38 ideas
21916 | Philosophers can't be religious, and don't need to be; philosophy is perilous but free [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: No one who is religious attains to philosophy; he does not need it. No one who really philosophizes is religious; he walks without leading-strings, perilously but free. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], II p.241-3), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
A reaction: This is a direct reply to the opposite view expressed by Schleiermacher (and quoted by Lewis). I would say that to be a philosopher one must give priority to the philosophy, ahead of any religious beliefs. Thinking must be free. |
22270 | Frege changed philosophy by extending logic's ability to check the grounds of thinking [Potter on Frege] |
Full Idea: Frege's 1879 logic transformed philosophy because it greatly expanded logic's reach - what thought can achieve unaided - and hence compelled a re-examination of everything previously said about the grounds of thought when logic gives out. | |
From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 Intro | |
A reaction: I loved the gloss on logic as 'what thought can achieve unaided'. I largely see logic in terms of what is mechanically computable. |
8939 | We should not describe human laws of thought, but how to correctly track truth [Frege, by Fisher] |
Full Idea: Frege disagree that logic should merely describe the laws of thought - how people actually did reason. Logic is essentially normative, not descriptive. We want the one logic which successfully tracks the truth. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Jennifer Fisher - On the Philosophy of Logic 1.III | |
A reaction: This explains Frege's sustained attack on psychologism, and it also explains we he ended up as a platonist about logic - because he wanted its laws to be valid independently of human thinking. A step too far, perhaps. Brains are truth machines. |
4971 | I don't use 'subject' and 'predicate' in my way of representing a judgement [Frege] |
Full Idea: A distinction of subject and predicate finds no place in my way of representing a judgement. | |
From: Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879], §03) | |
A reaction: Perhaps this sentence could be taken as the beginning of modern analytical philosophy. The old view doesn't seem to me entirely redundant - merely replaced by a much more detailed analysis of what makes a 'subject' and what makes a 'predicate'. |
17745 | For Frege, 'All A's are B's' means that the concept A implies the concept B [Frege, by Walicki] |
Full Idea: 'All A's are B's' meant for Frege that the concept A implies the concept B, or that to be A implies also to be B. Moreover this applies to arbitrary x which happens to be A. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michal Walicki - Introduction to Mathematical Logic History D.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to hit the renate/cordate problem. If all creatures with hearts also have kidneys, does that mean that being enhearted logically implies being kidneyfied? If all chimps are hairy, is that a logical requirement? Is inclusion implication? |
7728 | Frege has a judgement stroke (vertical, asserting or judging) and a content stroke (horizontal, expressing) [Frege, by Weiner] |
Full Idea: Frege distinguished between asserting a proposition and expressing it, and he introduced the judgement stroke (a small vertical line, assertion) and the content stroke (a long horizontal line, expression) to represent them. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.3 | |
A reaction: There are also strokes for conditional and denial. |
16881 | The laws of logic are boundless, so we want the few whose power contains the others [Frege] |
Full Idea: Since in view of the boundless multitude of laws that can be enunciated we cannot list them all, we cannot achieve completeness except by searching out those that, by their power, contain all of them. | |
From: Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879], §13) | |
A reaction: He refers to these laws in the previous sentence as the 'core'. His talk of 'power' is music to my ears, since it implies a direction of explanation. Burge says the power is that of defining other concepts. |
7622 | In 1879 Frege developed second order logic [Frege, by Putnam] |
Full Idea: By 1879 Frege had discovered an algorithm, a mechanical proof procedure, that embraces what is today standard 'second order logic'. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Hilary Putnam - Reason, Truth and History Ch.5 | |
A reaction: Note that Frege did more than introduce quantifiers, and the logic of predicates. |
7729 | Frege replaced Aristotle's subject/predicate form with function/argument form [Frege, by Weiner] |
Full Idea: Frege's regimentation is based on the view of the simplest sort of statement as having, not subject/predicate form (as in Aristotle), but function/argument form. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Joan Weiner - Frege | |
