6 ideas
| 21547 | On Meinong's principles 'the existent round square' has to exist [Russell] |
| Full Idea: To my contention that, on his principles, 'the existent round square' exists, Meinong replies that it is existent but does not exist. I must confess that I see no difference between existing and being existent, and I have no more to say on this head. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Review: Meinong 'Uber die Stellung...' [1907], p.93) | |
| A reaction: Russell is obviously invoking the famously dubious ontological argument for God's existence. Normally impossible objects are rejected because of contradictions, but there might also be category mistakes. 'The slow square'. |
| 22049 | Transcendental idealism aims to explain objectivity through subjectivity [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The aim of transcendental idealism is to give a basis for objectivity in terms of subjectivity. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: Hume used subjectivity to undermine the findings of objectivity. There was then no return to naive objectivity. Kant's aim then was to thwart global scepticism. Post-Kantians feared that he had failed. |
| 22055 | The Idealists saw the same unexplained spontaneity in Kant's judgements and choices [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The Idealist saw in Kant that knowledge, which depends on the spontaneity of judgement, and self-determined spontaneous action, can be seen as sharing the same source, which is not accessible to scientific investigation. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010]) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'spontaneity' of judgements and choices which was seen as the main idea in Kant. It inspired romantic individualism. The judgements are the rule-based application of concepts. |
| 22054 | German Idealism tried to stop oppositions of appearances/things and receptivity/spontaneity [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: A central aim of German Idealism is to overcome Kant's oppositions between appearances and thing in themselves, and between receptivity and spontaneity. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 2) | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that there were two strategies: break down the opposition within the self (Fichte), or break down the opposition in the world (Spinozism). |
| 22056 | Crucial to Idealism is the idea of continuity between receptivity and spontaneous judgement [Bowie] |
| Full Idea: A crucial idea for German Idealism (from Hamann) is that apparently passive receptivity and active spontaneity are in fact different degrees of the same 'activity, and the gap between subject and world can be closed. | |
| From: Andrew Bowie (German Philosophy: a very short introduction [2010], 3) | |
| A reaction: The 'passive' bit seems to be Hume's 'impressions', which are Kant's 'intuitions', which need 'spontaneous' interpretation to become experiences. Critics of Kant said this implied a dualism. |
| 15308 | Science is the reduction of diverse forces and powers to a smaller number that explain them [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All natural philosophy consists in the reduction of given forces apparently diverse to a smaller number of forces and powers sufficient for the explication of the actions of the former. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science [1786], 534) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think science is just tracking of complex forces and powers back to fundamental forces and powers. In which case, that is the analysis Kant is talking of. The standard model of physics would thrill him to bits. |