41 ideas
| 21474 | Metaphysics studies the inexplicable ends of explanation [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The plummet touches the bottom of the sea now at a greater depth, now at a less, but is bound to reach it somewhere sooner or later; the study of this inexplicable devolves upon metaphysics. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:1) | |
| A reaction: This definition of metapysics contains the germ of despair about the subject. Does he hope that metaphysicians can explain what nobody else can? |
| 5784 | In its primary and formal sense, 'true' applies to propositions, not beliefs [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We call a belief true when it is belief in a true proposition, ..but it is to propositions that the primary formal meanings of 'truth' and 'falsehood' apply. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. A proposition such as 'it is raining' would need a date-and-time stamp to be a candidate for truth, and an indexical statement such as 'I am ill' would need to be asserted by a person. Of course, books can contain unread truths. |
| 5777 | The truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I take it as evident that the truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
| A reaction: A nice bold commitment to a controversial idea. The traditional objection is to ask how you are going to formulate the 'facts' except in terms of more beliefs, so you ending up comparing beliefs. Facts are a metaphysical commitment, not an acquaintance. |
| 5783 | Propositions of existence, generalities, disjunctions and hypotheticals make correspondence tricky [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence of proposition and fact grows increasingly complicated as we pass to more complicated types of propositions: existence-propositions, general propositions, disjunctive and hypothetical propositions, and so on. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: An important point. Truth must not just work for 'it is raining', but also for maths, logic, tautologies, laws etc. This is why so many modern philosophers have retreated to deflationary and minimal accounts of truth, which will cover all cases. |
| 21470 | For me the objective thing-in-itself is the will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Thing in itself signifies that which exists independently of our perception, that which actually is; …to Kant it was '= x'; to me it is will. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IV:61) | |
| A reaction: Does he mean his own will, which is plausible since he has direct experience of it, or is he referring will in general - whatever that is? |
| 2526 | Philosophers regularly confuse failures of imagination with insights into necessity [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The besetting foible of philosophers is mistaking failures of imagination for insights into necessity. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) |
| 21479 | Knowledge is not power! Ignorant people possess supreme authority [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge is power. The devil it is! One man can have a great deal of knowledge without its giving him the least power, while another possesses supreme authority but next to no knowledge. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:43) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to Bacon's famous adage. Bacon may be right about military affairs, but not about politics. |
| 5780 | The three questions about belief are its contents, its success, and its character [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There are three issues about belief: 1) the content which is believed, 2) the relation of the content to its 'objective' - the fact which makes it true or false, and 3) the element which is belief, as opposed to consideration or doubt or desire. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: The correct answers to the questions (trust me) are that propositions are the contents, the relation aimed at is truth, which is a 'metaphysical ideal' of correspondence to facts, and belief itself is an indefinable feeling. See Hume, Idea 2208. |
| 21476 | A priori propositions are those we could never be seriously motivated to challenge [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: A dictate of reason is the name we give to certain propositions which we hold to be true without investigation, and of which we think ourselves so firmly convinced we should be incapable of seriously testing them even if we wanted to. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:12) | |
| A reaction: This is closer to the cautious way modern thinkers are inclined to express the idea. Even Quine would be reasonably happy with this. |
| 2523 | That every mammal has a mother is a secure reality, but without foundations [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Naturalistic philosophers should look with favour on the finite regress that peters out without foundations or thresholds or essences. That every mammal has a mother does not imply an infinite regress. Mammals have secure reality without foundations. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: I love this thought, which has permeated my thinking quite extensively. Logicians are terrified of regresses, but this may be because they haven't understood the vagueness of language. |
| 21473 | All knowledge and explanation rests on the inexplicable [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The fundament upon which all our knowledge and learning rests is the inexplicable. It is to this that every explanation, through few or many intermediary stages, leads. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:1) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously true, and the only question is whether it is a necessary or a contingent truth. |
| 2528 | Does consciousness need the concept of consciousness? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: You can't have consciousness until you have the concept of consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If you read enough Dennett this begins to sound vaguely plausible, but next day it sounds like an absurd claim. 'You can't see a tree until you have the concept of a tree?' When do children acquire the concept of consciousness? Are apes non-conscious? |
| 2525 | Maybe language is crucial to consciousness [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I continue to argue for a crucial role of natural language in generating the central features of consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: 'Central features' might beg the question. Dennett does doubt the consciousness of animals (1996). As I stare out of my window, his proposal seems deeply counterintuitive. How could language 'generate' consciousness? Would loss of language create zombies? |
