Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Simon Critchley, Simon Blackburn and J.M.E. McTaggart

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45 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / b. Pre-Socratic philosophy
Philosophy really got started as the rival mode of discourse to tragedy [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / d. Philosophy as puzzles
Philosophy begins in disappointment, notably in religion and politics [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 8. Humour
Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley]
Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 3. Scientism
If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley]
Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley]
Science gives us an excessively theoretical view of life [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy
To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley]
The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley]
German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley]
Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley]
Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley]
Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley]
Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley]
1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 2. Phenomenology
Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley]
Phenomenology uncovers and redescribes the pre-theoretical layer of life [Critchley]
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / d. Substance defined
Substance has to exist, with no intrinsic qualities or relations [McTaggart]
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 11. Denial of Necessity
Asserting a necessity just expresses our inability to imagine it is false [Blackburn]
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 1. Sources of Necessity
If we are told the source of necessity, this seems to be a regress if the source is not already necessary [Blackburn]
If something underlies a necessity, is that underlying thing necessary or contingent? [Blackburn, by Hale/Hoffmann,A]
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / a. Sense-data theory
Visual sense data are an inner picture show which represents the world [Blackburn]
13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 3. Reliabilism / b. Anti-reliabilism
A true belief might be based on a generally reliable process that failed on this occasion [Blackburn]
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / d. Weakness of will
Akrasia is intelligible in hindsight, when we revisit our previous emotions [Blackburn]
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 8. The Arts / b. Literature
Wallace Stevens is the greatest philosophical poet of the twentieth century in English [Critchley]
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
Interesting art is always organised around ethical demands [Critchley]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory
Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn]
The problems is not justifying ethics, but motivating it. Why should a self seek its good? [Critchley]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / c. Ethical intuitionism
The main objection to intuitionism in ethics is that intuition is a disguise for prejudice or emotion [Blackburn]
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / i. Prescriptivism
Critics of prescriptivism observe that it is consistent to accept an ethical verdict but refuse to be bound by it [Blackburn]
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value
Food first, then ethics [Critchley]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / h. Respect
The word 'respect' ranges from mere non-interference to the highest levels of reverence [Blackburn]
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 2. Nihilism
Perceiving meaninglessness is an achievement, which can transform daily life [Critchley]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 2. Anarchism
Anarchism used to be libertarian (especially for sexuality), but now concerns responsibility [Critchley]
The state, law, bureaucracy and capital are limitations on life, so I prefer federalist anarchism [Critchley]
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 3. Conservatism
Belief that humans are wicked leads to authoritarian politics [Critchley]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / b. Relative time
For McTaggart time is seen either as fixed, or as relative to events [McTaggart, by Ayer]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / i. Denying time
A-series time positions are contradictory, and yet all events occupy all of them! [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
Time involves change, only the A-series explains change, but it involves contradictions, so time is unreal [McTaggart, by Lowe]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / a. Experience of time
There could be no time if nothing changed [McTaggart]
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / d. Time series
The B-series can be inferred from the A-series, but not the other way round [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
A-series uses past, present and future; B-series uses 'before' and 'after' [McTaggart, by Girle]
A-series expressions place things in time, and their truth varies; B-series is relative, and always true [McTaggart, by Lowe]
The B-series must depend on the A-series, because change must be explained [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]