81 ideas
19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity, where the understanding sees and accepts only separation. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
A reaction: Puzzled by the role of 'understanding' here. I tend to cite that as the highest aspiration of philosophy. Hegel seems to offer a higher understanding of unity, and a weaker analytic understanding, which is part of our limited psychology. |
15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Thinking that is free is without presuppositions. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add1) | |
A reaction: Fat chance, I would have thought. Hegel's project was indeed to try to get right to the bottom of the presuppositions. My picture is always of holding one thing presupposed while you examine another, and then switching to other presuppositions. |
15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Abstract identity (which is what here is also called 'concept') and being are the two moments that reason seeks to unify; this unification is the Ideal of reason. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §49) | |
A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I connect it to Aristotle's approach to the problem of being, which was to abandon the head-on approach, and aim to understand the identities of particulars and kinds. |
18859 | Metaphysics is a quest for truthmakers [Tallant] |
Full Idea: In this book I will treat metaphysics as a quest for truthmakers. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 01) | |
A reaction: I find this appealing, though obviously you have to say what sort of truthmakers generate 'metaphysical' truths, as opposed to physics or biology. I take it that would involve truthmakers that had a high level of generality, idealisation and abstraction. |
15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The older metaphysics has the naïve presupposition that thinking grasps what things are in-themselves, that things only are what they genuinely are when they are captured in thought. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
A reaction: His 'older' metaphysics is prior to Kant's critique. The less naïve version is more aware of antinomies and dialectical conflicts within thought. |
21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'Logic' | |
A reaction: Not a very clear definition, given that thinking about a table appears to be a 'thing grasped in thought'. Presumably it refers to things which can only be grasped in thought, which seems to make it entirely a priori. |
21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §80Z p.115), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: This sounds like a combination of Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein, and may be one of the ideas that launches 'continental' philosophy. Recent French thinkers talk continually of 'liberation'. |
22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Let thought follow its own course; and I think badly whenever I add something of my own. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24 Add 2), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100 | |
A reaction: The idea that reason has a course of its own is a mega-assumption, which I would only accept after a lot of persuasion, which I doubt that Hegel can provide. The modern analytic idea of metaphysics as logic has a similar basis. |
15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
Full Idea: It is the categories that elevate mere perception into objectivity, into experience; but these concepts ...are conditioned by the given material. ...Hence the understanding, or cognition through categories, cannot become cognizant of things-in-themselves. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §43-4) | |
A reaction: As one often fears with Hegel, this sounds like a deep insight, but is less persuasive when translated into simpler English (if I've got it right!). Being 'conditioned by the material' strikes me as just what is needed for good categories. |
15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
Full Idea: If truth were nothing more than lack of contradiction, one would have to examine first of all, with regard to each concept, whether it does not on its own account, contain an inner contradiction. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §33 Rem) | |
A reaction: This is a very nice thought, which modern analytic philosophers, steeped in logic, should think about. It is always presumed that a contradiction is between a proposition and its negation, not some inner feature. |
15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The older metaphysics became dogmatism because, given the nature of finite determinations, it had to assume that of two opposed assertions (of the kind that those propositions were) one must be true and the other false. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §32) | |
A reaction: While dialethism in logic looks very dubious to me, I have every sympathy with Hegel when it comes to the reasonings of ordinary language. There it is much harder to know whether you are addressing truly opposed assertions. |
21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
Full Idea: In the domain of individual ethics, we find the consciousness of dialectic in those universally familiar proverbs 'pride goes before a fall' and 'too much wit outwits itself'. ...Joy relieves itself in tears, and melancholy can be revealed in a smile. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method' | |
A reaction: 'Too clever by half' is the English version. Hegel's dialectic suggests that each concept somehow implies its opposite, rather than a mere mercurial drift from one extreme to the other. Most pride doesn't lead to a fall. |
15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
Full Idea: It is in the Platonic philosophy that dialectic first occurs in a form which is freely scientific, and hence also objective. With Socrates, dialectical thinking still has a predominantly subjective shape, consistent with his irony. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81 Add1) | |
