35 ideas
| 9307 | Modern Western culture suddenly appeared in Jena in the 1790s [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: Foucault was right to say that Jena in the 1790s was the arena where the fundamental interests in modern Western culture suddenly had their breakthrough. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: [Hölderlin, Novalis, Tieck, Schlegel, based on Kant and Fichte] Romanticism seems to have been born then. Is that the essence of modernism? Foucault and his pals are hoping to destroy the Enlightenment by ignoring it, but that is modern too. |
| 9297 | You can't understand love in terms of 'if and only if...' [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: I once began reading a philosophical article on love. The following statement soon came up: 'Bob loves Kate if and only if...' At that point I stopped reading. Such a formalized approach was unsuitable, because the actual phenomenon would be lost. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Pref) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree! However, if your best friend comes to you and says, 'I can't decide whether I am really in love with Kate; what do you think?', how are you going to respond. You offer 'if and only if..', but in a warm and sympathetic way! |
| 13252 | Some truths have true negations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Dialetheism is the view that some truths have true negations. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: The important thing to remember is that they are truths. Thus 'Are you feeling happy?' might be answered 'Yes and no'. |
| 13247 | A truthmaker is an object which entails a sentence [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker thesis is that an object is a truthmaker for a sentence if and only if its existence entails the sentence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.3) | |
| A reaction: The use of the word 'object' here is even odder than usual, and invites many questions. And the 'only if' seems peculiar, since all sorts of things can make a sentence true. 'There is someone in the house' for example. |
| 13249 | (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The inference of 'distribution' (∀x)(A v B) |- (∀x)A v (∃x)B) is valid in classical logic but invalid intuitionistically. It is straightforward to construct a 'stage' at which the LHS is true but the RHS is not. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to parallel the iterative notion in set theory, that you must construct your hierarchy. All part of the general 'constructivist' approach to things. Is some kind of mad platonism the only alternative? |
| 13243 | Excluded middle must be true for some situation, not for all situations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant logic endorses excluded middle, ..but says instances of the law may fail. Bv¬B is true in every situation that settles the matter of B. It is necessary that there is some such situation. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: See next idea for the unusual view of necessity on which this rests. It seems easier to assert something about all situations than just about 'some' situation. |
| 13242 | It's 'relevantly' valid if all those situations make it true [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The argument from P to A is 'relevantly' valid if and only if, for every situation in which each premise in P is true, so is A. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea that proper inference should have an element of relevance to it. A falsehood may allow all sorts of things, without actually implying them. 'Situations' sound promising here. |
| 13246 | Relevant logic does not abandon classical logic [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We have not abandoned classical logic in our acceptance of relevant logic. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: It appears that classical logic is straightforwardly accepted, but there is a difference of opinion over when it is applicable. |
| 13245 | Relevant consequence says invalidity is the conclusion not being 'in' the premises [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Relevant consequence says the conclusion of a relevantly invalid argument is not 'carried in' the premises - it does not follow from the premises. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: I find this appealing. It need not invalidate classical logic. It is just a tougher criterion which is introduced when you want to do 'proper' reasoning, instead of just playing games with formal systems. |
| 13254 | A doesn't imply A - that would be circular [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We could reject the inference from A to itself (on grounds of circularity). | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [Martin-Meyer System] 'It's raining today'. 'Are you implying that it is raining today?' 'No, I'm SAYING it's raining today'. Logicians don't seem to understand the word 'implication'. Logic should capture how we reason. Nice proposal. |
| 13255 | Relevant logic may reject transitivity [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Some relevant logics reject transitivity, but we defend the classical view. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: [they cite Neil Tennant for this view] To reject transitivity (A?B ? B?C ? A?C) certainly seems a long way from classical logic. But in everyday inference Tennant's idea seems good. The first premise may be irrelevant to the final conclusion. |
| 13250 | Free logic terms aren't existential; classical is non-empty, with referring names [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: A logic is 'free' to the degree it refrains from existential import of its singular and general terms. Classical logic must have non-empty domain, and each name must denote in the domain. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that logic should have no ontology at all, so I like the sound of 'free' logic. We can't say 'Pegasus does not exist', and then reason about Pegasus just like any other horse. |