A reaction: This looks like being a crucial move into the modern world, where one piece of information is taken in and dealt with, as in computer procedures. Have educated people reorganised their minds along Fregean lines? |
9950 | A quantifier is a second-level predicate (which explains how it contributes to truth-conditions) [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
Full Idea: The contribution of the quantifier to the truth conditions of sentences of which it is a part cannot be adequately explained if it is treated as other than a second-level predicate (for instance, if it is viewed as name). | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
A reaction: They suggest that this makes it something like a 'property of properties'. With this account it becomes plausible to think of numbers as quantifiers (since they do, after all, specify quantities). |
9991 | For Frege the variable ranges over all objects [Frege, by Tait] |
Full Idea: For Frege the variable ranges over all objects. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind XII | |
A reaction: The point is that Frege had not yet seen the necessity to define the domain of quantification, and this leads him into various difficulties. |
10536 | Frege's domain for variables is all objects, but modern interpretations first fix the domain [Dummett on Frege] |
Full Idea: For Frege there is no need to specify the domain of the individual variables, which is taken as the totality of all objects. This contrasts with the standard notion of an interpretation, which demands that we first fix the domain. | |
From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michael Dummett - Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) Ch.14 | |
A reaction: What intrigues me is how domains of quantification shift according to context in ordinary usage, even in mid-sentence. I ought to go through every idea in this database, specifying its domain of quantification. Any volunteers? |
7730 | Frege introduced quantifiers for generality [Frege, by Weiner] |
Full Idea: In order to express generality, Frege introduced quantifier notation. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Joan Weiner - Frege | |
A reaction: This is the birth of predicate logic, beloved of analytical philosophers (but of no apparent interest to phenomenalists, deconstructionists, existentialists?). Generality is what you get from induction (which is, of course, problematic). |
7742 | Frege reduced most quantifiers to 'everything' combined with 'not' [Frege, by McCullogh] |
Full Idea: Frege treated 'everything' as basic, and suggested ways of recasting propositions containing other quantifiers so that this was the only one remaining. He recast 'something' as 'at least one thing', and defined this in terms of 'everything' and 'not'. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Gregory McCullogh - The Game of the Name 1.6 | |
A reaction: Extreme parsimony seems highly desirable in logic as well as ontology, but it can lead to frustrations, especially over the crucial question of the existence of things quantified over. See Idea 6068. |
13824 | Proof theory began with Frege's definition of derivability [Frege, by Prawitz] |
Full Idea: Frege's formal definition of derivability is perhaps the first investigation in general proof theory. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Dag Prawitz - Gentzen's Analysis of First-Order Proofs 2 n2 | |
A reaction: In 'On General Proof Theory §1' Prawitz says "proof theory originated with Hilbert" in 1900. Presumably Frege offered a theory, and then Hilbert saw it as a general project. |
13609 | Frege produced axioms for logic, though that does not now seem the natural basis for logic [Frege, by Kaplan] |
Full Idea: Frege's work supplied a set of axioms for logic itself, at least partly because it was a well-known way of presenting the foundations in other disciplines, especially mathematics, but it does not nowadays strike us as natural for logic. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by David Kaplan - Dthat 5.1 | |
A reaction: What Bostock has in mind is the so-called 'natural' deduction systems, which base logic on rules of entailment, rather than on a set of truths. The axiomatic approach uses a set of truths, plus the idea of possible contradictions. |
17518 | Counting 'coin in this box' may have coin as the unit, with 'in this box' merely as the scope [Ayers] |
Full Idea: If we count the concept 'coin in this box', we could regard coin as the 'unit', while taking 'in this box' to limit the scope. Counting coins in two boxes would be not a difference in unit (kind of object), but in scope. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting') | |
A reaction: This is a very nice alternative to the Fregean view of counting, depending totally on the concept, and rests more on a natural concept of object. I prefer Ayers. Compare 'count coins till I tell you to stop'. |
17516 | If counting needs a sortal, what of things which fall under two sortals? [Ayers] |
Full Idea: If we accepted that counting objects always presupposes some sortal, it is surely clear that the class of objects to be counted could be designated by two sortals rather than one. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii) | |