A reaction: I don't understand how dialectic can be 'objective', given that it is a method rather than a belief. Plato certainly seems to elevate dialectic into something almost mystical, because of what is said to be within its power. |
15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression, and it is the principle through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science. ..[Add 1] It is the principle of all motion, of all life. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81) |
9847 | A contextual definition permits the elimination of the expression by a substitution [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The standard sense of a 'contextual definition' permits the eliminating of the defined expression, by transforming any sentence containing it into an equivalent one not containing it. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: So the whole definition might be eliminated by a single word, which is not equivalent to the target word, which is embedded in the original expression. Clearly contextual definitions have some problems |
18861 | Maybe number statements can be paraphrased into quantifications plus identities [Tallant] |
Full Idea: One strategy is whenever we are presented with a sentence that might appear to entail the existence of numbers, all that we have to do is paraphrase it using a quantified logic, plus identity. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 03.5) | |
A reaction: This nominalist strategy seems fine for manageable numbers, but gets in trouble with numbers too big to count (e.g. grains of sand in the world) , or genuine infinities. |
19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something is. This is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare correctness. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
A reaction: I would translate this idea as saying that bare correctness is conscious awareness of the truthmaker for some statement. Hegel then offers a 'deeper' account of the nature of truth. I would say awareness is quite separate from the concept of truth. |
5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
Full Idea: The terms of Hegel's logic are not judgements or propositions, but rather concepts: and it is concepts, in this view, that are true or false. | |
From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
A reaction: Quite alien to normal studies of logic, but I can make sense of a correspondence theory of truth for concepts, which might be more interesting than normal propositional or predicate logic. Does the concept of, say, a 'natural law' correspond to anything? |
19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
Full Idea: When truth is viewed in the deeper sense, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, and man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
A reaction: See Idea 19071 for the 'deeper sense'. This seems to confirm that Hegel's deeper concept of truth resembles authenticity. I guess it will be something fulfilling the essence of the thing. Doctors must be proper doctors. Gold must be true gold? |
18866 | Maybe only 'positive' truths need truth-makers [Tallant] |
Full Idea: We might say that those truths that do not need truth-makers are those that are negative. Those that do need truth-makers are those that are positive. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 10.8) | |
A reaction: If you deny the existence of something, there is always an implicit domain for the denial, such as 'on the table', or 'in this building', or 'in the cosmos'. So why can't that domain be the truthmaker for a negative existential? |
18860 | A truthmaker is the minimal portion of reality that will do the job [Tallant] |
Full Idea: A 'minimal' truth-maker is the 'smallest' portion of reality required to make a given proposition true. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 01.2) | |
A reaction: A nice suggestion. This seems to make Ockham's Razor an integral part of the theory of truth-makers. I would apply the same principle to explanations. An Ockhamist explanation is what explains the puzzling thing - and nothing else. |
18863 | What is the truthmaker for a possible new power? [Tallant] |
Full Idea: What power will make true 'there could be a power that does not in fact exist'? | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 04.13) | |
A reaction: Nice question. We can't know whether it is true that a new power could exist, so we can't expect an actual truthmaker for it. Though we might predict new powers (such as for a new transuranic element), on the basis of the known ones. |
19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Truth in the deeper sense is the identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of a true state or work of art. These are true if they are as they ought to be (their reality corresponds to their notion). | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a correspondence theory, but not as we know it, Jim. He seems to have a value built into truth, which sounds to me like existentialist 'authenticity'. I like what he is saying, but I would analyse it into two or more components. |
9820 | In classical logic, logical truths are valid formulas; in higher-order logics they are purely logical [Dummett] |
Full Idea: For sentential or first-order logic, the logical truths are represented by valid formulas; in higher-order logics, by sentences formulated in purely logical terms. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 3) |
21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The law of excluded middle is ...the maxim of the definite understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in doing so falls into it. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.172), quoted by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.5 | |
A reaction: Not sure how this works, but he would say this, wouldn't he? |
