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21757
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Philosophy is the conceptual essence of the shape of history [Hegel]
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Full Idea:
Philosophy is the supreme blossom - the concept - of the entire shape of history, the consciousness and the spiritual essence of the whole situation, the spirit of the age as the spirit present and aware of itself in thought.
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From:
Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the History of Philosophy [1830], p.25), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01
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A reaction:
This sees philosophy as intrinsically historical, which is a founding idea for 'continental' philosophy. Analysis is tied to science, in which the history of the subject is seen as irrelevant to its truth. Does this mean we can't go back to Aristotle?
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11175
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Logical concepts rest on certain inferences, not on facts about implications [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
The nature of the logical concepts is given, not by certain logical truths, but by certain logical inferences. What properly belongs to disjunction is the inference from p to (p or q), rather than the fact that p implies (p or q).
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From:
Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §3)
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A reaction:
Does this mean that Fine is wickedly starting with the psychology, rather than with the pure truth of the connection? Frege is shuddering. This view seems to imply that the truth table for 'or' is secondary.
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11176
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The property of Property Abstraction says any suitable condition must imply a property [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
According to the principle of Property Abstraction, there is, for any suitable condition, a property that is possessed by an object just in case it conforms to the condition. This is usually taken to be a second-order logical truth.
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From:
Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §4)
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A reaction:
Fine objects that it is implied that if Socrates is essentially a man, then he essentially has the property of being a man. Like Fine, I think this conclusion is distasteful. A classification is not a property, at least the way most people use 'property'.
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11173
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Being a man is a consequence of his essence, not constitutive of it [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
If we distinguish 'constitutive' from 'consequential' essence, ..then the essence of Socrates will, in part, be constituted by his being a man. But being a man (or a mountain) will merely be consequential upon, and not constitutive of, his essence.
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From:
Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §3)
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A reaction:
Yes yes yes. I think it is absurd to say that the class to which something belongs is part of its essential nature, given that it presumably can only belong to the class if it already has a certain essential nature. What did Frankenstein construct?
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11179
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If there are alternative definitions, then we have three possibilities for essence [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
If there are alternative definitions for an essence, we must distinguish three notions. There is the essence as the manifold (the combined definitions), or as the range of alternative definitions (with component essences), or there is the common essence.
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From:
Kit Fine (Senses of Essence [1995], §8)
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A reaction:
Fine opts for the third alternative (what the definitions all have in common) as the best account. He says (p.68) 'definitive' properties come from one definition, and 'essential' properties from every possible definition.
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12727
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It's impossible, but imagine a body carrying on normally, but with no mind [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
If it could be supposed that a body exists without a mind, then a man would do everything in the same way as if he did not have a mind, and men would speak and write the same things, without knowing what they do. ...But this supposition is impossible.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Paper of December 1676 [1676], A6.3.400), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 5
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A reaction:
This is clearly the zombie dream, three centuries before Robert Kirk's modern invention of the idea. Leibniz's reason for denying the possibility of zombies won't be the modern physicalist reason.
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