42 ideas
| 4697 | There has been a distinct 'Social Turn' in recent philosophy, like the earlier 'Linguistic Turn' [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The Social Turn is as defining a characteristic of contemporary philosophy as the Linguistic Turn has been of the earlier twentieth century period. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A helpful observation. It ties in with externalism about concepts (Twin Earth), impossibility of Private Language, and externalism about knowledge. |
| 8220 | Philosophy is in a perpetual state of digression [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy can be seen as being in a perpetual state of digression. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who has ever tried to teach philosophy will vouch for this. Philosophy is the 'Arabian Nights', conjuring up wonderful stories, to avoid having to face something nasty. Philosophy is perpetual postponement of problems. |
| 8217 | Philosophy is a concept-creating discipline [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the discipline that involves creating concepts. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], Intro) | |
| A reaction: One might very reasonably reply that Geography is a discipline which creates concepts. However, this emphasis is an interesting corrective to the school of analysis, which appears confined to existing, and even 'folk', concepts. |
| 8242 | Philosophy aims at what is interesting, remarkable or important - not at knowledge or truth [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy does not consist in knowing, and is not inspired by truth. Rather, it is categories like Interesting, Remarkable, or Important that determine success or failure. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Speak for yourself. I wonder what the criteria are for 'Interesting' or 'Important'. They can't seriously count 'remarkable' as a criterion of philosophical success, can they? There can be remarkable stupidity. |
| 8223 | The plague of philosophy is those who criticise without creating, and defend dead concepts [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Those who criticise without creating, those who are content to defend the vanished concept without being able to give it the forces it needs to return to life, are the plague of philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the continental view of analytical philosophy, that it is pathetically conservative. I would offer MacIntyre as a response, who gives a beautiful analysis of why the super-modern view is dead. The French are hopelessly romantic. |
| 8247 | Phenomenology needs art as logic needs science [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenology needs art as logic needs science. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that it was science that needs logic. Art is more elitist than science, and less universal. I presume artists and phenomenologists share a target of deconstructing lived human experience. |
| 4731 | Good reasoning will avoid contradiction, enhance coherence, not ignore evidence, and maximise evidence [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The four basic principles of rationality are 1) avoid contradiction, 2) enhance coherence, 3) avoid ignoring evidence, and 4) maximise evidence. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I like this, and can't think of any additions. 'Coherence' is the vaguest of the conditions. Maximising evidence is still the driving force of science, even if it does sound quaintly positivist. |
| 8224 | 'Eris' is the divinity of conflict, the opposite of Philia, the god of friendship [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: 'Eris' is the Greek divinity of discord, conflict, and strife, the complementary opposite of Philia, the divinity of union and friendship. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.2 n) | |
| A reaction: Are these actual gods? This interestingly implies that the wonders of dialectic and Socrates' elenchus are simply aspects of friendship, which was elevated by Epicurus to the highest good. The Greeks just wanted wonderful friends and fine speeches. |
| 4735 | Just as maps must simplify their subject matter, so thought has to be reductionist about reality [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: A map that is identical in all respects with that which is mapped is just useless. So reductionism is not just a good thing - it is essential to thought. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A useful warning, when thinking about truth. It is folly to want your thoughts to exactly correspond to reality. I want to understand the world, but not if it requires being the world. |
| 4703 | The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality' [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The epistemic theory of truth presents it as 'that which is licensed by our best theory of reality'. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Dangerous nonsense. This leaves truth shifting as our theories change, it leads to different truths in different cultures, and no palpable falsehood in ignorant cultures. Don't give it house-room. |
| 4701 | To say a relative truth is inexpressible in other frameworks is 'weak', while saying it is false is 'strong' [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Weak alethic relativism holds that while a statement may be true in one framework, it is inexpressible in another. Strong alethic relativism is where a sentence is true relative to one framework, but false relative to another. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The weak version will be Kuhn's 'incommensurability' of scientific theories, while the strong version will be full Protagorean relativism, saying all beliefs are true. |
