44 ideas
| 21634 | Metaphysics is (supposedly) first the ontology, then in general what things are like [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics can be divided into two parts: first ontology, which is supposed to tell us what there is in general. The second part is the rest of metaphysics, which is supposed to tell us what these things are like, in various general ways. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber is a fairly sceptical guide to metaphysics, but this has been the standard view for the last decade. Before that, Quine had set an agenda of mere ontology. |
| 21666 | 'Fundamentality' is either a superficial idea, or much too obscure [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The dilemma of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is that on an ordinary reading of prioriy, 'fundamentality' won't give the intended results, and on a metaphysical reading it turns into esoteric metaphysics. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.2) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber is hostile to 'esoteric' metaphysics, but sympathetic to 'egalitarian' metaphysics, which anyone can understand (with a bit of effort). |
| 22024 | Fichte's subjectivity struggles to then give any account of objectivity [Pinkard on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: For Fichte 'subjectivity' came first, and he was then stuck with the (impossible) task of showing how 'objectivity' arose out of it. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: The best available answer to this problem (for idealists) is, I think, Nietzsche's perspectives, in which multiple subjectivities are summed to produce a blurred picture which has a degree of consensus. Fichte later embraced other minds. |
| 21640 | 'It's true that Fido is a dog' conjures up a contrast class, of 'it's false' or 'it's unlikely' [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'It's true that Fido is a dog' gives rise to a contrastive focus on 'true', with the contrast class probably depending on members like 'it's false that...' or 'it's unlikely that...'. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.6.3) | |
| A reaction: If we introduce (from linguistics) the idea of a 'contrast class', then Ramsey's famous example begins to sound meaningful. It might occur in a discussion of 'did Antony actually say 'Friends, Romans. countrymen'?' |
| 21657 | Since properties can have properties, some theorists rank them in 'types' [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Since properties themselves can have properties there is a well-known division in the theory of properties between those who take a typed and those who take a type-free approach. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: I take this idea to be about linguistic predicates, and about semantics which draws on model theory. To see it as about actual 'properties' in the physical world makes no sense. |
| 22017 | Normativity needs the possibility of negation, in affirmation and denial [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: To adopt any kind of normative stance is to commit oneself necessarily to the possibility of negation. It involves doing something correctly or incorrectly, so there must exist the possibility of denying or affirming. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key idea for understanding Hegel's logic. Personally I think animals have a non-verbal experience of negation - when a partner dies, for example. |
| 21653 | Maybe not even names are referential, but are just by used by speakers to refer [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A more radical alternative which takes names not to be referring even in the broader sense, but only takes speakers to refer with uses of names. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: Given that you can make up nicknames and silly nonce names for people, this seems plausible. I may say a name in a crowded room and three people look up. |
| 21636 | 'Singular terms' are not found in modern linguistics, and are not the same as noun phrases [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Being a 'singular term' is not a category in contemporary syntactic theory and it doesn't correspond to any of the notions employed there like that of a singular noun phrase or the like. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber has researched such things. This is an important objection to the reliance of modern Fregeans on the ontological commitments of singular terms (as proof that there are 'mathematical objects'). |
| 21637 | If two processes are said to be identical, that doesn't make their terms refer to entities [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Identity between objects occurs in 'How Mary makes a chocolate cake is identical to how my grandfather used to make it', but does this show that 'how Mary makes a chocolate cake' aims to pick out an entity? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a counterexample to the Fregean thought that the criterion for the existence of the referent of a singular term is its capacity to participate in an identity relation. Defenders of the Fregean view are aware of such examples. |
| 21643 | The inferential quantifier focuses on truth; the domain quantifier focuses on reality [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: When we ask 'is there a number?' in its inferential role (or internalist) reading, then we ask whether or not there is a true instance of 't is a number'. When we ask in its domain conditions (externalist) reading, we ask if the world contains a number. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber's key distinction. The distinction between making truth prior and making reference prior is intriguing and important. The internalist version is close to substitutional quantification. Only the externalist view needs robust reference. |
| 21644 | Numbers are used as singular terms, as adjectives, and as symbols [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Number words have a singular term use, and adjectival (or determiner) use, and the symbolic use. The main question is how they relate to each other. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'the number four is even', 'there are four moons', and '4 comes after 3'. |
