20 ideas
21916 | Philosophers can't be religious, and don't need to be; philosophy is perilous but free [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: No one who is religious attains to philosophy; he does not need it. No one who really philosophizes is religious; he walks without leading-strings, perilously but free. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], II p.241-3), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
A reaction: This is a direct reply to the opposite view expressed by Schleiermacher (and quoted by Lewis). I would say that to be a philosopher one must give priority to the philosophy, ahead of any religious beliefs. Thinking must be free. |
16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'. |
16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' arise, in practice, in four ways: as generalisations of disjunctions; when an instance suggests compatibility of terms we thought incompatible; as steps to a generalisation; and in cases of imperfect memory. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Modern logicians seem to have no interest in the question Russell is investigating here, but I love his attempt, however vague the result, to connect logic to real experience and thought. |
16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
Full Idea: The non-mental world can be completely described without the use of any logical word, …but when it comes to the mental world, there are facts which cannot be mentioned without the use of logical words. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: He adds that logical words are not needed for physics, but are needed for psychology. I love Russell's interest in the psychology of logic (in defiance of the anti-psychologism of Frege). See also the ideas of Robert Hanna. |
2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
Full Idea: Without the law of excluded middle, we could not ask the questions that give rise to discoveries. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], c.p.88) |
16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
Full Idea: A disjunction is the verbal expression of indecision, or, if a question, of the desire to reach a decision. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Russell is fishing here for Grice's conversational implicature. If you want to assert a simple proposition, you don't introduce it into an irrelevant disjunction, because that would have a particular expressive purpose. |
16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
Full Idea: Psychologically, 'or' corresponds to a state of hesitation. A dog waits at a fork in the road, to see which way you are going. For crumbs on a windowsill, birds behave in a manner we would express by 'shall I be brave, or go hungry?'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I love two facts here - first, that Russell wants to link the connective to the psychology of experience, and second, that a great logician wants to connect his logic to the minds of animals. |
16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
Full Idea: When we assert 'p or q' we are in a state which is derivative from two previous states, and we express this state, not something about the world. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: His example: at a junction this road or that road goes to Oxford, but the world only contains the roads, not some state of 'this or that road'. He doesn't deny that in one sense 'p or q' tells you something about the world. |
16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
Full Idea: It might be contended that, in describing what happens when a man believes 'p or q', the 'or' that we must use is not the same as the 'or' of logic. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This seems to be the general verdict on Russell's enquiries in this chapter, but I love any attempt, however lacking in rigour etc., to connect formal logic to how we think, and thence to the world. |
16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
Full Idea: Another situation in which a disjunction may arise is practice is imperfect memory. 'Either Brown or Jones told me that'. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) |
16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
Full Idea: A predicate is 'heterological' when it cannot be predicated of itself; thus 'long' is heterological because it is not a long word, but 'short' is homological. So is 'heterological' heterological? Either answer leads to a contradiction. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: [Grelling's Paradox] Yes: 'heterological' is heterological because it isn't heterological; No: it isn't, because it is. Russell says we therefore need a hierarchy of languages (types), and the word 'word' is outside the system. |
16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
Full Idea: All our knowledge about the world, in so far as it is expressed in words, is more or less general, because every sentence contains at least one word that is not a proper name, and all such words are general. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: I really like this, especially because it addresses the excessive reliance of some essentialists on sortals, categories and natural kinds, instead of focusing on the actual physical essences of individual objects. |
4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |
Full Idea: Naïve realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naïve realism is false. Therefore naïve realism, if true, is false, therefore it is false. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], p.13) | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to agree with this, though once you have gone off and explored representation and sense data you may be driven back to naïve realism again. |
16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
Full Idea: So long as a man avoids words which are condensed inductions (such as 'dog'), and confines himself to words that can describe a single experience, it is possible for a single experience to show that his words are true. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: One might question whether a line can be drawn between the inductive and the non-inductive in this way. I'm inclined just to say that the simpler the proposition the less room there is for error in confirming it. |
16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
Full Idea: Propositions about 'some' may be proved empirically, but propositions about 'all' are difficult to know, and can't be proved unless such propositions are in the premisses. These aren't in perception, so forgo general propositions, or abandon empiricism? | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: This is obviously related to the difficulty empiricists have with induction. You could hardly persuade logicians to give up the universal quantifier, because it is needed in mathematics. Do we actually know any universal empirical truths? |
16236 | Maybe our persistence conditions concern bodies, rather than persons [Olson, by Hawley] |
Full Idea: Instead of attributing person-like persistence conditions to bodies, we could attribute body-like persistence conditions to persons, …so human persons are identical with human organisms. | |
From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.10 | |
A reaction: In the case of pre-birth and advanced senility, Olson thinks we could have the body without the person, so person is a 'phase sortal' of bodies. A good theory, which seems to answer a lot of questions. 'Person' may be an abstraction. |
6669 | For 'animalism', I exist before I became a person, and can continue after it, so I am not a person [Olson, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: According to 'animalism', I existed before I was a person and I may well go one existing for some time after I cease to be a person; hence, I am not essentially a person, but a human organism. | |
From: report of Eric T. Olson (The Human Animal [1997]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.10 | |
A reaction: There is a very real sense in which an extremely senile person has 'ceased to exist' (e.g. as the person I used to love). On the whole, though, I think that Olson is right, and yet 'person' is an important concept. Neither concept is all-or-nothing. |
21924 | As the subject of willing I am wretched, but absorption in knowledge is bliss [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: As the subject of willing I am an exceedingly wretched being, and all our suffering consistd in willing, ...but as soon as I am absorbed in knowledge, I am blissfully happy and nothing can assail me. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], I p.137), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 4 | |
A reaction: So the source of his pessimism is subjection to his own will. However, since becoming absorbed in knowledge is an easy task for a scholar, he has little to grumble about. Nietzsche mocked the great pessimist for playing the flute every day. |
16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
Full Idea: I once, to test the story of Buridan's Ass, put a cat exactly half-way between her two kittens, both too young to move: for a time she found the disjunction paralysing. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
A reaction: Buridan's Ass is said to have starved between two equal piles of hay. Reason can't be the tie-breaker; reason obviously says 'choose one!', but intellectualism demands a reason for the one you choose. |
21915 | To deduce morality from reason is blasphemy, because it is holy, and far above reason [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: To deduce from reason [Vernunft] the moral element in conduct is blasphemy. In this element there is expressed the better consciousness which lies far above all reason. expresses itself in conduct as holiness, and is the true salvation of the world. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], I p.47), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
A reaction: Aimed at Kant. Only Plato could inspire a non-religious person to write about morality is such terms. Maybe also the stoic ideal of beautiful deeds (given the supreme value Schopenhauer placed on the arts). |