31 ideas
| 7113 | Phenomenology assumes that all consciousness is of something [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The essential principle of phenomenology is that 'all consciousness is consciousness of something'. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: This idea is found well before Husserl, in Schopenhauer (Idea 4166). It seems to contradict a thought such as Locke's (Idea 1202), that self-awareness is a separate and distinct criterion for personal identity. Sartre gives a nice account. |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b | |
| A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful. |
| 8915 | How we refer to abstractions is much less clear than how we refer to other things [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: It is unclear how we manage to refer determinately to abstract entities in a sense in which it is not unclear how we manage to refer determinately to other things. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Ex') | |
| A reaction: This is where problems of abstraction overlap with problems about reference in language. Can we have a 'baptism' account of each abstraction (even very large numbers)? Will descriptions do it? Do abstractions collapse into particulars when we refer? |
| 7112 | The Cogito depends on a second-order experience, of being conscious of consciousness [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: We must remember that all authors who have described the Cogito have presented it as a reflective operation, i.e. as second-order. This Cogito is performed by a consciousness directed towards consciousness, which takes consciousness as its object. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: Sartre is raising the nice question of whether the Cogito still works for first-order consciousness, which attends totally to external objects. He claims that it doesn't. Contrast Russell, who says (Idea 5380) that it only works when it is first-order! |
| 7114 | The consciousness that says 'I think' is not the consciousness that thinks [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The consciousness that says 'I think' is precisely not the consciousness that thinks. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: All parties seem to be agreed that if we are going to introspect in search of our own ego, we must distinguish between the mental act of instrospection and the mental act of applying the mind to the world. Each gives a different result. |
| 7119 | Is the Cogito reporting an immediate experience of doubting, or the whole enterprise of doubting? [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: When Descartes says 'I doubt therefore I am', is he talking about the spontaneous doubt that reflective consciousness grasps in its instantaneous character, or is he talking of the enterprise of doubting? This ambiguity can lead to serious errors. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (B)) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. The obvious response is that it is about the immediate experience, but that leads to the problem of an instantaneous ego, which can't be justified over time. The 'enterprise' gives an enduring ego, but it is a more intellectual concept. |
| 7122 | We can never, even in principle, grasp other minds, because the Ego is self-conceiving [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The Ego can be conceived only through itself and this is why we cannot grasp the consciousness of another (for this reason alone, and not because bodies separate us). | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This makes telepathy a logical impossibility, and the body the only possible route for the communication between two minds. But, is Sartre is right, how do bodily events penetrate the inturned world of the Ego? |
| 7125 | A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Conc (1)) | |
| A reaction: This is why we don't know what it is like to be a bat. This seems right, though it looks like a contingent truth, and yet Sartre seems to offer it as a necessary truth. Can God conceive of my consciousness? |
| 7108 | The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The unity of the thousand active consciousnesses through which I have added two and two to make four, is the transcendent object '2+2=4'. Without the permanence of this eternal truth, it would be impossible to conceive of a real unity of mind. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of externalism, here presented as a Platonic attitude to arithmetic, rather than being about water or gold. He claims that internalist attitudes to unity are fictions. I am inclined to think he is wrong, and that unity is biological. |
| 7111 | Consciousness exists as consciousness of itself [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The existence of consciousness is an absolute, because consciousness is consciousness of itself; the type of existence that consciousness has is that it is consciousness of itself. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
| A reaction: I find this unconvincing. Anyone analysis the nature of the mind should think as much about animal minds as human minds. It seems obvious to me that there is likely to be an animal consciousness which is entirely of environment and its body. |
| 22226 | Since we are a consciousness, Sartre entirely rejected the unconscious mind [Sartre, by Daigle] |
| Full Idea: Sartre refused, denied and fought against the unconscious. Since we are consciousness, there cannot be such a thing as unconsciousness. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1 | |
| A reaction: The modern view is increasingly opposed to this, as neuroscience and psychology uncover hidden motives etc. Sartre's view is still legitimate, though. An unconscious motive is not more my motive than a law of the land is part of me? |
