12 ideas
| 2945 | Most philosophers start with reality and then examine knowledge; Descartes put the study of knowledge first [Lehrer] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers (e.g Plato) begin with an account of reality, and then appended an account of how we can know it, ..but Descartes turned the tables, insisting that we must first decide what we can know. | |
| From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.2) |
| 22002 | Wolff's version of Leibniz dominated mid-18th C German thought [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: The dominant philosophy of mid-eighteenth century Germany was Wolffianism, a codified and almost legalistically organised form of Leibnizian thought. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Kant grew up in this intellectual climate. |
| 22021 | Romantics explored beautiful subjectivity, and the re-enchantment of nature [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Early Romanticism can be seen as the exploration of subjective interiority and as the re-enchantment of nature (as organic). Hegel said they had the idea of a 'beautiful soul', which (he said) either paralysed action, or made them smug. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed, inc Note 1] A major dilemma of life is the extent of our social engagement, because it makes life worthwhile, but pollutes the mind with continual conflicts. |
| 22010 | The combination of Kant and the French Revolution was an excited focus for German philosophy [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: After the French Revolution, philosophy suddenly became the key rallying point for an entire generation of German intellectuals, who had been reading Kant as the harbinger of a new order. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], Pt II Intro) | |
| A reaction: Kant was a harbinger because he offered an autonomous status to each individual, rather than being subservient to a social order. |
| 22036 | In Hegel's time naturalism was called 'Spinozism' [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: In Hegel's time the shorthand for the Naturalistic worldview was 'Spinozism'. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 10) | |
| A reaction: Spinozism hit Germany like a bomb in 1786, when it was reported that the poet Hölderlin was a fan of Spinoza. |
| 2946 | You cannot demand an analysis of a concept without knowing the purpose of the analysis [Lehrer] |
| Full Idea: An analysis is always relative to some objective. It makes no sense to simply demand an analysis of goodness, knowledge, beauty or truth, without some indication of the purpose of the analysis. | |
| From: Keith Lehrer (Theory of Knowledge (2nd edn) [2000], I p.7) | |
| A reaction: Your dismantling of a car will go better if you know what a car is for, but you can still take it apart in ignorance. |
| 8251 | The logical space of reasons is a natural phenomenon, and it is the realm of freedom [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The logical space of reasons is just part of the logical space of nature. ...And, in a Kantian slogan, the space of reasons is the realm of freedom. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], Intro 7) | |
| A reaction: [second half on p.5] This is a modern have-your-cake-and-eat-it view of which I am becoming very suspicious. The modern Kantians (Davidson, Nagel, McDowell) are struggling to naturalise free will, but it won't work. Just dump it! |
| 22048 | Idealism is the link between reason and freedom [Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Idealism was conceived as a link between reason and freedom. | |
| From: Terry Pinkard (German Philosophy 1760-1860 [2002], 14 Conc) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to see the Romantic era as the Age of Freedom, which followed the Age of Reason. This idea fits that picture nicely. Pinkard says that paradoxes resulted from the attemptl |
| 8128 | Representation must be propositional if it can give reasons and be epistemological [McDowell, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: McDowell has claimed that one cannot make sense of representation that plays a role in epistemology unless one takes the representation to be propositional, and thus capable of yielding reasons. | |
| From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.456 | |
| A reaction: A transcendental argument leads back to a somewhat implausible conclusion. I suspect that McDowell has a slightly inflated (Kantian) notion of the purity of the 'space of reasons'. Do philosophers just imagine their problems? |
| 19092 | There is no pure Given, but it is cultured, rather than entirely relative [McDowell, by Macbeth] |
| Full Idea: McDowell argues that the Myth of the Given shows not that there is no content to a concept that is not a matter of its inferential relations to other concepts but only that awareness of the sort that we enjoy ...is acquired in the course of acculturation. | |
| From: report of John McDowell (Mind and World [1994]) by Danielle Macbeth - Pragmatism and Objective Truth p.185 | |
| A reaction: The first view is of Wilfred Sellars, who derives pragmatic relativism from his rejection of the Myth. This idea is helpful is seeing why McDowell has a good proposal. As I look out of my window, my immediate experience seems 'cultured'. |
| 8253 | Sense impressions already have conceptual content [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The world's impressions on our senses are already possessed of conceptual content. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea of McDowell's, which challenges most traditional empiricist views, and (maybe) offers a solution to the rationalist/empiricist debate. His commitment to the 'space of reasons' strikes me as an optional extra. |
| 8254 | Forming concepts by abstraction from the Given is private definition, which the Private Lang. Arg. attacks [McDowell] |
| Full Idea: The idea that concepts can be formed by abstraction from the Given just is the idea of private ostensive definition. So the Private Language Argument just is the rejection of the Given, in so far as it bears on the possibilities for language. | |
| From: John McDowell (Mind and World [1994], I.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why the process of abstraction from raw impressions shouldn't be a matter of public, explicit, community negotiation. We seem to be able to share and compare fairly raw impressions without much trouble (discussing sunsets). |