44 ideas
| 7973 | There is no longer anything on which there is nothing to say [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: There is no longer anything on which there is nothing to say. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: Compare Ideas 2937 and 6870. I'm not sure whether Baudrillard is referring to the limits of philosophy, or merely to social taboos. I like Ansell Pearson's view: we should attempt to discuss what appears to be undiscussable. |
| 14611 | Metaphysics should avoid talk of past, present or future [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics should not be cosmically parochial. It should eschew tensed languages. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (The Tenseless Theory of Time [2008], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is quite an engaging reason to be an eternalist (or B-theorist) about time. Presumably we can still believe in tensed time, as long as we recognise that metaphysics itself is a timeless subject. |
| 6841 | Some continental philosophers are relativists - Baudrillard, for example [Baudrillard, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: There are philosophers in the continental tradition who are relativists - Baudrillard, for example. | |
| From: report of Jean Baudrillard (works [1976]) by Simon Critchley - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.192 | |
| A reaction: This remark is in the context of Critchley denying that most continental philosophers are relativists. |
| 7975 | The task of philosophy is to unmask the illusion of objective reality [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: The task of philosophy is to unmask the illusion of objective reality - a trap that is, in a sense, laid for us by nature. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 40) | |
| A reaction: There is a vast gap between this and the Lockean view (Idea 7653) that philosophers are there to help reveal reality, probably via science. I retain the Enlightenment faith that there is a reality to be found. Baudrillard must be taken seriously, though. |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I shall make use of the admittedly imprecise notions of consilience, simplicity, analogy and fitting into a web of belief, or in short of 'coherence'. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.06) | |
| A reaction: Coherence sounds like a family of tests, rather than a single unified concept. I still like coherence, though. |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Not mere self-coherence, but comprehensiveness belongs to the notion of coherence. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) |
| 7986 | Drunken boat pilots are less likely to collide than clearly focused ones [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Two boats on Lake Constance in dense fog are in less danger of colliding if their pilots are drunk than if they are attempting to master the situation. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.196) | |
| A reaction: Charming, but I think empirical research would prove it false. At least rational pilots know to keep to the right (?) when a shape looms through the fog. I prefer rational pilots, but then I am one of those sad people who admires the Enlightenment. |
| 7982 | Instead of thesis and antithesis leading to synthesis, they now cancel out, and the conflict is levelled [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Gone is the dialectic, the play of thesis and antithesis resolving itself in synthesis. The opposing terms now cancel each other out in a levelling of all conflict. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.129) | |
| A reaction: This is from someone who approved of 9/11 (p.137 of this text), and seemed to welcome conflict. His idea, which has plausibility, is that the modern media have become a great warm bath that calmly absorbs every abrasive thrown into it. |
| 12452 | Our dislike of contradiction in logic is a matter of psychology, not mathematics [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: Not to the mathematician, but to the psychologist, belongs the task of explaining why ...we are averse to so-called contradictory systems in which the negative as well as the positive of certain propositions are valid. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Intuitionism and Formalism [1912], p.79) | |
| A reaction: Was the turning point of Graham Priest's life the day he read this sentence? I don't agree. I take the principle of non-contradiction to be a highly generalised observation of how the world works (and Russell agrees with me). |
| 15941 | For intuitionists excluded middle is an outdated historical convention [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: From the intuitionist standpoint the dogma of the universal validity of the principle of excluded third in mathematics can only be considered as a phenomenon of history of civilization, like the rationality of pi or rotation of the sky about the earth. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]), quoted by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite VI.2 | |
| A reaction: [Brouwer 1952:510-11] |
| 18119 | Mathematics is a mental activity which does not use language [Brouwer, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Brouwer made the rather extraordinary claim that mathematics is a mental activity which uses no language. | |
| From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Mathematics, Science and Language [1928]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.1 | |
| A reaction: Since I take language to have far less of a role in thought than is commonly believed, I don't think this idea is absurd. I would say that we don't use language much when we are talking! |
| 18247 | Brouwer saw reals as potential, not actual, and produced by a rule, or a choice [Brouwer, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: In his early writing, Brouwer took a real number to be a Cauchy sequence determined by a rule. Later he augmented rule-governed sequences with free-choice sequences, but even then the attitude is that Cauchy sequences are potential, not actual infinities. | |
