114 ideas
| 19635 | Hegel produced modern optimism; he failed to grasp that consciousness never progresses [Hegel, by Cioran] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is chiefly responsible for modern optimism. How could he have failed to see that consciousness changes only its forms and modalities, but never progresses. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by E.M. Cioran - A Short History of Decay 5 |
| 8215 | Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book [Hegel, by Derrida] |
| Full Idea: Hegel was the last philosopher of the Book. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Jacques Derrida - Positions p.64 | |
| A reaction: Reference to 'the Book' connects this to the great religions which rely on one holy text. The implication is that Hegel was proposing one big solution to all problems. It is doubtful if many philosophers before Hegel dreamt of that either. |
| 2516 | Most of philosophy begins where science leaves off [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy, or at least one large part of it, is subsequent to science; it begins where science leaves off. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxi) | |
| A reaction: In some sense this has to be true. Without metaphysics there couldn't be any science. Rationalists should not forget, though, the huge impact which Darwin's science has (or should have) on fairly abstract philosophy (e.g. epistemology). |
| 2510 | Traditionally philosophy is an a priori enquiry into general truths about reality [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of philosophy is that it is an a priori enquiry into the most general facts about reality. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xi) | |
| A reaction: I think this still defines philosophy, though it also highlights the weakness of the subject, which is over-confidence about asserting necessary truths. How could the most god-like areas of human thought be about anything else? |
| 2196 | The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) | |
| A reaction: No wonder some people dislike philosophy. There is no question that the human race is often ludicrously over-confident about its attempts to understand, and a careful examination of the situation tends to undermine such confidence. |
| 16011 | Hegel doesn't storm the heavens like the giants, but works his way up by syllogisms [Kierkegaard on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is a Johannes Climacus who does not storm the heavens, like the giants, by putting mountain upon mountain, but climbs aboard them by way of his syllogisms. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Søren Kierkegaard - The Journals of Kierkegaard 2A | |
| A reaction: [Idea from SY] This appears to be an attempt at insulting Hegel for his timidity, but it seems to be describing the cautious approach which most modern philosophers take to be correct. [PG] |
| 5433 | For Hegel, things are incomplete, and contain external references in their own nature [Hegel, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: The basis of Hegel's system is that what is incomplete must not be self-subsistent, and needs the support of other things; whatever has relations to things outside itself must contain some reference to those outside things in its own nature. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.14 | |
| A reaction: This leads to the idealist doctrine of 'internal relations'. It has some plausibility if you think about the physicist's definition of mass, which has to refer to forces etc. Presumably there is one essence for all of reality, instead of separate ones. |
| 3301 | On the continent it is generally believed that metaphysics died with Hegel [Benardete,JA on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In continental Europe it is widely believed that the metaphysical game was played out in Hegel. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Intro |
| 2187 | If we suspect that a philosophical term is meaningless, we should ask what impression it derives from [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we entertain any suspicion that a philosophical term is without any meaning or idea, we need but enquire "from what impression is that supposed idea derived?" | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.17) |
| 2200 | All experimental conclusions assume that the future will be like the past [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 19661 | Making sufficient reason an absolute devalues the principle of non-contradiction [Hegel, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Hegel saw that the absolutization of the principle of sufficient reason (which marked the culmination of the belief in the necessity of what is) required the devaluation of the principle of non-contradiction. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812], 3) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 3 | |
| A reaction: I pass this on without understanding it, though a joint study of my collection of ideas on sufficient reason and non-contradiction might make it clear. [Let me know if you can explain it!] |
| 20952 | Rather than in three stages, Hegel presented his dialectic as 'negation of the negation' [Hegel, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's 'dialectic' is often characterised in terms of the triad of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This is, however, not the way he presents it. The core of the dialectic is rather what Hegel terms the 'negation of the negation'. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this connects it to debates about intuitionist logic, which denies that double-negation necessarily makes a positive. Presumably Marx emphasised the first reading. |
| 4636 | All reasoning concerning matters of fact is based on analogy (with similar results of similar causes) [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], §82) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Analogy notoriously becomes problematical when you have only one case (or a few) to go on, as when inferring other minds, or God's existence from natural design. |
