42 ideas
| 7578 | I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Author') | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is like Socrates's image of himself as the 'gadfly' of Athens. The interesting question is always to see what the rest of society makes of having someone in their midst who sees it as their social role to 'create difficulties'. |
| 22047 | Wherever there is painless contradiction there is also comedy [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Wherever there is contradiction, the comical is also present. ...The tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical is the painless contradiction. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.459), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 13 | |
| A reaction: He is not saying that this is the only source of comedy. I once heard an adult say that there is one thing that is always funny, and that is a fart. |
| 12027 | There must be a plausible epistemological theory alongside any metaphysical theory [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: No metaphysical account which renders it impossible to give a plausible epistemological theory is to be countenanced. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.1) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to object to this principle, though we certainly don't want to go verificationist, and thus rule out speculations about metaphysics which are beyond any possible knowledge. Some have tried to prove that something must exist (e.g. Jacquette). |
| 22092 | Kierkegaard's truth draws on authenticity, fidelity and honesty [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard offers a different interpretation of truth, which draws on the notions of authenticity, fidelity and honesty. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: This notion of truth, meaning 'the real thing' (as in 'she was a true scholar'), seems to begin with Hegel. I suggest we use the word 'genuine' for that, and save 'truth' for its traditional role. It is disastrous to blur the simple concept of truth. |
| 15999 | Pure truth is for infinite beings only; I prefer endless striving for truth [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the ever-striving drive for truth, even if erring forever, and he were to say Choose! I would humbly fall at his left hand and say Father, give! Pure truth is for infinite beings only. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.106) | |
| A reaction: A sobering realistic thought of our own limitations; Kierkegaard allows that there is no limit to how far we can strive for truth. Just that truth is comprehended by infinite beings (if any), not by mere mortals. [SY] |
| 20313 | The highest truth we can get is uncertainty held fast by an inward passion [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing individual. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] Offered as a definition of truth, knowing how strange and paradoxical it sounds. If we view all life as subjectivity, then there can of course be nothing more to truth than passionate conviction. Personally I think thought can be objective. |
| 12005 | The symbol 'ι' forms definite descriptions; (ιx)F(x) says 'the x which is such that F(x)' [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: We use the symbol 'ι' (Greek 'iota') to form definite descriptions, reading (ιx)F(x) as 'the x which is such that F(x)', or simply as 'the F'. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Compare the lambda operator in modal logic, which picks out predicates from similar formulae. |
| 12010 | Is the meaning of 'and' given by its truth table, or by its introduction and elimination rules? [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The typical semantic account of validity for propositional connectives like 'and' presupposes that meaning is given by truth-tables. On the natural deduction view, the meaning of 'and' is given by its introduction and elimination rules. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.4) |
| 12023 | Vagueness problems arise from applying sharp semantics to vague languages [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: It is very plausible that the sorites paradoxes arose from the application of a semantic apparatus appropriate only for sharp predicates to languages containing vague predicates (rather than from deficiency of meaning, or from incoherence). | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Of course, logic has been designed for sharp predicates, and natural languages are awash with vagueness. But the problems of vagueness bothered lawyers long before logicians like Russell began to worry about it. |
| 12017 | In all instances of identity, there must be some facts to ensure the identity [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: For each instance of identity or failure of identity, there must be facts in virtue of which that instance obtains. ..Enough has been said to lend this doctrine some plausibility. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: Penelope Mackie picks this out from Forbes as a key principle. It sounds to be in danger of circularity, unless the 'facts' can be cited without referring to, or implicitly making use of, identities - which seems unlikely. |
| 12024 | If we combined two clocks, it seems that two clocks may have become one clock. [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: If we imagine a possible world in which two clocks in a room make one clock from half the parts of each, the judgement 'these two actual clocks could have been a single clock' does not seem wholly false. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: You would, of course, have sufficient parts left over to make a second clock, so they look like a destroyed clock, so I don't think I find Forbes's intuition on this one very persuasive. |
| 11885 | Only individual essences will ground identities across worlds in other properties [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Forbes argues that, unless we posit individual essences, we cannot guarantee that identities across possible worlds will be appropriately grounded in other properties. | |
| From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.4 | |
| A reaction: There is a confrontation between Wiggins, who says identity is primitive, and Forbes, who says identity must be grounded in other properties. I think I side with Forbes. |
| 12014 | An individual essence is a set of essential properties which only that object can have [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence of an object x is a set of properties I which satisfies the following conditions: i. every property P in I is an essential property of x; ii. it is not possible that some object y distinct from x has every member of I. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I am coming to the view that stable natural kinds (like electrons or gold) do not have individual essences, but complex kinds (like tigers or tables) do. The view is based on the idea that explanatory power is what individuates an essence. |
| 12015 | Non-trivial individual essence is properties other than de dicto, or universal, or relational [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: A non-trivial individual essence is properties other than a) those following from a de dicto truth, b) properties of existence and self-identity (or their cognates), c) properties derived from necessities in some other category. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [I have compressed Forbes] Rather than adding all these qualificational clauses to our concept, we could just tighten up on the notion of a property, saying it is something which is causally efficacious, and hence explanatory. |