| 21646 | The Amazonian Piraha language is said to have no number words [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The now famous Piraha language, of the Amazon region in Brazil, allegedly has no number words. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.6) | |
| A reaction: Two groups can be shown to be of equal cardinality, by one-to-one matching rather than by counting. They could get by using 'equals' (and maybe unequally bigger and unequally smaller), and intuitive feelings for sizes of groups. |
| 21665 | The fundamental theorem of arithmetic is that all numbers are composed uniquely of primes [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The prime numbers are more fundamental than the even numbers, and than the composite non-prime numbers. The result that all numbers uniquely decompose into a product of prime numbers is called the 'Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic'. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.2) | |
| A reaction: I could have used this example in my thesis, which defended the view that essences are the fundamentals of explanation, even in abstract theoretical realms. |
| 21649 | How can words be used for counting if they are objects? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Number words as singular terms seem to refer to objects; numbers words in determiner or adjectival position are tied to counting. How these objects are related to counting is what the application problem is about. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.3) | |
| A reaction: You can't use stones for counting, so there must be more to numbers than the announcement that they are 'objects'. They seem to have internal relations, which makes them unusual objects. |
| 21647 | Logicism makes sense of our ability to know arithmetic just by thought [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Frege's tying the objectivity of arithmetic to the objectivity of logic makes sense of the fact that can find out about arithmetic by thinking alone. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that logic is entirely a priori. We might compare the geometry of land surfaces with 'pure' geometry. If numbers are independent objects, it is unclear how we could have any a priori knowledge of them. |
| 21648 | Neo-Fregeans are dazzled by a technical result, and ignore practicalities [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A major flaw of the neo-Fregean program is that it is more impressed by the technical result that Peano Arithmetic can be interpreted by second-order logic plus Hume's Principle, than empirical considerations about how numbers come about. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound like a problem that would bother Fregeans or neo-Fregeans much. Deriving the Peano Axioms from various beginnings has become a parlour game for modern philosophers of mathematics. |
| 21664 | Supervenience offers little explanation for things which necessarily go together [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The results from the use of supervenience in philosophical theorising are limited. In particular, modal notions can't distinguish between things which necessarily go together. For example, that truths about numbers are grounded in truths about sets. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 21660 | Reality can be seen as the totality of facts, or as the totality of things [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Reality can be seen as everything that is the case - the totality of all facts that obtain - or reality can be seen as everything there is - the totality of all things that exist. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10) | |
| A reaction: Things are a lot easier to specify than facts, but on the whole I prefer facts, just in order to affirm that there is more to reality than the mere 'things' that compose it. Our ontology must capture the dynamic and relational character of reality. |
| 21661 | There are probably ineffable facts, systematically hidden from us [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: We do have reason to think that there are ineffable facts, and that these facts are systematically hidden from us. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10.2.4) | |
| A reaction: [Hofweber's Ch.10 is a lengthy and interesting discussion of ineffable facts] Things which are very very small, or very very remote in space seem obvious candidates. The most obvious candidates are tiny detail about the remote past. |
| 21652 | Our perceptual beliefs are about ordinary objects, not about simples arranged chair-wise [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The belief that there are simples arranged chair-wise is not a perceptual belief. Our perceptual beliefs have a content about ordinary objects, not simples arranged chair-wise. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 07.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber gives ontological priority to 'perceptual beliefs'. I'm inclined to agree, but I hear the critical hordes swarming against the gate. |
| 21663 | Counterfactuals are essential for planning, and learning from mistakes [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Counterfactuals are important for reasoning about the past and to plan for the future. If we want to learn from our mistakes, it is important to think about what would have happened if I had done things differently. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.1) | |
| A reaction: A thought also found in Tim Williamson, but not the sort of thing you hear from Lewis or Stalnaker. It is a nice example of how highly abstract and theoretical problems need to be slotted into human psychology. |
| 22018 | Necessary truths derive from basic assertion and negation [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte thought that everything that involves necessary truths - even mathematics and logic - should be shown to follow from the more basic principles involved in assertion and negation. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: An interesting proposal, though I am struggling to see how it works. Fichte sees assertion and negation as foundational (Idea 22017), but I take them to be responses to the real world. |
