21 ideas
| 6211 | Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from some sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves, by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.IX.13) | |
| A reaction: Laughter tends to involve something unusual. We don't just burst out with a glory of vanity whenever we meet some inferiority in another person. |
| 7740 | There exists a realm, beyond objects and ideas, of non-spatio-temporal thoughts [Frege, by Weiner] |
| Full Idea: There is, in addition to the external world of physical objects and the internal world of ideas, a third realm of non-spatio-temporal objective objects, among which are thoughts. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Platonism, and, in particular, to give a Platonic existent status to propositions. Personally I believe in propositions, but as glimpses of how our brains actually work, not as mystical objects. |
| 19466 | The word 'true' seems to be unique and indefinable [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It seems likely that the content of the word 'true' is sui generis and indefinable | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60)) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I associate with Davidson, though fans of Axiomatic Truth give up defining it, and just describe how it behaves. Defining it is very elusive, but I don't accept that nothing can be said about the contents of the concept of truth. |
| 19465 | There cannot be complete correspondence, because ideas and reality are quite different [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It is essential that the reality shall be distinct from the idea. But then there can be no complete correspondence, no complete truth. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60)) | |
| A reaction: He thinks that logic can give a perfect account of truth, or at least the extension of truth, where ordinary language will always fail. I wonder what he would have thought of Tarski's theory? |
| 19468 | The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets' [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'I smell the scent of violets' has just the same content as 'It is true that I smell the scent of violets'. So it seems that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.328 (61)) | |
| A reaction: This idea predates Ramsey's similar proposal, for which, oddly, Ramsey always seems to get the credit. To a logician they may have identical content, but pragmatically they are likely to differ in context. 'True' certainly doesn't add to the thought. |
| 19470 | Thoughts in the 'third realm' cannot be sensed, and do not need an owner to exist [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are neither things in the external world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognised. Anything in this realm has it in common with ideas that it cannot be perceived by the senses, and does not need an owner to belong with his consciousness. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.337(69)) | |
| A reaction: This important idea is the creed for modern platonists. We don't have to accept Forms, or any particular content, but there is a mode of existence which is distinct from both mental and physical, and is the residence of 'abstracta'. I deny it! |
| 19471 | A fact is a thought that is true [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A fact is a thought that is true. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.342(74)) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me as pretty obvious that facts are not thoughts, because they concern the contents of thoughts. You can't discuss facts without the notion of what a thought is 'about'. If I think about my garden, the relevant fact is aspects of my garden. |
| 9877 | Late Frege saw his non-actual objective objects as exclusively thoughts and senses [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Earlier, Frege divided objects into subjective, actual objective, and non-actual objective; in the 'Grundgesetze' he emphasised logical objects; but in 'The Thought' the non-actual objects become exclusively thoughts and their constituent senses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: Sounds to me like Frege was finally waking up and taking a dose of common sense. The Equator is the standard example of a non-actual objective object. |
| 6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The will is not voluntary: for a man can no more say he will will, than he will will will, and so make an infinite repetition of the word 'will', which is absurd and insignificant. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.XII.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice simple point, allied to Nietzsche's notion that thoughts are uncontrollable (Idea 2291). Even Aquinas, who is quite a fan of free will, spotted the problem (Idea 1854). Personally I agree with Hobbes. Free will is a shibboleth. |
| 6208 | Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Conceptions and apparitions are nothing really, but motion in some internal substance of the head. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.1) | |
| A reaction: Note that he carefully covers both thought in concepts and thought in images, and also that he is not saying that thought is the substance, but that it is a 'motion'. This strikes me as an excellent word, and I think Hobbes is right. |
| 19469 | We grasp thoughts (thinking), decide they are true (judgement), and manifest the judgement (assertion) [Frege] |
| Full Idea: We distinguish the grasp of a thought, which is 'thinking', from the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought, which is the act of 'judgement', from the manifestation of this judgement, which is an 'assertion'. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.329 (62)) |
| 8162 | Thoughts have their own realm of reality - 'sense' (as opposed to the realm of 'reference') [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, thoughts belong to a special realm of reality, which he called the 'realm of sense' and distinguished from the 'realm of reference'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
| A reaction: A thought is, for Frege, a proposition. There is a halfway Platonism possible here, where the 'realm' for such things exists, but within that realm the objects might be conventional, or some such. Real possible worlds containing fictions! |
| 9818 | A thought is distinguished from other things by a capacity to be true or false [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: On Frege's view, what distinguishes thoughts from everything else is that they may meaningfully be called 'true' and 'false'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: A lot of thinking is imagistic, and while the image may or may not truly picture the world, we tend to think that the truth or otherwise of daydreaming is simply irrelevant. Does Frege take all thought to be propositional? |
| 16379 | Thoughts about myself are understood one way to me, and another when communicated [Frege] |
| Full Idea: When Dr Lauben thinks he has been wounded, ..only Dr Lauben can grasp thoughts determined in this way. But he cannot communicate a thought which only he can grasp. To say 'I have been wounded' he must use 'I' in a sense graspable by others. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 16.1 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to be the first, and very influential, attempt to explain the unusual and revealing semantics of indexicals. It seems to be the ultimate source of 2-D semantics, by introducing two modes of meaning for one term. |
| 19467 | A 'thought' is something for which the question of truth can arise; thoughts are senses of sentences [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I call a 'thought' something for which the question of truth can arise at all. ...So I can say: thoughts are senses of sentences, without wishing to assert that the sense of every sentence is a thought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327-8 (61)) | |
| A reaction: This builds on his distinction between sense and reference. The reference of every truth sentence is just 'the true', and the sense is the proposition. The concept of a proposition seems indispensable to logic, I would say. |
| 19472 | A sentence is only a thought if it is complete, and has a time-specification [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Only a sentence with the time-specification filled out, a sentence complete in every respect, expresses a thought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.343(76)) | |
| A reaction: I take the 'every respect' to include the avoidance of ambiguity, and some sort of perspicacious reference for the terms. I wish philosophers would focus on the thoughts in their subject, and not nit-pick about the sentences. Does he mean 'utterances'? |
| 6209 | There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as absolute goodness, considered without relation: for even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his goodness to us. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: Plato's view of goodness is much more absolute than that of religion, as he proposes the Good as the eternal underpinning of nature. I agree with Hobbes that if God is the source of goodness, that will prevent goodness from being truly absolute. |
| 6210 | Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: For an utmost end, in which the ancient philosophers have placed felicity, there is no such thing in this world, nor way to it: for while we live, we have desires, and desire presupposeth a further end. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.VII.6) | |
| A reaction: Kant's definition of happiness (Idea 1452) seems to be the underlying idea, and hence with the same implication (of impossibility). However, an alcoholic locked in a brewery would seem to have all that Hobbes requires for happiness. |
| 6212 | Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Lust consists of two appetites together, to please, and to be pleased, and the delight men take in delighting is not sensual, but a pleasure or joy of the mind consisting in the imagination of the power they have so much to please. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Human Nature [1640], Ch.IX) | |
| A reaction: Hobbes would rather burst a blood-vessel than admit any altruism. If you take pleasure in pleasing someone else, why can't that simply be because of the other person's pleasure, with which we sympathise, rather than relishing our own 'power'? |
| 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. |