| 21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the 'negation of negation' is negation that, as it were, doubles back on itself and 'relates itself to itself'. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 6 'Space' | |
| A reaction: [ref VNP 1823 p.108] Glad we've cleared that one up. |
| 2521 | 'Real' maths objects have no causal role, no determinate reference, and no abstract/concrete distinction [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Three objections to realism in philosophy of mathematics: mathematical objects have no space/time location, and so no causal role; that such objects are determinate, but reference to numbers aren't; and that there is no abstract/concrete distinction. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxix) |
| 2197 | Reason assists experience in discovering laws, and in measuring their application [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Abstract reasonings are employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of natural laws, or to determine their influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any precise degree of distance or quantity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.27) |
| 5645 | The dialectical opposition of being and nothing is resolved in passing to the concept of becoming [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The concept of being contains within itself it own negation - nothing - and the dialectical opposition between these two concepts is resolved only in the passage to a new concept, becoming, which contains the truth of the passage from nothing to being. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: The idea that one concept 'contains' another, or that an opposition could be 'resolved' by a new concept, sounds doubtful to me. For most analytical philosophers, and for Aristotle, oppositions are contradictions, and cannot and should not be 'resolved'. |
| 7700 | We can't think about the abstract idea of triangles, but only of particular triangles [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Let any man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isoceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.122) | |
| A reaction: I think there is a basic error in this. I admit that I can only imagine a particular triangle, but it doesn't follow that I am thinking about one triangle. Ontology/epistemology confusion. I picture a shape while believing the shape to be irrelevant. |
| 5646 | Hegel gives an ontological proof of the existence of everything [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: It would not be unfair to say that Hegel's metaphysics consists of an ontological proof of the existence of everything. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: This is so gloriously far from David Hume that we must all find some appeal in it. The next question would be whether necessary existence has been proved. If so, given death, decay and entropy, what is it that has to exist? 2nd Law of Thermodynamics? |
| 21755 | For Hegel, categories shift their form in the course of history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the categories of thought are not fixed, eternal forms that remain unchanged throughout history, but are concepts that alter their meaning in history. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This results from a critique of Kant's rather rigid view of categories. This idea is very influential, and certainly counts among Hegel's better ideas. |
| 21754 | Our concepts and categories disclose the world, because we are part of the world [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the structure of our concepts and categories is identical with, and thus discloses, the structure of the world itself, because we ourselves are born into and so share the character of the world we encounter. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This is a reasonable speculation, but it makes more sense in the context of natural selection, and an empiricist theory of concepts. |
| 22079 | Hegel said Kant's fixed categories actually vary with culture and era [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's disagreement with Kant is that categories are not unambiguously universal forms of human understanding, but are conceived in subtly different ways in different cultures and in different historical epochs. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95 | |
| A reaction: This may be Hegel's most influential idea. Though he hoped that categories would contain truth, by arising untrammelled from reason, and thereby matching reality. His successors seem to have given up on that hope, and settled for relativism. |
| 13602 | We cannot form an idea of a 'power', and the word is without meaning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We can have no idea of connexion or power at all, and these words are absolutely without any meaning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.58) | |
| A reaction: I would say that this ignores a phenomenon of which Hume is well aware, which is the power of our own minds to generate thoughts and actions. Hume seems to be employing a verificationist theory of meaning |
| 2216 | We transfer the frequency of past observations to our future predictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where different effects have been found to follow from causes, which are to appearance exactly similar, all these various effects must occur to the mind in the same proportion in transferring the past to the future. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.47) |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as chance in the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.46) |
| 2209 | Belief is stronger, clearer and steadier than imagination [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.40) |
