48 ideas
| 20388 | 'Necessary' conditions are requirements, and 'sufficient' conditions are guarantees [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: A 'necessary' condition for something's being an X is condition that all Xs must satisfy. ...A 'sufficient' condition for something's being an X is a condition that, when satisfied, guarantees that what satisfies it is an X. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: By summarising this I arrive at the requirement/guarantee formulation, which I am rather pleased with. What is required for rain, and what guarantees rain? |
| 6294 | In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God [John] |
| Full Idea: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God. | |
| From: St John (04: Gospel of St John [c.95], 01.01) | |
| A reaction: 'Word' translates the Greek word 'logos', which has come a long way since Heraclitus. The interesting contrast is with the later Platonist view that the essence of God is the Good. So is the source of everything to be found in reason, or in value? |
| 20389 | A definition of a thing gives all the requirements which add up to a guarantee of it [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: If we specify the 'necessary' conditions that are 'sufficient' for something's being an X, that is a combination of conditions such that all and only Xs meet them, which is the hallmark of a definition of X-hood. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: There are, of course, many other ways to define something, as shown in the 2.D Reason | Definition section of this database. This nicely summarises the classical view. |
| 20391 | Feminists warn that ideologies use timeless objective definitions as a tool of repression [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: According to the feminist critique, ideologies that operate as tools of political repression are falsely represented as definitions possessing a timeless, natural, asocial, universal objectivity. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this does not just apply to definitions, but to all expressions of ideologically repressive strategy. I'm trying to think of an example of a specifically feminist problem case. Davies doesn't cite anyone. |
| 8821 | Jesus said he bore witness to the truth. Pilate asked, What is truth? [John] |
| Full Idea: Jesus: I came into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? | |
| From: St John (04: Gospel of St John [c.95], 18:37-8) | |
| A reaction: There is very little explicit discussion of truth in philosophy before this exchange (apart from Ideas 251 and 586), and there isn't any real debate prior to Russell and the pragmatists. What was Pilate's tone? Did he spit at the end of his question? |
| 16588 | I prefer a lack of form to mean non-existence, than to think of some quasi-existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I sooner judged that what lacks all form does not exist, than thought of as something in between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, unformed and next to nothing. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XII.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were struck by the contrast between this remark, and the remark of Averroes (Idea 16587) that prime matter was halfway existence. Their two great authorities disagreed! This sort of thing stimulated the revival of metaphysics. |
| 22979 | Three main questions seem to be whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I am told that I can ask three sorts of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very Aristotelian approach. I am pleased to see that what it is and what sort it is are not conflated. The first one must be its individual essence, and the second its generic essence. |
| 22977 | I can distinguish different smells even when I am not experiencing them [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I can distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets, even though there is no scent at all in my nostrils. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: Augustine has a nice introspective account of how we experience memory, and identifies lots of puzzling features. I know I can identify the smell of vinegar, but I can't bring it to mind, the way I can the appearance of roses. |
| 22982 | Why does joy in my mind make me happy, but joy in my memory doesn't? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How can it be that my mind can be happy because of the joy that is in it, and yet my memory is not sad by reason of the sadness that is in it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contradict his thought in Idea 22981, that memory and mind are the same. Recall seems to be a part of consciousness which is not fully wired up to the rest of the mind. |
| 22981 | Mind and memory are the same, as shown in 'bear it in mind' or 'it slipped from mind' [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the memory are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell a person to remember something, we tell them to 'bear this in mind', and when we forget something 'it slipped out of my mind'. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This idea has become familiar in modern neuroscience, I think, presumably because we do not find distinct types of neurons for consciousness and for memory. |
| 22980 | Memory contains innumerable principles of maths, as well as past sense experiences [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these can have been conveyed to me by the bodily senses. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.12) | |
| A reaction: Even if you have a fairly empirical view of the sources of mathematics (a view with which I sympathise), it must by admitted that our endless extrapolations from the sources also reside in memory. So we remember thoughts as well as experiences. |
| 22983 | We would avoid remembering sorrow or fear if that triggered the emotions afresh [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: If we had to experience sorrow or fear every time that we mentioned these emotions, no one would be willing to speak of them. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: Remembering the death of a loved one can trigger fresh grief, but remembering their dangerous illness from which they recovered no longer contains the feeling of fear. |
