134 ideas
| 21887 | Derrida focuses on other philosophers, rather than on science [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We should focus on other philosophers, and not on science. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21888 | Philosophy is just a linguistic display [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is entirely linguistic, and is a display. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21896 | Philosophy aims to build foundations for thought [Derrida, by May] |
| Full Idea: Derrida points out that the project of philosophy consists largely in attempting to build foundations for thought. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: You would first need to be convinced that there could be such a thing as foundations for thinking. Derrida thinks the project is hopeless. I think of it more as building an ideal framework for thought. |
| 21893 | Philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and its writing is aesthetic [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All of philosophy is necessarily metaphorical, and hence aesthetic. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 13395 | If an analysis shows the features of a concept, it doesn't seem to 'reduce' the concept [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: An analysis of a concept tells us what the concept is by telling us what its constituents are and how they are combined. ..The features of the concept are present in the analysis, making it surprising the 'reductive' analyses are sought. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: He says that there are nevertheless reductive analyses, such as David Lewis's analysis of modality. We must disentangle conceptual analysis from causal analysis (e.g. in his example of the physicalist reduction of mind). |
| 15570 | Phenomenology is the science of essences - necessary universal structures for art, representation etc. [Husserl, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: For Husserl, phenomenology must seek the essential aspects of phenomena - necessary, universal structures, such as the essence of art or the essence of representation. He sought a science of these essences. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 2 'Dilthey' |
| 3348 | If phenomenology is deprived of the synthetic a priori, it is reduced to literature [Benardete,JA on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Sternly envisaged by Husserl as a scientific discipline, phenomenology, on being stripped of the synthetic a priori by the logical positivists, ends up in Sartre as a largely literary undertaking. | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (works [1898]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 7614 | Bracketing subtracts entailments about external reality from beliefs [Husserl, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: In effect, the device of bracketing subtracts entailments from the ordinary belief locution (the entailments that refer to what is external to the thinker's mind). | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Hilary Putnam - Reason, Truth and History Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to leave phenomenology as pure introspection, or as a phenomenalist description of sense-data. It is also a refusal to explain anything. That sounds quite appealing, like Keats's 'negative capability'. |
| 6893 | Phenomenology aims to describe experience directly, rather than by its origins or causes [Husserl, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology, in Husserl, is an attempt to describe our experience directly, as it is, separately from its origins and development, independently of the causal explanations that historians, sociologists or psychologists might give. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.421 | |
| A reaction: In this simple definition the concept sounds very like the modern popular use of the word 'deconstruction', though that is applied more commonly to cultural artifacts than to actual sense experience. |
| 22216 | Phenomenology studies different types of correlation between consciousness and its objects [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: Husserl's phenomenology is the science of the intentional correlation of acts of consciousness with their objects and it studies the ways in which different kinds of objects involve different kinds of correlation with different kinds of acts. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.198 | |
| A reaction: I notice he uncritically accepts Husserl's description of it as a 'science'. My naive question is how you would distinguish one kind of 'correlation' from another. |
| 21217 | Phenomenology needs absolute reflection, without presuppositions [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology demands the most perfect freedom from presuppositions and, concerning itself, an absolute reflective insight. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], III.1.063), quoted by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 3.1 | |
| A reaction: As an outsider, I would have thought that the whole weight of modern continental philosophy is entirely opposed to the aspiration to think without presuppositions. |
| 22218 | There can only be a science of fluctuating consciousness if it focuses on stable essences [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: How can there be a science of a Heraclitean flux of acts of consciousness? Husserl answers that this is possible only if these acts are described in respect of their invariant or essential structure. This is an 'eidetic' scence of 'pure' psychology. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.199 | |
| A reaction: This is his phenomenology in 1913, which Bernet describes as 'static'. Husserl later introduced time with his 'genetic' version of phenomenology, looking at the sources of experience (and then at history). Essentialism seems to be intuitive. |
| 22217 | Phenomenology aims to validate objects, on the basis of intentional intuitive experience [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: Husserl's goal is to account for the validity, the 'being-true', of objects on the basis of the way in which they are given or constituted. ...Experiences more suitable for guaranteeing objects are those which both intend and intuitively apprehend them. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.199 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] In the light of previous scepticism and idealism, the project sounds a bit optimistic. If there is a gulf between mind and world it can only be bridged by 'reaching out' from both sides. This is a mind-sided attempt. |
| 22219 | Husserl saw transcendental phenomenology as idealist, in its construction of objects [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: Phenomeonology is 'transcendental' in describing the correlation between phenomena and intentional objects, to show how their meaning and validity are constructed. Husserl gave this process an idealist interpretation (which Heidegger criticised). | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.200 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If the actions which produce our concepts of objects all take place 'behind' phenomenal consciousness, then it is hard to avoid sliding into some sort of idealism. It encourages direct realism about perception. |
| 22204 | Start philosophising with no preconceptions, from the intuitively non-theoretical self-given [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Where other philosophers ...start from unclarified, ungrounded preconceptions, we start out from that which antedates all standpoints: from the totality of the intuitively self-given which is prior to any theorising reflexion. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.2.020) | |
| A reaction: This is the great aim of Phenomenology, which is obviously inspired by Hegel's similar desire to start from nothing. Hegel starts from a concept ('nothing'), but Husserl starts from raw experience. I suspect both approaches are idle dreams. |