| 2207 | Belief can't be a concept plus an idea, or we could add the idea to fictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What is the difference between fiction and belief? It can't be a peculiar idea annexed to a conception which commands our assent, and is wanting to fiction, for then the mind could voluntarily annex this idea to any fiction, and believe what it pleases. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2208 | Belief is just a particular feeling attached to ideas of objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When an object is present to memory or senses, custom carries the imagination to that object which is usually conjoined with it. This carries a feeling different from the loose reveries of fantasy, and in this consists the whole nature of belief. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2213 | Beliefs are built up by resemblance, contiguity and causation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief, where it reaches beyond the memory or senses, arises from resemblance, contiguity or causation, with the same transition of thought and vivacity of conception. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.44) |
| 3661 | 'Natural beliefs' are unavoidable, whatever our judgements [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume has a doctrine of "natural belief", about the sorts of things we can't help believing, in 'common' or everyday life, irrespective of our philosophical conclusions. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 9225 | Hegel reputedly claimed to know a priori that there are five planets [Hegel, by Field,H] |
| Full Idea: Hegel is reputed to have claimed to have deduced on a priori grounds that the number of planets is exactly five. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Hartry Field - Recent Debates on the A Priori 1 | |
| A reaction: Even if this is a wicked travesty of Hegel, it will do nicely to represent the extremes of claims to a priori synthetic knowledge. Field doesn't offer any evidence. I would love it to be true. |
| 2513 | We don't have a clear enough sense of meaning to pronounce some sentences meaningless or just analytic [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic meaning is not rich enough to show either that all metaphysical sentences are meaningless or that all alleged synthetic a priori propositions are just analytic a priori propositions. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xx) |
| 2191 | Relations of ideas are known by thought, independently from the world [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Relations of Ideas are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2239 | If secondary qualities (e.g. hardness) are in the mind, so are primary qualities like extension [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed that all sensible qualities of objects, such as hard or hot, are secondary, and exist in the mind and not in objects; but then this also follows for the primary qualities of extension and solidity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.122) | |
| A reaction: he mentions Berkeley |
| 2237 | It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Men instinctively suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one is nothing but representations of the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2184 | All ideas are copies of impressions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) |
| 23631 | Hume is loose when he says perceptions of different strength are different species [Reid on Hume] |
| Full Idea: When Hume divides all perceptions into two classes or species, distinguished by their degrees of force and vivacity, this is loose and unphilosophical. To differ in species is one thing, to differ in degree is another. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary 1 | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's 'impressions' and 'ideas'. As usual with Reid, this is a very astute criticism. Reid is a direct realist, so his solution is to view ideas as weakened impressions. If impressions are strong ideas, you get idealism (which is bad!). |
| 2192 | All reasoning about facts is causal; nothing else goes beyond memory and senses [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond of our memory and senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.22) |
| 2182 | Impressions are our livelier perceptions, Ideas the less lively ones [Hume] |
| Full Idea: 'Impressions' are our more lively perceptions, when we hear, see, feel, love, hate, desire or will. 'Ideas' are less lively perceptions, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) |
| 2190 | All objects of enquiry are Relations of Ideas, or Matters of Fact [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2246 | If books don't relate ideas or explain facts, commit them to the flames [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we take in hand any volume of divinity or metaphysics, ask 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Or experimental reason on matters of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2189 | All ideas are connected by Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection between ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], III.19) |
| 2186 | We cannot form the idea of something we haven't experienced [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. ….A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the relish of wine. ….A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.15) |
| 2702 | Only madmen dispute the authority of experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: None but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.31) |
| 2217 | When definitions are pushed to the limit, only experience can make them precise [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas and still find some ambiguity and obscurity, how can we render them altogether precise and determinate? Produce the impressions or original sentiments from which the ideas were copied. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.49) |
| 2194 | How could Adam predict he would drown in water or burn in fire? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 2183 | We can only invent a golden mountain by combining experiences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense or experience. For example, a golden mountain or a virtuous horse come from joining ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) | |