15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The thought that the contradiction which is posited by the determinations of the understanding in what is rational is essential and necessary, has to be considered one of the most important and profound advances of the philosophy of modern times. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48) | |
A reaction: This is the aspect of Kant's philosophy which launched the whole career of Hegel. Hegel is the philosopher of the antinomies. Graham Priest is his current representative on earth. |
15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The solution to the antinomies is as trivial as they are profound; it consists merely in a tenderness for the things of this world. The stain of contradiction ought not to be in the essence of what is in the world; it must belong only to thinking reason. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem) | |
A reaction: A rather Wittgensteinian remark. I love his 'tenderness for the things of this world'! I'm not clear why our thinking should be considered to be inescapably riddled with basic contradictions, as Hegel seems to imply. Just make more effort. |
15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The main point that has to be made is that antinomy is found not only in Kant's four particular objects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts and ideas. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem) | |
A reaction: I suppose Heraclitus and Empedocles, with their oppositional accounts of reality, are the ancestors of this worldview. I just don't feel that sudden flood of insight from this idea of Hegel that comes from some of the other great philsophical theories. |
9896 | A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A prime number is one which is measured by a unit alone. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 11) | |
A reaction: We might say that the only way of 'reaching' or 'constructing' a prime is by incrementing by one till you reach it. That seems a pretty good definition. 64, for example, can be reached by a large number of different routes. |
18255 | Addition of quantities is prior to ordering, as shown in cyclic domains like angles [Dummett] |
Full Idea: It is essential to a quantitative domain of any kind that there should be an operation of adding its elements; that this is more fundamental thaat that they should be linearly ordered by magnitude is apparent from cyclic domains like that of angles. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
9895 | A number is a multitude composed of units [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A number is a multitude composed of units. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 7 Def 2) | |
A reaction: This is outdated by the assumption that 0 and 1 are also numbers, but if we say one is really just the 'unit' which is preliminary to numbers, and 0 is as bogus a number as i is, we might stick with the original Greek distinction. |
9852 | We understand 'there are as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them as by counting them [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A child understands 'there are just as many nuts as apples' as easily by pairing them off as by counting them. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
A reaction: I find it very intriguing that you could know that two sets have the same number, without knowing any numbers. Is it like knowing two foreigners spoke the same words, without understanding them? Or is 'equinumerous' conceptually prior to 'number'? |
9829 | The identity of a number may be fixed by something outside structure - by counting [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The identity of a mathematical object may sometimes be fixed by its relation to what lies outside the structure to which it belongs. It is more fundamental to '3' that if certain objects are counted, there are three of them. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as Dummett being pushed (by his dislike of the purely abstract picture given by structuralism) back to a rather empiricist and physical view of numbers, though he would totally deny that. |
9828 | Numbers aren't fixed by position in a structure; it won't tell you whether to start with 0 or 1 [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The number 0 is not differentiated from 1 by its position in a progression, otherwise there would be no difference between starting with 0 and starting with 1. That is enough to show that numbers are not identifiable just as positions in structures. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 5) | |
A reaction: This sounds conclusive, but doesn't feel right. If numbers are a structure, then where you 'start' seems unimportant. Where do you 'start' in St Paul's Cathedral? Starting sounds like a constructivist concept for number theory. |
9876 | Set theory isn't part of logic, and why reduce to something more complex? [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The two frequent modern objects to logicism are that set theory is not part of logic, or that it is of no interest to 'reduce' a mathematical theory to another, more complex, one. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
A reaction: Dummett says these are irrelevant (see context). The first one seems a good objection. The second one less so, because whether something is 'complex' is a quite different issue from whether it is ontologically more fundamental. |
9884 | The distinction of concrete/abstract, or actual/non-actual, is a scale, not a dichotomy [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The distinction between concrete and abstract objects, or Frege's corresponding distinction between actual and non-actual objects, is not a sharp dichotomy, but resembles a scale upon which objects occupy a range of positions. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