| 22207 | Epoché or 'bracketing' is refraining from judgement, even when some truths are certain [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: In relation to every thesis we can use this peculiar epoché (the phenomenon of 'bracketing' or 'disconnecting'), a certain refraining from judgment which is compatible with the unshaken and unshakable because self-evidencing conviction of Truth. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.1.031) | |
| A reaction: This is the crucial first step of Phenomenology. It seems to me that it is best described as 'methodological scepticism'. People actually practise it all the time, while they focus on some experience, while trying to forget preconceptions. |
| 22208 | 'Bracketing' means no judgements at all about spatio-temporal existence [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: I use the 'phenomenological' epoché, which completely bars me from using any judgment that concerns spatio-temporal existence. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.1.032) | |
| A reaction: This makes bracketing (or epoché) into a sort of voluntary idealism. Put like that, it is hard to see what benefits it could bring. I am, you will notice, a pretty thorough sceptic about the project of phenomenology. What has it taught us? |
| 22210 | After everything is bracketed, consciousness still has a unique being of its own [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: We fix our eyes steadily upon the sphere of Consciousness and study what it is that we find immanent in it. ...Consciousness in itself has a being of its own which in its absolute uniqueness of nature remains unaffected by disconnection. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.2.033) | |
| A reaction: 'Disconnection' is his 'bracketing'. He makes it sound obvious, but Schopenhauer entirely disagrees with him, and I have no idea how to arbitrate. I struggle to grasp consciousness once nature has been bracketed, but have little luck. Is it Da-sein? |
| 22215 | Phenomenology describes consciousness, in the light of pure experiences [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology is a pure descriptive discipline which studies the whole field of pure transcendental consciousness in the light of pure intuition. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.4.059) | |
| A reaction: When he uses the word 'pure' three times in a sentence, each applied to a different thing, you begin to wonder precisely what it means. Strictly speaking, I would probably only apply 'pure' to abstracta, and never to experiences or reality.115 |
| 20925 | Hermeneutics blunts truth, by conforming it to the interpreter [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida worried that hermeneutics blunts the disruptive power of truth by forcing it conform to the interpreter's mental horizon. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction 3 'The heart' | |
| A reaction: Good heavens - I agree with Derrida. Very French, though, to see the value of truth in its disruptiveness. I tend to find the truth reassuring, but then I'm English. |
| 20934 | Hermeneutics is hostile, trying to overcome the other person's difference [Derrida, by Zimmermann,J] |
| Full Idea: Derrida described the hermeneutic impulse to understand another as a form of violence that seeks to overcome the other's particularity and unique difference. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Jens Zimmermann - Hermeneutics: a very short introduction App 'Derrida' | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'violence', but Derrida was on to somethng here. The 'hermeneutic circle' sounds like a creepy process of absorption, where the original writer disappears in a whirlpool of interpretation. |
| 21892 | Interpretations can be interpreted, so there is no original 'meaning' available [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Because interpretations of texts can be interpreted, they can therefore have no 'original meaning'. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21895 | Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Structuralism destroys awareness of dynamic meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8210 | Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5) | |
| A reaction: All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine. |
| 8211 | The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7) | |
| A reaction: 'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction. |
| 6840 | Derrida came to believe in the undeconstructability of justice, which cannot be relativised [Derrida, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's later work we find him moving explicitly towards a belief in the undeconstructability of justice, as he puts it, which is an overarching value that cannot be relativised. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.191 | |
| A reaction: A nice corrective to the standard Anglo-Saxon assumption that Derrida is an extreme (and stupid) relativist. The notion of 'undeconstructability' is nice, just as Descartes found an idea that resisted the blasts of scepticism. |
| 21934 | The idea of being as persistent presence, and meaning as conscious intelligibility, are self-destructive [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The tradition of conceiving being in terms of persisting presence, and meaning in terms of pure intelligibility or logos potentially present to the mind, finds itself dismantled by resources internal to its own construction. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Glendinning says this is the basic meaning of de-construction. My personal reading of this is that Aristotle is right, and grand talk of Being is hopeless, so we should just aim to understand objects. I also believe in propositions. |
| 21883 | Sincerity can't be verified, so fiction infuses speech, and hence reality also [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sincerity can never be verified, so fiction infuses all speech, which means that reality is also fictional. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21882 | Sentences are contradictory, as they have opposite meanings in some contexts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are implicitly contradictory, because they can be used differently in different contexts (most obviously in 'I am ill'). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8216 | Deconstruction is not neutral; it intervenes [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Deconstruction, I have insisted, is not neutral. It intervenes. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.76) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is because there is in Derrida, as in most French philosophers, a strong streak of Marxism, and a desire to change the world, rather than merely understanding it. Idea 8213 shows the sort of thing he wants to change. |
| 21881 | We aim to explore the limits of expression (as in Mallarmé's poetry) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The aim is to explore the limits of expression (which is what makes the poetry of Mallarmé so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 8213 | I try to analyse certain verbal concepts which block and confuse the dialectical process [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: I have tried to analyse certain marks in writing which are undecidables, false verbal properties, which inhabit philosophical opposition, resisting and disorganising it, without ever constituting a third term, withour ever leaving room for a solution. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Positions [1971], p.40) | |
| A reaction: [I have simplified his sentence!] Much of Derrida seems to be a commentary on the Hegelian dialectic, and the project is presumably to figure out why philosophy is not advancing in the way we would like. Interesting... |
| 22201 | The use of mathematical-style definitions in philosophy is fruitless and harmful [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Definition cannot take the same form in philosophy as it does in mathematics; the imitation of mathematical procedure is invariably in this respect not only unfruitful, but perverse and most harmful in its consequences. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A hundred years of analytic philosophy has entirely ignored this warning. My heart has always sunk when I read '=def...' in a philosophy article (which is usually American). The illusion of rigour. |
| 4756 | Derrida says that all truth-talk is merely metaphor [Derrida, by Engel] |