A reaction: His nice example is an object which is both 'a single piece of wool' and a 'sweater', which had better not be counted twice. Wiggins struggles to argue that there is always one 'substance sortal' which predominates. |
17855 | It may be possible to define induction in terms of the ancestral relation [Frege, by Wright,C] |
Full Idea: Frege's account of the ancestral has made it possible, in effect, to define the natural numbers as entities for which induction holds. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Crispin Wright - Frege's Concept of Numbers as Objects 4.xix | |
A reaction: This is the opposite of the approach in the Peano Axioms, where induction is used to define the natural numbers. |
10607 | Frege's logic has a hierarchy of object, property, property-of-property etc. [Frege, by Smith,P] |
Full Idea: Frege's general logical system involves a type hierarchy, distinguishing objects from properties from properties-of-properties etc., with every item belonging to a determinate level. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Peter Smith - Intro to Gödel's Theorems 14.1 | |
A reaction: The Theory of Types went on to apply this hierarchy to classes, where Frege's disastrous Basic Law V flattens the hierarchy of classes, putting them on the same level (Smith p.119) |
11008 | Existence is not a first-order property, but the instantiation of a property [Frege, by Read] |
Full Idea: When Kant said that existence was not a property, what he meant was, according to Frege, that existence is not a first-order property - it is not a property of individuals but a property of properties, that the property has an instance. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.5 |
17520 | Events do not have natural boundaries, and we have to set them [Ayers] |
Full Idea: In order to know which event has been ostensively identified by a speaker, the auditor must know the limits intended by the speaker. ...Events do not have natural boundaries. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
A reaction: He distinguishes events thus from natural objects, where the world, to a large extent, offers us the boundaries. Nice point. |
17519 | To express borderline cases of objects, you need the concept of an 'object' [Ayers] |
Full Idea: The only explanation of the power to produce borderline examples like 'Is this hazelnut one object or two?' is the possession of the concept of an object. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Counting') |
17510 | Speakers need the very general category of a thing, if they are to think about it [Ayers] |
Full Idea: If a speaker indicates something, then in order for others to catch his reference they must know, at some level of generality, what kind of thing is indicated. They must categorise it as event, object, or quality. Thinking about something needs that much. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
A reaction: Ayers defends the view that such general categories are required, but not the much narrower sortal terms defended by Geach and Wiggins. I'm with Ayers all the way. 'What the hell is that?' |
17522 | We use sortals to classify physical objects by the nature and origin of their unity [Ayers] |
Full Idea: Sortals are the terms by which we intend to classify physical objects according to the nature and origin of their unity. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
A reaction: This is as opposed to using sortals for the initial individuation. I take the perception of the unity to come first, so resemblance must be mentioned, though it can be an underlying (essentialist) resemblance. |
17515 | Seeing caterpillar and moth as the same needs continuity, not identity of sortal concepts [Ayers] |
Full Idea: It is unnecessary to call moths 'caterpillars' or caterpillars 'moths' to see that they can be the same individual. It may be that our sortal concepts reflect our beliefs about continuity, but our beliefs about continuity need not reflect our sortals. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vi) | |
A reaction: Something that metamorphosed through 15 different stages could hardly required 15 different sortals before we recognised the fact. Ayers is right. |
17511 | Recognising continuity is separate from sortals, and must precede their use [Ayers] |
Full Idea: The recognition of the fact of continuity is logically independent of the possession of sortal concepts, whereas the formation of sortal concepts is at least psychologically dependent upon the recognition of continuity. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
A reaction: I take this to be entirely correct. I might add that unity must also be recognised. |
17517 | Could the same matter have more than one form or principle of unity? [Ayers] |
Full Idea: The abstract question arises of whether the same matter could be subject to more than one principle of unity simultaneously, or unified by more than one 'form'. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Realist' vii) | |
A reaction: He suggests that the unity of the sweater is destroyed by unravelling, and the unity of the thread by cutting. |
