45 ideas
22701 | Jokes can sometimes be funny because they are offensive [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: Sometimes it is exactly what is offensive about a joke that makes it funny. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
A reaction: Jacobson offers this in support of his immoralist view, that immoral literature can be aesthetically successful. It is uncomfortable to find yourself laughing at a joke of which you disapprove. |
7113 | Phenomenology assumes that all consciousness is of something [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The essential principle of phenomenology is that 'all consciousness is consciousness of something'. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: This idea is found well before Husserl, in Schopenhauer (Idea 4166). It seems to contradict a thought such as Locke's (Idea 1202), that self-awareness is a separate and distinct criterion for personal identity. Sartre gives a nice account. |
6161 | Structuralism is neo-Kantian idealism, with language playing the role of categories of understanding [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Structuralism is a form of neo-Kantian idealism, in which the job of creating Kant's phenomenal world has been taken over by language instead of forms of sensibility and categories of the understanding. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: A helpful connection, which explains my aversion to any attempt at understanding the world simply by analysing language, either in its ordinary usage, or in its underlying logical form. |
6163 | If bivalence is rejected, then excluded middle must also be rejected [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: If you reject the principle of bivalence (that a proposition is either determinately true or false), then statements are also not subject to the Law of Excluded Middle (P or not-P). | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: I think Rowlands is wrong about this. Excluded Middle could be purely syntacti, or its semantics could be 'True or Not-True'. Only bivalent excluded middle introduces 'True or False'. Compare Idea 4752. |
6155 | Supervenience is a one-way relation of dependence or determination between properties [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Supervenience is essentially a one-way relation of dependence or determination, …which holds, in the first instance, between properties. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This definition immediately shows why supervenient properties are in danger of being epiphenomenal (i.e. causally irrelevant). Carefully thought about the notion of a 'one-way' relation will, I think, make it more obscure rather than clearer. |
6154 | It is argued that wholes possess modal and counterfactual properties that parts lack [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Some have argued that a mereological whole should not be identified with the sum of its parts on the grounds that the former possess certain properties - specifically modal and (perhaps) counterfactual properties - that the latter lacks. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: I am not convinced that modal and counterfactual claims should count as properties. If my pen is heated it melts (a property), but if my pen were intelligent it could do philosophy. Intelligence is a property, but the situation isn't. |
6157 | Tokens are dated, concrete particulars; types are their general properties or kinds [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Tokens are dated, concrete, particular occurrences or instances; types are the general properties that these occurrences exemplify or the kinds to which they belong. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: It might be said that types are sets, of which tokens are the members. The question of 'general properties' raises the question of whether universals must exist to make kinds possible. |
7112 | The Cogito depends on a second-order experience, of being conscious of consciousness [Sartre] |
Full Idea: We must remember that all authors who have described the Cogito have presented it as a reflective operation, i.e. as second-order. This Cogito is performed by a consciousness directed towards consciousness, which takes consciousness as its object. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: Sartre is raising the nice question of whether the Cogito still works for first-order consciousness, which attends totally to external objects. He claims that it doesn't. Contrast Russell, who says (Idea 5380) that it only works when it is first-order! |
7114 | The consciousness that says 'I think' is not the consciousness that thinks [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The consciousness that says 'I think' is precisely not the consciousness that thinks. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: All parties seem to be agreed that if we are going to introspect in search of our own ego, we must distinguish between the mental act of instrospection and the mental act of applying the mind to the world. Each gives a different result. |
7119 | Is the Cogito reporting an immediate experience of doubting, or the whole enterprise of doubting? [Sartre] |
Full Idea: When Descartes says 'I doubt therefore I am', is he talking about the spontaneous doubt that reflective consciousness grasps in its instantaneous character, or is he talking of the enterprise of doubting? This ambiguity can lead to serious errors. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (B)) | |