| From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (works [1930]) by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is the 'constructivist' view of numbers, as espoused by intuitionists like Brouwer. |
| 12451 | Scientific laws largely rest on the results of counting and measuring [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: A large part of the natural laws introduced by science treat only of the mutual relations between the results of counting and measuring. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Intuitionism and Formalism [1912], p.77) | |
| A reaction: His point, I take it, is that the higher reaches of numbers have lost touch with the original point of the system. I now see the whole issue as just depending on conventions about the agreed extension of the word 'number'. |
| 18118 | Brouwer regards the application of mathematics to the world as somehow 'wicked' [Brouwer, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: Brouwer regards as somehow 'wicked' the idea that mathematics can be applied to a non-mental subject matter, the physical world, and that it might develop in response to the needs which that application reveals. | |
| From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Mathematics, Science and Language [1928]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 7.1 | |
| A reaction: The idea is that mathematics only concerns creations of the human mind. It presumably has no more application than, say, noughts-and-crosses. |
| 12454 | Intuitionists only accept denumerable sets [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: The intuitionist recognises only the existence of denumerable sets. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Intuitionism and Formalism [1912], p.80) | |
| A reaction: That takes you up to omega, but not beyond, presumably because it then loses sight of the original intuition of 'bare two-oneness' (Idea 12453). I sympathise, but the word 'number' has shifted its meaning a lot these days. |
| 12453 | Neo-intuitionism abstracts from the reuniting of moments, to intuit bare two-oneness [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: Neo-intuitionism sees the falling apart of moments, reunited while remaining separated in time, as the fundamental phenomenon of human intellect, passing by abstracting to mathematical thinking, the intuition of bare two-oneness. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Intuitionism and Formalism [1912], p.80) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A famous and somewhat obscure idea. He goes on to say that this creates one and two, and all the finite ordinals. |
| 8728 | Intuitionist mathematics deduces by introspective construction, and rejects unknown truths [Brouwer] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics rigorously treated from the point of view of deducing theorems exclusively by means of introspective construction, is called intuitionistic mathematics. It deviates from classical mathematics, which believes in unknown truths. | |
| From: Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Consciousness, Philosophy and Mathematics [1948]), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Clearly intuitionist mathematics is a close cousin of logical positivism and the verification principle. This view would be anathema to Frege, because it is psychological. Personally I believe in the existence of unknown truths, big time! |
| 7974 | Without God we faced reality: what do we face without reality? [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: The eclipse of God left us up against reality. Where will the eclipse of reality leave us? | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004]) | |
| A reaction: Baudrillard's distinctive view is that modern culture is thwarting all our attempts to grasp reality, which itself becomes a fiction. The answer is that you are left in the position of the ancient sceptics. Sextus Empiricus (see) is the saviour. |
| 7987 | Nothing is true, but everything is exact [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Someone said: everything is true, nothing is exact. I would say the opposite: nothing is true, everything is exact. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.210) | |
| A reaction: In analytical terminology, this appears to say that vagueness is ontological, not epistemological, agreeing with Williamson and others. To say that 'nothing is true', though, just strikes me as silly. What does Baudrillard mean by 'true'? |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The simplest way of fitting the putative observed phenomena of telepathy or clairvoyance into my web of belief is to refuse to take them at face value. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07-8) | |
| A reaction: Love it. It is very disconcerting for the sceptical naturalist to be faced with adamant claims that the paranormal has occurred, but my response is exactly the same as Smart's. I reject the reports, no matter how passionately they are asserted. |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| Full Idea: You could imagine a person using the angle from a theodolite to decide a suitable spot to cut the height of the flagpole, …but since such circumstances would be very unusual we naturally say the flagpole subtends the angle because of its height. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.14) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he mentions Van Fraassen 1980:132-3 for a similar point] As a response this seems a bit lame, if the direction is fixed by what is 'usual'. I think the key point is that the direction of explanation is one way or the other, not both. |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The theory of the expansion of the universe renders the red shift no longer puzzling, whereas he expansion of the universe is hardly rendered less puzzling by facts about the red shift. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.15) | |