| Full Idea: Derrida's view is that every discourse is metaphorical, and there is no difference between truth-talk and metaphor. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §2.5 | |
| A reaction: Right. Note that this is a Frenchman's summary. How would one define metaphor, without mentioning that it is parasitic on truth? Certainly some language tries to be metaphor, and other language tries not to be. |
| 21877 | True thoughts are inaccessible, in the subconscious, prior to speech or writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'True' thoughts are inaccessible, buried in the subconscious, long before they get to speech or writing. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: [My reading of some Derrida produced no quotations. I've read two commentaries, which were obscure. The Derrida ideas in this db are my simplistic tertiary summaries. Experts can chuckle over my failure] |
| 9967 | 'Impure' sets have a concrete member, while 'pure' (abstract) sets do not [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any set with a concrete member is 'impure'. 'Pure' sets are those that are not impure, and are paradigm cases of abstract entities, such as the sort of sets apparently dealt with in Zermelo-Fraenkel (ZF) set theory. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.116) | |
| A reaction: [I am unclear whether Jubien is introducing this distinction] This seems crucial in accounts of mathematics. On the one had arithmetic can be built from Millian pebbles, giving impure sets, while logicists build it from pure sets. |
| 13378 | It is a mistake to think that the logic developed for mathematics can clarify language and philosophy [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: It has often been uncritically assumed that logic that was initially a tool for clarifying mathematics could be seamlessly and uniformly applied in the effort to clarify ordinary language and philosophy, but this has been a real mistake. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not saying he's right (since you need stupendous expertise to make that call) but my intuitions are that he has a good point, and he is at least addressing a crucial question which most analytical philosophers avert their eyes from. |
| 21222 | Logicians presuppose a world, and ignore logic/world connections, so their logic is impure [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl maintained that because most logicians have not studied the connection between logic and the world, logic did not achieve its status of purity. Even more, their logic implicitly presupposed a world. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.1 | |
| A reaction: The point here is that the bracketing of phenomenology, to reach an understanding with no presuppositions, is impossible if you don't realise what your are presupposing. I think the logic/world relationship is badly neglected, thanks to Frege. |
| 21223 | Phenomenology grounds logic in subjective experience [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: The phenomenological logic grounds logical notions in subjective acts of experience. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929], p.183) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.1 | |
| A reaction: I'll approach this with great caution, but this is a line of thought that appeals to me. The core assumptions of logic do not arise ex nihilo. |
| 13402 | We only grasp a name if we know whether to apply it when the bearer changes [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We cannot be said to have a full grasp of a name unless we have a definite disposition to apply it or to withhold it under whatever conceivable changes the bearer of the name might come to undergo. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is right, and an excellent counterproposal to the logicians' notion that names have to rigidly designate. As a bare minimum, you are not supposed to deny the identity of your parents because they have grown a bit older, or a damaged painting. |
| 13405 | The baptiser picks the bearer of a name, but social use decides the category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The person who introduces a proper name gets to pick its bearer, but its category - and consequently the meaning of the name - is determined by social use. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 7) | |
| A reaction: New 'division of labour'. The idea that a name has some sort of meaning seems right and important. If babies were switched after baptism, social use might fix the name to the new baby. The namer could stipulate the category at the baptism. Too neat. |
| 21878 | Names have a subjective aspect, especially the role of our own name [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: We can give a subjective account of names, by considering our own name. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21889 | 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: 'I' is the perfect name, because it denotes without description. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 13399 | Examples show that ordinary proper names are not rigid designators [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There are plenty of examples to show that ordinary proper names simply are not rigid designators. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: His examples are the planet Venus and the dust of which it is formed, and a statue made of clay. In other words, for some objects, perhaps under certain descriptions (e.g. functional ones), the baptised matter can change. Rigidity is an extra topping. |
| 21879 | Even Kripke can't explain names; the word is the thing, and the thing is the word [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even Kripke can't explain names, because the word is the thing, and also the thing is the word. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 13398 | We could make a contingent description into a rigid and necessary one by adding 'actual' to it [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: 'The winner of the Derby' satisfies some horse, but only accidentally. But we could 'rigidify' the description by inserting 'actual' into it, giving 'the actual winner of the Derby'. Winning is a contingent property, but actually winning is necessary. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this unusual proposal because instead of switching into formal logic in order to capture the ideas we are after, he is drawing on the resources of ordinary language, offering philosophers a way of speaking plain English more precisely. |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 13392 | Philosophers reduce complex English kind-quantifiers to the simplistic first-order quantifier [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There is a readiness of philosophers to 'translate' English, with its seeming multitude of kind-driven quantifiers, into first-order logic, with its single wide-open quantifier. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: As in example he says that reference to a statue involves a 'statue-quantifier'. Thus we say things about the statue that we would not say about the clay, which would involve a 'clay-quantifier'. |
| 9968 | A model is 'fundamental' if it contains only concrete entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: A first-order model can be viewed as a kind of ordered set, and if the domain of the model contains only concrete entities then it is a 'fundamental' model. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.117) | |
| A reaction: An important idea. Fundamental models are where the world of logic connects with the physical world. Any account of relationship between fundamental models and more abstract ones tells us how thought links to world. |
| 9965 | There couldn't just be one number, such as 17 [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense to suppose there might be just one natural number, say seventeen. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.113) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Not convinced. If numbers are essentially patterns, we might only have the number 'twelve', because we had built our religion around anything which exhibited that form (in any of its various arrangements). Nice point, though. |
