17 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. |
| 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. |
| 4187 | 'There is nothing without a reason why it should be rather than not be' (a generalisation of 'Why?') [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The Principle may be stated as 'There is nothing without a reason why it should be rather than not be', which is a generalisation of the assumption which justifies the question 'Why?', which is the mother of all science. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This faith is the core of philosophy, to be maintained against all defeatists like Wittgenstein and Colin McGinn. Reality must be rational, or we wouldn't be here to think about it. (Maybe!) |
| 4192 | All necessity arises from causation, which is conditioned; there is no absolute or unconditioned necessity [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Necessity has no meaning other than the irresistible sequence of the effect where the cause is given. All necessity is thus conditioned, and absolute or unconditioned necessity is a contradiction in terms. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.VIII) | |
| A reaction: I.e. there is only natural necessity, and no such thing as metaphysical necessity. But what about logical necessity(e.g. 2+3=5)? I think there may be metaphysical necessity, but we can't know much about it, and we are over-confident in assessing it. |
| 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) |
| 4190 | All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: All understanding is an immediate apprehension of the causal relation. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.IV) | |
| A reaction: Based, I take it, on Hume. Presumably he means a posteriori understanding, as it hardly fits an understanding of arithmetic. Understanding needs more than just causation. What aspects of causation? |
| 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. |
| 4191 | What we know in ourselves is not a knower but a will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: What we know in ourselves is never what knows, but what wills, the will. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.VII) | |
| A reaction: An interesting slant on Hume's scepticism about personal identity. Hume was hunting for a thing-which-experiences. If he had sought his will, he might have spotted it. |
| 21368 | The knot of the world is the use of 'I' to refer to both willing and knowing [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The identity of the subject of willing with that of knowing by virtue whereof ...the word 'I' includes and indicates both, is the knot of the world, and hence inexplicable. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], p.211-2), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 4 'Self' | |
| A reaction: I'm struggling to see this as a deep mystery. If we look objectively at animals and ask 'what is their brain for?' the answer seems obvious. This may be a case of everything looking mysterious after a philosopher has stared at it for a while. |
| 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. |
| 4189 | Time may be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: Time may be defined as the possibility of mutually exclusive conditions of the same thing. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Abstract of 'The Fourfold Root' [1813], Ch.IV) | |
| A reaction: An off-beat philosophical view of the question. Sounds more like a consequence of time than its essential nature. |
| 14409 | I am a presentist, and all language and common sense supports my view [Bigelow] |
| Full Idea: I am a presentist: nothing exists which is not present. Everyone believed this until the nineteenth century; it is writing into the grammar of natural languages; it is still assumed in everyday life, even by philosophers who deny it. | |
| From: John Bigelow (Presentism and Properties [1996], p.36), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Truth and Ontology | |
| A reaction: The most likely deniers of presentism seem to be physicists and cosmologists who have overdosed on Einstein. On the whole I vote for presentism, but what justifies truths about the past and future. Traces existing in the present? |