| A reaction: The direction of explanation is, I take it, made obvious by the direction of causation, with questions about what is 'puzzling' as mere side-effects. |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I want to characterise explanation of some fact as a matter of fitting belief in this fact into a system of beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good to me. Simple facts slot straight into daily beliefs, and deep obscure facts are explained when we hook them up to things we have already grasped. Quark theory fits into prior physics of forces, properties etc. |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| Full Idea: An explanation may be bad if it fits only into a bad web of belief. It can also be bad if it fits into a (possibly good) web of belief in a bad sort of way. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.09) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you think someone has an absurd web of beliefs, then it counts against some belief (for you) if it fits beautifully into the other person's belief system. Judgement of coherence comes in at different levels. |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The Hempelian deductive-nomological model of explanation clearly fits in well with the notion of explanation in terms of coherence. One way of fitting a belief into a system is to show that it is deducible from other beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.13) | |
| A reaction: Smart goes on to reject the law-based deductive approach, for familiar reasons, but at least it has something in common with the Smart view of explanation, which is the one I like. |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| Full Idea: One explanation will be a better explanation that another if it also explains a set of phenomena from a different field ('consilience'). | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) | |
| A reaction: This would count as 'unexpected accommodation', rather than prediction. It is a nice addition to Lipton's comparison of mere accommodation versus prediction as criteria. It sounds like a strong criterion for a persuasive explanation. |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I class mathematical explanation with scientific explanation. This would be resisted by those who, unlike me, regard the notion of causation as essential to scientific explanation. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02-3) | |
| A reaction: I aim to champion mathematical explanation, in terms of axioms etc., so I am realising that my instinctive attraction to exclusively causal explanation won't do. What explanation needs is a direction of dependence. |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The history of science suggests that most often explanation is reduction to the unfamiliar. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Boyle was keen to reduce things to the familiar, but that was early days for science, and some nasty shocks were coming our way. What would Boyle make of quantum non-locality? |
| 7978 | There is no need to involve the idea of free will to make choices about one's life [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: There is no need to involve the idea of free will to make choices about one's life. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 57) | |
| A reaction: Someone who believed that free will was metaphysically possible, but that they themselves lacked it, might feel paralysed, defeated or fatalistic about their decision-making. But that would be like falsely believing you were fatally ill. |
| 10117 | Intuitonists in mathematics worried about unjustified assertion, as well as contradiction [Brouwer, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: The concern of mathematical intuitionists was that the use of certain forms of inference generates, not contradiction, but unjustified assertions. | |
| From: report of Luitzen E.J. Brouwer (Intuitionism and Formalism [1912]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the real origin of the verificationist idea in the theory of meaning. It is a hugely revolutionary idea - that ideas are not only ruled out of court by contradiction, but that there are other criteria which should also be met. |
| 7980 | In modern times, being useless is the essential aesthetic ingredient for an object [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Since the nineteenth century it has been art's claim that it is useless...so it is enough to elevate any object to uselessness to turn it into a work of art...and obsolete useless objects automatically acquire an aesthetic aura. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.111) | |
| A reaction: Art is 'purposive without purpose' (Kant). An nice summary of the situation, and this seems to explain the role of Duchamp's famous urinal, up on the wall and rendered useless. The obvious rebellion, though, is Arts and Crafts. |
| 7983 | Good versus evil has been banefully reduced to happiness versus misfortune [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: The ideal opposition between good and evil has been reduced to the idealogical oppositions between happiness and misfortune. The reduction of good to happiness is as baneful as that of evil to misfortune. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.139) | |
| A reaction: A nice example is the use in the media of the word 'tragic' for every misfortune. See the debate over the translation of the Greek 'eudaimonia'. 'Happiness' seems the wrong translation, if it leads to comments like Baudrillard's. |
| 22405 | Negative utilitarianism implies that the world should be destroyed, to avoid future misery [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of negative utilitarianism (that we should concern ourselves with the minimisation of suffering, rather than the maximisation of happiness) ...means we should support a tyrant who explodes the world, to prevent infinite future misery. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Outline of a System of Utilitarianism [1973], 5) | |
| A reaction: That only seems to imply that the negative utilitarian rule needs supplementary rules. We are too fond of looking for one single moral rule that guides everything. |
| 22404 | Any group interested in ethics must surely have a sentiment of generalised benevolence [Smart] |