A reaction: This might seem right if you live (as Dummett chooses to) in the fog of language, but it surely can't be right if you think about reality. Is the Equator supposed to be near the middle of his scale? Either there is an equator, or there isn't. |
9869 | Realism is just the application of two-valued semantics to sentences [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Fully fledged realism depends on - indeed, may be identified with - an undiluted application to sentences of the relevant kind of straightforwards two-valued semantics. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
A reaction: This is the sort of account you get from a whole-heartedly linguistic philosopher. Personally I would say that Dummett has got it precisely the wrong way round: I adopt a two-valued semantics because my metaphysics is realist. |
22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Categories, like 'being', or 'individuality', are already mingled into every proposition, even when it has a completely sensible content, such as "this leaf is green". | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §246 Add), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95 | |
A reaction: This is the source of the idea that observation is theory-laden (which tracks back to Kant). Not Duhem, who gets the credit among analytic philosophers. Quine obviously never read Hegel. But the idea is overrated. |
15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
Full Idea: As an activity of the particular, thinking has the categories as its only product and content. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62) | |
A reaction: There seems to be an interesting implication in this remark (taken in isolation!) that one can somehow transcend the categories when one begins to think about the universal. Are the universal and the categories not connected? |
18864 | The wisdom of Plato and of Socrates are not the same property [Tallant] |
Full Idea: It is not the case that Plato's wisdom = Socrates's wisdom. Platonic-wisdom and Socratic-wisdom are not the same property. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 05.4) | |
A reaction: This seems reasonable in the case of wisdom, but not so clear in the case of indistinguishable properties of redness or squareness or mass. Nevertheless it gives nice support for trope theory. |
9880 | Nominalism assumes unmediated mental contact with objects [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The nominalist superstition is based ultimately on the myth of the unmediated presentation of genuine concrete objects to the mind. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
A reaction: Personally I am inclined to favour nominalism and a representative theory of perception, which acknowledges some 'mediation', but of a non-linguistic form. Any good theory here had better include animals, which seem to form concepts. |
9885 | The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The existence of abstract objects is a pseudo-problem. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.18) | |
A reaction: This remark follows after Idea 9884, which says the abstract/concrete distinction is a sliding scale. Personally I take the distinction to be fairly sharp, and it is therefore probably the single most important problem in the whole of human thought. |
9858 | Abstract objects nowadays are those which are objective but not actual [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Objects which are objective but not actual are precisely what are now called abstract objects. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
A reaction: Why can there not be subjective abstract objects? 'My favourites are x, y and z'. 'I'll decide later what my favourites are'. 'I only buy my favourites - nothing else'. |
9859 | It is absurd to deny the Equator, on the grounds that it lacks causal powers [Dummett] |
Full Idea: If someone argued that assuming the existence of the Equator explains nothing, and it has no causal powers, so everything would be the same if it didn't exist, so we needn't accept its existence, we should gape at the crudity of the misunderstanding. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
A reaction: Not me. I would gape if someone argued that latitude 55° 14' (and an infinity of other lines) exists for the same reasons (whatever they may be) that the Equator exists. A mode of description can't create an object. |
9860 | 'We've crossed the Equator' has truth-conditions, so accept the Equator - and it's an object [Dummett] |
Full Idea: 'We've crossed the Equator' is judged true if we are nearer the other Pole, so it not for philosophers to deny that the Earth has an equator, and we see that the Equator is not a concept or relation or function, so it must be classified as an object. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.15) | |
A reaction: A lovely example of linguistic philosophy in action (and so much the worse for that, I would say). A useful label here, I suggest (unoriginally, I think), is that we should label such an item a 'semantic object', rather than a real object in our ontology. |
9872 | Abstract objects need the context principle, since they can't be encountered directly [Dummett] |
Full Idea: To recognise that there is no objection in principle to abstract objects requires acknowledgement that some form of the context principle is correct, since abstract objects can neither be encountered nor presented. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
A reaction: I take this to be an immensely important idea. I consider myself to be a philosopher of thought rather than a philosopher of language (Dummett's distinction, he being one of the latter). Thought connects to the world, but does it connect to abstracta? |
21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
Full Idea: As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, substance is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive substance of its own. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.215), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6 | |
