Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson', 'In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism' and 'A Conversation: what is it? What is it for?'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 1. History of Philosophy

21844	The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the oppressor's role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: I find it hard to relate to this French 1960s obsession with everybody being oppressed in every conceivable way, so that 'liberation' is the only value that matters. If you ask why liberty is needed, you seem to have missed the point.

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 1. Philosophy

21849	Thought should be thrown like a stone from a war-machine [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Thought should be thrown like a stone by a war-machine. …Isn't this what Nietzsche does with an aphorism?
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
	A reaction: It sounds as if philosophy should consist of nothing but aphorisms.

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly

21845	Philosophy aims to become the official language, supporting orthodoxy and the state [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Philosophy is shot through with the project of becoming the official language of a Pure State. The exercise of thought thus conforms to the goals of the real State, to the dominant meanings and to the requirements of the established order.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: [He cites Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator' as the source of this] Is Karl Marx included in this generalisation, or Diogenes of Sinope? Is conservative philosophy thereby invalidated?

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 7. Limitations of Analysis

21839	When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Not reflection, and objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's get on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: I know it is heresy in analytic philosophy, but I love this! In analytic seminars you can barely complete your first sentence before someone interrupts. It's like road range - the philosophical mind state is always poised to attack, attack.

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 1. Continental Philosophy

21841	We must create new words, and treat them as normal, and as if designating real things. [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: This sounds like the attitude of someone creating a computer game. A language game! The idea is to create concepts with which to 'palpitate' our conceptual scheme, in order to reveal it, and thus put it within our power.

2. Reason / C. Styles of Reason / 1. Dialectic

21842	Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: Neither relativism nor dialectic. Sounds like just having fun with ideas, but a commentator tells me it is a strategy for liberating our thought, following an agenda created by Nietzsche.

21850	Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: It is always possible to undo dualisms from the inside, by tracing the line of flight which passes between the two terms or the two sets …and which draws both into a non-parallel evolution. At least this does not belong to the dialectic.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
	A reaction: Deleuze disliked Hegel's version of the dialectic. Not clear what he means here, but he is evidently groping for an alternative account of the reasoning process, which is interesting. Deleuze hates rigid dualisms.

5. Theory of Logic / L. Paradox / 2. Aporiai

21838	Before we seek solutions, it is important to invent problems [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: The art of constructing a problem is very important: you invent a problem, a problem-position, before finding a solution.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: I get the impression that Deleuze prefers problems to solutions, so the activity of exploring the problem is all that really matters. Sceptics accuse philosophers of inventing pseudo-problems. We must first know why 'problematising' is good.

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / i. Deflating being

21847	Before Being there is politics [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Before Being there is politics.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: [He says he is quoting Felix Guattari] I can only think that this is a very Marxist view - that politics permeates and dictates everything. This seems to tell me that I am forever controlled by something so deep and vast that I can never understand it.

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind

14082	No sortal could ever exactly pin down which set of particles count as this 'cup' [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Many decent candidates could the referent of this 'cup', differing over whether outlying particles are parts. No further sortal I could invoke will be selective enough to rule out all but one referent for it.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1 n8)
	A reaction: I never had much faith in sortals for establishing individual identity, so this point comes as no surprise. The implication is strongly realist - that the cup has an identity which is permanently beyond our capacity to specify it.

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 3. Three-Dimensionalism

12295	3-D says things are stretched in space but not in time, and entire at a time but not at a location [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Three-dimensionalist think a thing is somehow 'stretched out' through its location at a given time though not through the period during which it exists, and it is present in its entirety at a moment when it exists though not at a position of its location.
	From: Kit Fine (In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism [2006], p.1)
	A reaction: This definition is designed to set up Fine's defence of the 3-D view, by showing that various dubious asymmetries show up if you do not respect the distinctions offered by the 3-D view.