| 22064 | Fichte's logic is much too narrow, and doesn't deduce ethics, art, society or life [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Only Fichte's principles are deduced in his book, that is, the logical ones, and not even these completely. And what about the practical, the moral and ethical ones. Society, learning, wit, art, and so on are also entitled to be deduced here. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works Vol 18 p.34 | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of the romantic rebellion against a rather narrowly rationalist approach to philosophy. Schlegel also objects to the fact that Fichte only had one axiom (presumably the idea of the not-Self). |
| 22032 | Fichte's key claim was that the subjective-objective distinction must itself be subjective [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte's key claim was that the difference between the subjective and the objective points of view had to be itself a subjective distinction, something that the 'I' posits. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 09 | |
| A reaction: This seems to lock us firmly into the idealist mental prison and throw away the key. |
| 22020 | We only see ourselves as self-conscious and rational in relation to other rationalities [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: A rational creature cannot posit itself as such a creature with self-consciousness without positing itself as an individual, as one among many rational creatures. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.8), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 n25 | |
| A reaction: [1796 book about his Wissenschaftlehre] This is the transcendental (Kantian) approach to other minds. Wittgenstein's private language argument is similar. Hegel was impressed by this idea (I think). |
| 22060 | The Self is the spontaneity, self-relatedness and unity needed for knowledge [Fichte, by Siep] |
| Full Idea: According to Fichte, spontaneity, self-relatedness, and unity are the basic traits of knowledge (which includes conscience). ...This principle of all knowledge is what he calls the 'I' or the Self. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.58 | |
| A reaction: This is the idealist view. He gets 'spontaneity' from Kant, which is the mind's contribution to experience. Self-relatedness is the distinctive Fichte idea. Unity presumably means total coherence, which is typical of idealists. |
| 22066 | Novalis sought a much wider concept of the ego than Fichte's proposal [Novalis on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Novalis aimed to create a theory of the ego with a much wider scope than Fichte's doctrine of knowledge had been able to establish. ....Without philosophy, imperfect poet - without poetry, imperfect thinker. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Novalis - Logological Fragments I vol.3 p.531 | |
| A reaction: [in his 'Fichte Studies] Since this is at the heart of early romanticism, I take the concept to embrace nature, as well as creative imagination. There is a general rebellion against the narrowness of Fichte. |
| 22016 | The self is not a 'thing', but what emerges from an assertion of normativity [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte said the self is not a natural 'thing' but is itself a normative status, and 'it' can obtain this status, so it seems, only by an act of attributing it to itself. ...He continually identified the 'I' with 'reason' itself. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: Pinkard says Fichte gradually qualified this claim. Fichte struggled to state his view in a way that avoided obvious paradoxes. 'My mind produces decisions, so there must be someone in charge of them'? Is this transcendental? |
| 22019 | Consciousness of an object always entails awareness of the self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I can be conscious of any object only on the condition that I am also conscious of myself, that is, of the conscious subject. This proposition is incontrovertible. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794], p.112), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: [from the 1797/8 version of Wissenschaftslehre] Russell might be cross to find that his idea on this was anticipated by Fichte. I still approve of the idea. |
| 22061 | Judgement is distinguishing concepts, and seeing their relations [Fichte, by Siep] |
| Full Idea: For Fichte, to judge means to distinguish concepts from one another and to place them in relationship to one another. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Ludwig Siep - Fichte p.59 | |
| A reaction: This idea of Fichte's seems to be the key one for Hegel, and hence (I presume) it is the lynchpin of German Idealism. It seems to describe mathematical knowledge quite well. I don't think it fits judging whether there is a snake in the grass. |
| 21654 | The "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in a language has a referent [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The picture of language often called the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in natural languages refers; they simply differ in what they refer to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems obvious that at least there are syncategorematic terms like 'not' and 'or' and 'maybe' that are internal to language. I'm inclining to the opposite view of Paul Pietroski. Hofweber says if all words are names, they can't add up to truth. |
| 21641 | Inferential role semantics is an alternative to semantics that connects to the world [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: An inferential role semantics is generally seen as a large-scale alternative to a semantics based on reference and other language-world relations. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 03.4.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the other obvious language-world relation is truth. Being a robust realist, I take it I have to be strongly committed to semantics which connects to the world - or do I? Reality is robust, but our talk about it is evasive? |
