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5651
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Traditional views of truth are tautologies, and truth is empty without a subject [Kierkegaard, by Scruton]
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Full Idea:
Kierkegaard developed the idea of 'truth as subjectivity'; the traditional conceptions of truth - correspondence or coherence - he regarded as equally empty, not because false, but because tautologous; truth ceases to be empty when related to a subject.
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13
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A reaction:
It strikes me that the correspondence theory of truth also involves a subject. If you become too obsessed with the subject, you lose the concept of truth. You need a concept of the non-subject too. Truth concerns the contents of thought.
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18904
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'Predicable' terms come in charged pairs, with one the negation of the other [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
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Full Idea:
Sommers took the 'predicable' terms of any language to come in logically charged pairs. Examples might be red/nonred, massive/massless, tied/untied, in the house/not in the house. The idea that terms can be negated was essential for such pairing.
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From:
report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
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A reaction:
If, as Rumfitt says, we learn affirmation and negation as a single linguistic operation, this would fit well with it, though Rumfitt doubtless (as a fan of classical logic) prefers to negation sentences.
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18895
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Logic which maps ordinary reasoning must be transparent, and free of variables [Sommers]
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Full Idea:
What would a 'laws of thought' logic that cast light on natural language deductive thinking be like? Such a logic must be variable-free, conforming to normal syntax, and its modes of reasoning must be transparent, to make them virtually instantaneous.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'How We')
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A reaction:
This is the main motivation for Fred Sommers's creation of modern term logic. Even if you are up to your neck in modern symbolic logic (which I'm not), you have to find this idea appealing. You can't leave it to the psychologists.
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18893
|
Translating into quantificational idiom offers no clues as to how ordinary thinkers reason [Sommers]
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Full Idea:
Modern predicate logic's methods of justification, which involve translation into an artificial quantificational idiom, offer no clues to how the average person, knowing no logic and adhering to the vernacular, is so logically adept.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], Intro)
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A reaction:
Of course, people are very logically adept when the argument is simple (because, I guess, they can test it against the world), but not at all good when the reasoning becomes more complex. We do, though, reason in ordinary natural language.
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18903
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Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen]
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Full Idea:
If there is one idea that is the keystone of the edifice that constitutes Sommers's united philosophy it is that terms are the linguistic entities subject to negation in the most basic sense. It is a very old idea, tending to be rejected in modern times.
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From:
report of Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005]) by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 2
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A reaction:
Negation in modern logic is an operator applied to sentences, typically writing '¬Fa', which denies that F is predicated of a, with Fa being an atomic sentence. Do we say 'not(Stan is happy)', or 'not-Stan is happy', or 'Stan is not-happy'? Third one?
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18894
|
Predicates form a hierarchy, from the most general, down to names at the bottom [Sommers]
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Full Idea:
We organise our concepts of predicability on a hierarchical tree. At the top are terms like 'interesting', 'exists', 'talked about', which are predicable of anything. At the bottom are names, and in between are predicables of some things and not others.
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From:
Fred Sommers (Intellectual Autobiography [2005], 'Category')
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A reaction:
The heirarchy seem be arranged simply by the scope of the predicate. 'Tallest' is predicable of anything in principle, but only of a few things in practice. Is 'John Doe' a name? What is 'cosmic' predicable of? Challenging!
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22090
|
For me time stands still, and I with it [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle]
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Full Idea:
Time flows, life is a stream, people say, and so on. I do not notice it. Time stands still, and I with it.
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], I:26) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 3
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A reaction:
This is from the spokesman for the aesthetic option in life, which is largely pleasure-seeking. No real choices ever occur.
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5650
|
Reason is just abstractions, so our essence needs a subjective 'leap of faith' [Kierkegaard, by Scruton]
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Full Idea:
For Kierkegaard, reason, which produces only abstractions, negates our individual essence; this essence is subjectivity, and subjectivity exists only in the 'leap of faith', whereby the individual casts in his lot with eternity.
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.13
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A reaction:
Interesting, but this strikes me as a confusion of reason and logic. A logical life would indeed be a sort of death, and need faith as an escape, but a broad view of the rational life includes emotion, imagination and laughter. Blind faith is disaster.
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22095
|
There are aesthetic, ethical and religious subjectivity [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle]
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Full Idea:
Kierkegaard distinguishes three main types of subjectivity: aesthetic, ethical and religious. But are these types of people, or different phases of one person's life?
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From:
report of Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4
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A reaction:
His picture of the religious mode holds no appeal for me. I also can't accept that the aesthetic and the moral are somewho distinct. People may discover they have slipped into one of these modes, but no one chooses them, do they?
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20747
|
What matters is not right choice, but energy, earnestness and pathos in the choosing [Kierkegaard]
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Full Idea:
In making a choice, it is not so much a question of choosing the right way as of the energy, the earnestness, and the pathos with which one chooses.
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From:
Søren Kierkegaard (Either/Or: a fragment of life [1843], p.106), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology'
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A reaction:
I'm struggling to identify with the experience he is describing. I can't imagine a more quintessentially existentialist remark than this. Reference to 'energy' in choosing strikes me as very romantic. Is 'the way not taken' crucial (in 'pathos')?
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