12298	Genuine motion, rather than variation of position, requires the 'entire presence' of the object [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: In order to have genuine motion, rather than mere variation in position, it is necessary that the object should be 'entirely present' at each moment of the change. Thus without entire presence, or existence, genuine motion will not be possible.
	From: Kit Fine (In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism [2006], p.6)
	A reaction: See Idea 4786 for a rival view of motion. Of course, who says we have to have Kit Fine's 'genuine' motion, if some sort of ersatz motion still gets you to work in the morning?

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism

12296	4-D says things are stretched in space and in time, and not entire at a time or at a location [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Four-dimensionalists have thought that a material thing is as equally 'stretched out' in time as it is in space, and that there is no special way in which it is entirely present at a moment rather than at a position.
	From: Kit Fine (In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism [2006], p.1)
	A reaction: Compare his definition of 3-D in Idea 12295. The 4-D is contrary to our normal way of thinking. Since I don't think the future exists, I presume that if I am a 4-D object then I have to say that I don't yet exist, and I disapprove of such talk.

18882	You can ask when the wedding was, but not (usually) when the bride was [Fine,K, by Simons]
	Full Idea: Fine says it is acceptable to ask when a wedding was and where it was, and it is acceptable to ask or state where the bride was (at a certain time), but not when she was.
	From: report of Kit Fine (In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism [2006], p.18) by Peter Simons - Modes of Extension: comment on Fine p.18
	A reaction: This is aimed at three-dimensionalists who seem to think that a bride is a prolonged event, just as a wedding is. Fine is, interestingly, invoking ordinary language. When did the wedding start and end? When was the bride's birth and death?

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts

12297	Three-dimensionalist can accept temporal parts, as things enduring only for an instant [Fine,K]
	Full Idea: Even if one is a three-dimensionalist, one might affirm the existence of temporal parts, on the grounds that everything merely endures for an instant.
	From: Kit Fine (In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism [2006], p.2)
	A reaction: This seems an important point, as belief in temporal parts is normally equated with four-dimensionalism (see Idea 12296). The idea is that a thing might be 'entirely present' at each instant, only to be replaced by a simulacrum.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects

14081	Identities can be true despite indeterminate reference, if true under all interpretations [Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: There can be determinately true identity claims despite indeterminate reference of the terms flanking the identity sign; these will be identity claims true under all admissible interpretations of the flanking terms.
	From: Jonathan Schaffer (Deflationary Metaontology of Thomasson [2009], 3.1)
	A reaction: In informal contexts there might be problems with the notion of what is 'admissible'. Is 'my least favourite physical object' admissible?

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

21840	A meeting of man and animal can be deterritorialization (like a wasp with an orchid) [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: The wasp becomes part of the orchid's reproductive apparatus at the same time as the orchid becomes the sexual organ of the wasp. …There are becomings where a man and an animal only meet on the trajectory of a common but asymmetrical deterritorialization.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: [second bit compressed] The point here is to illustrate 'deterritorialization', a term which Deleuze got from Guattari. It seems to be where the margins of your being become unclear. Recall the externalist, anti-individualist view of mind.

16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 1. Self as Indeterminate

21843	People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: Things, people, are made up of varied lines, and they do not necessarily know which line they are on or where they should make the line which they are tracing pass; there is a whole geography in people, with rigid lines, supple lines, lines of flight etc.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I)
	A reaction: An example of Deleuze creating a novel concept, in order to generate a liberating way of seeing our lives. His big focus is on 'lines of flight' (which, I think, are less restrained by local culture than the others).

25. Social Practice / A. Freedoms / 2. Freedom of belief

21848	Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze]
	Full Idea: There are lines which do not amount to the path of a point, which break free from structure - lines of flight, becomings, without future or past, without memory, which resist the binary machine. …The rhizome is all this.
	From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II)
	A reaction: The binary machine enforces simplistic either/or choices. I assume the 'lines' are to replace the Self, with something much more indeterminate, active and changing.