10529
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If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth.
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From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310)
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A reaction:
This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers.
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10530
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Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition.
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From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312)
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A reaction:
I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition.
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20752
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For man, being is not what he is, but what he is going to be [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Being consists not in what it is already, but in what it is not yet, a being that consists in not-yet-being. Everything else in the world is what it is….Man is the entity that makes himself….He has to determine what he is going to be.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.112,201-2), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 4 'Problem'
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A reaction:
[p.112 and 201-2] This seems to be Ortega y Gasset's spin on Heidegger's concept, by adding a temporal dimension to it.
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10527
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An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K]
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Full Idea:
If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not.
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From:
Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307)
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A reaction:
I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects.
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20424
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Imaginative life requires no action, so new kinds of perception and values emerge in art [Fry]
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Full Idea:
In the imaginative life no action is necessary, so the whole consciousness may be focused upon the perceptive and the emotional aspects of the experience. Hence we get a different set of values, and a different kind of perception
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From:
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.24)
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A reaction:
Good. A huge range of human activities are like scientific experiments, where you draw on our evolved faculties, but put them in controlled conditions, where the less convenient and stressful parts are absent. War and sport. Real and theatrical tragedy.
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20430
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In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry]
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Full Idea:
Those feelings unhappily named cosmic emotion find almost no place in life, but, since they seem to belong to certain very deep springs of our nature, do become of great importance in the arts.
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From:
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.31)
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A reaction:
Focus on the sublime was big in the romantic era, but Fry still sees its importance, and I don't think it ever goes away. Art styles which scorn the sublime are failing to perform their social duty, say I.
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20428
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Popular opinion favours realism, yet most people never look closely at anything! [Fry]
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Full Idea:
Ordinary people have almost no idea of what things really look like, so that the one standard that popular criticism applies to painting (whether it is like nature or not) is the one which most people are prevented frm applying properly.
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From:
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.29)
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A reaction:
A nice remark, though there is a streak of Bloomsbury artistic snobbery running through Fry. Ordinary people recognise photographic realism, so they can study things closely either in the reality or the picture, should they so choose.
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20426
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For pure moralists art must promote right action, and not just be harmless [Fry]
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Full Idea:
To the pure moralist, accepting nothing but ethical values, to be justified, the life of the imagination must be shown not only not to hinder but actually to forward right action, otherwise it is not only useless but, by absorbing energies, harmful.
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From:
Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.26)
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A reaction:
I think this is the sort of attitude you find in Samuel Johnson. Puritans even reject light music, which seems pleasantly harmless to the rest of us. 'Absorbing energies' doesn't sound much of an objection, and may not be the actual objection.
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20756
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Instead of having a nature, man only has a history [Ortega y Gassett]
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Full Idea:
Man lives in view of the past. Man, in a word, has no nature; what he has is history. Expressed differently: what nature is to things, history is to man.
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From:
José Ortega y Gassett (Toward a Philosophy of History [1941], p.217), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 5 'Situated'
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A reaction:
Makes explicit the existentialist denial of human nature. The foundation of ethics can only be total freedom, to choose both yourself and your actions. What is inescapable is the social and culture contexts. What is the role of the 'history'?
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