| 12013 | Essential properties depend on a category, and perhaps also on particular facts [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of a thing will typically depend upon what category of thing it is, and perhaps also on some more particular facts about the thing itself. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I see no way of dispensing with the second requirement, in the cases of complex entities like animals. If all samples are the same, then of course we can define a sample's essence through its kind, but not if samples differ in any way. |
| 12012 | Essential properties are those without which an object could not exist [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An essential property of an object x is a property without possessing which x could not exist. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly open to question. See Joan Kung's account of Aristotle on essence. I am necessarily more than eight years old (now), and couldn't exist without that property, but is the property part of my essence? |
| 12022 | Same parts does not ensure same artefact, if those parts could constitute a different artefact [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Sameness of parts is not sufficient for identity of artefacts at a world, since the very same parts may turn up at different times as the parts of artefacts with different designs and functions. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the Ship of Theseus could be dismantled and turned into a barn (as happened with the 'Mayflower'). They could then be reconstituted as the ship, which would then have two beginnings (as Chris Hughes has pointed out). |
| 12025 | Artefacts have fuzzy essences [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Artefacts can be ascribed fuzzy essences. ...We might say that it is essential to an artefact to have 'most' of its parts. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: I think I prefer to accept the idea that essences are unstable things, in all cases. For all we know, electrons might subtly change their general character, or cease to be uniform, tomorrow. Essences explain, and what needs explaining changes. |
| 12020 | An individual might change their sex in a world, but couldn't have differed in sex at origin [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: In the time of a single world, the same individual can undergo a change of sex, but it is less clear that an individual of one sex could have been, from the outset, an individual of another. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this support for essentiality of origin very persuasive. I struggle with these ideas. Given my sex yesterday, then presumably I couldn't have had a different sex yesterday. Given that pigs can fly, pigs can fly. What am I missing? |
| 11888 | Identities must hold because of other facts, which must be instrinsic [Forbes,G, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Forbes has two principles of identity, which we can call the No Bare Identities Principle (identities hold in virtue of other facts), and the No Extrinsic Determination Principle (that only intrinsic facts of a thing establish identity). | |
| From: report of Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 127-8) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 2.7 | |
| A reaction: The job of the philosopher is to prise apart the real identities of things from the way in which we conceive of identities. I take these principles to apply to real identities, not conceptual identities. |
| 12003 | De re modal formulae, unlike de dicto, are sensitive to transworld identities [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The difference between de re and de dicto formulae is a difference between formulae which are, and formulae which are not, sensitive to the identities of objects at various worlds. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 3.1) |
| 12028 | De re necessity is a form of conceptual necessity, just as de dicto necessity is [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: De re necessity does not differ from de dicto necessity in respect of how it arises: it is still a form of conceptual necessity. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.4) | |
| A reaction: [Forbes proceeds to argue for this claim] Forbes defends a form of essentialism, but takes the necessity to arise from a posteriori truths because of the a priori involvement of other concepts (rather as Kripke argues). |
| 12008 | Unlike places and times, we cannot separate possible worlds from what is true at them [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: There is no means by which we might distinguish a possible world from what is true at it. ...Whereas our ability to separate a place, or a time, from its occupier is crucial to realism about places and times, as is a distance relation. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: He is objecting to Lewis's modal realism. I'm not fully convinced. It depends whether we are discussing real ontology or conceptual space. In the latter I see no difference between times and possible worlds. In ontology, a 'time' is weird. |
| 12009 | The problem with possible worlds realism is epistemological; we can't know properties of possible objects [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The main objection to realism about worlds is from epistemology. Knowledge of properties of objects requires experience of these objects, which must be within the range of our sensory faculties, but only concrete actual objects achieve that. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints my dislike of the whole possible worlds framework, ontologically speaking. I seem to be an actualist. I take possibilities to be inferences to the best explanation from the powers we know of in the actual world. We experience potentiality. |
| 12007 | Possible worlds are points of logical space, rather like other times than our own [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Someone impressed by the parallel between tense and modal operators ...might suggest that just as we can speak of places and times forming their own manifolds or spaces, so we can say that worlds are the points of logical space. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I particularly like the notion of worlds being "points of logical space", and am inclined to remove it from this context and embrace it as the correct way to understand possible worlds. We must understand logical or conceptual space. |
| 12011 | Transworld identity concerns the limits of possibility for ordinary things [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: An elucidation of transworld identity can be regarded as an elucidation of the boundaries of possibility for ordinary things. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: I presume that if we don't search for some such criterion, we just have to face the possibility that Aristotle could have been a poached egg in some possible world. To know the bounds of possibility, study the powers of actual objects. |
| 12016 | The problem of transworld identity can be solved by individual essences [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The motivation for investigating individual essences should be obvious, since if every object has such an essence, the problem of elucidating transworld identity can be solved. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: It is important that, if necessary, the identities be 'individual', and not just generic, by sortal, or natural kind. We want to reason about (and explain) truths at the fine-grained level of the individual, not just at the broad level of generalisation. |