| 7107 | Intentionality defines, transcends and unites consciousness [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is defined by intentionality. Through intentionality it transcends itself, it unifies itself by going outside itself. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
| A reaction: The standard view for a hundred years was Brentano's idea that intentionality defines the mind. Qualia are the modern rival. If I had to choose I think I would go for intentionality, but they may be naturally and metaphysically inseparable. |
| 7109 | If you think of '2+2=4' as the content of thought, the self must be united transcendentally [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: It is possible that those who think that '2 and 2 make 4' is the content of my representations may be forced to resort to a transcendental and subjective principle of unification - in other words, the I. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that thoughts themselves unite the mind, externally. If you think of thoughts as internal, you must resort to a transcendental fiction to unify the mind. Personally I think the mind is inherently unified by brain structures. |
| 7106 | The Ego is not formally or materially part of consciousness, but is outside in the world [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: I should like to show here that the Ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness; it is outside, in the world; it is a being in the world, like the Ego of another. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This idea is the germ of what has got modern externalists about the mind (see quotations from Mark Rowlands) interested in Sartre. Personally I think he is wrong, and the Ego is a part of consciousness. It doesn't, though, have sharp boundaries. |
| 7117 | How could two I's, the reflective and the reflected, communicate with each other? [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: If the 'I' is part of consciousness, there will be two I's: the reflective and the reflected. ...but it is unacceptable for any communication to be established between the reflective I and the reflected I, if they are real elements of consciousness. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: If we accept that there are two orders of consciousness (reflective, about itself, and reflected, about the world) it seems reasonable to say that there cannot be an 'I' in both of them. A nice, and intriguing, argument. |
| 7123 | Knowing yourself requires an exterior viewpoint, which is necessarily false [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: 'To know oneself well' is inevitably to look at oneself from the point of view of someone else, in other words from a point of view that is necessarily false. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
| A reaction: (This is because the Ego cannot be known from the outside). I agree with Russell that the self is most evident when we are engaged with the world, which implies that you can only acquire self-knowledge by studying those engagements. |
| 22225 | My ego is more intimate to me, but not more certain than other egos [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: My I, in efffect, is no more certain for consciousness than the I of other men. It is only more intimate. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], p.104), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1 | |
| A reaction: Not sure how to assess this. Other people seem just as real as I do, when I encounter them, as friend or as foe. And in dealing with them we act as if dealing with their Self (rather than their legs, say). So this idea seems a good one. |
| 7124 | The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
| A reaction: He denies that we know the Ego when engaged with the world, and agrees with Hume that the ego can't be directly known. All that is left is this, which seems to be introspection 'out of the corner of your eye'. Not persuasive. |
| 7116 | When we are unreflective (as when chasing a tram) there is no 'I' [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: There is no 'I' on the unreflected level. When I run after a tram, ...there is no I. There is a consciousness of the tram-needing-to-be-caught, and a non-positional consciousness of consciousness. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: Russell (Idea 5380) says exactly the opposite. My sympathies are more with Russell. I don't just focus on the tram, I focus on the relation between myself and the tram, and that includes my need to catch it, as well as my body. |
| 7120 | It is theoretically possible that the Ego consists entirely of false memories [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: One cannot rule out the metaphysical hypothesis that my Ego is not composed of elements that have existed in reality (ten years or one second ago), but is merely constituted by false memories. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
| A reaction: (He mentions the evil demon as a source). The problem that false memories (such as George IV 'remembering' he was at Waterloo, when he wasn't) is well known. But this raises the possibility of all memories being false, yet constituting the person. |
| 7110 | If the 'I' is transcendental, it unnecessarily splits consciousness in two [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The superfluous transcendental 'I' is actually a hindrance. If it existed, it would violently separate consciousness from itself, it would divide it, slicing through consciousness like an opaque blade. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
| A reaction: I see no a priori reason why consciousness should not be split in two, if that's how it is. Personally I am happy with a fairly traditional Cartesian view, that the self is the will and understanding, and the rest of consciousness is its working material. |