| A reaction: The example of the Golden Mountain comes from Aguinas Quodlibeta 8.2.1. The original idea is in Sextus Empiricus. |
| 2205 | You couldn't reason at all if you lacked experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: An unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely unexperienced. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36 n.1) |
| 3902 | Hume mistakenly lumps sensations and perceptions together as 'impressions' [Scruton on Hume] |
| Full Idea: The greatest weakness in Hume's philosophy is his use of the term 'impression' to refer to both sensations and perceptions. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 24 |
| 2522 | Experience cannot teach us why maths and logic are necessary [Katz] |
| Full Idea: The Leibniz-Kant criticism of empiricism is that experience cannot teach us why mathematical and logical facts couldn't be otherwise than they are. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxxi) |
| 23421 | If a person had a gap in their experience of blue shades, they could imaginatively fill it in [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a person to be perfectly acquainted with all colours, except one particular shade of blue. It must be possible for him to raise up from his own imagination the idea of that particular shade, though never conveyed to him by the senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.16) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He dismisses this as 'so singular it is scarcely worth observing', but it is crucial. It isn't 'singular'. We do it all the time, by extrapolating from experiences and interpolating between them. Thus we extend knowledge beyond experience. |
| 2206 | Reasons for belief must eventually terminate in experience, or they are without foundation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If I ask why you believe some fact, you must tell me a reason, which will be some other fact, connected with it. But this process must terminate in a fact which is present to your memory or senses; or you must allow that the belief is without foundation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.37) | |
| A reaction: A classic quotation of empirical foundationalism. The rival view would be that the process does not terminate at all, but nevertheless builds up a persuasive picture which is foundational. |
| 2235 | There is no certain supreme principle, or infallible rule of inference [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no original supreme principle that is self-evident and convincing; nor, if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by those very faculties of which sceptics are supposed to be already diffident. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.116) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the chief exponent of empirical foundationalism attacking rational foundationalism. The problem of 'advancing beyond' basic beliefs is also a problem for Hume's position. |
| 10328 | We think testimony matches reality because of experience, not some a priori connection [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.i.89) | |
| A reaction: Well he would say that, wouldn't he? If there is no connection in testimony, presumably there can be no a priori connection with private experience, but there is a danger of never getting started, and ending in anti-realism. |
| 2230 | Good testimony needs education, integrity, motive and agreement [Hume, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Reliable testimony needs a good number of educated people, all of undoubted integrity, who have a lot to lose if they are caught lying, reporting very public events. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.II.92) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice checklist for flying saucer sightings etc: education, integrity, lying risky, very public. If any of those fail, it comes down to likelihood (apply Bayes?) and character assessment. |
| 2238 | Reason can never show that experiences are connected to external objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that perceptions are connected with any external objects. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.121) |
| 2242 | Mitigated scepticism draws attention to the limitations of human reason, and encourages modesty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A mitigated scepticism … can make dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, and inspire them with more modesty and reserve. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.129) |
| 2243 | Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Mitigated scepticism is an advantage to mankind, as it limits our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.130) |
| 2236 | Examples of illusion only show that sense experience needs correction by reason [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Trite sceptical examples, such as the oar bent in water, or double images when the eye is pressed, are only sufficient to prove that senses alone are not dependable, but we must correct their evidence with reason. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2240 | It is a very extravagant aim of the sceptics to destroy reason and argument by means of reason and argument [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may seem a very extravagant attempt of the sceptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grand scope of all their enquiries and disputes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.124) |
| 2241 | The main objection to scepticism is that no good can come of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism is that no durable good can ever result from it. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.128) |
| 2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
| 2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
| 2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
| 2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
| 2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