| 21478 | Half our thinking is unconscious, and we reach conclusions while unaware of premises [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: One might almost believe that half our thinking takes place unconsciously.. Usually we arrive at a conclusion without having clearly thought about the premises which lead to it. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:40) | |
| A reaction: Schopenhauer was a major pioneer of this crucial idea. I'm beginning to think it is much greater than a half. |
| 2527 | Unconscious intentionality is the foundation of the mind [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: It is on the foundation of unconscious intentionality that the higher-order complexities developed that have culminated in what we call consciousness. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right to me. Pace Searle, I have no problem with unconscious intentionality, and the general homuncular picture of low levels building up to complex high levels, which suddenly burst into the song and dance of consciousness. |
| 21477 | We don't control our own thinking [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts come not when we want but when they want. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:37) | |
| A reaction: One of my favourite Nietzsche ideas originated in Schopenhauer! |
| 5778 | If we object to all data which is 'introspective' we will cease to believe in toothaches [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If privacy is the main objection to introspective data, we shall have to include among such data all sensations; a toothache, for example, is essentially private; a dentist may see the bad condition of your tooth, but does not feel your ache. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §II) | |
| A reaction: Russell was perhaps the first to see why eliminative behaviourism is a non-starter as a theory of mind. Mental states are clearly a cause of behaviour, so they can't be the same thing. We might 'eliminate' mental states by reducing them, though. |
| 2530 | Could a robot be made conscious just by software? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: How could you make a robot conscious? The answer, I think, is to be found in software. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to strong AI, though Dennett is keen to point out that brains are the only plausible implementation of such software. Most find his claim baffling. |
| 5779 | There are distinct sets of psychological and physical causal laws [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There do seem to be psychological and physical causal laws which are distinct from each other. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §II) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the essence of 'property dualism'. Reductive physicalists (like myself) say there is no distinction. Davidson, usually considered a property dualist, claims there are no psycho-physical laws. Russell notes that reduction may be possible. |
| 2524 | A language of thought doesn't explain content [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Postulating a language of thought is a postponement of the central problems of content ascription, not a necessary first step. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: If the idea of content is built on the idea of representation, then you need some account of what the brain does with its representations. |
| 21475 | All of our concepts are borrowed from perceptual knowledge [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The entire property of a concept consists in nothing more than what has been begged and borrowed from perceptual knowledge, which is the true and inexhaustible source of all insight. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], I:9) | |
| A reaction: Schopenhauer is usually seen as a sort of idealist, but this is a full endorsement of the empirical view of concepts, to which I largely subscribe. Note that he talks of 'knowledge', rather than of 'experience'. |
| 2529 | Maybe there can be non-conscious concepts (e.g. in bees) [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Concepts do not require consciousness. As Jaynes says, the bee has a concept of a flower, but not a conscious concept. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Brainchildren [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Does the flower have a concept of rain? Rain plays a big functional role in its existence. It depends, alas, on what we mean by a 'concept'. |
| 5781 | Our important beliefs all, if put into words, take the form of propositions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The important beliefs, even if they are not the only ones, are those which, if rendered into explicit words, take the form of a proposition. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: This assertion is close to the heart of the twentieth century linking of ontology and epistemology to language. It is open to challenges. Why is non-propositional belief unimportant? Do dogs have important beliefs? Can propositions exist non-verbally? |
| 5782 | A proposition expressed in words is a 'word-proposition', and one of images an 'image-proposition' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I shall distinguish a proposition expressed in words as a 'word-proposition', and one consisting of images as an 'image-proposition'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is good, though it raises the question of what exactly an 'image' is when it is non-visual, as when a dog believes its owner called. This distinction prevents us from regarding all knowledge and ontology as verbal in form. |
| 5776 | A proposition is what we believe when we believe truly or falsely [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A proposition may be defined as: what we believe when we believe truly or falsely. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
| A reaction: If we define belief as 'commitment to truth', Russell's last six words become redundant. "Propositions are the contents of beliefs", it being beliefs which are candidates for truth, not propositions. (Russell agrees, on p.308!) |
| 21372 | Aesthetics concerns how we can take pleasure in an object, with no reference to the will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The central problem of aesthetics is how satisfaction with and pleasure in an object are possible without any reference thereof to our willing. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], II:415), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 6 'Aesthetic' | |
| A reaction: This does seem a good distinction. We can divide pleasures into willed and unwilled. Compare thinking that some remote stranger (in a photograph) is very beautiful, with falling in love with someone. |
| 21488 | The beautiful is a perception of Plato's Forms, which eliminates the will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: In the beautiful we always perceive the intrinsic and primary form of animate and inanimate nature, that is to say Plato's Ideas thereof. …When an aesthetic perception occurs the will completely vanishes from consciousness. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XIX:205) | |
