48 ideas
| 8220 | Philosophy is in a perpetual state of digression [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy can be seen as being in a perpetual state of digression. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who has ever tried to teach philosophy will vouch for this. Philosophy is the 'Arabian Nights', conjuring up wonderful stories, to avoid having to face something nasty. Philosophy is perpetual postponement of problems. |
| 8217 | Philosophy is a concept-creating discipline [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the discipline that involves creating concepts. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], Intro) | |
| A reaction: One might very reasonably reply that Geography is a discipline which creates concepts. However, this emphasis is an interesting corrective to the school of analysis, which appears confined to existing, and even 'folk', concepts. |
| 8242 | Philosophy aims at what is interesting, remarkable or important - not at knowledge or truth [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy does not consist in knowing, and is not inspired by truth. Rather, it is categories like Interesting, Remarkable, or Important that determine success or failure. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Speak for yourself. I wonder what the criteria are for 'Interesting' or 'Important'. They can't seriously count 'remarkable' as a criterion of philosophical success, can they? There can be remarkable stupidity. |
| 8223 | The plague of philosophy is those who criticise without creating, and defend dead concepts [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Those who criticise without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life, are the plague of philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the continental view of analytical philosophy, that it is pathetically conservative. I would offer MacIntyre as a response, who gives a beautiful analysis of why the super-modern view is dead. The French are hopelessly romantic. |
| 8247 | Phenomenology needs art as logic needs science [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology needs art as logic needs science. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that it was science that needs logic. Art is more elitist than science, and less universal. I presume artists and phenomenologists share a target of deconstructing lived human experience. |
| 8224 | 'Eris' is the divinity of conflict, the opposite of Philia, the god of friendship [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: 'Eris' is the Greek divinity of discord, conflict, and strife, the complementary opposite of Philia, the divinity of union and friendship. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.2 n) | |
| A reaction: Are these actual gods? This interestingly implies that the wonders of dialectic and Socrates' elenchus are simply aspects of friendship, which was elevated by Epicurus to the highest good. The Greeks just wanted wonderful friends and fine speeches. |
| 15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Square of Opposition: 'all A are B' and 'no A are B' are contraries; 'some A are B' and 'some A are not B' are sub-contraries; the pairs 'all A are B'/'some A are B' and 'no A are B'/'some A are B' are contradictories. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: [the reader may construct his own diagram from this description!] The contraries are at the extremes of contradiction, but the sub-contraries are actual compatible. You could add possible worlds to this picture. |
| 8219 | Logic has an infantile idea of philosophy [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Logic has an infantile idea of philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This offers some explanation of why Anglo-American philosophers are steeped in logic, and the continentals just ignore it. I have some sympathy with the French view. Logic seems to study language with all the interesting part drained off. |
| 8246 | Logic hates philosophy, and wishes to supplant it [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: A real hatred inspires logic's rivalry with, or its will to supplant, philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: A delightful corrective to the neurotic inferiority that most English-speaking philosophers feel about their failure to master logic. What was Aristotle playing at when he invented logic? Philosophical talent is utterly different from a talent for logic. |
| 15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The generalising function and the ontological function of discourse are elided in the traditional quantifier. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: This simple point strikes me as helping enormously to disentangle the mess created by over-emphasis on formal logic in ontology, and especially in the Quinean concept of 'ontological commitment'. |
| 15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The quantifier 'any' unambiguously rules out any presupposition of order in the members of the range of individuals quantified. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He contrasts this with 'all', 'each' and 'every', which are ambiguous in this respect. |
| 15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The properties of material things with which the sciences deal are not the qualities we observe them to have, but the dispositions of those things to engender the states and qualities we observe. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the correct use of the word 'qualities', so that properties are not qualities (in the way Heil would like). |
| 15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
| Full Idea: A statement is a law of nature if it is true in all those worlds which differ only as to their initial conditions, that is in which the underlying mechanisms of nature are the same. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
| A reaction: Harré takes it that laws of nature have to be necessary, by definition. I like this way of expressing natural necessity, in terms of 'mechanisms' rather than of 'laws'. Where do the mechanisms get their necessity? |