| 6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
| 3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
| Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
| 2210 | A picture of a friend strengthens our idea of him, by resemblance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) |
| 17712 | General ideas are the connection by resemblance to some particular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], I.VII.17), quoted by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: This is close to Berkeley's idea that we can only grasp particulars. Personally I think the idea of (psychological) abstraction is unavoidable. Irrelevant features of particulars need to ignored. |
| 8544 | Hume does not distinguish real resemblances among degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume regarded the notion of resemblance as unproblematic, ..but any two objects share infinitely many Cambridge (whimsical relational) properties, and resemble in infinite ways. He needs real resemblance, which needs degrees of resemblance. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See Idea 191. We forgive Hume, because he is a pioneer, but this is obviously right. Draw a line between 'real' resemblances and rest will be tricky, and bad news for regularity accounts of laws and causation. |
| 2211 | When I am close to (contiguous with) home, I feel its presence more nearly [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When I am a few miles from home, whatever relates to it touches me more nearly than when I am two hundred leagues distance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.42) |
| 2212 | An object made by a saint is the best way to produce thoughts of him [Hume] |
| Full Idea: One of the best reliques which a devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a saint, because they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.43) |
| 2214 | Our awareness of patterns of causation is too important to be left to slow and uncertain reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our inference of like effects from like causes is so essential to the subsistence of human creatures that it is unlikely to be trusted to the fallacious deductions of reasoning, which are slow, develop late, and are liable to error. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.45) |
| 2222 | The doctrine of free will arises from a false sensation we have of freedom in many actions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in many of our actions. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.72) |
| 2223 | Liberty is merely acting according to the will, which anyone can do if they are not in chains [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By liberty we can only mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will, …which is universally allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.73) |
| 3655 | Hume makes determinism less rigid by removing the necessity from causation [Trusted on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's account of the causal relation makes determinism less rigid because there is no longer a logical necessity in the succession of events. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.II.75) by Jennifer Trusted - Free Will and Responsibility Ch.4 |
| 2517 | Structuralists see meaning behaviouristically, and Chomsky says nothing about it [Katz] |
| Full Idea: In linguistics there are two schools of thought: Bloomfieldian structuralism (favoured by Quine) conceives of sentences acoustically and meanings behaviouristically; and Chomskian generative grammar (which is silent about semantics). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxiv) | |
| A reaction: They both appear to be wrong, so there is (or was) something rotten in the state of linguistics. Are the only options for meaning either behaviourist or eliminativist? |
| 2519 | It is generally accepted that sense is defined as the determiner of reference [Katz] |
| Full Idea: There is virtually universal acceptance of Frege's definition of sense as the determiner of reference. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: Not any more, since Kripke and Putnam. It is one thing to say sense determines reference, and quite another to say that this is the definition of sense. |
| 2520 | Sense determines meaning and synonymy, not referential properties like denotation and truth [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Pace Frege, sense determines sense properties and relations, like meaningfulness and synonymy, rather than determining referential properties, like denotation and truth. | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: This leaves room for Fregean 'sense', after Kripke has demolished the idea that sense determines reference. |
| 2518 | Sentences are abstract types (like musical scores), not individual tokens [Katz] |
| Full Idea: Sentences are types, not utterance tokens or mental/neural tokens, and hence sentences are abstract objects (like musical scores). | |
| From: Jerrold J. Katz (Realistic Rationalism [2000], Int.xxvi) | |
| A reaction: If sentences are abstract types, then two verbally indistinguishable sentences are the same sentence. But if I say 'I am happy', that isn't the same as you saying it. |
| 2220 | Only experience teaches us about our wills [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.52) | |
| A reaction: I can, of course, produce inductive generalisations about what my will can achieve, based on some limited experiences. "I know I can master that". Hobbes (and others) say we have no experience of a 'will'. Hume should be more sceptical! |
| 2224 | Praise and blame can only be given if an action proceeds from a person's character and disposition [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where actions proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor his infamy, if evil. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) |
| 2225 | If you deny all necessity and causation, then our character is not responsible for our crime [Hume] |