| Full Idea: A utilitarian can appeal to the sentiment of generalised benevolence, which is surely present in any group with whom it is profitable to discuss ethical questions. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Outline of a System of Utilitarianism [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: But ethics is not intended only for those who are interested in ethics. If this is the basics of ethics, then we must leave the mafia to pursue its sordid activities without criticism. Their lack of sympathy seems to be their good fortune. |
| 7981 | Whole populations are terrorist threats to authorities, who unite against them [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: One way or another, populations themselves are a terrorist threat to the authorities...and by extension, we can hypothesize a coalition of all governments against all populations. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.120) | |
| A reaction: This may count as left-wing paranoia, but it is a striking thought, which plants an uneasy notion in the mind whenever we see two world leaders disappear behind closed doors for a chat. |
| 7976 | People like democracy because it means they can avoid power [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: If the people puts itself into the hands of the political class, it does so more to be rid of power than out of any desire for representation. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 54) | |
| A reaction: Very nice. If we are all in the grips of some biological 'will to power', that needn't be power over huge numbers of other people, merely power over our immediate lives. It can be expressed by building a wall. |
| 7977 | Only in the last 200 years have people demanded the democratic privilege of being individuals [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Individuality is a recent phenomenon. It is only over the last two centuries that the populations of the civilized countries have demanded the democratic privilege of being individuals. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 55) | |
| A reaction: I think Aristotle's ethics and politics imply individuality, given that the only purpose of civic society seems to be to enable individuals to flourish and lead virtuous lives. Society is justified, for example, because it makes friendship possible. |
| 7979 | The arrival of the news media brought history to an end [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: The course of history came to an end with the entry on the scene of the news media. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p. 83) | |
| A reaction: The sort of remark for which Baudrillard became famous. It strikes me as nonsense. The view the British people got of the Battle of Trafalgar was even more distorted than their picture of the Battle of El Alamein. We know what he means, though. |
| 7984 | Suicide is ascribed to depression, with the originality of the act of will ignored [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: Suicide is always ascribed to depressive motivations with no account taken of an originality of, an original will to commit, the act itself. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.153) | |
| A reaction: Apparently research suggests that most suicides are clinically depressed, but even within the depression there is a startling act of will that goes beyond merely feeling bad. |
| 14613 | Special relativity won't determine a preferred frame, but we can pick one externally [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Though special relativity does not determine a preferred frame of reference, it does not rule out the possibility of a frame being determined from outside the theory. Perhaps we should prefer a frame where background radiation is equal in all directions. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (The Tenseless Theory of Time [2008], 3) | |
| A reaction: Of course this is a mere philosopher offering the escape clause, and not some Nobel-winning physicist, but I start from the assumption that this idea is plausible, and I am unmoved by the contempt for presentism among relativity geeks. |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Newtonian celestial mechanics does not explain the advance of the perihelion of Mercury, while Einstein's general theory of relativity does. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.03) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of why explanation is the central concept in science, and probably in all epistemological activity. The desire to know is the desire for an explanation. Once the explanation is obvious, we know. |
| 14615 | If time flows, then 'how fast does it flow?' is a tricky question [Smart] |
| Full Idea: If it is said that time flows, then it seems that the question 'how fast does it flow?' is a devastating one for the A-theorist. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (The Tenseless Theory of Time [2008], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the basic landmarks in any debate on time. Time can't be understood by analogy with anything else (such as a river) it seems. |
| 14614 | The past, present, future and tenses of A-theory are too weird, and should be analysed indexically [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The main objections to the A-theory are due to the metaphysical mysteriousness of the A-theory ideas of past, present and future, and also tenses, and to the greater plausibility of analyzing them as indexicals. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (The Tenseless Theory of Time [2008], 3) | |
| A reaction: When it comes to time, every theory that has ever been though of is deeply weird, so the basic objection doesn't bother me. Analysing as indexicals just seems to be a technical way of denying reality to the present. |
| 7985 | Pascal says secular life is acceptable, but more fun with the hypothesis of God [Baudrillard] |
| Full Idea: What Pascal says, more or less, is that you can more or less content yourself with a secular existence and its advantages, but it's much more fun with the hypothesis of God. | |
| From: Jean Baudrillard (The Intelligence of Evil [2004], p.155) | |
| A reaction: Pascal will be a bit startled when he reads this, but it is a lovely way to present his idea. It suddenly sounds much more attractive. Life would be much more fun if we lived according to all sorts of startling beliefs. Relating your life to God is one. |