27 ideas
| 3067 | A philosopher should have principles ready for understanding, like a surgeon with instruments [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: As physicians have always their instruments and knives ready for cases which suddenly require their skill, so should you have principles ready for the understanding of things divine and human. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 3.13) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Philosophy is the training ground where wisdom and good living are made possible, but it cannot be a substitute for living. |
| 3072 | Everything is changing, including yourself and the whole universe [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: All things are changing; and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 9.19) |
| 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. |
| 3847 | Man is nothing else but the sum of his actions [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Man is nothing else but the sum of his actions. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.41) | |
| A reaction: This might be plausible if unperformed actions are included. For some people, their whole life story consists of what they failed to do. |
| 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. |
| 3846 | Man IS freedom [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: There is no determinism - man is free, man IS freedom. …Man is condemned to be free. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.34) |
| 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'. |
| 3843 | There is no human nature [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: There is no human nature. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.28) | |
| A reaction: Everything which can be individuated has a nature, say I, wearing my Aristotelian lapel badge. Does he think the same of cats? Does he think the mind is a blank page? |
| 3066 | Nothing is evil which is according to nature [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is evil which is according to nature. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 2.17) | |
| A reaction: A bit hopeful. Sounds tautological. I.e. anything which is agreed to be evil is probably immediately labelled as 'unnatural'. What would he agree was evil? |
| 20762 | There are no values to justify us, and no excuses [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: There are no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct. …We are alone with no excuses. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.296), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 6 'Bad' | |
| A reaction: If there are no values or duties, why might you ever need excuses? |
| 3852 | If values depend on us, freedom is the foundation of all values [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Once a man has seen that values depend upon himself, he can only will one thing, and that is freedom as the foundation of all values. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.51) | |
| A reaction: I don't think so. Is freedom the foundation of all arithmetic, because I am untrammelled when doing addition? Values are ridiculous if they don't reflect facts. |
| 3071 | Justice has no virtue opposed to it, but pleasure has temperance opposed to it [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: In the constitution of the rational animal I see no virtue which is opposed to justice; but I see a virtue which is opposed to pleasure, and that is temperance. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 8.39) | |
| A reaction: There are plenty of hideous things opposed to justice, but presumably that immediately disqualifies them from being virtues. |
| 3069 | The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: The art of life is more like the wrestler's than the dancer's. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 7.61) |
| 20764 | In becoming what we want to be we create what we think man ought to be [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: In creating the man that we want to be, there is not a single one of our acts which does not at the same time create an image of man as we think he ought to be. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.293), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 7 'Anything' | |
| A reaction: I recall this being one of my earliest thoughts about morality - that in everything we do we are all role models for the people around us. For me, that leads to virtue theory. |
| 3848 | Cowards are responsible for their cowardice [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: The existentialist, when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.42) |
| 20763 | When my personal freedom becomes involved, I must want freedom for everyone else [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Freedom as the definition of man does not depend on others, but as soon as there is involvement, I am obliged to want others to have freedom at the same time that I want my own freedom. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.306), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 7 'Anything' | |
| A reaction: Appears to be a highly Kantian sense of rational duty, and a rather odd constraint on someone whose only value is freedom. Sartre is aware that he needs an existential politics, but he's not there yet. 'Involvement' is an interesting addition to Kant. |
| 22229 | Existentialists says that cowards and heroes make themselves [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly, that the hero makes himself heroic. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.35), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the existential plasticity of the self, in opposition to the much stronger concept of human nature in Aristotle (who nevertheless believes you can acquire virtues and vices). |
| 3842 | Existence before essence (or begin with the subjective) [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Existentialism says that existence comes before essence - or, if you will, that we must begin from the subjective. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.26) |
| 6868 | 'Existence precedes essence' means we have no pre-existing self, but create it through existence [Sartre, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: I take 'existence precedes essence' to mean that we do not have a pre-existing self, which organises our behaviour, but rather that we create our self as we go along, through our existence and activities. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.222 | |
| A reaction: The direct opponent of this is Aristotle, who builds his ethics on a fairly fixed human nature, but even he agrees that we mould our moral characters through our activities, in a circular way. There are not, though, infinite possibilities in mankind. |
| 3844 | Existentialism says man is whatever he makes of himself [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. This is the first principle of existentialism. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.28) |
| 20754 | It is dishonest to offer passions as an excuse [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Every man who takes refuge behind the excuse of his passions is a dishonest man. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.305), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Core' | |
| A reaction: To say 'my passion was so strong that I was too weak to resist it' doesn't sound prima facie dishonest. Sartre's idea is more of an exhortation than a fact, and sounds rather old fashioned and puritan. Do my reasons constitutes excuses? |
| 6571 | When a man must choose between his mother and the Resistance, no theory can help [Sartre, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: When a young man must choose between his bereft mother and the French Resistance, Sartre says no moral theory is capable of resolving the dilemma; the man must act on his own, and in the process define his moral character. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.35-9) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Fogelin agrees, but rejects Sartre's claim that all morality is like this. I agree with Fogelin. However, what I like is the idea of 'defining one's moral character' by choices, but that is because it endorses the views of Aristotle (e.g. Idea 4394). |
| 3851 | If I do not choose, that is still a choice [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: If I do not choose, that is still a choice. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.48) |
| 3065 | Humans are naturally made for co-operation [Aurelius] |
| Full Idea: We are made for cooperation, like feet, like hands, like eyelids, like the rows of upper and lower teeth. To act against one another, then, is contrary to nature. | |
| From: Marcus Aurelius (The Meditations (To Himself) [c.170], 2.1) |
| 3845 | Without God there is no intelligibility or value [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: For the atheist existentialist there disappears with God all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. (Dostoevsky wrote "If God did not exist, everything would be permitted"). | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Existentialism and Humanism [1945], p.33) |