| 9837 | 0 is not a number, as it answers 'how many?' negatively [Husserl, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl contends that 0 is not a number, on the grounds that 'nought' is a negative answer to the question 'how many?'. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.144) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: I seem to be in a tiny minority in thinking that Husserl may have a good point. One apple is different from one orange, but no apples are the same as no oranges. That makes 0 a very peculiar number. See Idea 9838. |
| 9576 | Multiplicity in general is just one and one and one, etc. [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Multiplicity in general is no more than something and something and something, etc.; ..or more briefly, one and one and one, etc. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.85), quoted by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' | |
| A reaction: Frege goes on to attack this idea fairly convincingly. It seems obvious that it is hard to say that you have seventeen items, if the only numberical concept in your possession is 'one'. How would you distinguish 17 from 16? What makes the ones 'multiple'? |
| 17444 | Husserl said counting is more basic than Frege's one-one correspondence [Husserl, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: Husserl famously argued that one should not explain number in terms of equinumerosity (or one-one correspondence), but should explain equinumerosity in terms of sameness of number, which should be characterised in terms of counting. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3 | |
| A reaction: [Heck admits he hasn't read the Husserl] I'm very sympathetic to Husserl, though nearly all modern thinking favours Frege. Counting connects numbers to their roots in the world. Mathematicians seem oblivious of such things. |
| 21224 | Pure mathematics is the relations between all possible objects, and is thus formal ontology [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Pure mathematics is the science of the relations between any object whatever (relation of whole to part, relation of equality, property, unity etc.). In this sense, pure mathematics is seen by Husserl as formal ontology. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.2 | |
| A reaction: I would expect most modern analytic philosophers to agree with this. Modern mathematics (e.g. category theory) seems to have moved beyond this stage, but I still like this idea. |
| 9966 | The subject-matter of (pure) mathematics is abstract structure [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The subject-matter of (pure) mathematics is abstract structure per se. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.115) | |
| A reaction: This is the Structuralist idea beginning to take shape after Benacerraf's launching of it. Note that Jubien gets there by his rejection of platonism, whereas some structuralist have given a platonist interpretation of structure. |
| 9963 | If we all intuited mathematical objects, platonism would be agreed [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If the intuition of mathematical objects were general, there would be no real debate over platonism. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.111) | |
| A reaction: It is particularly perplexing when Gödel says that his perception of them is just like sight or smell, since I have no such perception. How do you individuate very large numbers, or irrational numbers, apart from writing down numerals? |
| 9962 | How can pure abstract entities give models to serve as interpretations? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I am unable to see how the mere existence of pure abstract entities enables us to concoct appropriate models to serve as interpretations. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.111) | |
| A reaction: Nice question. It is always assumed that once we have platonic realm, that everything else follows. Even if we are able to grasp the objects, despite their causal inertness, we still have to discern innumerable relations between them. |
| 9964 | Since mathematical objects are essentially relational, they can't be picked out on their own [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of mathematical entities seem to be relational, ...so we make no progress unless we can pick out some mathematical entities wihout presupposing other entities already picked out. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.112) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Jubien is a good critic of platonism. He has identified the problem with Frege's metaphor of a 'borehole', where we discover delightful new properties of numbers simply by reaching them. |
| 22209 | Our goal is to reveal a new hidden region of Being [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: We could refer to our goal as the winning of a new region of Being, the distinctive character of which has not yet been defined. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.2.033) | |
| A reaction: The obvious fruit of this idea, I would think, is Heidegger's concept of Da-sein, which claims to be a distinctively human region of Being. I'm not sure I can cope with the claim that Being itself (a very broad-brush term) has hidden regions. |
| 13404 | To exist necessarily is to have an essence whose own essence must be instantiated [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: For a thing to exist necessarily is for it to have an entity-essence whose own entity-essence entails being instantiated. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of a lengthy discussion, and is not immediately persuasive. For Jubien the analysis rests on a platonist view of properties, which doesn't help. |
| 22211 | As a thing and its perception are separated, two modes of Being emerge [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: We are left with the transcendence of the thing over against the perception of it, ...and thus a basic and essential difference arises between Being as Experience and Being as Thing. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.2.042) | |
| A reaction: I'm thinking that this is not just the germ of Heidegger's concept of Da-sein, but it actually IS his concept, without the label. Husserl had said that he hoped to reveal a new region of Being. |
| 21226 | Husserl sees the ego as a monad, unifying presence, sense and intentional acts [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl's notion of monad expresses a complete inegration of every intentional presence into its sense, and every sense into the intentional acts, ....and finally every intentional act is integrated into the ego. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Cartesian Meditations [1931]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.6.2 | |
| A reaction: No, I don't understand that either, but it makes good sense to employ the concept of a 'monad' into the concept of the ego, if you think it embodies perfect unity. That was a main motivation for Leibniz to employ the word. |
| 13386 | If objects are just conventional, there is no ontological distinction between stuff and things [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Under the Quinean (conventional) view of objects, there is no ontological distinction between stuff and things. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the bold nihilistic account of physical objects, which seems to push all of our ontology into language (English?). We could devise divisions into things that were just crazy, and likely to lead to the rapid extinction of creatures who did it. |
| 22202 | The World is all experiencable objects [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: The World is the totality of objects that can be known through experience. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.1.001) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the 'Nature' which has to be 'bracketed', when pursuing Phenomenology. It sounds like anti-realist empiricism, which has no place for unobservables. |
| 22213 | Absolute reality is an absurdity [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: An absolute reality is just as valid as a round square. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.3.055) | |