| 8219 | Logic has an infantile idea of philosophy [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Logic has an infantile idea of philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This offers some explanation of why Anglo-American philosophers are steeped in logic, and the continentals just ignore it. I have some sympathy with the French view. Logic seems to study language with all the interesting part drained off. |
| 8246 | Logic hates philosophy, and wishes to supplant it [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: A real hatred inspires logic's rivalry with, or its will to supplant, philosophy. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: A delightful corrective to the neurotic inferiority that most English-speaking philosophers feel about their failure to master logic. What was Aristotle playing at when he invented logic? Philosophical talent is utterly different from a talent for logic. |
| 4705 | Logical relativism appears if we allow more than one legitimate logical system [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Logical relativism emerges if one defends the existence of two or more rival systems that one may legitimately choose between, or move back and forth between. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: All my instincts rebel against this possibility. All of Aristotle's and Kant's philosophy would be rendered meaningless. Obviously you can create artificial logics (like games), but I believe there is a truth logic. (Pathetic, isn't it?) |
| 4700 | A third value for truth might be "indeterminate", or a point on a scale between 'true' and 'false' [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Suggestions for a third value for truth are "indeterminate", or a scale running from "true", through "mostly true", "mainly true", "half true", "mainly false", "mostly false", to "false", or maybe even "0.56 true". | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Anything on a sliding scale sounds wrong, as it seems to be paracitic on an underlying fixed idea of 'true'. "Indeterminate", though, seems just right for the truth of predictions ('sea-fight tomorrow'). |
| 17896 | We need to know the meaning of 'and', prior to its role in reasoning [Prior,AN, by Belnap] |
| Full Idea: For Prior, so the moral goes, we must first have a notion of what 'and' means, independently of the role it plays as premise and as conclusion. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.132 | |
| A reaction: The meaning would be given by the truth tables (the truth-conditions), whereas the role would be given by the natural deduction introduction and elimination rules. This seems to be the basic debate about logical connectives. |
| 17898 | Prior's 'tonk' is inconsistent, since it allows the non-conservative inference A |- B [Belnap on Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: Prior's definition of 'tonk' is inconsistent. It gives us an extension of our original characterisation of deducibility which is not conservative, since in the extension (but not the original) we have, for arbitrary A and B, A |- B. | |
| From: comment on Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Nuel D. Belnap - Tonk, Plonk and Plink p.135 | |
| A reaction: Belnap's idea is that connectives don't just rest on their rules, but also on the going concern of normal deduction. |
| 11021 | Prior rejected accounts of logical connectives by inference pattern, with 'tonk' his absurd example [Prior,AN, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Prior dislike the holism inherent in the claim that the meaning of a logical connective was determined by the inference patterns into which it validly fitted. ...His notorious example of 'tonk' (A → A-tonk-B → B) was a reductio of the view. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: [The view being attacked was attributed to Gentzen] |
| 13836 | Maybe introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference leads to absurdity [Prior,AN, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Prior intended 'tonk' (a connective which leads to absurdity) as a criticism of the very idea of introducing or defining logical connectives by rules of inference. | |
| From: report of Arthur N. Prior (The Runabout Inference Ticket [1960], §09) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? |
| 4704 | Wittgenstein reduced Russell's five primitive logical symbols to a mere one [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: While Russell and Whitehead used five primitive logical symbols in their system, Wittgenstein suggested in his 'Tractatus' that this be reduced to one. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This certainly captures why Russell was so impressed by him. In retrospect what looked like progress presumably now looks like the beginning of the collapse of the enterprise. |
| 4711 | Anti-realists say our theories (such as wave-particle duality) give reality incompatible properties [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The anti-realist says we have theories about the world that are incompatible with each other, and irreducible to each other. They often cite wave-particle duality, which postulate incompatible properties to reality. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Most physicists, of course, hate this duality, precisely because they can't conceive how the two properties could be real. I say realism comes first, and the theories must try to accommodate that assumption. |
| 4698 | What counts as a fact partly depends on the availability of human concepts to describe them [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: What counts as a fact partly depends on human input, such as the availability of concepts to describe such facts. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The point must be taken. I am happy to generalise about 'The Facts', meaning 'whatever is the case', but the individuation of specific facts is bound to hit the current problem. |
