9 ideas
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. |
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? |
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. |
5121 | Basing ethics on flourishing makes it consequentialist, as actions are judged by contributing to it [Harman] |
Full Idea: Basing ethics on human flourishing tends towards utilitarianism or consequentialism; actions, character traits, laws, and so on are to be assessed with reference to their contributions to human flourishing. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.2) | |
A reaction: This raises the question of whether only virtue can contribute to flourishing, or whether a bit of vice might be helpful. This problem presumably pushed the Stoics to say that virtue itself is the good, rather than the resulting flourishing. |
5120 | What counts as 'flourishing' must be relative to various sets of values [Harman] |
Full Idea: If we base our ethics on human flourishing, one implication would seem to be moral relativism, since what counts as 'flourishing' seems inevitably relative to one or other set of values. | |
From: Gilbert Harman (Human Flourishing, Ethics and Liberty [1983], 9.2.1) | |
A reaction: This remark seems to make the relativist assumption that all value systems are equal. For Aristotle, flourishing is no more relative than health is. No one can assert that illness has an intrinsically high value in human life. |
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? |