| A reaction: Husserl distances himself from 'Berkeleyian' idealism, but his discussion keeps flirting with, perhaps in some sort of have-your-cake-and-eat-it Hegelian way. Perhaps it is close to Dummett's Anti-Realism. |
| 13403 | The category of Venus is not 'object', or even 'planet', but a particular class of good-sized object [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The category of Venus is not 'physical object' or 'mereological sum', but narrower. Surprisingly, it is not 'planet', since it might cease to be a planet and still merit the name 'Venus'. It is something like 'well-integrated, good-sized physical object'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Jubien is illustrating Idea 13402. This is a nice demonstration of how one might go about the task of constructing categories - by showing the modal profiles of things to which names have been assigned. Categories are file names. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 9969 | The empty set is the purest abstract object [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The empty set is the pure abstract object par excellence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Ontology and Mathematical Truth [1977], p.118 n8) | |
| A reaction: So a really good PhD on the empty set could crack the whole nature of reality. Get to work, whoever you are! |
| 13375 | The idea that every entity must have identity conditions is an unfortunate misunderstanding [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The pervasiveness, throughout philosophy, of the assumption that entities of various kinds need identity conditions is one unfortunate aspect of Quine's important philosophical legacy. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Lowe seems to be an example of a philosopher who habitually demands individuation conditions for everything that is referred to. Presumably the alternative is to take lots of things as primitive, but this seems to be second best. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 13393 | Any entity has the unique property of being that specific entity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: For any entity of any sort, abstract or concrete, I assume there is a property of being that specific entity. For want of a better term, I will call such properties entity-essences. They are 'singulary' - not instantiable by more than one thing at a time. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Baffling. Why would someone who has mocked all sorts of bogus philosophical claims based on logic then go on to assert the existence of such weird things as these? I can't make sense of this property being added to a thing's other properties. |
| 13388 | It is incoherent to think that a given entity depends on its kind for its existence [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: It is simply far-fetched - even incoherent - to think that, given an entity, of whatever kind, its being a single entity somehow consists in its satisfying some condition involving the kind to which it belongs (or concepts related to that kind). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: Well said. I can't see how philosophers have allowed themselves to drift into such a daft view. Kinds blatantly depend on the individuals that constitute them, so how could the identity of the individuals depend on their kind? |
| 13384 | Objects need conventions for their matter, their temporal possibility, and their spatial possibility [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We need a first convention to determine what matter constitutes objects, then a second to determine whether there are different temporal possibilities for a given object, then a third for different spatial possibilities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is building up a Quinean account of objects, as mere matter in regions of spacetime, which are then precisely determined by a set of social conventions. |
| 13385 | Basically, the world doesn't have ready-made 'objects'; we carve objects any way we like [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: There is a certain - very mild - sense in which I don't think the physical world comes with ready-made objects. I think instead that we (conventionally) carve it up into objects, and this can be done any way we like. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I have no idea how one could begin to refute such a view. Obviously there are divisions (even if only of physical density) in the world, but nothing obliges us to make divisions at those points. We happily accept objects with gaps in them. |
| 13383 | If the statue is loved and the clay hated, that is about the object first qua statue, then qua clay [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If a sculptor says 'I love the statue but I really hate that piece of clay - it is way too hard to work with' ...the statement is partly is partly about that object qua statue and partly about that object qua piece of clay. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: His point is that identity is partly determined by the concept or category under which the thing falls. Plausible. Lots of identity muddles seem to come from our conceptual scheme not being quite up to the job when things change. |
| 13400 | If one entity is an object, a statue, and some clay, these come apart in at least three ways [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: A single entity is a physical object, a piece of clay and a statue. We seem to have that the object could be scattered, but not the other two; the object and the clay could be spherical, but not the statue; and only the object could have different matter. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: His proposal, roughly, is to reduce object-talk to property-talk, and then see the three views of this object as referring to different sets of properties, rather than to a single thing. Promising, except that he goes platonist about properties. |
| 13401 | The idea of coincident objects is a last resort, as it is opposed to commonsense naturalism [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I find it surprising that some philosophers accept 'coincident objects'. This notion clearly offends against commonsense 'naturalism' about the world, so it should be viewed as a last resort. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 5.2 n9) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite clear why he invokes 'naturalism', but I pass on his intuition because it seems right to me. |
| 13380 | Parts seem to matter when it is just an object, but not matter when it is a kind of object [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: When thought of just as an object, the parts of a thing seem definitive and their arrangement seems inconsequential. But when thought of as an object of a familiar kind it is reversed: the arrangement is important and the parts are inessential. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is analogous to the Ship of Theseus, where we say that the tour operator and the museum keeper give different accounts of whether it is the same ship. The 'kind' Jubien refers to is most likely to be a functional kind. |
| 21218 | The sense of anything contingent has a purely apprehensible essence or Eidos [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: It belongs to the sense of anything contingent to have an essence and therefore an Eidos which can be apprehended purely. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.1.002), quoted by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 3.2.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the quirky idea that we can know necessary categorial essences a priori, even if the category is currently empty. Crops us in Lowe. Husserl says grasping the corresponding individuals must be possible. Third Man question. |
| 13376 | We should not regard essentialism as just nontrivial de re necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I argue against the widely accepted characterization of the doctrine of 'essentialism' as the acceptance of nontrivial de re necessity | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. The notion of an essence is powerful if clearly distinguished. The test is: can everything being said about essences be just as easily said by referring to necessities? If so, you are talking about the wrong thing. |
