14 ideas
| 21463 | Hamann, Herder and Jacobi were key opponents of the Enlightenment [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Hamann, Herder and Jacobi are central figues in the reaction against Enlightenment. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 10 'immediate') | |
| A reaction: From a British perspective I would see Hume as the leading such figure. Hamann emphasised the neglect of the role of language. Jacobi was a Christian. |
| 21459 | Kant halted rationalism, and forced empiricists to worry about foundations [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Kant's Critique swiftly brought rationalism to a halt, and after Kant empiricism has displayed a nervousness regarding its foundations, and been forced to assume more sophisticated forms. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 10 Intro) | |
| A reaction: See the ideas of Laurence Bonjour for a modern revival of rationalism. After Kant philosophers either went existential, or stared gloomily into the obscure depths. Formal logic was seen as a possible rope ladder down. |
| 21460 | Only Kant and Hegel have united nature, morals, politics, aesthetics and religion [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Apart from Hegel, no later philosophical system equals in stature Kant's attempt to weld together the diverse fields of natural science, morality, politics, aesthetics and religion into a systematic overarching epistemological and metaphysical unity. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 10) | |
| A reaction: Earlier candidate are Plato and Aristotle. Earlier Enlightenment figures say little about morality or aesthetics. Hobbes ranges widely. Aquinas covered most things. |
| 21443 | Transcendental proofs derive necessities from possibilities (e.g. possibility of experiencing objects) [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: A transcendental proof converts a possibility into a necessity: by saying under what conditions experience of objects is possible, transcendental proofs show those conditions to be necessary for us to the extent that we have any experience of objects. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 02 'Transc') | |
| A reaction: They appear to be hypothetical necessities, rather than true metaphysical necessities. Gardner is discussing Kant, but seems to be generalising. Hypothetical necessities are easy: if it is flying, it is necessarily above the ground. |
| 21444 | Modern geoemtry is either 'pure' (and formal), or 'applied' (and a posteriori) [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: There is now 'pure' geometry, consisting of formal systems based on axioms for which truth is not claimed, and which are consequently not synthetic; and 'applied', a branch of physics, the truth of which is empirical, and therefore not a priori. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 03 'Maths') | |
| A reaction: His point is that there is no longer any room for a priori geometry. Might the same division be asserted of arithmetic, or analysis, or set theory? |
| 8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps it is impossible that an event should have had a causal history different from the one that it actually had. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.220) | |
| A reaction: [He cites van Inwagen for this] The idea is analagous to baptismal accounts of reference. Individuate an event by its history. It might depend (as Davidson implies) on how you describe the event. |
| 8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: It has been argued that an event's time of occurrence is essential to it. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.221) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Lawrence Lombard] This sound initially implausible, particularly if a rival event happened, say, .1 of a second later than the actual event. It might depend on one's view about determinism. Interesting. |
| 21453 | Leibnizian monads qualify as Kantian noumena [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Leibnizian monads clearly satisfy Kant's definition of noumena. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason [1999], 06 'Noumena') | |
| A reaction: This needs qualifying, because Leibniz clearly specifies the main attributes of monads, where Kant is adamant that we can saying virtually nothing about noumena. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Although you cannot cause a fire by delaying something's burning, you can cause a fire by hastening something's burning. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.223) | |
| A reaction: A very nice observation which brings out all sorts of problems about identifying causes. Bennett is criticising the counterfactual account. It is part of the problem of pre-emption, where causes are queueing up to produce a given effect. |
| 8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: We must choose between subsumption and counterfactual analyses of causal statements. The former means that cause and effect have some properties that enables them to be subsumed under a conditional. The latter is just 'if no-c then no-e'. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.217) | |
| A reaction: I have an immediate preference for the former account, which seems to potentially connect it with physics and features of the world which make one thing lead to another. The counterfactual account seems very thin, and is more like mere semantics. |
| 8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Theories of causation are split between event and fact/state of affairs theories. The first have the form 'the explosion caused the fire' (perfect nominals) and the second have the form 'the fire started because a bomb dropped' (sentential clauses). | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987]) | |
| A reaction: Surely events must have priority? The form which uses facts is drifting off into explanation, and is much more likely to involve subjective human elements and interpretations. Events are closer to the physics, and the mechanics of what happens. |
| 8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: The refinement of a simple counterfactual analysis is to say that cause and effect depend on a series of events. This must be asserted because counterfactual conditionals are well known not to be transitive. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987]) | |
| A reaction: This fills out the theory, but offers another target for critics. If the glue that binds the series is not in the counterfactuals, is it just in the mind of the speaker? How do you decide what's in the series? Cf. deciding offside in football (soccer!). |
| 8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Any counterfactual about a particular event implies or presupposes something about the event's essence. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.219) | |
| A reaction: This is where the counterfactual theory suddenly becomes more interesting, instead of just being a rather bare account of the logical structure of causation. (Bennett offers some discussion of possible essential implications). |