| 8221 | We cannot judge the Cogito. Must we begin? Must we start from certainty? Can 'I' relate to thought? [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: There is no point in wondering whether Descartes' Cogito is right or wrong. Is it necessary "to begin", and, if so, is it necessary to start from the point of view of a subjective certainty? Can thought be the verb of an I? There is no direct answer. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice first sentence for a work of philosophy would be "It is necessary to begin". Is the Cogito the only idea that is beyond judgement? I fear a slippery slope here, which would paralyse all of our judgements - and would therefore be ridiculous. |
| 15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In the physical sciences the particular observations and experimental results are usually orderable, while in the biological sciences it is the classes of organism which are ordered, not the particular organisms. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: Harré is interesting on the role of ordering in science. Functions can be defined by an order. Maths feeds on orderings. Physics, he notes, focuses on things which vary together. |
| 15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In accounts of experiments, by Faraday and others, the role of the guiding hand of the actual experimenter is written out in successive accounts. The effect is to display the phenomenon as a natural occurrence, existing independently of the experiments. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: He records three stages in Faraday's reports. The move from active to passive voice is obviously part of it. The claim of universality is thus implicit rather than explicit. |
| 15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
| Full Idea: When we come upon a counter-instance to a generalisation we can save the putative law, by treating it as potentially analytic and claiming it as a definition. ...Thus magnetism doesn't hold for phosphorus, so we say phosphorus is not a magnetic substance. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: He notes this as being particularly true when the laws concern the dispositions of substances, rather than patterns of events. |
| 15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Since there are three different dimensions of generality into which every law of nature is generalised, there can be no one system of logic which will govern inference to or from every law of every kind. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at the covering-law approach, which actually aims to output observations as logical inferences from laws. Wrong. |
| 8222 | Concepts are superior because they make us more aware, and change our thinking [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: If one concept is 'better' than an earlier one, it is because it makes us aware of new variations and unknown resonances, it carries out unforeseen cuttings-out, it brings forth an Event that surveys (survole) us. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't get much of that, but it is certainly in tune with the Kuhn/Feyerabend idea that what science can generate is fresh visions, rather than precisely expanded truths. Personally I consider it dangerous nonsense, but I thought I ought to pass it on. |
| 15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In introducing the predicate 'grue' we also introduce an additional causal hypothesis into our chemistry and physics; namely, that when observed grue emeralds change from blue to green. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: [The 'when observered' is a Harré addition] I hate 'grue'. Only people who think our predicates have very little to do with reality are impressed by it. Grue is a behaviour, not a colour. |
| 15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The grue problem illustrates the enormous importance that the concept of a natural-kind plays in real science. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point is that we took emeralds to be a natural kind, but 'grue' proposes that they aren't, since stability is the hallmark of a natural kind. |
| 15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
| Full Idea: It is because ravens are birds that it makes sense to contemplate the possibility of a lawful relation between their species and their colour. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: Compare the 'laws' concerning leaf colour in autumn, and the 'laws' concerning packaging colour in supermarkets. Harré's underlying point is that raven colour concerns mechanism. |
| 15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Non-black non-ravens have no role to play in assessing the plausibility of 'All ravens are black' because their existence is not among the existential presuppositions of that statement. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Strawson for the 'presupposition' approach] |
| 15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The 'must' of Newton's First Law is different. There is no deeper level relative to the processes described to give a mechanism which generates uniform motion. There is no such mechanism. ..It specifies what it is for something to be a material thing. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
| A reaction: Harré says the law can only exist as part of a network of other ideas. |
| 8218 | Other people completely revise our perceptions, because they are possible worlds [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: The concept of the Other Person as expression of a possible world in a perceptual field leads us to consider the components of this field in a new way. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that other people are possible worlds. You can give reductionist accounts of the human animal till the cows come home, but when one walk into your visual field, the mind takes off. See Crusoe and Friday. |
| 15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
| Full Idea: An 'idealisation' preserves all the properties of the source but it possesses these properties in some ideal or perfect form. ...An 'abstraction', on the other hand, lacks certain features of its source. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: Yet another example in contemporary philosophy of a clear understanding of the sort of abstraction which Geach and others have poured scorn on. |