| 19263 | Imagine an object's properties varying; the ones that won't vary are the essential ones [Husserl, by Vaidya] |
| Full Idea: Husserl's 'eidetic variation' implies that we can judge the essential properties of an object by varying the properties of the object in imagination, and seeing which vary and which do not. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Anand Vaidya - Understanding and Essence 'Knowledge' | |
| A reaction: The problem with this is that there are trivial or highly general necessary properties which are obviously not essential to the thing. Vaidya says [822] you can't perform the experiment without prior knowledge of the essence. |
| 13381 | Thinking of them as 'ships' the repaired ship is the original, but as 'objects' the reassembly is the original [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Thinking about the original ship as a ship, we think we continue to have the 'same ship' as each part is replaced; ...but when we think of them as physical objects, we think the original ship and the outcome of the reassembly are one and the same. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that you cannot eliminate how we are thinking of the ship as influencing how we should read it. My suggestion is to think of Theseus himself valuing either the repaired or the reassembled version. That's bad for Jubien's account. |
| 13382 | Rearranging the planks as a ship is confusing; we'd say it was the same 'object' with a different arrangement [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: That the planks are rearranged as a ship elevates the sense of mystery, because arrangements matter for ships, but if they had been arranged differently we would have the same intuition - that it still counts as the same object. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Implausible. Classic case: can I have my pen back? - smashes it to pieces and hands it over with 'there you are' - that's not my pen! - Jubien says it's the same object! - it isn't my pen, and it isn't the same object either! Where is Shelley's skylark? |
| 13379 | If two objects are indiscernible across spacetime, how could we decide whether or not they are the same? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If a bit of matter has a qualitatively indistinguishable object located at a later time, with a path of spacetime connecting them, how could we determine they are identical? Neither identity nor diversity follows from qualitative indiscernibility. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: All these principles expounded by Leibniz were assumed to be timeless, but for identity over time the whole notion of things retaining identity despite changing has to be rethought. Essentialism to the rescue. |
| 13394 | Entailment does not result from mutual necessity; mutual necessity ensures entailment [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typically philosophers say that for P to entail Q is for the proposition that all P's are Q's to be necessary. I think this analysis is backwards, and that necessity rests on entailment, not vice versa. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: His example is that being a horse and being an animal are such that one entails the other. In other words, necessities arise out of property relations (which for Jubien are necessary because the properties are platonically timeless). Wrong. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 13391 | Modality concerns relations among platonic properties [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I think modality has to do with relations involving the abstract part of the world, specifically with relations among (Platonic) properties. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [Sider calls Jubien's the 'governance' view, since abstract relations govern the concrete] I take Jubien here (having done a beautiful demolition job on the possible worlds account of modality) to go spectacularly wrong. Modality starts in the concrete. |
| 13374 | To analyse modality, we must give accounts of objects, properties and relations [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate analysis of possibility and necessity depends on two important ontological decisions: the choice of an analysis of the intuitive concept of a physical object, and the other is the positing of properties and relations. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: In the same passage he adopts Quine's view of objects, leading to mereological essentialism, and a Platonic view of properties, based on Lewis's argument for taking some things at face value. One might start with processes and events instead. |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 13389 | The love of possible worlds is part of the dream that technical logic solves philosophical problems [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I believe the contemporary infatuation with possible worlds in philosophy stems in part from a tendency to think that technical logic offers silver-bullet solutions to philosophical problems. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I would say that the main reason for the infatuation is just novelty. As a technical device it was only invented in the 1960s, so we are in a honeymoon period, as we would be with any new gadget. I can't imagine possible worlds figuring much in 100 years. |
| 13390 | Possible worlds don't explain necessity, because they are a bunch of parallel contingencies [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental problem is that in world theory, what passes for necessity is in effect just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien's general complaint is that there is no connection between the possible worlds and the actual world, so they are irrelevant, but this is a nicely different point - that lots of contingent worlds can't add up to necessity. Nice. |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 21220 | The physical given, unlike the mental given, could be non-existing [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Anything physical which is given in person can be non-existing, no mental process which is given in person can be non-existing. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.2.046), quoted by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 3.3.5 | |
| A reaction: This endorsement of Descartes shows how strong the influence of the Cogito remained in later continental philosophy. Phenomenology is a footnote to Descartes. |
| 21216 | Husserl says we have intellectual intuitions (of categories), as well as of the senses [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: The novelty of Husserl is to describe that we have intellectual intuitions, intuitions of categories as we have intuitions of sense objects. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Logical Investigations [1900], II.VI.24) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.4.4 | |
| A reaction: This is 'intuitions' in Kant's sense, of something like direct apprehensions. This idea is an axiom of phenomenology, because all mental life must be bracketed, and not just the sense experience part. |
| 22205 | Feelings of self-evidence (and necessity) are just the inventions of theory [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: So-called feelings of self-evidence, of intellectual necessity, and however they may otherwise be called, are just theoretically invented feelings. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.2.021) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a dismissal of the a priori necessary on the grounds that it is 'theory-laden' - which is why it has to be bracketed in order to do phenomenology. |
| 21221 | Direct 'seeing' by consciousness is the ultimate rational legitimation [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Immediate 'seeing', not merely sensuous, experiential seeing, but seeing in the universal sense as an originally presenting consciousness of any kind whatsoever, is the ultimate legitimising source of all rational assertions. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.2.019), quoted by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 3.3.5 | |
| A reaction: Husserl is (I gather from this) a classic rationalist. Just like Descartes' judgement of the molten wax. |