| 4715 | We may say that objects have intrinsic identity conditions, but still allow multiple accounts of them [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Those defending the claim that objects exist with identity conditions not imposed by us, do not have to say that there is just one account of those objects possible. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but the test question is whether the mind of God contains a single unified theory/account. Are multiple accounts the result of human inadequacy? Yes, I surmise. |
| 4719 | Maybe developments in logic and geometry have shown that the a priori may be relative [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: A weaker form of relativism holds that developments in logic, in maths and in geometry have shown how a relativised notion of the a priori is possible. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is non-Euclidean geometry, and multiple formalisations of logic. Personally I don't believe it. You can expand these subjects, and pursue whimsical speculations, but I have faith in their stable natural core. Neo-Platonism. |
| 8221 | We cannot judge the Cogito. Must we begin? Must we start from certainty? Can 'I' relate to thought? [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: There is no point in wondering whether Descartes' Cogito is right or wrong. Is it necessary "to begin", and, if so, is it necessary to start from the point of view of a subjective certainty? Can thought be the verb of an I? There is no direct answer. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice first sentence for a work of philosophy would be "It is necessary to begin". Is the Cogito the only idea that is beyond judgement? I fear a slippery slope here, which would paralyse all of our judgements - and would therefore be ridiculous. |
| 4720 | Sense-data are only safe from scepticism if they are primitive and unconceptualised [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The reason sense-data were immune from doubt was because they were so primitive; they were unstructured and below the level of conceptualisation. Once they were given structure and conceptualised, they were no longer safe from sceptical challenge. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The question of whether sense-data are conceptualised doesn't have to be all-or-nothing. As concepts creep in, so does scepticism, but so what? Sensible philosophers live with scepticism, like a mad aunt in the attic. |
| 4722 | Modern epistemology centres on debates about foundations, and about external justification [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The two dichotomies which set the agenda in contemporary epistemology are the foundationalist-coherentist debate, and the internalist-externalist debate. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. Roughly, foundationalists are often externalists (if they are empiricists), and coherentists are often internalists (esp. if they are rationalists). An eccentric combination would make a good PhD. |
| 4724 | Internalists say the reasons for belief must be available to the subject, and externalists deny this [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Internalism about justification says that the reasons one has for a belief must be in some sense available to the knowing subject, ..while externalism holds that it is possible for a person to have a justified belief without having access to the reason. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that internalists are talking about the believer being justified, and externalists talk about the belief being justified. I'm with the internalists. If this means cats don't know much, so much the worse for cats. |
| 4723 | Coherence involves support from explanation and evidence, and also probability and confirmation [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Coherentist justification is more than absence of contradictions, and will involve issues like explanatory support and evidential support, and perhaps issues about probability and confirmation too. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Something like this is obviously essential. Is the notion of 'relevance' also needed (e.g. to avoid the raven paradox of induction)? Coherence of justification will combine with correspondence for truth. |
| 4709 | Ontological relativists are anti-realists, who deny that our theories carve nature at the joints [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Ontological relativists are anti-realists in the strong sense; they hold as meaningless the view that our theories carve nature at the joints. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints my disagreement with such relativism, as it seems obvious to me that nature has 'joints', and that we would agree with any sensible alien about lots of things. |
| 4725 | Contextualism says that knowledge is relative to its context; 'empty' depends on your interests [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Contextualist about knowledge say that "to know" means different things in different context. For example, a warehouse may be empty for a furniture owner, but not for a bacteriologist or a physicist. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: There is obviously some truth in this, but we might say that 'empty' is a secondary quality, or that 'empty for furniture' is not relative. We needn't accept relativism here. |
| 8222 | Concepts are superior because they make us more aware, and change our thinking [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: If one concept is 'better' than an earlier one, it is because it makes us aware of new variations and unknown resonances, it carries out unforeseen cuttings-out, it brings forth an Event that surveys (survole) us. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I don't get much of that, but it is certainly in tune with the Kuhn/Feyerabend idea that what science can generate is fresh visions, rather than precisely expanded truths. Personally I consider it dangerous nonsense, but I thought I ought to pass it on. |