| 13235 | Logic studies consequence; logical truths are consequences of everything, or nothing [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays we think of the consequence relation itself as the primary subject of logic, and view logical truths as degenerate instances of this relation. Logical truths follow from any set of assumptions, or from no assumptions at all. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems exactly right; the alternative is the study of necessities, but that may not involve logic. |
| 13238 | Syllogisms are only logic when they use variables, and not concrete terms [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: According to the Peripatetics (Aristotelians), only syllogistic laws stated in variables belong to logic, and not their applications to concrete terms. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: [from Lukasiewicz] Seems wrong. I take it there are logical relations between concrete things, and the variables are merely used to describe these relations. Variables lack the internal powers to drive logical necessities. Variables lack essence! |
| 13234 | The view of logic as knowing a body of truths looks out-of-date [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Through much of the 20th century the conception of logic was inherited from Frege and Russell, as knowledge of a body of logical truths, as arithmetic or geometry was a knowledge of truths. This is odd, and a historical anomaly. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I have always taken this idea to be false. I presume logic has minimal subject matter and truths, and preferably none at all. |
| 13232 | Logic studies arguments, not formal languages; this involves interpretations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Logic does not study formal languages for their own sake, which is formal grammar. Logic evaluates arguments, and primarily considers formal languages as interpreted. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Hodges seems to think logic just studies formal languages. The current idea strikes me as a much more sensible view. |
| 13241 | The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The model theory of classical predicate logic is mathematics if anything is. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting contrast to the claim of logicism, that mathematics reduces to logic. This idea explains why students of logic are surprised to find themselves involved in mathematics. |
| 13253 | There are several different consequence relations [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: We are pluralists about logical consequence because we take there to be a number of different consequence relations, each reflecting different precisifications of the pre-theoretic notion of deductive logical consequence. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 8) | |
| A reaction: I don't see how you avoid the slippery slope that leads to daft logical rules like Prior's 'tonk' (from which you can infer anything you like). I say that nature imposes logical conquence on us - but don't ask me to prove it. |
| 13240 | A sentence follows from others if they always model it [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The sentence X follows logically from the sentences of the class K if and only if every model of the class K is also a model of the sentence X. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This why the symbol |= is often referred to as 'models'. |
| 13236 | Logical truth is much more important if mathematics rests on it, as logicism claims [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: If mathematical truth reduces to logical truth then it is important what counts as logically true, …but if logicism is not a going concern, then the body of purely logical truths will be less interesting. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Logicism would only be one motivation for pursuing logical truths. Maybe my new 'Necessitism' will derive the Peano Axioms from broad necessary truths, rather than from logic. |
| 13237 | Preface Paradox affirms and denies the conjunction of propositions in the book [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: The Paradox of the Preface is an apology, that you are committed to each proposition in the book, but admit that collectively they probably contain a mistake. There is a contradiction, of affirming and denying the conjunction of propositions. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems similar to the Lottery Paradox - its inverse perhaps. Affirm all and then deny one, or deny all and then affirm one? |
| 13244 | Relevant necessity is always true for some situation (not all situations) [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: In relevant logic, the necessary truths are not those which are true in every situation; rather, they are those for which it is necessary that there is a situation making them true. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to rest on the truthmaker view of such things, which I find quite attractive (despite Merricks's assault). Always ask what is making some truth necessary. This leads you to essences. |
| 9308 | If subjective and objective begin to merge, then so do primary and secondary qualities [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: It is doubtful whether the traditional dichotomy between the strictly subjective and the strictly objective can still be maintained; if not, we must also revise the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Very perceptive. The reason why I am so keen to hang onto the primary/secondary distinction is because I want to preserve objectivity (and realism). I much prefer Locke to Hume, as empiricist spokesmen. |
| 9309 | Emotions have intentional objects, while a mood is objectless [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: An emotion normally has an intentional object, while a mood is objectless. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It doesn't follow that the object of the emotion is clearly understood, or even that it is conscious. One may experience rising anger while struggling to see what its object is. Artistic symbolism seems to involve objects that create moods. |