| A reaction: An essential Schopenauer idea. Iris Murdoch said something similar. |
| 21483 | Man is essentially a dreadful wild animal [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Man is at bottom a dreadful wild animal. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:114) | |
| A reaction: As an example he cites the slave owners in the United States. |
| 21466 | Pleasure is weaker, and pain stronger, than we expect [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: As a rule we find pleasure much less pleasurable, pain much more painful than we expected. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:149) | |
| A reaction: Never go on holiday with Schopenhauer. This is more accurate about pain, I think. |
| 21484 | A man's character can be learned from a single characteristic action [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: As a botanist can recognise the whole plant from one leaf, …so an accurate knowledge of a man's character can be arrived at from a single characteristic action. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:118) | |
| A reaction: Very true. Great novelists specialise in such observations. One word can reveal a character, as well as one action. |
| 21482 | The five Chinese virtues: pity, justice, politeness, wisdom, honesty [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The Chinese name five cardinal virtues: pity, justice, politeness, wisdom and honesty. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:110) | |
| A reaction: I like politeness being on the list, though it seems rather superficial to be a virtue of character. Respect would be better. |
| 21481 | Buddhists wisely start with the cardinal vices [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Because of their profounder ethical and metaphysical insight, the Buddhists start not with the cardinal virtues but with cardinal vices, …which are lust, sloth, wrath and avarice (and maybe hatred). | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], VIII:110) | |
| A reaction: This may be right. Our lives are affected much more by the vices of others than by their virtues, and most virtuous behaviour aims at rectifying the bad effects of other people's vices. |
| 21480 | Boredom is only felt by those clever enough to need activity [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Only in the cleverest animals such as dogs and apes does the need for activity, and with that boredom, make itself felt. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], III:50) | |
| A reaction: But it is much more frequently young creatures, of almost any kind, that seek constant activity, and get continually restless. The most active adults need not be the cleverest. |
| 21469 | Human life is a mistake, shown by boredom, which is direct awareness of the fact [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Human life must be some kind of mistake. ...Boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XI:146) | |
| A reaction: I think it is a good advertisement for existentialism that it makes something more out of boredom than Schopenhauer does. |
| 21485 | The state only exists to defend citizens, from exterior threats, and from one another [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The state is essentially no more than an institution for the protection of the whole against attacks from without, and the protection of its individual members from attacks by one another. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:123) | |
| A reaction: He then has a swipe at Hegel for his inflated idea of the importance of the state. Schopenhauer is close to Hobbes on this one. |
| 21486 | Poverty and slavery are virtually two words for the same thing [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Poverty and slavery are only two forms - on might almost say two words for - the same thing, the essence of which is that a man's energies are expended for the most part not on his own behalf but on that of others. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:125) | |
| A reaction: The modern world is full of people who righteously despise slavery, but think only of the poor that it serves them right. |
| 21487 | The freedom of the press to sell poison outweighs its usefulness [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Freedom of the press must be regarded as a permit to sell poison. …I very much fear, therefore, that the dangers of press freedom outweigh its usefulness. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], IX:127) | |
| A reaction: On the whole the modern world disagrees with this view, but watching the popular press in Britain in the last twenty years has made me sympathise with Schopenhauer. |
| 21471 | If suicide was quick and easy, most people would have done it by now [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps there is no one alive who would not already have put an end to his life if this end were something purely negative, a sudden cessation of existence. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XIII:158) | |
| A reaction: Nonsense, on the whole, but it is a nice question how many people would do it if it only took a painless instant. |
| 21467 | Would humanity still exist if sex wasn't both desired and pleasurable? [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: If the act of procreation were neither the outcome of a desire nor accompanied by feelings of pleasure, but a matter to be decided on the basis of purely rational considerations, is it likely the human race would still exist? | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:156) | |
| A reaction: This is almost certainly correct in the modern world. In tougher economic circumstances people seem desperate to have children who will help them survive. |
| 21472 | Only religion introduces serious issues to uneducated people [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Religion is the only means of introducing some notion of the high significance of life into the uncultivated heads of the masses. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XV:174) | |
| A reaction: Cf Philip Larkin's poem 'Church Going'. On the whole Schopenhauer didn't actually believe that our lives had any 'high significance'. |
| 21468 | The Creator created the possibilities for worlds, so should have made a better one than this possible [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The Creator created not only the world, but also created possibility itself; therefore he should have created the possibility of a better world than this one. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], XII:156) | |
| A reaction: This is explicitly a response to Leibniz's claim that the Creator selected the best of all possible worlds from the available options. The Euthyphro Question hovers here: must the Creator accept what is possible (the platonic view), or create possibility? |