A reaction: This seems to be an expression of idealism, since only what is conceptualised can exist. |
18865 | Substance must have two properties: individuation, and property-bearing [Tallant] |
Full Idea: It appears that substance has essential properties: it is of the essence of substance that it individuates, and it is of the essence of substance that it bears properties. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 06.2) | |
A reaction: The point being that substances are not 'bear', because they have a role to perform, and a complete blank can't fulfil a role. We can't take substance, though, seriously in ontology. It is just a label for distinct individuals. |
15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The entire second part of the 'Logic', the doctrine of Essence, deals with the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §65) | |
A reaction: He is referring to his book 'Science of Logic'. I don't really understand this, but that essence 'posits' the unity of a thing catches my attention. |
15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
Full Idea: In genuine cognition ...an object determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in an external way. If we proceed by way of predication, the spirit gets the feeling that the predicates cannot exhaust what they are attached to. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
A reaction: I take this to be a glimpse of Hegel's notoriously difficult account of essence. Place this alongside Locke's distinction between Nominal and Real essences. Once we have the predicates, we want to grasp their source. |
9848 | Content is replaceable if identical, so replaceability can't define identity [Dummett, by Dummett] |
Full Idea: Husserl says the only ground for assuming the replaceability of one content by another is their identity; we are therefore not entitled to define their identity as consisting in their replaceability. | |
From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
A reaction: This is a direct challenge to Frege. Tricky to arbitrate, as it is an issue of conceptual priority. My intuition is with Husserl, but maybe the two are just benignly inerdefinable. |
9842 | Frege introduced criteria for identity, but thought defining identity was circular [Dummett] |
Full Idea: In his middle period Frege rated identity indefinable, on the ground that every definition must take the form of an identity-statement. Frege introduced the notion of criterion of identity, which has been widely used by analytical philosophers. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: The objection that attempts to define identity would be circular sounds quite plausible. It sounds right to seek a criterion for type-identity (in shared properties or predicates), but token-identity looks too fundamental to give clear criteria. |
15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The proposition 'Cogito Ergo Sum' stands at the very centre, so to speak, of the entire concern of modern philosophy. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §64 Rem) | |
A reaction: I distinguish two approaches to philosophy: the Parmenidean (which starts from the nature of being), and the Cartesian (which starts from the fact of consciousness). This remark confirms that Hegel is firmly in the latter school. |
22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Everything that exists stands in correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of existence. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.235 (1892)), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 23 'Abs' |
15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The distinction of the sensible from thought is to be located in that fact that the determination of the sensible is singularity. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20 Rem) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 15608, where we find that thought concerns universals. What a very clear thinker Hegel was! |
15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
Full Idea: What can be perceived by the senses is really secondary and not self-standing, while thoughts, on the contrary, are what is genuinely independent and primitive. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add2) | |
A reaction: Although this is post-Kant, it strikes me as a perfect slogan for rationalism. Personally I would say that such a dichotomy is becoming a historical relic, in the light of modern understanding of the brain. Experience and thought are inextricable. |
15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
Full Idea: We must recognise the important principle of freedom that lies in Empiricism; namely, that what ought to count in our human knowing, we ought to see for ourselves, and to know ourselves as present in it. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
A reaction: Like Idea 15619, this is an interesting and perceptive remark, from a philosopher who seems a long way from empiricism. I presume he will be thinking mainly of Hume, via Kant. Personally I prefer Locke. |
15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Empiricism resulted from a need for concrete content, as opposed to abstract theories that cannot advance from universal generalizations to the particular, and for a firm hold against the possibility of proving any claim at all in the field. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §37) | |
A reaction: That sounds about right, and makes you wonder why Hegel wasn't an empiricist. |
15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Empiricism operates without knowing that it contains a metaphysics and is engaged in it, and that it is using categories and their connections in a totally uncritical and unconscious manner. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
A reaction: I doubt whether this is true of modern empiricists, who have been challenged so often from within their own ranks on so many things. I'm not even sure that it is true of Locke and Hume, apart from the way in which all philosophers are unaware of things. |