| Full Idea: According to the principle which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a man is pure and unattainted after having committed the most horrid of crimes, since his actions are not derived from his character. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: The idea that responsibility involves actions which are 'derived from his character' strikes me as good. Once you give up free will, it is almost the only sensible way to go. |
| 2226 | Repentance gets rid of guilt, which shows that responsibility arose from the criminal principles in the mind [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Repentance and reformation can wipe off every crime, but that is because criminal acts prove criminal principles in the mind, so alteration of these principles removes that proof, and the acts cease to be criminal. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: A bit overstated, because a heinous crime will always taint our impression of someone's character. The person may cease to be criminal, but surely not the original acts? |
| 21758 | Humans have no fixed identity, but produce and reveal their shifting identity in history [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, the absolute truth of humanity is that human beings have no fixed, given identity, but rather determine and produce their own identity and their world in history, and that they gradually come to the recognition of this fact in history. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: This quintessentially existentialist idea, most obvious in Sartre, seems to have originated with this view of Hegel's. |
| 20414 | Hegel's Absolute Spirit is the union of human rational activity at a moment, and whatever that sustains [Hegel, by Eldridge] |
| Full Idea: We may take Hegel's Absolute Spirit to be the union of collective, human rational activity at a historical moment with its proper object, the forms of social and individual life that the rational activity is devoted to understanding and sustaining. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Richard Eldridge - G.W.F. Hegel (aesthetics) 1 | |
| A reaction: From this formulation it sounds as if the whole human race might have momentary union, but presumably it is more local 'peoples' that can exhibit this. |
| 3909 | Society isn’t founded on a contract, since contracts presuppose a society [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel, society cannot be founded on a contract, since contracts have no reality until society is in place. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 28.2 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and reminiscent of the private language argument, but contracts surely start as deals between individuals (on a desert island?). |
| 2233 | No government has ever suffered by being too tolerant of philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A state ought to tolerate every principle of philosophy, nor is there any instance that a government has suffered in its political interests by such indulgence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.114) |
| 4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]), quoted by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Sounds good, though I'm not sure what it means. The application of the word 'natural' seems a bit arbitrary to me. No objective joint exists between the natural and unnatural. The default position has to be that everything is natural. |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 2245 | A priori it looks as if a cause could have absolutely any effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we just reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 4772 | If a singular effect is studied, its cause can only be inferred from the types of events involved [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Only when two species of objects are constantly conjoined can we infer one from the other; were an entirely singular effect presented, which could not be comprehended under a species, I do not see that we could form any conjecture concerning its cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: A key issue in causation. Note that Hume is willing to discuss causation in a freakishly unique happening, but only if he can spot a 'type' in the each of the events. I don't like it, but the man has a good point… |
| 8341 | Hume never even suggests that there is no such thing as causation [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: At no point (in Sect VII of 'Enquiries') does Hume even hint at the thesis that there is (or even might be) no such thing as causation. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion 21.3 | |
| A reaction: If, as some people think, Hume is a phenomenalist, then we wouldn't expect him to actually deny the existence of such things. The standard position (cf. Ayer on religion) is that such things are not even worth mentioning. |
| 8344 | At first Hume said qualities are the causal entities, but later he said events [Hume, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: In the Enquiries Hume clearly suggests that causes and effects are entities that can be named or described by singular terms; probably events, since one can follow another; but in the Treatise it seems to be the quality or circumstance which is the cause. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: A quality would have to have an associated power if it was going to trigger an effect. But then so would an event (unless inertia carried across?). Qualities are more distinct. Events can last for years. |
| 3662 | Hume says we can only know constant conjunctions, not that that's what causation IS [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's regularity theory of causation is only a theory about causation so far as we can know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects, not about causation as it is in the objects. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 4771 | In both of Hume's definitions, causation is extrinsic to the sequence of events [Psillos on Hume] |
