display all the ideas for this combination of texts
18 ideas
| 8643 | Affirmation of existence is just denial of zero [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Affirmation of existence is nothing but denial of the number nought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §53) | |
| A reaction: Mathematicians - don't you luv 'em. No doubt this is helpful in placing existence within the great network of logical inferences, but his 'nothing but' is laughable. I don't see much existential anguish in the denial of zero. |
| 229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) |
| 21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
| 8911 | If abstracta are non-mental, quarks are abstracta, and yet chess and God's thoughts are mental [Rosen on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege's identification of the abstract with the realm of non-mental things entails that unobservables such as quarks are abstract. The abstract nature of chess, and the possibility of abstracta in the mind of God, show they can be mind-dependent. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Gideon Rosen - Abstract Objects 'Way of Neg' | |
| A reaction: I like the robust question 'if a is said to 'exist', what is it said to be made of?' I consider the views of Frege to have had too much influence in this area, and recognising the role of the mind (psychology!) in abstraction is a start. |
| 8634 | The equator is imaginary, but not fictitious; thought is needed to recognise it [Frege] |
| Full Idea: We speak of the equator as an imaginary line, but it is not a fictitious line; it is not a creature of thought, the product of a psychological process, but is only recognised or apprehended by thought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §26) | |
| A reaction: Nice point. The same goes for the apparently very abstract and theoretical concept of a 'circle', because a perfect circle could be imagined in a very specific location, perhaps passing through three specified points. |
| 17443 | Many of us find Frege's claim that truths depend on one another an obscure idea [Heck on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege sometimes speaks of 'the dependence of truths upon one another' (1884:§2), but I find such ideas obscure, and suspect I'm not the only one who does. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §02) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 1 | |
| A reaction: He refers to Burge 'struggling mightily' with this aspect of Frege's thought. I intend to defend Frege. See his 1914 lectures. I thought this dependence was basic to the whole modern project of doing metaphysics through logic? |
| 17445 | Parallelism is intuitive, so it is more fundamental than sameness of direction [Frege, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: Frege says that parallelism is more fundamental than sameness of direction because all geometrical notions must originally be given in intuition. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §64) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3 | |
| A reaction: If Frege thinks some truths are more fundamental, this gives an indication of his reasons. But intuition is not a very strong base. |
| 7644 | The monad idea incomprehensibly spiritualises matter, instead of materialising soul [La Mettrie on Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The Leibnizians with their monads have constructed an incomprehensible hypothesis. They have spiritualized matter rather than materialising the soul. | |
| From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Julien Offray de La Mettrie - Machine Man p.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree with La Mettrie. This disagreement shows, I think, how important the problem of interaction between mind and body was in the century after Descartes. Drastic action seemed needed to bridge the gap, one way or the other. |
| 11857 | He replaced Aristotelian continuants with monads [Leibniz, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: In the end Leibniz dethroned Aristotelian continuants, seen as imperfect from his point of view, in favour of monads. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 3.1 | |
| A reaction: I take the 'continuants' to be either the 'ultimate subject of predication' (in 'Categories'), or 'essences' (in 'Metaphysics'). Since monads seem to be mental (presumably to explain the powers of things), this strikes me as a bit mad. |
| 7843 | Is a drop of urine really an infinity of thinking monads? [Voltaire on Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Can you really maintain that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each one of these has ideas, however obscure, of the entire universe? | |
| From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Francois-Marie Voltaire - works Vol 22:434 | |
| A reaction: Monads are a bit like Christian theology - if you meet them cold they seem totally ridiculous, but if you meet them after ten years of careful preliminary study they make (apparently) complete sense. Defenders of panpsychism presumably like them. |
| 12751 | It is unclear in 'Monadology' how extended bodies relate to mind-like monads. [Garber on Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is never clear in the 'Monadologie' how exactly the world of extended bodies is related to the world of simple substances, the world of non-extended and mind-like monads. | |
| From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 9 | |
| A reaction: Leibniz was always going to hit the interaction problem, as soon as he started giving an increasingly spiritual account of what a substance, and hence marginalising the 'force' which had held centre-stage earlier on. Presumably they are 'parallel'. |
| 19363 | Changes in a monad come from an internal principle, and the diversity within its substance [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A monad's natural changes come from an internal principle, ...but there must be diversity in that which changes, which produces the specification and variety of substances. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §11-12) | |
| A reaction: You don't have to like monads to like this generalisation (and Perkins says Leibniz had a genius for generalisations). Metaphysics must give an account of change. Succeeding time-slices etc explain nothing. Principle and substance must meet. |
| 19352 | A 'monad' has basic perception and appetite; a 'soul' has distinct perception and memory [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The general name 'monad' or 'entelechy' may suffice for those substances which have nothing but perception and appetition; the name 'souls' may be reserved for those having perception that is more distinct and accompanied by memory. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §19) | |
| A reaction: It is basic to the study of Leibniz that you don't think monads are full-blown consciousnesses. He isn't really a panpsychist, because the level of mental activity is so minimal. There seem to be degrees of monadhood. |
| 10539 | Frege refers to 'concrete' objects, but they are no different in principle from abstract ones [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Frege employs the notion of 'concrete' (wirklich, literally 'actual') objects, in arguing that not every object is concrete, but it does not work; abstract objects are just as much objects as concrete ones. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884], §26,85) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: See Idea 10516 for why Dummett is keen on the distinction. Frege strikes me as being wildly irresponsible about ontology. |
| 221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) |
| 17431 | Vagueness is incomplete definition [Frege, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Frege seems to assimilate vagueness to incompleteness of definition. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Isolation and Non-arbitrary Division 2.1 |
| 13879 | For Frege, ontological questions are to be settled by reference to syntactic structures [Frege, by Wright,C] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, syntactic categories are prior to ontological ones, and it is by reference to the syntactic structure of true statements that ontological questions are to be understood and settled. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 1.v |
| 10642 | Second-order quantifiers are committed to concepts, as first-order commits to objects [Frege, by Linnebo] |
| Full Idea: Frege claims that second-order quantifiers are committed to concepts, just as singular first-order quantifiers are committed to objects. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) [1884]) by Øystein Linnebo - Plural Quantification 5.3 | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that Fregeans try to get away with this nonsense by diluting both the notion of a 'concept' and the notion of an 'object'. |