| 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. It is part of my nature, but I cannot understand all that I am. Hence the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. Is the other part outside of itself, and not within it? How then can it be a part? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: He seems to understand the mind as entirely consisting of consciousness. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first inklings of the modern externalist view of the mind. |
| 22984 | Without memory I could not even speak of myself [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand the power of memory that is in myself, although without it I could not even speak of myself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.16) | |
| A reaction: Even if the self is not identical with memory, this idea seems to establish that memory is an essential aspect of the self. This point is neglected by those who see the self as an entity (the 'soul pearl') which persists through all experience. |
| 5982 | If the future does not exist, how can prophets see it? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How do prophets see the future, if there is not a future to be seen? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.17) | |
| A reaction: The answer, I suspect, is that prophets can't see the future. The prospect that the future already exists would seem to saboutage human freedom and responsibility, and point to Calvinist predestination, and even fatalism. |
| 22976 | Memories are preserved separately, according to category [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: In memory everything is preserved separately, according to its category. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the first seeds of the idea that the mind functions by means of mental files. Our memories of cats are 'close to' or 'linked to' our memories of dogs. |
| 20387 | Aesthetic experience involves perception, but also imagination and understanding [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: It was suggested that aesthetic experience isn't solely perceptual. It's infused by a cognitive but non-conceptual process described by Kant as involving the free play of the imagination and the understanding. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This fits literature very well, painting quite well, and music hardly at all. |
| 20385 | The faculty of 'taste' was posited to explain why only some people had aesthetic appreciation [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: To explain why not everyone who is prepared to encounter a thing's aesthetic properties can recognise them, ...eighteenth century theorists posited the existence of a special faculty of aesthetic perception, that of taste. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: But there seem to be two aspects to taste - first the capacity to enjoy some sorts of art, and second the ability to discriminate the good from the bad. The latter is 'standards' of taste (Hume's title). Do non-musical people lack taste? |
| 20386 | The sublime is negative in awareness of insignificance, and positive in showing understanding [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: An example of the sublime is the vastness of the night sky. ...It includes negative feelings of insignificance in the face of nature's indifference, power and magnitude, but is positive in that we are capable of comprehending such matters. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The negative part seems to be a very intellectual experience, with close links to religion, and may be the experience that leads to deism (belief in God's indifference). |
| 20384 | The idea that art forms are linked into a single concept began in the 1740s [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The first to link the art forms together explicitly and to separate them from other disciplines and activities were the authors of encyclopedias and books in the 1740s and 1750s. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing that no individual seems to get the credit (or blame). Presumably our modern Aesthetics (applied to art) couldn't exist before this move was made - and yet there is plenty of aesthetic discussion in early Greek philosophy. |
| 20390 | Defining art as representation or expression or form were all undermined by the avant-garde [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The avant-garde art of the twentieth century played a significant role in defeating definitions that had prevailed in earlier times, such as ones maintaining that art is representation, expression or significant form | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I really think the first rule of philosophical aesthetics is 'ignore Marcel Duchamp'. We wouldn't give up our idea of philosophy if someone managed to publish a long string of expletives in a philosophy journal. Would we?? |
| 20392 | 'Aesthetic functionalism' says art is what is intended to create aesthetic experiences [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: 'Aesthetic functionalism' maintains that something is an artwork if it is intended to provide the person who contemplates it for its own sake with an aesthetic experience of a significant magnitude on the basis of its aesthetic features. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [Beardsley is cited as having this view] For this you need to know what an aesthetic 'feature' is, and you'd have to indepdently recognise aesthetic experience. |
| 20405 | Music may be expressive by being 'associated' with other emotional words or events [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: One view explains music's expressiveness as 'associative'. Through being regularly associated with emotionally charged words or events, particular musical ideas become associated with emotions or moods. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a more promising theory. I take the feeling in music to be parasitic on other feelings we have, and other triggers that evoke them. I'm particularly struck with story-telling (which Levinson and Robinson also like). |