| Full Idea: What needs to be stressed is that in both of Hume's definitions of cause, an individual sequence of events is deemed causal only because something extrinsic to the sequence occurs (be it conjunctions, or a mental link). | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §1.9 | |
| A reaction: Simple but important. Hume's basic claim is that there is no 'causation' in events, apart from the events themselves. Hence no necessity, on top of the apparent contingency. |
| 5194 | Hume's definition of cause as constantly joined thoughts can't cover undiscovered laws [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's second definition of cause (one object always 'conveys the thought' of another) implies that it is inconceivable that there should be causal laws which have never yet been thought of, and this is not so. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a good criticism of Hume, but also a bit of a problem for a strong empiricist like Ayer. There may also be causal laws which we cannot discover, but logical positivism will not allow me to speculate about that. |
| 2221 | A cause is either similar events following one another, or an experience always suggesting a second experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second, or, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) |
| 2234 | It is only when two species of thing are constantly conjoined that we can infer one from the other [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is only when two species of object are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: what is a species? |
| 2193 | No causes can be known a priori, but only from experience of constant conjunctions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Without exception, knowledge of cause and effect is not attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 8422 | Cause is where if the first object had not been, the second had not existed [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We may define a cause to be where .....if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.60) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's second definition, cited by Lewis as the ancestor of his counterfactual theory. It feels all wrong to me. 'If there had been no window, there would have been no window-breakage'? |
| 2218 | In observing causes we can never observe any necessary connections or binding qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able to discover any power or necessary connexion, any quality which binds the effect to the cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.50) |
| 15249 | Hume never shows how a strong habit could generate the concept of necessity [Harré/Madden on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's contemporary critics are correct. He never really shows how it is possible for a habit, however strong it may be, to generate the concept of necessity. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful objection which hadn't occurred to me. Presumably eighteenth century critics are referred to? I suppose if a necessity is what 'cannot be otherwise', a very deeply ingrained habit might seem that way - but in me, not in the world. |
| 8339 | Hume's regularity theory of causation is epistemological; he believed in some sort of natural necessity [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Regularity theory of causation is about causation as we know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects. As far as causation as it is in the objects is concerned, Hume firmly believed in some sort of natural necessity or causal power. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C | |
| A reaction: Strawson's controversial reinterpretation of Hume. We are confusing his epistemology with his ontology. Hume is simply being sceptical about our ability to bridge the gap to achieve understanding of natural necessity. A very different view of Hume. |
| 4188 | Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof [Schopenhauer on Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's entire philosophy is nothing but a monstrous amplification of the ontological proof. | |
| From: comment on Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Arthur Schopenhauer - Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' Ch.II | |
| A reaction: All massive a priori metaphysics is summed up in this argument, which is right at the core of philosophy. |
| 2244 | It can never be a logical contradiction to assert the non-existence of something thought to exist [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Whatever 'is' may 'not be'. No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction. The non-existence of any being, without exception, is as clear and distinct an idea as its existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2232 | You can't infer the cause to be any greater than its effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we infer a cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other. …a body of ten ounces raised in a scale proves the counterbalance exceeds ten ounces, but not that it exceeds a hundred. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.105) |
| 2228 | All experience must be against a supposed miracle, or it wouldn't be called 'a miracle' [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2229 | To establish a miracle the falseness of the evidence must be a greater miracle than the claimed miraculous event [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.91) |
| 2227 | A miracle violates laws which have been established by continuous unchanging experience, so should be ignored [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imagined. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2185 | The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.14) |
| 6686 | Hegel said he was offering an encyclopaedic rationalisation of Christianity [Hegel, by Graham] |
| Full Idea: Hegel claimed that his philosophy was nothing less than an encyclopaedic rationalisation of the Christian religion. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]) by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Why did he pick Christianity to rationalise? How can you reason properly if you start with a dogma? |