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All the ideas for 'Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity', 'Implications' and 'Russell's Ontological Development'

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6 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 6. Deconstruction

8210	Deconstructing philosophy gives the history of concepts, and the repressions behind them [Derrida]
	Full Idea: To 'deconstruct' philosophy would be to think the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time determine what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid, making itself into history by this motivated repression.
	From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.5)
	A reaction: All of this type of philosophy is motivated by what I think of as (I'm afraid!) a rather adolescent belief that we are all being 'repressed', and that somehow, if we think hard enough, we can all become 'free', and then everything will be fine.

8211	The movement of 'différance' is the root of all the oppositional concepts in our language [Derrida]
	Full Idea: The movement of 'différance', as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language, such as sensible/intelligible, intuition/signification, nature/culture etc.
	From: Jacques Derrida (Implications [1967], p.7)
	A reaction: 'Différance' is a word coined by Derrida, and his most famous concept. At first glance, the concept of a thing which is the source of all differentiation sounds like a fiction.

2. Reason / D. Definition / 12. Paraphrase

21699	Russell offered a paraphrase of definite description, to avoid the commitment to objects [Quine]
	Full Idea: Russell's theory involved defining a term not by presenting a direct equivalent of it, but by 'paraphrasis', providing equivalents of the sentences. In this way, reference to fictitious objects can be simulated without our being committed to the objects.
	From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.75)
	A reaction: I hadn't quite grasped that the modern strategy of paraphrase tracks back to Russell - though it now looks obvious, thanks to Quine. Paraphrase is a beautiful way of sidestepping ontological problems. See Frege on the moons of Jupiter.

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind

13128	'Ultimate sortals' cannot explain ontological categories [Westerhoff on Wiggins]
	Full Idea: 'Ultimate sortals' are said to be non-subordinated, disjoint from one another, and uniquely paired with each object. Because of this, the ultimate sortal cannot be a satisfactory explication of the notion of an ontological category.
	From: comment on David Wiggins (Identity and Spatio-Temporal Continuity [1971], p.75) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §26
	A reaction: My strong intuitions are that Wiggins is plain wrong, and Westerhoff gives the most promising reasons for my intuition. The simplest point is that objects can obviously belong to more than one category.

19. Language / A. Nature of Meaning / 7. Meaning Holism / a. Sentence meaning

21700	Taking sentences as the unit of meaning makes useful paraphrasing possible [Quine]
	Full Idea: The new freedom that Russell confers by paraphrasis (of definite descriptions) is our reward for recognising that the unit of communication is the sentence and not the word.
	From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.75)
	A reaction: Since many people hardly ever speak a properly formed sentence, I take propositions to be better candidates for this. However, I don't see how we can reject the compositional view (the meanings are assembled).

21701	Knowing a word is knowing the meanings of sentences which contain it [Quine]
	Full Idea: We can say that knowing words is knowing how to work out the meanings of sentences containing them. Dictionary definitions are mere clauses in a recursive definition of the meanings of sentences.
	From: Willard Quine (Russell's Ontological Development [1966], p.76)
	A reaction: Do you have to recursively define all the sentences that might contain the word, before you can fully know the meaning of the word? He seems to credit Russell with the holistic view of sentences (though I think that starts with Frege).