19 ideas
| 21901 | 'Difference' refers to that which eludes capture [Deleuze, by May] |
| Full Idea: 'Difference' is a term which Deleuze uses to refer to that which eludes capture. | |
| From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
| A reaction: Presumably its ancestor is Kant's noumenon. This is one of his concepts used to 'palpate' our ossified conceptual scheme. |
| 4568 | If 'Queen of England' does not refer if there is no queen, its meaning can't refer if there is one [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If 'the Queen of England' is not a referring expression when there is no queen, nor can it be one when there is a queen - since the meaning of the expression is the same in either case. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced. Does this mean that since I can point with my finger at nothing, I therefore do not indicate anything when there is an object at which I am pointing. Sounds silly to me. |
| 21902 | 'Being' is univocal, but its subject matter is actually 'difference' [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Being is said in a single and same sense of everything of which it is said, but that of which it is said differs: it is said of difference itself. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968], p.36), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
| A reaction: This is an attempt to express the Heraclitean view of reality, as process, movement, multiplicity - something which always eludes our attempts to pin it down. |
| 21908 | Ontology can be continual creation, not to know being, but to probe the unknowable [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Ontology can be an ontology of difference ....where what is there is not the same old things but a process of continual creation, an ontology that does not seek to reduce being to the knowable, but widens thought to palpate the unknowable. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]), quoted by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 5.05 | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the first duty of ontology is to face up to the knowable. I'm not sure that probing the unknowable, with no success or prospect of it, is a good way to spend a life. Probing ('palpating') can sometimes discover things. |
| 21903 | Ontology does not tell what there is; it is just a strange adventure [Deleuze, by May] |
| Full Idea: In Deleuze's hands ontology is not a matter of telling us what there is, but of taking us on strange adventures. | |
| From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 3.03 | |
| A reaction: Presumably you only indulge in the strange adventure because you have no idea how to specify what there is. This sounds like the essence of post-modernism, in which life is just a game. |
| 21904 | Being is a problem to be engaged, not solved, and needs a new mode of thinking [Deleuze, by May] |
| Full Idea: In Deleuze, Being is not a puzzle to be solved but a problem to be engaged. It is to be engaged by a thought that moves as comfortably among problems as it does among solutions, as fluidly among differences as it does among identities. | |
| From: report of Gilles Deleuze (Difference and Repetition [1968]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 4.01 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like what I've always known as 'negative capability' (thanks to Keats). Is philosophy just a hobby, like playing darts? It seems that the aim of the process is 'liberation', about which I would like to know more. |
| 4574 | If some peoples do not have categories like time or cause, they can't be essential features of rationality [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If our most basic concepts, like time, space, substance or causality, are not shared by some peoples, it puts paid to the cherished ideal of philosophers to discover a set of concepts or categories which any rational human must employ in his thinking. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a place where a priori philosophy (Aristotle,Kant,Hegel) meets empirical research (Whorf). However, interpreting the research is so fraught with problems it drives you back to the a priori… |
| 4573 | If it is claimed that language correlates with culture, we must be able to identify the two independently [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If it is claimed that linguistic differences significantly correlate with cultural differences, it must therefore be possible to identify the linguistic differences independently from the cultural ones. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a basic objection to any extreme relativist version of the S-P hypothesis. They are part of the conspiracy to overemphasise language in philosophy, and they are wrong. |
| 4575 | A person's language doesn't prove their concepts, but how are concepts deduced apart from language? [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It would be absurd to say the Hopi lack the concept of time because they lack tensed verbs, ..but how do we find out what a man's concepts are except in terms of his language? | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably we should look at animals, where concepts must be inferred in order to explain behaviour. I don't see why introspection (scientifically wicked) should not also be employed to detect our own non-verbal concepts. How are new words invented? |
| 4561 | Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Many sentences set up dispositions which are irrelevant to the meanings of the sentences. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.3) | |
| A reaction: Yet another telling objection to behaviourism. When I look at broccoli I may have a disposition to be sick, but that isn't part of the concept of broccoli. |
| 4564 | I can meaningfully speculate that humans may have experiences currently impossible for us [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It is not meaningless for me to postulate the potential for humans to sense in a manner which is at present unimaginable and indescribable. There is no reason to believe me, but I might be right. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: The key counterexample to verificationist theories of meaning is wild speculations, which are clearly meaningful, though frequently far beyond any likely human experience. Logical positivists are allergic to imagination. |
| 4565 | The verification principle itself seems neither analytic nor verifiable [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: It seems that the positivists must admit that there is at least one statement which is meaningful, but which is neither verifiable nor analytic - namely, the statement of the principle of verification itself. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: Some people think this objection is decisive, but I think any theory must be permitted a few metatheoretic assertions or axioms which are beyond discussion. Ayer thought the VP might be treated as analytic. Everyone has to start somewhere. |
| 4563 | 'How now brown cow?' is used for elocution, but this says nothing about its meaning [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'How now brown cow?' has its use in elocutions classes, yet this aspect of its use tells us nothing about its meaning. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, and also there are weird sentence of which we can assemble a meaning, but cannot think of any conceivable use ('rats swim in purple marmalade'). |
| 4562 | Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Most people know how to use the word "Amen", but they do not know what it means. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find examples like this decisive against the 'use' theory of meaning. Maybe the defence is that the theory works for sentences, and individual words (like passwords) are peripheral. |
| 4571 | Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Reference need not be a hit-or-miss affair. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right. If the basic scenario is picking someone out in a crowd, your listener may think they know which person you are talking about, with a high degree of probability. |
| 4566 | Any thesis about reference is also a thesis about what exists to be referred to [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Any thesis about reference is also going to be a thesis about what there is in existence to refer to. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4) | |
| A reaction: I see the point, but we must not put the cart before the horse. I may have an intuition that something exists, but not know how to refer to it (because of my small vocabulary). |
| 4572 | If predicates name things, that reduces every sentence to a mere list of names [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: If predicates are names of entities, then subject/predicate sentences are pairs of names, since subjects are names (or referring expressions). But a pair of names is not a sentence at all, it is a mere list. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §4.4) | |
| A reaction: If that is meant to demolish universals it is too quick. Concatenating names is not the same as listing them. A relationship is asserted. There is a (mysterious) Platonic 'partaking' between form and particular. Perhaps. |
| 4576 | An analytic truth is one which becomes a logical truth when some synonyms have been replaced [Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: The definition of analytic truth which has, I believe, the most chance of success is one in terms of synonymy; ..an analytic truth is one which can be transformed into a logical truth once synonyms are replaced by synonyms. | |
| From: David E. Cooper (Philosophy and the Nature of Language [1973], §7.1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds promising, though there is Quine's notorious problem of circularity in all these concepts. If synonymy is conventional, then so is analyticity. I personally feel that the circle can be broken. |
| 20082 | Bodily movements are not actions, which are really the tryings within bodily movement [Hornsby, by Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Hornsby claims the basic description of action is in terms of trying, that all actions (even means of doing other actions) are actions of trying, and that tryings (and therefore actions) are interior to bodily movements (which are thus not essential). | |
| From: report of Jennifer Hornsby (Actions [1980]) by Rowland Stout - Action 9 'Trying' | |
| A reaction: [compression of his summary] There is no regress with explaining the 'action' of trying, because it is proposed that trying is the most basic thing in all actions. If you are paralysed, your trying does not result in action. Too mentalistic? |