7 ideas
| 21925 | For Schelling the Absolute spirit manifests as nature in which self-consciousness evolves [Schelling, by Lewis,PB] |
| Full Idea: (Like Schopenhauer) Schelling understood the Absolute - spirit rather than will - to manifest itself as nature in which man evolves with self-consciousness. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 4 | |
| A reaction: The influence of Spinoza seems strong here. Is his Absolute just Spinoza's 'God'? |
| 22045 | Metaphysics aims at the Absolute, which goes beyond subjective and objective viewpoints [Schelling, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Schelling never lost his youthful conviction that any metaphysics had to be an explication of the 'absolute' as something that went beyond both subjective and objective points of view. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 12 | |
| A reaction: Even for a scientific and analytic modern philosopher there must be a target of an ideal account that includes human subjectivity within an objective view of the world. Even Mysterians like McGinn would like that. |
| 1556 | By nature people are close to one another, but culture drives them apart [Hippias] |
| Full Idea: I regard you all as relatives - by nature, not by convention. By nature like is akin to like, but convention is a tyrant over humankind and often constrains people to act contrary to nature. | |
| From: Hippias (fragments/reports [c.430 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 337c8 |
| 7441 | Experiences are defined by their causal role, and causal roles belong to physical states [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The definitive characteristic of any experience is its causal role, its most typical causes and effects; but we materialists believe that these causal roles which belong by analytic necessity to experiences belong in fact to certain physical states. | |
| From: David Lewis (An Argument for the Identity Theory [1966], §I) | |
| A reaction: This is the Causal version of functionalism, which Armstrong also developed. The word 'typical' leads later to a teleological element in the theory (e.g. in Lycan). There are other things to say about mental states than just their causal role. |
| 7442 | 'Pain' contingently names the state that occupies the causal role of pain [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: On my theory, 'pain' is a contingent name - that is, a name with different denotations in different possible worlds - since in any world, 'pain' names whatever state happens in that world to occupy the causal role definitive of pain. | |
| From: David Lewis (An Argument for the Identity Theory [1966], §II n6) | |
| A reaction: Better to say that 'pain' (like 'sound') is ambiguous. It is indiscriminately used by English-speakers to mean [1] the raw quale that we experience when damaged, and [2] whatever it is that leads to pain behaviour. Maybe frogs have 2 but not 1. |
| 22057 | Schelling sought a union between the productivities of nature and of the mind [Schelling, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Schelling's philosophy of nature aims to connect nature's 'unconscious productivity' with the mind's 'conscious productivity'. | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 3 | |
| A reaction: If you have a fairly active view of nature (as Leibniz did), then this is a promising line. I like the unpopular view that the modern idea of spontaneous 'powers' in nature is applicable to explanations of mind. |
| 22031 | Schelling made organisms central to nature, because mere mechanism could never produce them [Schelling, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Schelling made the image of the 'organism' central to his conception of nature, arguing that merely mechanical processes could never produce 'life' (as a self-producing, self-sustaining, self-directing process). | |
| From: report of Friedrich Schelling (Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature [1799]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 08 | |
| A reaction: At that date this seems a reasonable claim, but subsequent biochemistry has undermined it. |