| 4732 | One may understand a realm of ideas, but be unable to judge their rationality or truth [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to conceive of one understanding the meaning of a realm of ideas, but holding that one cannot judge as to the truth or rationality of the claims made in it. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I think Davidson gives good grounds for challenging this, by doubt whether one 'conceptual scheme' can know another without grasping its rationality and truth-conditions. |
| 8218 | Other people completely revise our perceptions, because they are possible worlds [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: The concept of the Other Person as expression of a possible world in a perceptual field leads us to consider the components of this field in a new way. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that other people are possible worlds. You can give reductionist accounts of the human animal till the cows come home, but when one walk into your visual field, the mind takes off. See Crusoe and Friday. |
| 8248 | Phenomenology says thought is part of the world [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: According to phenomenology, thought depends on man's relations with the world - with which the brain is necessarily in agreement because it is drawn from these relations. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], Conclusion) | |
| A reaction: The development of externalist views of mind, arising from the Twin Earth idea, seems to provide a link to continental philosophy, where similar ideas are found in Husserl, Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. So study science, psychology, or sociology? |
| 8245 | The logical attitude tries to turn concepts into functions, when they are really forms or forces [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: Logic is reductionist not accidentally, but essentially and necessarily: following the route marked out by Frege and Russell, it wants to turn the concept into a function (...when actually a concept is a form, or a force). | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: [Last part on p.144] I'm not sure that I understand 'form or force', but the idea that concepts are mere functions is like describing something as 'transport', without saying whether it is bus/bike/train.. Is a concept a vision, or a tool? |
| 4710 | Verificationism was attacked by the deniers of the analytic-synthetic distinction, needed for 'facts' [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Verificationism came under attack from empiricists who were friendly to the banishment of traditional metaphysics, but unfriendly to the analytic-synthetic distinction, on which the idea of a 'factual statement' depended. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this move because I don't consider the 'facts' to be language-dependent. They are pre-linguistic, they outrun that capacity of our language, and they are available to animals. |
| 4717 | If we abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction, scepticism about meaning may be inevitable [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: There may be no way to avoid scepticism about meaning if you abandon the analytic-synthetic distinction in the way Quine does. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: My suspicion was always that Quine's proposal began the slippery road to hell. It appears to be pragmatists who are most drawn to Quine's idea. The proposal that all my analytic propositions could be treated as synthetic totally baffles me. |
| 4706 | Early Quine says all beliefs could be otherwise, but later he said we would assume mistranslation [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: In his earlier work, Quine defended the view that no belief (including logic) is in principle unrevisable, but in his later work (1970) he took the conservative view that we would always impute mistranslation rather than deviancy. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I take it he was influenced by Davidson's 'principle of charity'. He says that if someone asserts 'p and not-p', we would assume a misunderstanding of 'and' or 'not'. |
| 4734 | Cryptographers can recognise that something is a language, without translating it [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: It makes sense to think that one could recognise that something is a language without necessarily being able to translate it; cryptographers do this all the time. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Maybe, but cryptographers usually have a lot of context to work with. If we met extraterrestrials if might not be so clear. One can only spot patterns, and crystals have those. |
| 8243 | Atheism is the philosopher's serenity, and philosophy's achievement [Deleuze/Guattari] |
| Full Idea: It is amazing that so many philosophers take the death of God as tragic. Atheism is not a drama, but the philosopher's serenity and philosophy's achievement. | |
| From: G Deleuze / F Guattari (What is Philosophy? [1991], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that it is the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that feels the death of God as a tragedy. Modern Anglo-American philosophers are mostly pretty serene on the subject, unless, like Dennett, they go on the offensive. |
| 4727 | The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas [O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: The chief problem for fideists is other fideists who hold contrary ideas. | |
| From: Paul O'Grady (Relativism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The other problem is trying to find grounds for sticking to the object of one's faith, rather than changing from time to time. |