| 8248 | Phenomenology says thought is part of the world [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: According to phenomenology, thought depends on man's relations with the world - with which the brain is necessarily in agreement because it is drawn from these relations. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], Conclusion) | |
| A reaction: The development of externalist views of mind, arising from the Twin Earth idea, seems to provide a link to continental philosophy, where similar ideas are found in Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. So study science, psychology, or sociology? |
| 8245 | The logical attitude tries to turn concepts into functions, when they are really forms or forces [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Logic is reductionist not accidentally, but essentially and necessarily: following the route marked out by Frege and Russell, it wants to turn the concept into a function (...when actually a concept is a form, or a force). | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: [Last part on p.144] I'm not sure that I understand 'form or force', but the idea that concepts are mere functions is like describing something as 'transport', without saying whether it is bus/bike/train.. Is a concept a vision, or a tool? |
| 20400 | Intentions either succeed or fail, so external evidence for them is always irrelevant [Wimsatt/Beardsley, by Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Wimsatt and Beardsley claimed that either the intention succeeded, so one does not need to look outside the work for its meaning, or the intention failed, so external evidence does not help. | |
| From: report of W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946]) by Stephen Davies - The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) 5.3 | |
| A reaction: Actually, the external evidence may tell you much more clearly and accurately what the intention was than the work itself does. The best example may be the title of the work, which is presumably outside the work. |
| 7266 | The author's intentions are irrelevant to the judgement of a work's success [Wimsatt/Beardsley] |
| Full Idea: The design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art. | |
| From: W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946], §I) | |
| A reaction: This famous proposal may have been misunderstood. Note that it is a comment about judging the work, not about understanding it. The idea allows for a work being much more successful than the author's humble intentions (e.g. Pepys). |
| 7267 | Poetry, unlike messages, can be successful without communicating intentions [Wimsatt/Beardsley] |
| Full Idea: Poetry differs from practical messages, which are successful if and only if we correctly infer the intention. | |
| From: W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946], §I) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced by this claim. It is plausible that a work does much more than it intends (Astaire said he danced "to make a buck"), but it is rather odd to rate very highly a work of which you have missed the point. |
| 7268 | The thoughts of a poem should be imputed to the dramatic speaker, and hardly at all to the poet [Wimsatt/Beardsley] |
| Full Idea: We ought to impute the thoughts and attitudes of the poem immediately to the dramatic speaker, and if to the author at all, only by an act of biographical inference. | |
| From: W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946], §I) | |
| A reaction: Wrong. If in Browning's "My Last Duchess" (say), we only inferred the mind of the speaker (and his Duchess), and took no interest in Browning's view of things, we would miss the point. We might end up respecting the Duke, which would be daft. |
| 7269 | The intentional fallacy is a romantic one [Wimsatt/Beardsley] |
| Full Idea: The intentional fallacy is a romantic one. | |
| From: W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946], §II) | |
| A reaction: Wrong. Even with those most famous of anonymous artists, the architects and carvers of medieval cathedrals, without some discernment of the purpose you won't get it. The Taj Mahal is a love letter, not a potential ice cream parlour. |
| 7271 | Biography can reveal meanings and dramatic character, as well as possible intentions [Wimsatt/Beardsley] |
| Full Idea: The use of biographical evidence need not involve intentionalism, because while it may be evidence of what the author intended, it may also be evidence of the meaning of his words and the dramatic character of his utterance. | |
| From: W Wimsatt/W Beardsley (The Intentional Fallacy [1946], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I am very keen to penetrate the author's intentions, but I have always be doubtful about the use of biography as a means to achieve this. Most of the effort to infer intentions must come from a study of the work itself, not introductions, letters etc. |
| 21906 | Political theory should not focus on the state or economy, but on the small scale of power [Deleuze/Guattari, by May] |
| Full Idea: Liberals who focus on the state and Marxists who focus on the economy are macropolitical theorists. They overlook the small elements that comprise our political lives. To understand how we are constructed and power works we must turn to the smaller scale. | |
| From: report of G Deleuze / F Guattari (A Thousand Plateaus [1980]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.04 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be precisely in tune with the ideas of Foucault. I'm not sure that a study of power within the family or the office throws much light on macropolitics. How the micro intrudes into the micro seems more interesting. |
| 15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The animating principle behind the material and discursive practices of science is the thesis that nature exemplifies multiple hierarchies of natural kinds. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: I agree. I take it to be a brute fact that there seem to be lots of stable natural kinds, which are worth investigating as long as they stay stable. If they are unstable, there needs to be something stable to measure that by - or we give up. |
