5 ideas
| 21753 | If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that it in turn assumes a rational aspect; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], p.29), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: What happens when I look at irrationality rationally? |
| 21974 | The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: To him who looks at the world rationally, the world looks rationally back; the two exist in reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], Intro p.29), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This is a nice variation on the stoic idea that nature is essentially rational. If we are capable of rationality, then nature has made us that way. Romantics seem to prefer looking at nature less rationally, so what do they see in nature? |
| 8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1 | |
| A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right. |
| 3536 | Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Each supervenient property necessarily has a coextensive property in the base family. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Concepts of supervenience [1984], §5) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the minimum requirement for a situation of supervenience. How do you decide which property is the 'base' property? Do we just mean that the base causes the other, but not vice versa? |
| 10364 | Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett] |
| Full Idea: Facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world. | |
| From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.22), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1 | |
| A reaction: Compare 10361. Good argument, but maybe 'fact' is ambiguous. See Idea 10365. Events are said to be more concrete, and so can do the job, but their individuation also seems to depend on a description (as Davidson has pointed out). |