Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Physics and Philosophy' and 'Existence,Ontological Commitment and Fictions'

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7 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 5. Reason for Existence
Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton]
     Full Idea: It would not be unfair to say that Hegel's metaphysics consists of an ontological proof of the existence of everything.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12
     A reaction: This is so gloriously far from David Hume that we must all find some appeal in it. The next question would be whether necessary existence has been proved. If so, given death, decay and entropy, what is it that has to exist? 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 2. Realism
Quantum theory shows that exact science does not need dogmatic realism [Heisenberg]
     Full Idea: It is only through quantum theory that we have learned that exact science is possible without the basis of dogmatic realism.
     From: Werner Heisenberg (Physics and Philosophy [1958], 05)
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
Quantum theory does not introduce minds into atomic events [Heisenberg]
     Full Idea: Certainly quantum theory does not contain genuine subjective features, it does not introduce the mind of the physicist as a part of the atomic event.
     From: Werner Heisenberg (Physics and Philosophy [1958], 03)
     A reaction: This should be digested by anyone who wants to erect some dodgy anti-realist, idealist, subjective metaphysics on the basis of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed, eternal forms that remain unchanged throughout history, but are concepts that alter their meaning in history.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This results from a critique of Kant's rather rigid view of categories. This idea is very influential, and certainly counts among Hegel's better ideas.
Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
     A reaction: This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate]
     Full Idea: Hegel's disagreement with Kant is that categories are not unambiguously universal forms of human understanding, but are conceived in subtly different ways in different cultures and in different historical epochs.
     From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95
     A reaction: This may be Hegel's most influential idea. Though he hoped that categories would contain truth, by arising untrammelled from reason, and thereby matching reality. His successors seem to have given up on that hope, and settled for relativism.