logical or mathematical truths, ..between metaphysical equivalences, ..between coreferentials, ..and between indexicals and non-indexicals. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 05.5) | |
A reaction: [A nice summary, very compressed] |
18423 | All indexicals can be expressed non-indexically [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Whatever can be expressed indexically could be expressed by non-indexical means. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 08.1) | |
A reaction: This is the best summary of the thesis of their book. Indexicality in non-essential. |
18408 | Indexicals are just non-constant in meaning, and don't involve any special concepts [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Once the non-constant characters of expressions has been characterised, there is no further need for additional devices like 'first-person concepts' or 'demonstrative concepts'. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.7) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be a wonderfully liberating attack on this issue. There is a kind of creepy mysticism that has been allowed to accrue around indexicals, and it's nonsense. |
18414 | Fregeans say 'I' differs in reference, so it must also differ in sense [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Fregeans tend to treat as a fundamental tenet that sense determines reference; same sense, same reference. From that it follow trivially that indexicals don't have the same sense: different uses of 'I' have different referents, so sense must differ. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 04.6) | |
A reaction: Interesting. Since it seems implausible that 'I' is profoundly different when two people use it, this seems to be a strong argument against Frege's distinction. But I rather like Frege's distinction, while being sceptical about 'I', so I'm baffled.... |
18406 | The basic Kaplan view is that there is truth-conditional content, and contextual character [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: In what we label 'Basic Kaplanianism', each of the sentences 'Smith is happy' and 'I am happy', as uttered by Smith, has two levels of meaning. The 'content' is a truth-conditional representation. The 'character' is a function from contexts to contents. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 01.6) | |
A reaction: They give this as a minimal and plausible account of the situation, without reading huge significance into the indexical. I'm inclined to see the situation in terms of the underlying proposition containing both ingredients. |
18411 | It is proposed that a huge range of linguistic items are context-sensitive [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: An enormous amount has been written about whether 'all', 'know', 'might', 'delicious', 'good', 'if, then', 'and', 'red', 'just', 'justified', 'probable', 'local', 'ready', and 'left-right' are context-sensitive. | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 02.3) | |
A reaction: The clearest way to approach these things is ask what the (informal) domain of quantification is for that particular context. The domain can shift in the course of a sentence. |
18420 | We deny that action involves some special class of beliefs [Cappelen/Dever] |
Full Idea: Maybe there is a class of beliefs that plays a special role in the explanation of action. We have argued against the existence of such a class (or at least any interesting such class). | |
From: Cappelen,H/Dever,Josh (The Inessential Indexical [2013], 06.2) | |
A reaction: The main class which has been proposed is the one that involves indexical beliefs. I agree with this idea. |
7346 | Jeremiah implied a link between weakness and goodness, and the evil of the state [Jeremiah, by Johnson,P] |
Full Idea: Jeremiah was the first to perceive the possibility that powerlessness and goodness were somehow linked; ...he comes close to the notion that the state itself was inherently evil. | |
From: report of Jeremiah (24: Book of Jeremiah [c.570 BCE]) by Paul Johnson - The History of the Jews Pt II | |
A reaction: This looks like the first seeds of the anarchist idea. You abandon the state for something 'higher'. 'Perceive' rather begs the question of whether he is right. This is the full 'inversion of values' of Nietzsche. |
7572 | Power is ordained by God, so anyone who resists power resists God, and will be damned [Paul] |
Full Idea: Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained by God. Whosoever therefore resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. | |
From: St Paul (06: Epistle to the Romans [c.55], 13:1-2) | |
A reaction: This notorious passage was used to justify the Divine Right of Kings in England in the seventeenth century. It strikes me as being utterly preposterous, though you might say that violent resistance to an evil dictator only brings worse evil. |
19945 | Jew and Greeks, bond and free, male and female, are all one in Christ [Paul] |
Full Idea: There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. | |
From: St Paul (09: Galatians [c.55], 3.28) | |
A reaction: No wonder women and slaves were enthusiastic about Christianity. This verse is powerful and influential, even if it was largely ignored by Christian rulers. Consider the relative positions of women in Islam and Christendom. |
22920 | Do I not fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord [Jeremiah] |
Full Idea: Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do I not fill heaven and earth? | |
From: Jeremiah (24: Book of Jeremiah [c.570 BCE], 23:24), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 03 'Where' | |
A reaction: If the Lord is omnipresent, then He must be present in each one of us. But does the Lord interact with each of us? |
20695 | God's eternal power and deity are clearly seen in what has been created [Paul] |
Full Idea: From the creation of the world God's invisible nature, namely his eternal power and deity, are clearly perceived in the things that have been made. | |
From: St Paul (06: Romans [c.55], 19-21), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion | |
A reaction: St Paul says that for this reason the Gentiles are 'without excuse' for not believing (which means they are in trouble if Christians ever gain political power). Davies says it is unusual to find an argument for God's existence in the Bible. |
22089 | Am I a God afar off, and not a God close at hand? [Jeremiah] |
Full Idea: Am I a God afar off, and not a God close at hand? Do I not fill heaven and earth? | |
From: Jeremiah (24: Book of Jeremiah [c.570 BCE], 23:23), quoted by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3 | |
A reaction: I assume this was often quoted by eighteenth century divines, against the rise of deism. |