14 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 9837 | 0 is not a number, as it answers 'how many?' negatively [Husserl, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl contends that 0 is not a number, on the grounds that 'nought' is a negative answer to the question 'how many?'. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.144) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: I seem to be in a tiny minority in thinking that Husserl may have a good point. One apple is different from one orange, but no apples are the same as no oranges. That makes 0 a very peculiar number. See Idea 9838. |
| 9576 | Multiplicity in general is just one and one and one, etc. [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Multiplicity in general is no more than something and something and something, etc.; ..or more briefly, one and one and one, etc. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.85), quoted by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' | |
| A reaction: Frege goes on to attack this idea fairly convincingly. It seems obvious that it is hard to say that you have seventeen items, if the only numberical concept in your possession is 'one'. How would you distinguish 17 from 16? What makes the ones 'multiple'? |
| 17444 | Husserl said counting is more basic than Frege's one-one correspondence [Husserl, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: Husserl famously argued that one should not explain number in terms of equinumerosity (or one-one correspondence), but should explain equinumerosity in terms of sameness of number, which should be characterised in terms of counting. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3 | |
| A reaction: [Heck admits he hasn't read the Husserl] I'm very sympathetic to Husserl, though nearly all modern thinking favours Frege. Counting connects numbers to their roots in the world. Mathematicians seem oblivious of such things. |
| 16052 | 'Superdupervenience' is supervenience that has a robustly materialistic explanation [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a ontological supervenience that is robustly explainable in a materialistically explainable way I hereby dub 'superdupervenience'. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: [He credits William Lycan with the actual word] His assumption prior to this introduction is that mere supervenience just adds a new mystery. I take supervenience to be an observation of 'tracking', which presumably needs to be explained. |
| 16053 | 'Global' supervenience is facts tracking varying physical facts in every possible world [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: The idea of 'global supervenience' is standardly expressed as 'there are no two physically possible worlds which are exactly alike in all physical respects but different in some other respect'. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
| A reaction: [Jaegwon Kim is the source of this concept] The 'local' view will be that they do indeed track, but they could, in principle, come apart. A zombie might be a case of them possibly coming apart. Zombies are silly. |
| 16056 | Don't just observe supervenience - explain it! [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: Although the task of explaining supervenience has been little appreciated and little discussed in the philosophical literature, it is time for that to change. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
| A reaction: I would offer a strong addition to this: be absolutely sure that you are dealing with two distinct things in the supervenience relationship, before you waste time trying to explain how they relate to one another. |
| 16054 | Physicalism needs more than global supervenience on the physical [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: Global supervenience seems too weak to capture the physical facts determining all the facts. …There could be two spatio-temporal regions alike in all physical respects, but different in some intrinsic non-physical respect. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
| A reaction: I.e. there might be two physically identical regions, but one contains angels and the other doesn't (so the extra fact isn't tracking the physical facts). Physicalism I take to be the simple denial of the angels. Supervenience is an explanandum. |
| 16055 | Materialism requires that physics be causally complete [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: Any broadly materialistic metaphysical position needs to claim that physics is causally complete. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §6) | |
| A reaction: Since 'physics' is a human creation, I presume he means that physical reality is causally complete. The interaction problem that faced Descartes seems crucial - how could something utterly non-physical effect a physical change? |
| 16057 | Instrumentalism normally says some discourse is useful, but not genuinely true [Horgan,T] |
| Full Idea: Instrumentalist views typically attribute utility to the given body of discourse, but deny that it expresses genuine truths. | |
| From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
| A reaction: To me it is obvious to ask why anything could have a high level of utility (especially in accounts of the external physical world) without being true. Falsehoods may sometimes (though I doubt it) be handy in human life, but useful in chemistry…? |
| 9575 | Husserl identifies a positive mental act of unification, and a negative mental act for differences [Husserl, by Frege] |
| Full Idea: Husserl identifies a 'unitary mental act' where several contents are connected or related to one another, and also a difference-relation where two contents are related to one another by a negative judgement. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.73-74) by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' p.322 | |
| A reaction: Frege is setting this up ready for a fairly vicious attack. Where Hume has a faculty for spotting resemblances, it is not implausible that we should also be hard-wired to spot differences. 'You look different; have you changed your hair style?' |
| 21214 | We clarify concepts (e.g. numbers) by determining their psychological origin [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl said that the clarification of any concept is made by determining its psychological origin. He is concerned with the psychological origins of the operation of calculating cardinal numbers. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.2 | |
| A reaction: This may not be the same as the 'psychologism' that Frege so despised, because Husserl is offering a clarification, rather than the intrinsic nature of number concepts. It is not a theory of the origin of numbers. |
| 9819 | Psychologism blunders in focusing on concept-formation instead of delineating the concepts [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl substitutes his account of the process of concept-formation for a delineation of the concept. It is above all in making this substitution that psychologism is objectionable (and Frege opposed it so vehemently). | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: While this is a powerful point which is a modern orthodoxy, it hardly excludes a study of concept-formation from being of great interest for other reasons. It may not appeal to logicians, but it is crucial part of the metaphysics of nature. |
| 9851 | Husserl wanted to keep a shadowy remnant of abstracted objects, to correlate them [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl saw that abstracted units, though featureless, must in some way retain their distinctness, some shadowy remnant of their objects. So he wanted to correlate like-numbered sets, not just register their identity, but then abstractionism fails. | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: Abstractionism is held to be between the devil and the deep blue sea, of depending on units which are identifiable, when they are defined as devoid of all individuality. We seem forced to say that the only distinction between them is countability. |