19 ideas
6848 | Humour is practically enacted philosophy [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Humour, for me, is practically enacted philosophy. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
A reaction: This may be overstating it, as the funniest jokes may be the least philosophical, and remarks may be faintly amusing but very profound. Lear and his Fool make up a single worldview together. |
6847 | Humour can give a phenomenological account of existence, and point to change [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Humour provides an oblique phenomenology of ordinary life; it is a way of describing the situation of our existence, and, at its best, it indicates how we might change that situation. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
A reaction: The trouble is that this leads us to relentlessly political standup comedians who aren't very funny. Critichley may have a problem with remarks which are very funny precisely because they are so politically incorrect. I sympathise, though. |
6844 | Scientism is the view that everything can be explained causally through scientific method [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Scientism is the belief that all phenomena can be explained through the methodology of the natural sciences, and the belief that, therefore, all phenomena are capable of a causal explanation. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.196) | |
A reaction: He links two ideas together, but I tend to subscribe fully to the second idea, but less fully to the first. Scientific method, if there is such a thing (Idea 6804), may not be the best way to lay bare the causal network of reality. |
6835 | German idealism aimed to find a unifying principle for Kant's various dualisms [Critchley] |
Full Idea: In his Third Critique Kant established a series of dualisms (pure/practical reason, nature/freedom, epistemology/ethics) but failed to provide a unifying principle; German idealism can be seen as an attempt to provide this principle. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.187) | |
A reaction: He cites 'subject', 'spirit', 'art', 'will to power', 'praxis' and 'being' as candidates. This is a helpful overview for someone struggling to get to grips with that tradition. |
6836 | Continental philosophy fights the threatened nihilism in the critique of reason [Critchley] |
Full Idea: If reason must criticise itself (in Kant) how does one avoid total scepticism? In my view, the problem that has animated the continental tradition since Jacobi (early 19th cent) is the threat of nihilism. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188) | |
A reaction: As an outsider to 'continental' philosophy, this is the most illuminating remark I have read about it. It is not only a plausible account of the movement, but also a very worth aim, which should be taken seriously by analytical philosophers. |
6837 | Since Hegel, continental philosophy has been linked with social and historical enquiry. [Critchley] |
Full Idea: In continental philosophy from Hegel onwards, systematic philosophical questions have to be linked to socio-historical enquiry, and the distinctions between philosophy, history and society begin to fall apart. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.188) | |
A reaction: I have a strong sales resistance to this view of philosophy, just as I would if it was said about mathematics. It seems to imply a bogus view that history exhibits direction and purpose (the 'Whig' view). There are pure reasons among the prejudices. |
6838 | Continental philosophy is based on critique, praxis and emancipation [Critchley] |
Full Idea: The basic map of the continental tradition can be summarised in three terms: critique, praxis and emancipation. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.189) | |
A reaction: I wince at 'emancipation', which seems to take freedom as of unquestionably high value, instead of being one of the principles up for question in social philosophy. There are more presuppositions in Marxist than in analytical philosophy. |
6845 | Continental philosophy has a bad tendency to offer 'one big thing' to explain everything [Critchley] |
Full Idea: In continental philosophy there is a pernicious tendency to explain everything in terms of 'one big thing', such as the 'death drive' (Freud), 'being' (Heidegger), 'the real' (Lacan), 'power' (Foucault), 'the other' (Levinas), or 'différance' (Derrida). | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.197) | |
A reaction: From a fan of this type of philosophy, this is a refreshing remark, because if pinpoints a very off-putting feature. Each of these 'big things' should be up for question, not offered as axiomatic assumptions that explain everything else. |
6846 | Phenomenology is a technique of redescription which clarifies our social world [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Phenomenology (as in the later Husserl) is for me a way of assembling reminders which clarify the social world in which we exist; it is a technique of redescription. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.198) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure if I can identify with this as a target for philosophy, but it is interesting and sound worthy of effort. Critchley offers this as the best strand in 'continental' philosophy, rather than the big explanatory ideas. |
17833 | The first-order ZF axiomatisation is highly non-categorical [Hallett,M] |
Full Idea: The first-order Sermelo-Fraenkel axiomatisation is highly non-categorical. | |
From: Michael Hallett (Introduction to Zermelo's 1930 paper [1996], p.1213) |
17834 | Non-categoricity reveals a sort of incompleteness, with sets existing that the axioms don't reveal [Hallett,M] |
Full Idea: The non-categoricity of the axioms which Zermelo demonstrates reveals an incompleteness of a sort, ....for this seems to show that there will always be a set (indeed, an unending sequence) that the basic axioms are incapable of revealing to be sets. | |
From: Michael Hallett (Introduction to Zermelo's 1930 paper [1996], p.1215) | |
A reaction: Hallett says the incompleteness concerning Zermelo was the (transfinitely) indefinite iterability of the power set operation (which is what drives the 'iterative conception' of sets). |
17837 | Zermelo allows ur-elements, to enable the widespread application of set-theory [Hallett,M] |
Full Idea: Unlike earlier writers (such as Fraenkel), Zermelo clearly allows that there might be ur-elements (that is, objects other than the empty set, which have no members). Indeed he sees in this the possibility of widespread application of set-theory. | |
From: Michael Hallett (Introduction to Zermelo's 1930 paper [1996], p.1217) |
17836 | The General Continuum Hypothesis and its negation are both consistent with ZF [Hallett,M] |
Full Idea: In 1938, Gödel showed that ZF plus the General Continuum Hypothesis is consistent if ZF is. Cohen showed that ZF and not-GCH is also consistent if ZF is, which finally shows that neither GCH nor ¬GCH can be proved from ZF itself. | |
From: Michael Hallett (Introduction to Zermelo's 1930 paper [1996], p.1217) |
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'. |
6843 | Perceiving meaninglessness is an achievement, which can transform daily life [Critchley] |
Full Idea: If nihilism is the threat of the collapse of meaning, then my position is that one has to accept meaninglessness as an achievement, as an accomplishment that permits a transformed relation to everyday life. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Interview with Baggini and Stangroom [2001], p.193) | |
A reaction: This sounds cheerfully upbeat and life-enhancing, but I don't quite see how it works. One could easily end up laughing at the most appalling tragedies, and that seems to me to be an inappropriate (Aristotelian word) way to respond to tragedy. |