| 15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Classification systems, or taxonomies, are as important a part of the natural sciences as are the laws of nature. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This illustrates how our view of science is radically shifted if we give biology equal prominence with physics. |
| 15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
| Full Idea: We can never devise an experimental situation in which there are no external forces to act on a body. It follows that Newton's First Law could never be demonstrated by means of experiment or observation. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: It can't be wholly demonstrated, but certain observations conform to it, such as the movement of low friction bodies, or the movements of planetary bodies. |
| 15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Boyle's Law generalises a mass of messy data culled from an apparatus; Snell's Law is an experimentally derived law deducible from theory; Newton's First Law derives from concepts and thought experiments; Mendel's Law used an experimental procedure. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice examples, especially since Boyle's and Newton's laws are divided by a huge gulf, and arrived at about the same time. On p.35 Harré says these come down to two: abstraction from experiment, and derivation from deep assumptions. |
| 15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: What is Newton's First Law about? Is it about events? Is it about types or universals? Is it about dispositions? Or is it, in some peculiar way, about all three? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: If laws merely chart regularities, then I suppose they are about events (which exhibit the regular patterns). If laws explain, which would be nice, then they are only about universals if you are a platonist. Hence laws are about dispositions. |
| 15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Is Newton's First Law about what has actually happened or is it about what might, or could possibly happen? Is it about the actual events and states of the world, or possible events and states? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I presume the first sentence distinguishes between what 'might (well)' happen, and what 'could (just) possibly happen'. I take it for granted that laws predict the actual future. The question is are they true of situations which will never occur? |
| 15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the Dretske-Armstrong-Tooley view is very simple: the laws of nature relate properties to properties. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the relations are necessary ones. I don't see why we need to mention these wretched 'universals' in order to expound this theory. It sounds much more plausible if you just say a property is defined by the way it relates to other properties. |
| 15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
| Full Idea: We do not take laws to be recordings of what happens perchance or for the most part, but specifications of what happens necessarily | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a plausible necessary condition for a law, but it may not be a sufficient one. Are trivial necessities laws? On this view if there are no necessities then there are no laws. |
| 15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
| Full Idea: Is a law of nature about everything in the universe or just about a restricted group of things? | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I presume the answer is that while a law may only refer to a small group of things, the law would still have to apply if that group moved or spread or enlarged, so it would have to be universals. A laws confined to one time or place? Maybe. |
| 15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature are not simple descriptions of what can be seen to happen. They are descriptions of abstractions and idealisations from a somewhat messy reality. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
| A reaction: This view seems to have increasingly gripped modern philosophers, so that the old view of God decreeing a few simple equations to run the world has faded away. |
| 15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
| Full Idea: A law of nature tells us what kinds of things, events and properties (all else being equal) go along with what. The 'must' of natural necessity has its place here because it is bound up with a model or analogy representing generative mechanisms. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is Harré's final page summary of laws. I agree with it. I would say that the laws are therefore descriptive, of the patterns of behaviour that arise when generative mechanisms meet. Maybe laws concern 'transformations'. |
| 15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |
| Full Idea: In drawing 'countefactual' conclusions we can be thought imaginatively to vary the conditions under which the substance, set-up etc. is manipulated or stimulated, while maintaining constant our conception of the nature of the being in question. | |
| From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you could vary the substance and keep the situation fixed, but then the counterfactual seems to be 'about' something different. Either that or the 'situation' is a actually a set of substances to be tested. |
| 8243 | Atheism is the philosopher's serenity, and philosophy's achievement [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: It is amazing that so many philosophers take the death of God as tragic. Atheism is not a drama, but the philosopher's serenity and philosophy's achievement. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that it is the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that feels the death of God as a tragedy. Modern Anglo-American philosophers are mostly pretty serene on the subject, unless, like Dennett, they go on the offensive. |