14 ideas
22864 | Philosophy is the study and criticsm of cultural beliefs, to achieve new possibilities [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is criticism of the influential beliefs that underlie culture, tracking them to their generating conditions and results, and considering their mutual compatibility. This terminates in a new perspective, which leads to new possibilities. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 6:19), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey Intro | |
A reaction: [compressed] This would make quite a good manifesto for French thinkers of the 1960s. Foucault could hardly disagree. An excellent idea. |
22873 | Liberalism should improve the system, and not just ameliorate it [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Liberalism must become radical in the sense that, instead of using social power to ameliorate the evil consequences of the existing system, it shall use social power to change the system. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:287), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
A reaction: Conservative liberals ask what people want, and try to give it to them. Radical liberals ask what people actually need, and try to make it possible. The latter is bound to be a bit paternalistic, but will probably create a better world. |
22869 | Knowledge is either the product of competent enquiry, or it is meaningless [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent enquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured into it. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
A reaction: What is the criterion of 'competent'? Danger of tautology, if competent enquiry is what produces knowledge. |
22867 | The quest for certainty aims for peace, and avoidance of the stress of action [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The quest for certainty is a quest for a peace which is assured, an object which is unqualified by risk and the shadow of fear which action costs. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 4:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Intro' | |
A reaction: This is a characteristic pragmatist account. I think Dewey and Peirce offer us the correct attitude to certainty. It is just not available to us, and can only be a delusion. That doesn't mean we don't know anything, however! |
22870 | No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
A reaction: A nice pragmatist mantra, but no scientists gets a research grant to prove facts which have been securely established for a very long time. It is neurotic to keep returning to check that you have locked your front door. Dewey introduced 'warranted'. |
22866 | Mind is never isolated, but only exists in its interactions [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Mind is primarily a verb. ...Mind never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 10:267), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 1 'emerge' | |
A reaction: I strongly agree with the idea that mind is a process, not a thing. Certain types of solitary introspection don't seem to quite fit his account, but in general he is right. |
22872 | Liberals aim to allow individuals to realise their capacities [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Liberalism is committed to …the liberation of individuals so that realisation of their capacities may be the law of their life. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:41), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
A reaction: Capacity expression as the main aim of politics is precisely the idea developed more fully in modern times by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It strikes me as an excellent proposal. Does it need liberalism, or socialism? |
22880 | The things in civilisation we prize are the products of other members of our community [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The things in civilisation we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:57), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Reconstruct' | |
A reaction: Dewey defends liberalism, but he has strong communitarian tendencies. What is the significance of an enduring community losing touch with its own achievements? |
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. |
22879 | 'God' is an imaginative unity of ideal values [Dewey] |
Full Idea: 'God' represents a unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:29), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
A reaction: This seems to have happened when a flawed God like Zeus is elevated to be the only God, and is given supreme power and wisdom. |
7417 | God can't have silly perfections, but how do we decide which ones are 'silly'? [Joslin] |
Full Idea: It is clear that God cannot have all conceivable perfections, because otherwise he would have absurd perfections (like being the perfect prawn sandwich), so a line must be drawn, and how are we to decide which perfections are appropriate and essential? | |
From: Jack Joslin (talk [2006]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: This is an excellent question for curbing the absurdities of those who want to load God with every good thing that can possibly be conceived. Is the God who is also a perfect prawn sandwich more perfect than the one who isn't? |
22877 | We should try attaching the intensity of religious devotion to intelligent social action [Dewey] |
Full Idea: One of the few experiments in the attachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that of devotion (so intense as to be religious) to intelligence as a force in social action. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:53), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Intro' | |
A reaction: An interesting thought that religious emotions such as devotion are so distinctive that they can be treated as valuable, even in the absence of belief. He seems to be advocating Technocracy. |
22878 | Religions are so shockingly diverse that they have no common element [Dewey] |
Full Idea: There is only a multitude of religions …and the differences between them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
A reaction: Religion is for Dewey what a game was for Wittgenstein, as an anti-essentialist example. I would have thought that they all involved some commitment to a realm of transcendent existence. |