15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Inasmuch as Empiricism restricts itself to what is finite, the consistent carrying through of its programme denies the supersensible altogether, ..and it leaves thinking with abstraction only, [i.e.] with formal universality and identity. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
A reaction: I'm not clear how a denial of empiricism allows you (with intellectual integrity) to embrace 'the supersensible'. The set theoretic account of higher levels of infinity looks like a nice test case. |
15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
Full Idea: The Humean standpoint proclaims the thinking of our perceptions to be inadmissible; i.e. the eliciting of the universal and necessary out of those perceptions. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §50) | |
A reaction: Obviously Hume permits 'relations of ideas', but presumably the point is that his approach only legitimates a rather passive abstraction from experience, rather than an active application of a priori concepts to it. A fair criticism. See Bonjour. |
15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Humean scepticism should be very carefully distinguished from Greek scepticism. In Humean scepticism, the truth of the empirical, the truth of feeling and intuition is taken as basic. ..Greek scepticism turned itself against the sensible. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §39 Rem) | |
A reaction: This seems right, and Hume himself was quite contemptuous of the sort of scepticism found in the ideas of Sextus Empiricus. |
15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Considered as abstractly confronting one another, freedom and necessity pertain to finitude only and are valid only on its soil. A freedom with no necessity in it, and a mere necessity without freedom, are determinations that are abstract and thus untrue. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §35 Add) | |
A reaction: This is, presumably, the Hegelian dialectical nature of things, that contradictories are bound together. We must struggle hard to undestand a freedom bound by necessity, and a necessity which contains freedom. (Good luck). |
15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
Full Idea: Thinking as an activity is the active universal, and indeed the self-actuating universal, since the act, or what is brought forth, is precisely the universal. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20) | |
A reaction: One should contemplate animal thought in the light of this remark. Thought requires the recognition of types of things, and resemblances, and repetitions, and patterns. Language consists almost entirely of universals. |
21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
Full Idea: For Hegel the full system of concepts ...contains many more than Kant's twelve. | |
From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §60Z) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
A reaction: This offers some sort of conceptual scheme, but not the structured one that Kant proposes. The sequence of dialectical mediation imposes some sort of shape on the concepts. |
15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
Full Idea: There is a saying that, when we have grasped a concept, we still do not know what to think with it. But there is nothing to be thought with a concept save the concept itself. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §03 Rem) | |
A reaction: Analytic philosophers should read Hegel on concepts, because he approaches the matter so very differently, and seems to be the root of the continental approach to such things. He seems to me to talk more sense than Frege on the subject. |
15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
Full Idea: When thinking is taken as active with regard to ob-jects, as the thinking-over of something, then the universal - as the product of the activity - contains the value of the matter, what is essential, inner, true. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §21) | |
A reaction: I prefer to talk of 'general terms' rather than 'universals'. If 'tiger' is coined for the first one, but must be applicable to subsequent tigers, it has to generalise what they all have in common. Locke's 'nominal' essence, I would say. |
9849 | Maybe a concept is 'prior' to another if it can be defined without the second concept [Dummett] |
Full Idea: One powerful argument for a thesis that one notion is conceptually prior to another is the possibility of defining the first without reference to the second. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
A reaction: You'd better check whether you can't also define the second without reference to the first before you rank their priority. And maybe 'conceptual priority' is conceptually prior to 'definition' (i.e. definition needs a knowledge of priority). Help! |
9850 | An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation [Dummett] |
Full Idea: An argument for conceptual priority is greater simplicity in explanation. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.12) | |
A reaction: One might still have to decide priority between two equally simple (or complex) concepts. I begin to wonder whether 'priority' has any other than an instrumental meaning (according to which direction you wish to travel - is London before Edinburgh?). |
9873 | Abstract terms are acceptable as long as we know how they function linguistically [Dummett] |
Full Idea: To recognise abstract terms as perfectly proper items of a vocabulary depends upon allowing that all that is necessary for the lawful introduction of a range of expressions into the language is a coherent account of how they are to function in sentences. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.16) | |
A reaction: Why can't the 'coherent account' of the sentences include the fact that there must be something there for the terms to refer to? How else are we to eliminate nonsense words which obey good syntactical rules? Cf. Idea 9872. |