| 7115 | Maybe it is the act of reflection that brings 'me' into existence [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Might it not be precisely the reflective act that brings the me into being in reflected consciousness? | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
| A reaction: He admits some sort of self a second-order entity, but this is 'transcendental', and essentially an illusion. This elimination of the first-order self clears the way for the existential view, that we can create whatever self we want. I disagree. |
| 7121 | The Ego only appears to reflection, so it is cut off from the World [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The Ego is an object that appears only to reflection, and is thereby radically cut off from the World. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of Sartre's attack (in 1937) on the Ego, paving the way for the freedom of existentialism. Personally I don't accept this picture of the Ego as a second-order fiction. My Ego is part of my relationship with the World. |
| 8917 | The Way of Abstraction used to say an abstraction is an idea that was formed by abstracting [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The simplest version of the Way of Abstraction would be to say that an object is abstract if it is a referent of an idea that was formed by abstraction, but this is wedded to an outmoded philosophy of mind. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Abs') | |
| A reaction: This presumably refers to Locke, who wields the highly ambiguous term 'idea'. But if we sort out that ambiguity (by using modern talk of mental events, concepts and content?) we might reclaim the view. But do we have a 'genetic fallacy' here? |
| 8912 | Nowadays abstractions are defined as non-spatial, causally inert things [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: If any characterization of the abstract deserves to be regarded as the modern standard one, it is this: an abstract entity is a non-spatial (or non-spatiotemporal) causally inert thing. This view presents a number of perplexities... | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Non-spat') | |
| A reaction: As indicated in other ideas, the problem is that some abstractions do seem to be located somewhere in space-time, and to have come into existence, and to pass away. I like 'to exist is to have causal powers'. See Ideas 5992 and 8300. |
| 8913 | Chess may be abstract, but it has existed in specific space and time [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The natural view of chess is not that it is a non-spatiotemporal mathematical object, but that it was invented at a certain time and place, that it has changed over the years, and so on. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Non-spat') | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being undeniable, and being an incredibly important point. Logicians seem to want to subsume things like games into the highly abstract world of logic and numbers. In fact the direction of explanation should be reversed. |
| 8914 | Sets are said to be abstract and non-spatial, but a set of books can be on a shelf [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: It is thought that sets are abstract, abstract objects do not exist in space, so sets must not exist in space. But it is not unnatural to say that a set of books is located on a certain shelf in the library. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Non-spat') | |
| A reaction: The arguments against non-spatiality of abstractions seem to me to be conclusive. Not being able to assign a location to the cosine function is on a par with not knowing where my thoughts are located in my brain. |
| 8916 | Conflating abstractions with either sets or universals is a big claim, needing a big defence [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: The Way of Conflation account of abstractions (identifying them sets or with universals) is now relatively rare. The claim sets or universals are the only abstract objects would amount to a substantive metaphysical thesis, in need of defence. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Con') | |
| A reaction: If you produce a concept like 'mammal' by psychological abstraction, you do seem to end up with a set of things with shared properties, so this approach is not silly. I can't think of any examples of abstractions which are not sets or universals. |
| 8918 | Functional terms can pick out abstractions by asserting an equivalence relation [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: On Frege's suggestion, functional terms that pick out abstract expressions (such as 'direction' or 'equinumeral') have a typical form of f(a) = f(b) iff aRb, where R is an equivalence relation, a relation which is reflexive, symmetric and transitive. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Abs') | |
| A reaction: [Wright and Hale are credited with the details] This has become the modern orthodoxy among the logically-minded. Examples of R are 'parallel' or 'just as many as'. It picks out an 'aspect', which isn't far from the old view. |
| 8919 | Abstraction by equivalence relationships might prove that a train is an abstract entity [Rosen] |
| Full Idea: It seems possible to define a train in terms of its carriages and the connection relationship, which would meet the equivalence account of abstraction, but demonstrate that trains are actually abstract. | |
| From: Gideon Rosen (Abstract Objects [2001], 'Way of Abs') | |
| A reaction: [Compressed. See article for more detail] A tricky example, but a suggestive line of criticism. If you find two physical objects which relate to one another reflexively, symmetrically and transitively, they may turn out to be abstract. |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive' | |
| A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein? |