14 ideas
| 5040 | Necessary truths can be analysed into original truths; contingent truths are infinitely analysable [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Derivative truths are of two sorts: some are analysed into original truths, others admit of an infinite process of analysis. The former are necessary, the latter are contingent. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Freedom [1689], p.108) | |
| A reaction: An intriguing proposal. Hume would presumably see contingent truths as being analysed until you reach 'impressions'. Analysis of necessary truths soon comes to the blinding light of what is obvious, but analysis of contingency never gets there. |
| 13159 | Only God sees contingent truths a priori [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Only God sees contingent truths a priori. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Freedom [1689], p.95) | |
| A reaction: This because everything is interconnected, and the whole picture must be seen to understand a contingent truth. |
| 5039 | If non-existents are possible, their existence would replace what now exists, which cannot therefore be necessary [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If certain possibles never exist, then existing things are not always necessary; otherwise it would be impossible for other things to exist instead of them, and so all things that never exist would be impossible. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Freedom [1689], p.106) | |
| A reaction: A neat argument, though it is not self-evident that when possibles came into existence they would have to replace what is already there. Can't something be possible, but only in another world, because this one is already booked? |
| 7658 | Obviously there can't be a functional anaylsis of qualia if they are defined by intrinsic properties [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: If you define qualia as intrinsic properties of experiences considered in isolation from all their causes and effects, logically independent of all dispositional properties, then they are logically guaranteed to elude all broad functional analysis. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a good point - it seems daft to reify qualia and imagine them dangling in mid-air with all their vibrant qualities - but that is a long way from saying there is nothing more to qualia than functional roles. Functions must be exlained too. |
| 7655 | The work done by the 'homunculus in the theatre' must be spread amongst non-conscious agencies [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: All the work done by the imagined homunculus in the Cartesian Theater must be distributed among various lesser agencies in the brain, none of which is conscious. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Dennett's account crucially depends on consciousness being much more fragmentary than most philosophers claim it to be. It is actually full of joints, which can come apart. He may be right. |
| 7657 | Intelligent agents are composed of nested homunculi, of decreasing intelligence, ending in machines [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: As long as your homunculi are more stupid and ignorant than the intelligent agent they compose, the nesting of homunculi within homunculi can be finite, bottoming out, eventually, with agents so unimpressive they can be replaced by machines. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [Dennett first proposed this in 'Brainstorms' 1978]. This view was developed well by Lycan. I rate it as one of the most illuminating ideas in the modern philosophy of mind. All complex systems (like aeroplanes) have this structure. |
| 7656 | I don't deny consciousness; it just isn't what people think it is [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: I don't maintain, of course, that human consciousness does not exist; I maintain that it is not what people often think it is. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I consider Dennett to be as near as you can get to an eliminativist, but he is not stupid. As far as I can see, the modern philosopher's bogey-man, the true total eliminativist, simply doesn't exist. Eliminativists usually deny propositional attitudes. |
| 7654 | What matters about neuro-science is the discovery of the functional role of the chemistry [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Neuro-science matters because - and only because - we have discovered that the many different neuromodulators and other chemical messengers that diffuse throughout the brain have functional roles that make important differences. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Sweet Dreams [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Dennett that this is the true ground for pessimism about spectacular breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, rather than abstract concerns about irreducible features of the mind like 'qualia' and 'rationality'. |
| 18225 | If we can't reason about value, we can reason about the unconditional source of value [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: If you can only know what is intrinsically valuable through intuition (as Moore claims), you can still argue about what is unconditionally valuable. There must be something unconditionally valuable because there must be a source of value. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Three') | |
| A reaction: If you only grasped the values through intuition, does that give you enough information to infer the dependence relations between values? |
| 18228 | An end can't be an ultimate value just because it is useless! [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: If what is final is whatever is an end but never a means, ...why should something be more valuable just because it is useless? | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Finality') | |
| A reaction: Korsgaard is offering this as a bad reading of what Aristotle intends. |
| 18224 | Goodness is given either by a psychological state, or the attribution of a property [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: 'Subjectivism' identifies good ends with or by reference to some psychological state. ...'Objectivism' says that something is good as an end if a property, intrinsic goodness, is attributed to it. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Three') |
| 18233 | Contemplation is final because it is an activity which is not a process [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: It is because contemplation is an activity that is not also a process that Aristotle identifies it as the most final good. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Activity') | |
| A reaction: Quite a helpful way of labelling what Aristotle has in mind. So should we not aspire to be involved in processes, except reluctantly? I take the mind itself to be a process, so that may be difficult! |
| 18226 | For Aristotle, contemplation consists purely of understanding [Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation, as Aristotle understand it, is not research or inquiry, but an activity that ensues on these: an activity that consists in understanding. | |
| From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Aristotle') | |
| A reaction: Fairly obvious, when you read the last part of 'Ethics', but helpful in grasping Aristotle, because understanding is the objective of 'Posterior Analytics' and 'Metaphysics', so he tells you how to achieve the ideal moral state. |
| 5041 | God does everything in a perfect way, and never acts contrary to reason [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We can regard it as certain that everything is done by God in the most perfect way, that he does nothing which is contrary to reason. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (On Freedom [1689], p.109) | |
| A reaction: The famous optimism which Voltaire laughed at in 'Candide'. I can't help thinking that there is an ideal of God being ABOVE reason. We reason, and give reasons, because we are unsure, and life is a struggle. The highest ideal is mystically self-evident. |