14 ideas
3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
Full Idea: The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is nothing to write home about either. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
A reaction: Presumably he means a life which is all theory and no practice. Compare Idea 343. |
3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
Full Idea: We must assume that something matters - that some things are for better and some things are for worse, for without that our assumed rationality would have nothing on which to get a purchase. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.1) | |
A reaction: It does seem that rationality wouldn't exist as an activity without some value to motivate it. |
3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
Full Idea: You say you cannot imagine that p, and therefore declare that p is impossible. Mightn't that be hubris? | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
Full Idea: In causal theories of knowledge and reference, the causal chain between object and thought must be of the "right" sort - the nature of rightness to be specified later, typically. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.3 n14) | |
A reaction: This is now the standard objection to a purely causal account of reference. Which of the many causal chains causes the meaning? Knowledge of maths is a further problem for it. |
3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
Full Idea: Control is the ultimate criterion of the self: I am the sum total of the parts I control directly. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
A reaction: This looks awfully like a flagrant self-contradiction, and I think it is. It seems pretty obvious that there is at least a distinction between the bit or bits that do the controlling, and the bits that get controlled. |
3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
Full Idea: If a brain implant would compel you to perform an action which you in fact freely choose, then you are free, but couldn't have done otherwise. | |
From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §6.1) by PG - Db (ideas) |
3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
Full Idea: Can I even conceive of beings whose wills are freer than our own? | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
Full Idea: The creature who is not only sensitive to patterns in its environment, but also sensitive to patterns in its own reactions to patterns in its environment, has taken a major step. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §2.2) |
3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
Full Idea: Foreknowledge is what permits control. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.2) |
3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
Full Idea: Faced with our inability to 'see' where the centre or source of our free actions is,…we exploit the gaps in our self-knowledge by filling it with a mysterious entity, the unmoved mover, the active self. | |
From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.1) | |
A reaction: I am convinced that there is no such things as free will; its origins are to be found in religion, where it is a necessary feature of a very supreme God. I don't believe for a moment that we need to believe in free will. |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
Full Idea: There are two senses of 'semantic' - as theory of meaning or as truth-based theory of logical consequence, and they are very different. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.78) | |
A reaction: This subtle point is significant in considering the role of logic in philosophy. The logicians' semantics (based on logical consequence) is in danger of ousting the broader and more elusive notion of meaning in natural language. |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
Full Idea: The semantic content of a sentence is not the set of circumstances supporting its truth. It is rather the semantic content of a structured proposition the constituents of which are the semantic contents of the constituents of the sentence. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.74) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I get this, but while I like the truth-conditions view, I am suspicious of any proposal that the semantic content of something is some actual physical ingredients of the world. Meanings aren't sticks and stones. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |