15 ideas
| 5044 | Reality must be made of basic unities, which will be animated, substantial points [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: A multiplicity can only be made up of true unities, ..so I had recourse to the idea of a real and animated point, or an atom of substance which must embrace some element of form or of activity in order to make a complete being. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New System and Explanation of New System [1696], p.116) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a combination of logical atomism and panpsychism. It has a certain charm, but looks like another example of these rationalist speculators overreaching themselves. |
| 20298 | The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Where Kant and others had traditionally assumed that the a priori concerned beliefs 'justifiable independently of experience', Quine and others of the time came to regard it as beliefs 'unrevisable in the light of experience'. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: That throws a rather striking light on Quine's project. Of course, if the a priori is also necessary, then it has to be unrevisable. But is a bachelor necessarily an unmarried man? It is not necessary that 'bachelor' has a fixed meaning. |
| 5045 | No machine or mere organised matter could have a unified self [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: By means of the soul or form, there is a true unity which is called the 'I' in us; a thing which could not occur in artificial machines, nor in the simple mass of matter, however organised it may be. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New System and Explanation of New System [1696], p.120) | |
| A reaction: I think the unity of consciousness and the unified Self are different phenomena. A wonderful remark about artificial intelligence for 1696! Note the idea of functionalism contained in 'organised'. Personally I see the brain as a 'mass of matter'. |
| 5046 | The soul does know bodies, although they do not influence one another [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I do not admit that the soul does not know bodies, although this knowledge arises without their influencing one another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New System and Explanation of New System [1696], Reply 11) | |
| A reaction: He couldn't very well admit this without moving into pure idealism. Presumably it is like "I know her - she'll be in Harrods this morning". I wonder if Satan could steal my body, but my mind continue to believe it was still there? |
| 20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Externalists are typically committed to counting expressions as 'synonymous' if they happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena, even if a thinker couldn't realise that they are by reflection alone. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Fodor] Externalists always try to link to concrete things in the world, but most of our talk is full of generalities, abstractions and fiction which don't link directly to anything. |
| 20294 | 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey] |
| Full Idea: If Bob is married to Sue, then Sue is married to Bob. If x bigger than y, and y bigger than z, x is bigger than z. The symmetry of 'marriage' or transitivity of 'bigger than' are not obviously 'contained in' the corresponding thoughts. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Also 'if something is red, then it is coloured'] This is a Fregean criticism of Kant. It is not so much that Kant was wrong, as that the concept of analyticity is seen to have a much wider application than Kant realised. Especially in mathematics. |
| 20293 | Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey] |
| Full Idea: Rejecting 'a married bachelor' as contradictory would seem to have no justification other than the claim that 'All bachelors are unmarried is analytic, and so cannot serve to justify or explain that claim. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Rey is discussing Frege's objection to Kant (who tried to prove the necessity of analytic judgements, on the basis of the denial being a contradiction). |
| 20297 | Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey] |
| Full Idea: What's peculiar about the analytic is that denying it seem unintelligible. Far from unrevisability explaining analyticity, it seems to be analyticitiy that explains unrevisability; we only balk at denying unmarried bachelors because that's what it means! | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: This is a criticism of Quine, who attacked analyticity when it is understood as unrevisability. Obviously we could revise the concept of 'bachelor', if our marriage customs changed a lot. Rey seems right here. |
| 20301 | The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the meaning properties of a term are the ones that play a basic explanatory role with regard to the use of the term generally, the ones in virtue ultimately of which a term is used with that meaning. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Devitt 1996, 2002, and Horwich 1998, 2005) I spring to philosophical life whenever I see the word 'explanatory', because that is the point of the whole game. They are pointing to the essence of the concept (which is explanatory, say I). |
| 20302 | An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The existence of a separate language faculty may be an odd but psychologically real fact about us, and it may thereby supply a real basis for commitments about not only what is or is not grammatical, but about what is a matter of natural language meaning. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the Chomskyan view of analytic sentences. An example from Chomsky (1977:142) is the semantic relationships of persuade, intend and believe. It's hard to see how the secret faculty on its own could do the job. Consensus is needed. |
| 20303 | Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey] |
| Full Idea: The movement of 'experimental philosophy' has pointed to evidence of considerable malleability of subject's 'intuitions' with regard to the standard kinds of thought experiments on which defenses of analytic claims typically rely. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: See Cappelen's interesting attack on the idea that philosophy relies on intuitions, and hence his attack on experimental philosophy. Our consensus on ordinary English usage hardly qualifies as somewhat vague 'intuitions'. |
| 20299 | If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey] |
| Full Idea: How in the end are we going to distinguish claims or the analytic as 'rational insight', 'primitive compulsion', inferential practice or folk belief from merely some deeply held empirical conviction, indeed, from mere dogma. | |
| From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Rey's summary of the persisting Quinean challenge to analytic truths, in the face of a set of replies, summarised by the various phrases here. So do we reject a dogma of empiricism, by asserting dogmatic empiricism? |
| 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 |
| 5043 | To regard animals as mere machines may be possible, but seems improbable [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that the opinion of those who transform or degrade the lower animals into mere machines, although it seems possible, is improbable, and even against the order of things. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New System and Explanation of New System [1696], p.116) | |
| A reaction: His target is Descartes. 'Against the order of things' seems to beg the question. What IS the order of things? Only a thorough-going dualist would worry about this question, and that isn't me. |
| 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. |