9993 | There is no reason why abstraction by equivalence classes should be called 'logical' [Dummett, by Tait] |
Full Idea: Dummett uses the term 'logical abstraction' for the construction of the abstract objects as equivalence classes, but it is not clear why we should call this construction 'logical'. | |
From: report of Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind n 14 | |
A reaction: This is a good objection, and Tait offers a much better notion of 'logical abstraction' (as involving preconditions for successful inference), in Idea 9981. |
9857 | We arrive at the concept 'suicide' by comparing 'Cato killed Cato' with 'Brutus killed Brutus' [Dummett] |
Full Idea: We arrive at the concept of suicide by considering both occurrences in the sentence 'Cato killed Cato' of the proper name 'Cato' as simultaneously replaceable by another name, say 'Brutus', and so apprehending the pattern common to both sentences. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch.14) | |
A reaction: This is intended to illustrate Frege's 'logical abstraction' technique, as opposed to wicked psychological abstraction. The concept of suicide is the pattern 'x killed x'. This is a crucial example if we are to understand abstraction... |
9833 | To abstract from spoons (to get the same number as the forks), the spoons must be indistinguishable too [Dummett] |
Full Idea: To get units by abstraction, units arrived at by abstraction from forks must the identical to that abstracted from spoons, with no trace of individuality. But if spoons can no longer be differentiated from forks, they can't differ from one another either. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Dummett makes the point better than Frege did. Can we 'think of a fork insofar as it is countable, ignoring its other features'? What are we left thinking of? Frege says it must still be the whole fork. 'Nice fork, apart from the colour'. |
9836 | Fregean semantics assumes a domain articulated into individual objects [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A Fregean semantics assumes a domain already determinately articulated into individual objects. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], Ch. 8) | |
A reaction: A more interesting criticism than most of Dummett's other challenges to the Frege/Davidson view. I am beginning to doubt whether the semantics and the ontology can ever be divorced from the psychology, of thought, interests, focus etc. |
18862 | Are propositions all the thoughts and sentences that are possible? [Tallant] |
Full Idea: One might be tempted to the view that there are as many different propositions as there are thoughts that could be thought and sentences that could be uttered. | |
From: Jonathan Tallant (Metaphysics: an introduction [2011], 04.5.3) | |
A reaction: A fairly orthodox view I take to be crazy. I think it is a view designed for logic, rather than for how the world is. Why tie propositions to what can be thought, and then introduce unthought propositions? Why no unthinkable propositions? |
15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
Full Idea: When finite things are grasped according to the determinations of cause and effect they are known in their finitude. But objects of reason cannot be determined through such finite predicates, and the attempt to do this was the defect of older metaphysics. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
A reaction: This sounds the launching point for a grand philosophical system which makes scientifically inclined philosophers feel very nervous indeed. I think I prefer the old (pre-Kantian) metaphysics. |
18257 | Why should the limit of measurement be points, not intervals? [Dummett] |
Full Idea: By what right do we assume that the limit of measurement is a point, and not an interval? | |
From: Michael Dummett (Frege philosophy of mathematics [1991], 22 'Quantit') |
15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
Full Idea: In earlier times, every type of so-called anthropomorphic representation was banished from God as finite, and hence unworthy of the Infinite; and as a result he had already grown into something remarkably empty. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62 Rem) | |
A reaction: Hegel favoured Christianity, because of its human aspect. His description fits Islam, where indeed the concept of God seems so drain of particularity that there is little in it to doubt, which might explain the durability of that religion. |
21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
Full Idea: It is true that God ...is the absolute thing: he is however no less the absolute person. That he is the absolute person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.214), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6 | |
A reaction: Moore says Hegel was a Spinozist, in his commitment to a single substance, but his idea of God is very different, presumably because consciousness and concepts are so important to Hegel. Hegel needs a Lockean abstract notion of 'person' here. |
15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
Full Idea: When the concept of God is apprehended merely as that of the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God becomes for us a mere Beyond, and there can be no further talk of the cognition of God. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §36 Add) |
15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |
Full Idea: One unification through which the Ideal is to be established starts from the abstraction of thinking and goes on to the determination for which being alone remains; this is the ontological proof that God is there. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §51) | |
A reaction: It should come as no surprise that a philosopher who so passionately endorses pure thinking, in opposition to empiricism, should end up endorsing the highly implausible ontological argument for God's existence. Jacquette gets existence from reason. |