| 20403 | It seems unlikely that sad music expresses a composer's sadness; it takes ages to write [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The 'expression theory' holds that if music is sad that is because it expresses the composer's sadness, ...but composers take a long time composing sad works, and may even been gleeful at receiving payment for it. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Pretty conclusive. I see composing as like acting. Just as you can put on a happy or sad face, so a composer can discover music that feels sad or happy. Three movement sonatas don't fit expression at all. |
| 20393 | The 'institutional' theory says art is just something appropriately placed in the 'artworld' [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The 'institutional' theory says to be an artwork, an artwork must be appropriately placed within a web of practices, roles and frameworks that comprise an informally organised institution, the artworld. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [He cites George Dickie] This theory seems to entirely developed to cope with the defiant gesture of Marcel Duchamp. Once I am an established artist, I have the authority to label anything I like as a work of art. Silly. |
| 20402 | Music is too definite to be put into words (not too indefinite!) [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Mendelssohn said that what music expresses is not too indefinite to put into words but, on the contrary, it is too definite. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Not sure whether that is true, but it is a lovely remark. It certainly challenges the naive philosophical view that words are the most precise mode of expression. |
| 20395 | The title of a painting can be vital, and the artist decrees who the portrait represents [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The title as given by the artist is something we might need to know (Brueghel's 'Icarus', for example), ...and if a painting depicts one of two twins, it will be the artist's intention that settles which one it is. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Those two points strike me as conclusively in favour of the importance of an artist's perceived intentions. |
| 20396 | We must know what the work is meant to be, to evaluate the artist's achievement [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Learning that a work is a copy of an earlier work, or is done in the style of some other artist, is relevant to an evaluation of what its creator has achieved. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: A simple but powerful point. We evaluate a forgery as an achievement, and the original plate of a great print as the focus of the achievement. We can assess the achievement of a poem in any printed copy. But what about perfect painting replicas? |
| 20399 | Intentionalism says either meaning just is intention, or ('moderate') meaning is successful intention [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: 'Actual intentionalism' holds that work's meaning is what its author intended, ...while 'moderate actual intentionalism' allows that the author's intention determines the work's meaning only if that intention is carried through successfully. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Noel Carroll for the moderate version] D.H. Lawrence, probably with a dose of Freud, said 'trust the work, not the artist' (of Moby Dick, I think). The thought is that authors only half know intentions, and works reveal them. |
| 20401 | The meaning is given by the audience's best guess at the author's intentions [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'hypothetical intentionalist', the work's meaning is determined by the intentions the audience is best justified in attributing to the author, whether or not these are the ones the author actually had. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: [Nehamas, Levinson and Jenefer Robinson are cited] This opens the door for psychiatric interpretations of 'Hamlet', and so on. The experts disagree over the nature of the audience needed to do the job. |
| 20397 | If we could perfectly clone the Mona Lisa, the original would still be special [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: If we could duplicate 'Mona Lisa', we're likely to be concerned to track the original and keep it separate from its clones, even if we judge that the clone isn't inferior to the original when the goal is art appreciation. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: But why? Is it just a sentimental attachment to what Leonardo worked on? Does the original manuscript of a work of literature have the same importance? We treasure such things, but not for aesthetic reasons. |
| 20398 | Art that is multiply instanced may require at least one instance [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Some multiply instanced artworks, such as novel and poems, must have at least one instance. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a comment on the idea that all artworks, even oil paintings and buildings are potentially multiply instanced (so the work is the type - Wollheim's view, not one of the tokens). |
| 20404 | Music isn't just sad because it makes the listener feel sad [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The 'arousal' theory says music is sad because it moves the hearer to sadness, ...but this seems to get things back to front, because we normally think it is because the music is sad that it moves the listener to sadness. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: The objection is right. If Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' always makes me feel sad (because it is so hopelessly optimistic), then that makes the music sad. Is the theory saying that there are no feelings in the music? |
| 22705 | If the depiction of evil is glorified, that is an artistic flaw [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: One case when the depiction of immorality becomes an artistic flaw …is when it is presented in brutal detail in a way that glorifies it. The celebration of evil corrodes the work's artistic value. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 8.7) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't allow for the case where the evil is celebrated in one part of a novel, yet the novel as a whole does not endorse the evil. The Marquis de Sade seems to have fully celebrated what we take to be evil. |