| 21638 | Syntactic form concerns the focus of the sentence, as well as the truth-conditions [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Syntactic form is not only related to the truth conditions of a sentence; it is also related to what focus an utterance of a sentence will have. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber has commendably studied some linguistics. The idea of mental and linguistic 'focus' increasingly strikes me as of importance in many areas of philosophy. E.g. in the scope of ethics, on whom should you focus? |
| 21658 | Properties can be expressed in a language despite the absence of a single word for them [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Simply because there is no single word in a certain language for a certain property doesn't mean that it isn't expressible in that language. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Good. For example a shade of blue for which there is no label might be 'the next darkest discriminable shade of blue adjacent to the one we are looking at'. And then the one after that... But 'tastes better than Diet Pepsi' in ancient Greek? |
| 21659 | 'Being taller than this' is a predicate which can express many different properties [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: It is said that not every property can be expressed because there are more properties than there are predicates. ...But the same predicate can be used to express many different properties: 'being taller than this' depends on what 'this' refers to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: A good example, but being a comparative and relying on a demonstrative indexical makes it a favourable example. 'Being made of iron' doesn't have much scope for expressing many properties. |
| 21655 | Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Compositional semantics assigns semantic values to various expressions in order to generate the truth conditions of the sentences in which they can occur correctly, ...thus leading to the truth-conditions of the sentence. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.3) | |
| A reaction: I favour both the compositional and the truth-conditional accounts of semantics, but I am not sure how to fit the pragmatic and contextual ingredient into that picture. You can't leave out psychology. |
| 21656 | Proposition have no content, because they are content [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there propositions then they do not have content, because they are content. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right. A rather obvious regress threatens if you say otherwise. |
| 21635 | Without propositions there can be no beliefs or desires [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there are no propositions, then there are no contents, and thus there are no beliefs and desires. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 01.4.3) | |
| A reaction: A simple but powerful point. Those who claim that there are only sentences (and no propositions) can hardly claim that you must formulate a sentence every time you have a specific belief or desire. |
| 21662 | Do there exist thoughts which we are incapable of thinking? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Might there be some thought token that has a different content than any such token we can in principle have? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10.3.3) | |
| A reaction: For me the idea that a thought might exist which can never be thought is an absurdity, but people who believe in the external existence of parts of reality called 'propositions' seem committed to it. A baffling view. |
| 21645 | 'Semantic type coercion' is selecting the reading of a word to make the best sense [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Semantic type coercion' is where an expression of variable type is forced to take a particular type on a particular occasion so that the sentence as a whole in which it occurse is semantically interpretable. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.4.4) | |
| A reaction: He compares 'and' in 'John sang and Mary danced' with 'John and Mary danced together', where 'and' can vary in type, and we adopt the reading that makes sense. Hofweber says we do this with number language. He favours 'cognitive need'. |
| 21639 | 'Background deletion' is appropriately omitting background from an answer [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Background deletion' is the pheomenon that what isn't focused in an answer, what is the background, can be left out of the answer, with the resulting sub-sentential answer nonetheless being appropriate. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [I'm struck by the verbosity of this sentence, from an over-long book] It is not unreasonable to think that each conversational exchange has an implicit and agreed domain of quantification. Well, 'focus', then. |
| 22023 | Fichte's idea of spontaneity implied that nothing counts unless we give it status [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Fichte placed emphasis on human spontaneity, on nothing 'counting' for us unless we somehow bestowed some kind of status on it. | |
| From: report of Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: This idea evidentally arises from Kant's account of thought. Pinkard says this idea inspired the early Romantics. I would have thought the drive to exist (Spinoza's conatus) would make things count whether we liked it or not. |
| 22065 | Fichte reduces nature to a lifeless immobility [Schlegel,F on Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Fichte reduces the non-Ego or nature to a state of constant calm, standstill, immobility, lack of all change, movement and life, that is death. | |
| From: comment on Johann Fichte (The Science of Knowing (Wissenschaftslehre) [1st ed] [1794]) by Friedrich Schlegel - works vol 12 p.190 | |
| A reaction: The point is that Fichte's nature is a merely logical or conceptual deduction from the spontaneous reason of the self, so it can't have the lively diversity we find in nature. |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |