19 ideas
| 9455 | Maybe proper names have the content of fixing a thing's category [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: Some say that proper names have no descriptive content, but others think that although a name does not have the right sort of descriptive content which fixes a unique referent, it has a content which fixes the sort or category to which it belongs. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §7) | |
| A reaction: Presumably 'Mary', and 'Felix', and 'Rover', and 'Smallville' are cases in point. There is a well known journalist called 'Manchester', a famous man called 'Hilary', a village in Hertfordshire called 'Matching Tie'... Interesting, though. |
| 9454 | The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The four leading theories of definite descriptions are Frege's, Russell's, Evans's, and Prior's, ...of which to many Frege's is the most intuitive of the four. Frege says they refer to the unique item (if it exists) which satisfies the predicate. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §5) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't expound the other three, but I record this a corrective to the view that Russell has the only game in town. |
| 22076 | Being is only perceptible to itself as becoming [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: Being is only perceptible to itself in the state of becoming. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.403), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.90 | |
| A reaction: Is the Enlightenment the era of Being, and the Romantic era that of Becoming? They like process, fluidity, even chaos. |
| 12354 | A 'categorial' property is had by virtue of being or having an item from a category [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: A 'categorial' property is a property something has by virtue of being or having an item from one of the categories. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], V.5) | |
| A reaction: I deny that these are 'properties'. A thing is categorised according to its properties. To denote the category as a further property is the route to madness (well, to a regress). |
| 12358 | Substance is a principle and a kind of cause [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Substance [ousia] is a principle [arché] and a kind of cause [aitia]. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], 1041a09) | |
| A reaction: The fact that substance is a cause is also the reason why substance is the ultimate explanation. It is here that I take the word 'power' to capture best what Aristotle has in mind. |
| 12346 | Form explains why some matter is of a certain kind, and that is explanatory bedrock [Wedin] |
| Full Idea: The form of a thing (of a given kind) explains why certain matter constitutes a thing of that kind, and with this, Aristotle holds, we have reached explanatory bedrock. | |
| From: Michael V. Wedin (Aristotle's Theory of Substance [2000], Intro) | |
| A reaction: We must explain an individual tiger which is unusually docile. It must have an individual form which makes it a tiger, but also an individual form which makes it docile. |
| 22072 | Schelling always affirmed the absolute status of freedom [Schelling, by Courtine] |
| Full Idea: Throughout Schelling's work we find the affirmation of absolute freedom or of the absolute as freedom. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Philosophy of Revelation [1843], Vol.13 p.359) by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.83 | |
| A reaction: Of all of the German idealists, Schelling may be the closest to modern existentialism. |
| 21925 | For Schelling the Absolute spirit manifests as nature in which self-consciousness evolves [Schelling, by Lewis,PB] |
| Full Idea: (Like Schopenhauer) Schelling understood the Absolute - spirit rather than will - to manifest itself as nature in which man evolves with self-consciousness. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 4 | |
| A reaction: The influence of Spinoza seems strong here. Is his Absolute just Spinoza's 'God'? |
| 22045 | Metaphysics aims at the Absolute, which goes beyond subjective and objective viewpoints [Schelling, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Schelling never lost his youthful conviction that any metaphysics had to be an explication of the 'absolute' as something that went beyond both subjective and objective points of view. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 12 | |
| A reaction: Even for a scientific and analytic modern philosopher there must be a target of an ideal account that includes human subjectivity within an objective view of the world. Even Mysterians like McGinn would like that. |
| 22074 | We must show that the whole of nature, because it is effective, is grounded in freedom [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: What is required is to show that everything that is effective (nature, the world of things) is grounded in activity, life, freedom. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.351), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling | |
| A reaction: I take the ancestor of this view of nature to be the monads of Leibniz, as the active principle in nature. Because this is an idealist view, it starts with the absolute freedom of the Self, and presumably sees nature in its own image. |
| 22073 | The basis of philosophy is the Self prior to experience, where it is the essence of freedom [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: The highest principle of all philosophy is the Self insofar as it is purely and simply Self, not yet conditioned by an object, but where it is formulated by freedom. The alpha and omega of all philosophy is freedom. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Letters to Hegel [1795], 1795 02 04), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.83 | |
| A reaction: A common later response to this (e.g. in Schopenhauer) is that there is no concept of the Self prior to experience. The idealists seem to adore free will, while offering no reply to Spinoza on the matter, with whom they were very familiar. |
| 22075 | Only idealism has given us the genuine concept of freedom [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: Until the discovery of idealism, the genuine concept of freedom has been missing from every modern system, whether it be that of Leibniz or of Spinoza. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.345), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling p.87 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza denied free will, and Leibniz fudged it. Evidently more medieval theological accounts were not good enough. I presume Fichte is Schelling's hero, and he seems to see freedom as axiomatic about the Self. |
| 9453 | Sentences saying the same with the same rigid designators may still express different propositions [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The propositions behind 'Cicero is emulated more than Tully' seems to differ somehow from 'Tully is emulated more than Cicero', despite the proper names being rigid designators. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, because this isn't a directly propositional attitude situation like 'believes', though it depends on such things. Bealer says this is a key modern difficulty with propositions. |
| 9452 | Propositions might be reduced to functions (worlds to truth values), or ordered sets of properties and relations [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: The reductionist view of propositions sees them as either extensional functions from possible worlds to truth values, or as ordered sets of properties, relations, and perhaps particulars. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: The usual problem of all functional accounts is 'what is it about x that enables it to have that function?' And if they are sets, where does the ordering come in? A proposition isn't just a list of items in some particular order. Both wrong. |
| 9451 | Modal logic and brain science have reaffirmed traditional belief in propositions [Bealer] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers have been skeptical about abstract objects, and so have been skeptical about propositions,..but with the rise of modal logic and metaphysics, and cognitive science's realism about intentional states, traditional propositions are now dominant. | |
| From: George Bealer (Propositions [1998], §1) | |
| A reaction: I personally strongly favour belief in propositions as brain states, which don't need a bizarre ontological status, but are essential to explain language, reasoning and communication. |
| 20956 | Ultimately, all being is willing. The nature of primal being is the same as the nature of willing [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: In the last and highest instance there is no other being but willing. Willing is primal being, and all the predicates of primal being only fit willing: groundlessness, eternity, being independent of time, self-affirmation. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (On the Essence of Human Freedom [1809], I.7.350), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 5 'Reason' | |
| A reaction: Insofar as this says that 'primal being' must be active in character, I love this idea. Not the rest of the idea though! Bowie says this essay clearly influenced Schopenhauer. It looks as if Nietzsche must be read it too. |
| 20957 | We don't choose our characters, yet we still claim credit for the actions our characters perform [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: Nobody has chosen their character; and yet this does not stop anybody attributing the action which follows from his character to themself as a free action. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (The Ages of the World [1810], I.93) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints a very nice ambivalence about our attitudes to our own characters. We all have some pride and shame about who we are, without having chosed who we are. At least when we are young. But we make the bed we lie in. |
| 22057 | Schelling sought a union between the productivities of nature and of the mind [Schelling, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Schelling's philosophy of nature aims to connect nature's 'unconscious productivity' with the mind's 'conscious productivity'. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 3 | |
| A reaction: If you have a fairly active view of nature (as Leibniz did), then this is a promising line. I like the unpopular view that the modern idea of spontaneous 'powers' in nature is applicable to explanations of mind. |
| 22031 | Schelling made organisms central to nature, because mere mechanism could never produce them [Schelling, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Schelling made the image of the 'organism' central to his conception of nature, arguing that merely mechanical processes could never produce 'life' (as a self-producing, self-sustaining, self-directing process). | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 08 | |
| A reaction: At that date this seems a reasonable claim, but subsequent biochemistry has undermined it. |