| 13239 | Judgement is always predicating a property of a subject [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: All judgement, for Kant, is essentially the predication of some property to some subject. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the denial of a predicate could be a judgement, or the affirmation of ambiguous predicates? |
| 13248 | We can rest truth-conditions on situations, rather than on possible worlds [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Situation semantics is a variation of the truth-conditional approach, taking the salient unit of analysis not to be the possible world, or some complete consistent index, but rather the more modest 'situation'. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 5.5.4) | |
| A reaction: When I read Davidson (and implicitly Frege) this is what I always assumed was meant. The idea that worlds are meant has crept in to give truth conditions for modal statements. Hence situation semantics must cover modality. |
| 13233 | Propositions commit to content, and not to any way of spelling it out [Beall/Restall] |
| Full Idea: Our talk of propositions expresses commitment to the general notion of content, without a commitment to any particular way of spelling this out. | |
| From: JC Beall / G Restall (Logical Pluralism [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of propositions I like this. It leaves open the question of whether the content belongs to the mind or the language. Animals entertain propositions, say I. |
| 9304 | Death appears to be more frightening the less one has lived [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: Death appears to be more frightening the less one has lived. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Adorno with this] A good thought, which should be immediately emailed to Epicurus for comment. Which is worse - to die when you have barely started your great work (Ramsey), or dying in full flow (Schubert)? |
| 9298 | We can be unaware that we are bored [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: It is perfectly possible to be bored without being aware of the fact. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: True. Also, I sometimes mistake indecision for boredom. It becomes very hard to say for certain whether you are bored. I am certain that I am bored if I am forced to do something which has no interest for me. The big one is free-but-bored. |
| 9301 | Boredom is so radical that suicide could not overcome it; only never having existed would do it [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: Boredom is so radical that it cannot even be overcome by suicide, only by something completely impossible - not to have existed at all. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: [he cites Fernando Pessoa for this] The actor George Sanders left a suicide note saying that he was just bored. A cloud of boredom is left hanging in the air where he was. |
| 9302 | We are bored because everything comes to us fully encoded, and we want personal meaning [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: Boredom results from a lack of personal meaning, which is due to the fact that all objects and actions come to us fully encoded, while we (as descendants of Romanticism) insist on a personal meaning. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This idea justifies me categorising Boredom under Existentialism. This is an excellent idea, and perfectly captures the experience of most teenagers, for whom it is impossible to impose a personal meaning on such a vast cultural reality. |
| 9310 | The profoundest boredom is boredom with boredom [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: In the profound form of boredom, I am bored by boredom itself. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Boredom is boring, which is why I try to avoid it. Third-level boredom is a rather enchanting idea. It sounds remarkably similar to the Buddha experiencing enlightenment. |
| 9311 | We have achieved a sort of utopia, and it is boring, so that is the end of utopias [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: There can hardly be any new utopias. To the extent that we can imagine a utopia, it must already have been realised. A utopia cannot, by definition, include boredom, but the 'utopia' we are living in is boring. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 8989. Lots of people (including me) think that we have achieved a kind of liberal, democratic, individualistic 'utopia', but the community needs of people are not being met, so we still have a way to go. |
| 9303 | The concept of 'alienation' seems no longer applicable [Svendsen] |
| Full Idea: I do not believe that the concept of 'alienation' is all that applicable any more. | |
| From: Lars Svendsen (A Philosophy of Boredom [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Interesting but puzzling. If alienation is the key existential phenomenon of a capitalist society, why should it fade away if we remain capitalist? He is proposing that it has metamorphosed into boredom, which may be a different sort of alienation. |
| 20525 | Free markets lead to boom and bust, pointless middlemen, and alienated workers [Engels] |
| Full Idea: Free markets inevitably lead to unemployment and ruined businesses, when the capitalist market is punctuated by a 'trade cycle' of boom and bust. .. There are speculating, swindling middlemen. ...and the nature of work is degrading and alienated. | |
| From: Friedrich Engels (Speeches in Elberfeld [1849]), quoted by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 5 'Arguments' | |
| A reaction: [compression of Wolff's summary] Wolff observes that middlemen are heroes to lovers of the market. The idea of alienation seems to be that everyone should be in charge of their own work. That may approach anarchy. |