| 22220 | The phenomena of memory are given in the present, but as being past [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: In Husserl's phenomenology, the intentional object of a memory is the object of a past experience, which is intuitively given to me in the present, not, however, as being present but as being past. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.203 | |
| A reaction: I certainly don't have to assess my mental events, and judge which are past, which are now, and which are future imaginings. I suppose Fodor would say they are memories because we find them in the memory-box. How else could it work? |
| 22206 | Natural science has become great by just ignoring ancient scepticism [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Natural science has grown to greatness by pushing ruthlessly aside the rank growth of ancient skepticism and renouncing the attempt to conquer it. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.2.026) | |
| A reaction: This may be because scepticism is boring, or it may be because science 'brackets' scepticism, leaving philosophers to worry about it. |
| 22221 | We know another's mind via bodily expression, while also knowing it is inaccessible [Husserl, by Bernet] |
| Full Idea: Another person's consciousness is given to me through the expressive stratum of her body, which gives me access to her experience while making me realise that it is inaccessible to me. Empathy is a presentation of what is absent. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913]) by Rudolf Bernet - Husserl p.203 | |
| A reaction: This is the phenomenological approach to the problem of other minds, by examining the raw experience of encountering another person. It is true that we seem to both know and not know another person's mind when we encounter them. |
| 21228 | Husserl's monads (egos) communicate, through acts of empathy. [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: For Husserl monads have windows because they communicate with each other. The windows of the monads are the acts of empathy. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Cartesian Meditations [1931]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.7.5 | |
| A reaction: Leibniz said his monads (which include minds) have 'no windows'. The mere existence of empathy (or mirror neurons, as we would say) is hardly sufficient to defeat solipsism. |
| 21890 | Heidegger showed that passing time is the key to consciousness [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger showed us the importance of transient time for consciousness. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 22212 | Pure consciousness is a sealed off system of actual Being [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness, considered in its 'purity', must be reckoned as a self-contained system of Being, a system of actual Being, into which nothing can penetrate, and from which nothing can escape. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.3.049) | |
| A reaction: Recorded without comment, to show that among phenomenologists there is a way of thinking about consciousness which is a long way from analytic discussions of the topic. |
| 9575 | Husserl identifies a positive mental act of unification, and a negative mental act for differences [Husserl, by Frege] |
| Full Idea: Husserl identifies a 'unitary mental act' where several contents are connected or related to one another, and also a difference-relation where two contents are related to one another by a negative judgement. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.73-74) by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' p.322 | |
| A reaction: Frege is setting this up ready for a fairly vicious attack. Where Hume has a faculty for spotting resemblances, it is not implausible that we should also be hard-wired to spot differences. 'You look different; have you changed your hair style?' |
| 21225 | The psychological ego is worldly, and the pure ego follows transcendental reduction [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl distinguishes two sorts of egos or subjects of experience, the psychological ego and the pure ego. The psychological ego is a reality of the world, and the pure ego is a result of transcendental reduction. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Cartesian Meditations [1931]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.6.1 | |
| A reaction: The sounds like embracing both the Cartesian and the Kantian egos. This is obviously the source of Sartre's interesting early book on the self. 'Transcendental reduction' is his bracketing or epoché. |
| 22214 | We never meet the Ego, as part of experience, or as left over from experience [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: We never stumble across the pure Ego as an experience within the flux of manifold experiences which survives as transcendental residuum; nor do we meet it as a constitutive bit of experience appearing with the experience of which it is an integral part. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], II.4.057) | |
| A reaction: It seems that he agrees with David Hume. Sartre's 'Transcendence of the Ego' follows up this idea. However, Husserl goes on to assert the 'necessity' of the permanent Ego, which sounds like Kant's view. |
| 13396 | Analysing mental concepts points to 'inclusionism' - that mental phenomena are part of the physical [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: We have (physicalist) 'inclusionism' when the mental is included in the physical, and mental phenomena are to be found among physical phenomena. Only inclusionism is compatible with a genuine physicalist analysis of mental concepts. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: This isn't the thesis of conceptual dualism (which I like), but an interesting accompaniment for it. Jubien is offering this as an alternative to 'reductive' analysis, translating all the mental concepts into physical language. He extends 'physical'. |
| 21880 | 'Tacit theory' controls our thinking (which is why Freud is important) [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All thought is controlled by tacit theory (which is why Freud is so important). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction | |
| A reaction: This idea is said to be the essential thought of Derrida's Deconstruction. The aim is liberation of thought, by identifying and bypassing these tacit metaphysical schemas. |
| 21214 | We clarify concepts (e.g. numbers) by determining their psychological origin [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl said that the clarification of any concept is made by determining its psychological origin. He is concerned with the psychological origins of the operation of calculating cardinal numbers. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.2 | |
| A reaction: This may not be the same as the 'psychologism' that Frege so despised, because Husserl is offering a clarification, rather than the intrinsic nature of number concepts. It is not a theory of the origin of numbers. |
| 9819 | Psychologism blunders in focusing on concept-formation instead of delineating the concepts [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl substitutes his account of the process of concept-formation for a delineation of the concept. It is above all in making this substitution that psychologism is objectionable (and Frege opposed it so vehemently). | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: While this is a powerful point which is a modern orthodoxy, it hardly excludes a study of concept-formation from being of great interest for other reasons. It may not appeal to logicians, but it is crucial part of the metaphysics of nature. |
| 9851 | Husserl wanted to keep a shadowy remnant of abstracted objects, to correlate them [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl saw that abstracted units, though featureless, must in some way retain their distinctness, some shadowy remnant of their objects. So he wanted to correlate like-numbered sets, not just register their identity, but then abstractionism fails. | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: Abstractionism is held to be between the devil and the deep blue sea, of depending on units which are identifiable, when they are defined as devoid of all individuality. We seem forced to say that the only distinction between them is countability. |
