17 ideas
| 10429 | It is best to say that a name designates iff there is something for it to designate [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: It is better to say that 'For all x ("Hesperus" stands for x iff x = Hesperus)', than to say '"Hesperus" stands for Hesperus', since then the expression can be a name with no bearer (e.g. "Vulcan"). | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: In cases where it is unclear whether the name actually designates something, it seems desirable that the name is at least allowed to function semantically. |
| 10425 | Definite descriptions may not be referring expressions, since they can fail to refer [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: Almost everyone agrees that intelligible definite descriptions may lack a referent; this has historically been a reason for not counting them among referring expressions. | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: One might compare indexicals such as 'I', which may be incapable of failing to refer when spoken. However 'look at that!' frequently fails to communicate reference. |
| 10438 | Definite descriptions are usually rigid in subject, but not in predicate, position [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: Definite descriptions used with referential intentions (usually in subject position) are normally rigid, ..but in predicate position they are normally not rigid, because there is no referential intention. | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.5) | |
| A reaction: 'The man in the blue suit is the President' seems to fit, but 'The President is the head of state' doesn't. Seems roughly right, but language is always too complex for philosophers. |
| 7647 | The imagination alone perceives all objects; it is the soul, playing all its roles [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The imagination alone perceives; it forms an idea of all objects, with the words and figures that characterise them; thus the imagination is the soul, because it plays all its roles. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.15) | |
| A reaction: This is not just a big claim for the importance of imagination, in strong opposition to Descartes's rather dismissive view (Idea 1399), but also appears to be the germ of an interesting theory about the nature of personal identity. |
| 7645 | When falling asleep, the soul becomes paralysed and weak, just like the body [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The soul and body fall asleep together. The soul slowly becomes paralysed, together with all the body's muscles. They can no longer hold up the weight of the head, while the soul can no longer bear the burden of thought. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.6) | |
| A reaction: A very nice observation, to place alongside other evidence such as drunkenness and blushing. Personally I find it hard to see why anyone ever believed dualism. You don't need modern brain scans and brain lesion research to see the problem. |
| 23225 | The soul's faculties depend on the brain, and are simply the brain's organisation [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: All the soul's faculties depend so much on the specific organisation of the brain and of the whole body that they are clearly nothing but that organisation. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.26) | |
| A reaction: An interesting idea because it suggests that La Mettrie is a functionalist, rather than simply a reductive physicalist. |
| 7652 | Man is a machine, and there exists only one substance, diversely modified [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: Let us conclude boldly that man is a machine and that there is in the whole universe only one diversely modified substance. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.39) | |
| A reaction: What courage it must have taken to write what now seems a perfectly acceptable and normal view. One day there should be a collective monument to Hobbes, Gassendi, Spinoza, La Mettrie and Hume, who thought so boldly. |
| 7650 | All thought is feeling, and rationality is the sensitive soul contemplating reasoning [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: Thought is only a capacity to feel, and the rational soul is only the sensitive soul applied to the contemplation of ideas and to reasoning. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.33) | |
| A reaction: What a very nice idea. La Mettrie wants to bring us closer to animals. Because we can pursue a train of rational thought, it does not follow that we have a faculty called 'rationality'. A dog can follow a clever series of clues that lead to food. |
| 7651 | With wonderful new machines being made, a speaking machine no longer seems impossible [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: If wonderful machines like Huygens's planetary clock can be made, it would take even more cogs and springs to make a speaking machine, which can no longer be considered impossible, particularly at the hands of a new Prometheus. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Compare Descartes in Idea 3614. The idea of artificial intelligence does not arise with the advent of computers; it follows naturally from the materialist view of the mind, along with a bit of ambition to build complex machines. |
| 10432 | A new usage of a name could arise from a mistaken baptism of nothing [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: A baptism which, perhaps through some radical mistake, is the baptism of nothing, is as good a propagator of a new use as a baptism of an object. | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.3) | |
| A reaction: An obvious example might be the Loch Ness Monster. There is something intuitively wrong about saying that physical objects are actually part of linguistic meaning or reference. I am not a meaning! |
| 10434 | Even a quantifier like 'someone' can be used referentially [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: A large range of expressions can be used with referential intentions, including quantifier phrases (as in 'someone has once again failed to close the door properly'). | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the pragmatic aspect of reference, where it can be achieved by all sorts of means. But are quantifiers inherently referential in their semantic function? Some of each, it seems. |
| 7648 | The sun and rain weren't made for us; they sometimes burn us, or spoil our seeds [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The sun was not made in order to heat the earth and all its inhabitants - whom it sometimes burns - any more than the rain was created in order to grow seeds - which it often spoils. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747]) | |
| A reaction: This denial of Aristotelian (and divine) teleology is as much part of the movement against religion, as are concerns about natural evil, and about the weakness of arguments for God's existence. These facts were obvious long before La Mettrie. |
| 10431 | Things are thought to have a function, even when they can't perform them [Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: On one common use of the notion of a function, something can possess a function which it does not, or even cannot, perform. A malformed heart is to pump blood, even if such a heart cannot in fact pump blood. | |
| From: Mark Sainsbury (The Essence of Reference [2006], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: One might say that the heart in a dead body had the function of pumping blood, but does it still have that function? Do I have the function of breaking the world 100 metres record, even though I can't quite manage it? Not that simple. |
| 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. |
| 7646 | There is no abrupt transition from man to animal; only language has opened a gap [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: From animals to man there is no abrupt transition. What was man before he invented words and learnt languages? An animal of a particular species, with much less natural instinct than the others. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747], p.13) | |
| A reaction: This shows how strongly the evolutionary idea was in the air, a century before Darwin proposed a mechanism for it. This thought is the beginning of a very new view of man, and also of a very new view of animals. |
| 7649 | There is no clear idea of the soul, which should only refer to our thinking part [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The soul is merely a vain term of which we have no idea and which a good mind should use only to refer to that part of us which thinks. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747]) | |
| A reaction: I have always found the concept of the soul particularly baffling. It seems that it is only believed in to make immortality possible, with no other purpose to the belief, let alone evidence. I suspect that Descartes agreed with La Mettrie on this. |