| 12004 | Counterpart theory is not good at handling the logic of identity [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The outstanding technical objection to counterpart-theoretic semantics concerns its handling of the logic of identity. In quantified S5 (the orthodox semantics) a = b → □(a = b) is valid, but 'a' must not attach to two objects. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 3.5) |
| 12021 | Haecceitism attributes to each individual a primitive identity or thisness [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: Haecceitism attributes to each individual a primitive identity or thisness, as opposed to the sort of essentialism that gives non-trivial conditions sufficient for transworld identity. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: 'Haecceitism' is the doctrine that things have primitive identity. A 'haecceity' is a postulated property which actually does the job. The key point of the view is that whatever it is is 'primitive', and not complex, or analysable. I don't believe it. |
| 12029 | We believe in thisnesses, because we reject bizarre possibilities as not being about that individual [Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: The natural response to an unreasonable hypothesis of possibility for an object x, that in such a state of affairs it would not be x which satisfies the conditions, is evidence that we do possess concepts of thisness for individuals. | |
| From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 9.4) | |
| A reaction: We may have a 'concept' of thisness, but we needn't be committed to the 'existence' of a thisness. There is a fairly universal intuition that cessation of existence of an entity when it starts to change can be a very vague matter. |
| 20742 | The real subject is ethical, not cognitive [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The real subject is not the cognitive subject …the real subject is the ethically existing subject. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.281), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective' | |
| A reaction: Perhaps we should say the essence of the self is its drive to live, not its drive to know. Just getting through the day is top priority, and ethics don’t figure much for the solitary person. But each activity, such as cooking, has its virtues. |
| 7579 | While big metaphysics is complete without ethics, personal philosophy emphasises ethics [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: While the Hegelian philosophy goes on and is finished without having an Ethics, the more simple philosophy which is propounded by an existing individual for existing individuals, will more especially emphasis the ethical. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of the Socratic revolution, which shifted philosophy from the study of nature to the study of personal virtue. However, if we look for ethical teachings in existentialism, there often seems to be a black hole in the middle. |
| 7581 | Speculative philosophy loses the individual in a vast vision of humanity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Being an individual man is a thing that has been abolished, and every speculative philosopher confuses himself with humanity at large, whereby he becomes infinitely great - and at the same time nothing at all. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4840. This is a beautiful statement of the motivation for existentialism. The sort of philosophers who love mathematics (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Russell) love losing themselves in abstractions. This is the rebellion. |
| 20314 | People want to lose themselves in movements and history, instead of being individuals [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Everything must attach itself so as to be part of some movement; men are determined to lose themselves in the totality of things, in world-history, fascinated and deceived by a magic witchery; no one wants to be an individual human being. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] I presume 'world-history' refers to the exhilerating ideas of Hegel. Right now [2017] I would say we have far too much of people only wanting to be individuals, with insufficient attention to our social nature. |
| 7582 | Becoming what one is is a huge difficulty, because we strongly aspire to be something else [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Striving to become what one already is is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all, because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: Presumably most people continually drift between vanity and low self-esteem, and between unattainable daydreams and powerless immediate reality. That creates the stage on which Kierkegaard's interesting battle would have to be fought. |
| 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. |
| 7586 | God does not think or exist; God creates, and is eternal [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: God does not think, He creates; God does not exist, he is eternal. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Thinker') | |
| A reaction: The sort of nicely challenging remarks we pay philosophers to come up with. I don't understand the second claim, but the first one certainly avoids all paradoxes that arise if God experiences all the intrinsic problems of thinking. |
| 20312 | God cannot be demonstrated objectively, because God is a subject, only existing inwardly [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Choosing the objective way enters upon the entire approximation-process by which it is proposed to bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible, because God is a subject, and therefore exist only for subjectivity in inwardness. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [pg in 711] This seems to have something like Wittgenstein's problem with a private language - that with no external peer-review it is unclear what the commitment is. |
| 7580 | Pantheism destroys the distinction between good and evil [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: So called pantheistic systems have often been characterised and challenged by the assertion that they abrogate the distinction between good and evil. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: He will have Spinoza in mind. Interesting. Obviously this criticism would come from someone who thought that the traditional deity was the only source of goodness. Good/evil isn't all-or-nothing. A monistic system could contain them. |
| 7583 | Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: The word 'highest' should always ring alarm bells. The worst sort of religious fanatics seem to be in the grip of this 'high' passion. The early twenty-first century is an echo of eighteenth century England, with its dislike of religious 'enthusiasm'. |
| 7584 | Without risk there is no faith [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Without risk there is no faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Inwardness') | |
| A reaction: Remarks like this make you realise that Kierkegaard is just as much of a romantic as most of the other nineteenth century philosophers. Plunge into the dark unknown of the human psyche, in order to intensify and heighten human life. |