Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics' and 'Introductions to 'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art''

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7 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 5. Metaphysics beyond Science

16415	Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like.
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)
	A reaction: He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up.

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 7. Against Metaphysics

16413	Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do?
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1)
	A reaction: Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good.

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 1. Quantification

16416	The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber]
	Full Idea: The inferential role of the existential quantifier in first order logic does not carry over to the existential quantifier in English (we have empty names, singular terms that are not even in the business of denoting, and so on).
	From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2)

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / e. Being and nothing

21982	I only wish I had such eyes as to see Nobody! It's as much as I can do to see real people. [Carroll,L]
	Full Idea: "I see nobody on the road," said Alice. - "I only wish I had such eyes," the King remarked. ..."To be able to see Nobody! ...Why, it's as much as I can do to see real people."
	From: Lewis Carroll (C.Dodgson) (Through the Looking Glass [1886], p.189), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7
	A reaction: [Moore quotes this, inevitably, in a chapter on Hegel] This may be a better candidate for the birth of philosophy of language than Frege's Groundwork.

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics

20327	Modern attention has moved from the intrinsic properties of art to its relational properties [Lamarque/Olson]
	Full Idea: In modern discussions, rather than look for intrinsic properties of objects, including aesthetic or formal properties, attention has turned to extrinsic or relational properties, notably of a social, historical, or 'institutional' nature.
	From: Lamargue,P/Olson,SH (Introductions to 'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art' [2004], Pt 1)
	A reaction: Lots of modern branches of philosophy have made this move, which seems to me like a defeat. We want to know why things have the relations they do. Just mapping the relations is superficial Humeanism.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 1. Defining Art

20326	Early 20th cent attempts at defining art focused on significant form, intuition, expression, unity [Lamarque/Olson]
	Full Idea: In the early twentieth century there were numerous attempts at defining the essence art. Significant form, intuition, the expression of emotion, organic unity, and other notions, were offered to this end.
	From: Lamargue,P/Olson,SH (Introductions to 'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art' [2004], Pt 1)
	A reaction: As far as I can see the whole of aesthetics was demolished in one blow by Marcel Duchamp's urinal. Artists announce: we will tell you what art is; you should just sit and listen. Compare the invention of an anarchic sport.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 7. Ontology of Art

20330	The dualistic view says works of art are either abstract objects (types), or physical objects [Lamarque/Olson]
	Full Idea: The dualistic view of the arts holds that works of art come in two fundamentally different kinds: those that are abstract entities, i.e. types, and those that are physical objects (tokens).
	From: Lamargue,P/Olson,SH (Introductions to 'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art' [2004], Pt 2)
	A reaction: Paintings are the main reason for retaining physical objects. Strawson 1974 argues that paintings are only physical because we cannot yet perfectly reproduce them. I agree. Works of art are types, not tokens.