22 ideas
| 3798 | An overexamined life is as bad as an unexamined one [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The unexamined life may not be worth living, but the overexamined life is nothing to write home about either. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably he means a life which is all theory and no practice. Compare Idea 343. |
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
| A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
| 22140 | The greatest philosophers are methodical; it is what makes them great [Grice] |
| Full Idea: The greatest philosophers have been the greatest, and most self-conscious, methodologists; indeed, I am tempted to regard the fact as primarily accounting for their greatness as philosophers. | |
| From: H. Paul Grice (Reply to Richards [1986], p.66), quoted by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 3 | |
| A reaction: I agree. Philosophy is nothing if it is not devoted to the attempt to be fully rational, and that implies consistency and coherence. If a thinker doesn't even try to be systematic, I would not consider them to be a philosopher. |
| 3801 | Rationality requires the assumption that things are either for better or worse [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: We must assume that something matters - that some things are for better and some things are for worse, for without that our assumed rationality would have nothing on which to get a purchase. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.1) | |
| A reaction: It does seem that rationality wouldn't exist as an activity without some value to motivate it. |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
| A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
| A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
| A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
| A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
| A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
| A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
| 3802 | Why pronounce impossible what you cannot imagine? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: You say you cannot imagine that p, and therefore declare that p is impossible. Mightn't that be hubris? | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general…..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
| A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
| 3795 | Causal theories require the "right" sort of link (usually unspecified) [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: In causal theories of knowledge and reference, the causal chain between object and thought must be of the "right" sort - the nature of rightness to be specified later, typically. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.3 n14) | |
| A reaction: This is now the standard objection to a purely causal account of reference. Which of the many causal chains causes the meaning? Knowledge of maths is a further problem for it. |
| 3797 | I am the sum total of what I directly control [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Control is the ultimate criterion of the self: I am the sum total of the parts I control directly. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: This looks awfully like a flagrant self-contradiction, and I think it is. It seems pretty obvious that there is at least a distinction between the bit or bits that do the controlling, and the bits that get controlled. |
| 3800 | You can be free even though force would have prevented you doing otherwise [Dennett, by PG] |
| Full Idea: If a brain implant would compel you to perform an action which you in fact freely choose, then you are free, but couldn't have done otherwise. | |
| From: report of Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §6.1) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 3803 | Can we conceive of a being with a will freer than our own? [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Can I even conceive of beings whose wills are freer than our own? | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §7.3) |
| 3791 | Awareness of thought is a step beyond awareness of the world [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The creature who is not only sensitive to patterns in its environment, but also sensitive to patterns in its own reactions to patterns in its environment, has taken a major step. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §2.2) |
| 3794 | Foreknowledge permits control [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Foreknowledge is what permits control. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §3.2) |
| 3796 | The active self is a fiction created because we are ignorant of our motivations [Dennett] |
| Full Idea: Faced with our inability to 'see' where the centre or source of our free actions is,…we exploit the gaps in our self-knowledge by filling it with a mysterious entity, the unmoved mover, the active self. | |
| From: Daniel C. Dennett (Elbow Room: varieties of free will [1984], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: I am convinced that there is no such things as free will; its origins are to be found in religion, where it is a necessary feature of a very supreme God. I don't believe for a moment that we need to believe in free will. |