| 21894 | Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks in all language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Madness and instability ('the demonic hyperbole') lurks behind all language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21932 | 'Différance' is the interwoven history of each sign [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: What Derrida calls 'différance' can be understood as the movement through which every sign is 'constituted historically as a weave of differences'....This replacement for 'speech' in the 'origin' of the system is to avoid the circularity in structuralism. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (Différance [1982]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Struggling to grasp this. Some English words entirely change their meaning over time (e.g. buxom). Does the lost meaning remain part of the new meaning? If so, how? He also calls différance 'sameness which is not identical'. |
| 21886 | Meanings depend on differences and contrasts [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Meaning depends on 'differences' (contrasts). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21930 | For Aristotle all proper nouns must have a single sense, which is the purpose of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: A noun [for Aristotle] is proper when it has but a single sense. Better, it is only in this case that it is properly a noun. Univocity is the essence, or better, the telos of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] His target seem to be Aristotelian definition, and also formal logic, which usually needs unambiguous meanings. {I'm puzzled that he thinks 'telos' is simply better than 'essence', since it is quite different]. |
| 21884 | Capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The capacity for repetitions is the hallmark of language. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21935 | The sign is only conceivable as a movement between elusive presences [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: The sign is conceivable only on the basis of the presence that it defers, and moving toward the deferred presence that it aims to reappropriate. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: [Glendinning gives no source for this] I take the fundamental idea to be that meanings are dynamic, when they are traditionally understood as static (and specifiable in dictionaries). |
| 21933 | Writing functions even if the sender or the receiver are absent [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: Writing can and must be able to do without the presence of the sender. ...Also writing can and must he able to do without the presence of the receiver. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: In simple terms, one of them could die during the transmission. This is the grounds for the assertion of the primacy of writing. It opposes orthodox views which define language in terms of sender and receiver. |
| 8212 | Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All experience is the experience of meaning (Sinn). Everything that appears to consciousness, everything that is for consciousness in general, is meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Semiology and Grammatology [1968], p.26) | |
| A reaction: This an assertion, from a quite different philosophical tradition, of the centrality of linguistic meaning in philosophy. It links with the centrality of intentionality in our understanding of the mind. |
| 21929 | Derrida focuses on ambiguity, but talks of 'dissemination', not traditional multiple meanings [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Derrida affirms something like an 'ambiguity of meaning'. But he explicitly contrasts the word he uses to characterize the phenomenon at issue, what he calls 'dissemination', with the traditional concept of 'polysemia' - multiple meanings. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Of Grammatology [1967]), quoted by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 2 'After' | |
| A reaction: The point, I presume, is that there is vagueness and elision to the meanings, rather than a list of options, such as bank/bank. Context (sense-making paths) is crucial for Derrida. Can the analytic apparatus for the logic of vagueness be brought to bear? |
| 21931 | 'Dissemination' is opposed to polysemia, since that is irreducible, because of multiple understandings [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The intention to oppose polysemia with dissemination does not aim to affirm that everything we say is ambiguous, but that polysemia is irreducible in the sense that each and every 'meaning' is itself subject to more than one understanding. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (works [1990]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 5 | |
| A reaction: The key point, I think, is that ambiguity and polysemia are not failures of language (which is the way most logicians see it), but part of the essential and irreducible nature of language. Nietzsche started this line of thought. |
| 21885 | Words exist in 'spacing', so meanings are never synchronic except in writing [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Words only exist is 'spacings' (of time and space), so there are no synchronic meanings (except perhaps in writing). | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 13377 | First-order logic tilts in favour of the direct reference theory, in its use of constants for objects [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic tilts in favor of the direct reference account of proper names by using individual constants to play the intuitive role of names, and by 'interpreting' the constants simply as the individuals that are assigned to them for truth-values. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Possibility [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the kind of challenge to orthodoxy that is much needed at the moment. We have an orthodoxy which is almost a new 'scholasticism', that logic will clarify our metaphysics. Trying to enhance the logic for the job may be a dead end. |
| 22203 | Only facts follow from facts [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: From facts follow always nothing but facts. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Ideas: intro to pure phenomenology [1913], I.1.008) | |
| A reaction: I presume objective possibilities follow from facts, so this doesn't sound strictly correct. I sounds like a nice slogan for those desiring to keep facts separate from values. [on p.53 he comments on fact/value] |
| 21891 | The good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there is no pure good [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Even the good is implicitly violent (against evil), so there can be no 'pure' good. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (works [1990]), quoted by Barry Stocker - Derrida on Deconstruction |
| 21936 | A community must consist of singular persons, with nothing in common [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: In Derrida's modal reversal (where the only possible forgiveness is forgiving the unforgivable), the only possible community is the impossible community, which is a 'community of singularities' without anything in common. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Since this seems to go beyond multiculturalism, I can only see it as hyper-liberalism - that isolated individuals have an absolute status. Sounds like Nozick, but Derrida saw himself as a non-Marxist left-winger. |
| 21937 | Can there be democratic friendship without us all becoming identical? [Derrida, by Glendinning] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether it is possible to think of a politics of democratic friendship that could free itself from the terrifying threat of homogenization. | |
| From: report of Jacques Derrida (later work [1980]) by Simon Glendinning - Derrida: A Very Short Introduction 7 | |
| A reaction: Being terrified of people becoming all the same links Derrida to existentialist individualism. Is he just a linguistic existentialist, trying to free us from the tyranny of linguistic uniformity? |