17513 | If there are two objects, then 'that marble, man-shaped object' is ambiguous [Ayers] |
Full Idea: The statue is marble and man-shaped, but so is the piece of marble. So not only are the two objects in the same place, but two marble and man-shaped objects in the same place, so 'that marble, man-shaped object' must be ambiguous or indefinite. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') | |
A reaction: It strikes me as basic that it can't be a piece of marble if you subtract its shape, and it can't be a statue if you subtract its matter. To treat a statue as an object, separately from its matter, is absurd. |
17523 | Sortals basically apply to individuals [Ayers] |
Full Idea: Sortals, in their primitive use, apply to the individual. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') | |
A reaction: If the sortal applies to the individual, any essence must pertain to that individual, and not to the class it has been placed in. |
17521 | You can't have the concept of a 'stage' if you lack the concept of an object [Ayers] |
Full Idea: It would be impossible for anyone to have the concept of a stage who did not already possess the concept of a physical object. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Concl') |
17514 | Temporal 'parts' cannot be separated or rearranged [Ayers] |
Full Idea: Temporally extended 'parts' are still mysteriously inseparable and not subject to rearrangement: a thing cannot be cut temporally in half. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') | |
A reaction: A nice warning to anyone accepting a glib analogy between spatial parts and temporal parts. |
17509 | Some say a 'covering concept' completes identity; others place the concept in the reference [Ayers] |
Full Idea: Some hold that the 'covering concept' completes the incomplete concept of identity, determining the kind of sameness involved. Others strongly deny the identity itself is incomplete, and locate the covering concept within the necessary act of reference. | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], Intro) | |
A reaction: [a bit compressed; Geach is the first view, and Quine the second; Wiggins is somewhere between the two] |
17512 | If diachronic identities need covering concepts, why not synchronic identities too? [Ayers] |
Full Idea: Why are covering concepts required for diachronic identities, when they must be supposed unnecessary for synchronic identities? | |
From: M.R. Ayers (Individuals without Sortals [1974], 'Prob') |
22280 | Frege's account was top-down and decompositional, not bottom-up and compositional [Frege, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Frege's account was top-down, not bottom-up: he aimed to decompose and discern function-argument structure in already existing sentences, not to explain how those sentences acquired their meanings in the first place. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 03 'Func' | |
A reaction: This goes with the holistic account of meaning, which leads to Quine's gavagai and Kuhn's obfuscation of science. I recommend compositionality for everthing. |
21924 | As the subject of willing I am wretched, but absorption in knowledge is bliss [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: As the subject of willing I am an exceedingly wretched being, and all our suffering consistd in willing, ...but as soon as I am absorbed in knowledge, I am blissfully happy and nothing can assail me. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], I p.137), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 4 | |
A reaction: So the source of his pessimism is subjection to his own will. However, since becoming absorbed in knowledge is an easy task for a scholar, he has little to grumble about. Nietzsche mocked the great pessimist for playing the flute every day. |
21915 | To deduce morality from reason is blasphemy, because it is holy, and far above reason [Schopenhauer] |
Full Idea: To deduce from reason [Vernunft] the moral element in conduct is blasphemy. In this element there is expressed the better consciousness which lies far above all reason. expresses itself in conduct as holiness, and is the true salvation of the world. | |
From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Manuscript remains [1855], I p.47), quoted by Peter B. Lewis - Schopenhauer 3 | |
A reaction: Aimed at Kant. Only Plato could inspire a non-religious person to write about morality is such terms. Maybe also the stoic ideal of beautiful deeds (given the supreme value Schopenhauer placed on the arts). |
7741 | The predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier [Frege, by Weiner] |
Full Idea: On Frege's logical analysis, the predicate 'exists' is actually a natural language expression for a quantifier. | |
From: report of Gottlob Frege (Begriffsschrift [1879]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.8 | |
A reaction: However see Idea 6067, for McGinn's alternative view of quantifiers. In the normal conventions of predicate logic it may be that existence is treated as a quantifier, but that is not the same as saying that existence just IS a quantifier. |