| 22707 | It is an artistic defect if excessive moral outrage distorts the story, and narrows our sympathies [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: The positive moral stance of a story can be an artistic defect where it shapes the story in an inappropriate fashion. If it displays disproportionate moral outrage, …it reveals a lack of toleration, compassion, or insight into its subject-matter. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 8.7) | |
| A reaction: There could be narrative irony in a story told by an angry and puritanical person, which continually condemns wickedness, with the reader expected to have a more tolerant attitude. Hard to think of any examples of this problem. |
| 22704 | Immorality may or may not be an artistic defect [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: Immorality in art is sometimes an artistic defect and sometimes not. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 8.7) | |
| A reaction: Davies seems to avoid the 'immoralist' view, that immorality in a work of art can sometimes be a strength. A sharp distinction is needed, I think, between the morality of what is depicted, and the morality of the whole artwork. |
| 22706 | A work which seeks approval for immorality, but alienates the audience, is a failure [Davies,S] |
| Full Idea: A work that looks for the audience's sympathetic approval and alienates them instead, because it's both morally repulsive and incoherent in what it requires them to suppose, isn't an artistic success. | |
| From: Stephen Davies (The Philosophy of Art (2nd ed) [2016], 8.7) | |
| A reaction: The implication seems to be that works are only successful if they achieve what the creator consciously intended. Lawrence said trust the novel, not the novelist. Milton's Satan is a famous example of heroism not intended by the author. |
| 22985 | Everyone wants happiness [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.20) | |
| A reaction: His concept of happiness is, of course, religious. Occasionally you meet habitual grumblers about life who give the impression that they are only happy when they are discontented. So happiness is achieving desires, not feeling good? |
| 5984 | Maybe time is an extension of the mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I begin to wonder whether time is an extension of the mind itself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.26) | |
| A reaction: The observation that the mind creates a 'specious present' (spreading experience out over a short fraction of second) reinforces this. Personally I like David Marshall's proposal that consciousness is entirely memory, which would deny this idea. |
| 22888 | To be aware of time it can only exist in the mind, as memory or anticipation [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: Augustine answers that for us to be aware of time it must exist only in the mind, …and the difference between past and future is just the difference between memory and anticipation. | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: This is an extreme idealist view. Are we to say that the past consists only of what can be remembered, and the future only of what is anticipated? Absurd anti-realism, in my view. Where do his concepts come from, asks Le Poidevin. |
| 5980 | How can ten days ahead be a short time, if it doesn't exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: A short time ago or a short time ahead we might put at ten days, but how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, which gets at the paradoxical nature of time very nicely. How can it be long, but non-existent? We could break the paradox by concluding '..and therefore time does exist', even though we can't see how. |
| 5979 | If the past is no longer, and the future is not yet, how can they exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Of the three divisions of time, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: This is the oldest bewilderment about time, which naturally leads us to the thought that time cannot actually 'exist'. The remark implies that at least 'now' is safe, but that also succumbs to paradox pretty quickly. |
| 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that the whole of the current year is present, and if the whole of it is not present, the year is not present. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: Another nice way of presenting the paradox of time. We are in a particular year, so it has to be real. |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind. |
| 5983 | I disagree with the idea that time is nothing but cosmic movement [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I do not agree. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.22) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to say that you either take time or movement as axiomatic, and describe one in terms of the other, but you are stuck unable to give the initial statement of the axiom without mentioning the second property you were saving for later. |
| 5977 | Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The fact that heaven and earth are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; ..the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.04) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that the underlying matter is eternal (as in various conservation laws, such as that of energy), and that all change is in the form rather than the substance. |
| 22887 | If God existed before creation, why would a perfect being desire to change things? [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: If nothing existed by God before creation, then what could have happened to, or within, God that led God to decide to create the universe at that particular moment? Why would an eternal or perfect being want or need to change? | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: I suppose you could reply that change is superior to stasis, but then why did God delay the creation? |
| 5976 | If God is outside time in eternity, can He hear prayers? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.01) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the single most difficult and most elusive question about the nature of a supreme divine being. If the being is trapped in time, as we are, it is greatly diminished, and if it is outside, it is hard to see how it could be a participant. |