A reaction: Interesting. The obvious response is that it is about the immediate experience, but that leads to the problem of an instantaneous ego, which can't be justified over time. The 'enterprise' gives an enduring ego, but it is a more intellectual concept. |
6159 | Strong idealism is the sort of mess produced by a Cartesian separation of mind and world [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Neo-Kantian idealism, and the excesses of recent versions of it, are precisely the sort of mess one can get oneself into through an uncritical acceptance of the dichotomizing of mind and world along Cartesian internalist lines. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: I am unconvinced that internalism about the mind (that its contents can be defined without reference to anything external) leads to this disastrous split. We don't have to abandon the links between an internal mind and the world. |
6152 | Minds are rational, conscious, subjective, self-knowing, free, meaningful and self-aware [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: The apparent features of mind which are not obviously physical include: rationality, thought, consciousness, subjectivity, infallible first-person knowledge, freedom, meaning and self-awareness. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: A helpful list, some of which can be challenged. Ryle challenges first-person infallibility. Hume challenges self-awareness. Quine challenges meaning. Lots of people (e.g. Spinoza) challenge freedom. The Churchlands seem to challenge consciousness. |
7122 | We can never, even in principle, grasp other minds, because the Ego is self-conceiving [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The Ego can be conceived only through itself and this is why we cannot grasp the consciousness of another (for this reason alone, and not because bodies separate us). | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
A reaction: Interesting. This makes telepathy a logical impossibility, and the body the only possible route for the communication between two minds. But, is Sartre is right, how do bodily events penetrate the inturned world of the Ego? |
7125 | A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself [Sartre] |
Full Idea: A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Conc (1)) | |
A reaction: This is why we don't know what it is like to be a bat. This seems right, though it looks like a contingent truth, and yet Sartre seems to offer it as a necessary truth. Can God conceive of my consciousness? |
7108 | The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The unity of the thousand active consciousnesses through which I have added two and two to make four, is the transcendent object '2+2=4'. Without the permanence of this eternal truth, it would be impossible to conceive of a real unity of mind. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
A reaction: This is the germ of externalism, here presented as a Platonic attitude to arithmetic, rather than being about water or gold. He claims that internalist attitudes to unity are fictions. I am inclined to think he is wrong, and that unity is biological. |
6173 | Content externalism implies that we do not have privileged access to our own minds [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Content externalism threatens the idea of first-person authority in all its forms, and does so because it calls into question the idea that the access we have to our own mental states is privileged in the way required for such authority. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.7) | |
A reaction: I am inclined to respond by saying that since we clearly have privileged access to our own minds, that means there must be something wrong with content externalism. |
6174 | If someone is secretly transported to Twin Earth, others know their thoughts better than they do [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: If someone knew that a thinker had, without realising it, been transported to Twin Earth, they would almost certainly be a higher authority on the content of the thinker's thoughts than would the thinker. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.8) | |
A reaction: They would certainly be a higher authority on the truth of the thinker's thoughts, but only in the way that you might think I hold a diamond when I know it is a club. If the thinker believes it is H2O, the fact that it isn't is irrelevant to content. |
7111 | Consciousness exists as consciousness of itself [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The existence of consciousness is an absolute, because consciousness is consciousness of itself; the type of existence that consciousness has is that it is consciousness of itself. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
A reaction: I find this unconvincing. Anyone analysis the nature of the mind should think as much about animal minds as human minds. It seems obvious to me that there is likely to be an animal consciousness which is entirely of environment and its body. |
22226 | Since we are a consciousness, Sartre entirely rejected the unconscious mind [Sartre, by Daigle] |
Full Idea: Sartre refused, denied and fought against the unconscious. Since we are consciousness, there cannot be such a thing as unconsciousness. | |
From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1 | |
A reaction: The modern view is increasingly opposed to this, as neuroscience and psychology uncover hidden motives etc. Sartre's view is still legitimate, though. An unconscious motive is not more my motive than a law of the land is part of me? |
7107 | Intentionality defines, transcends and unites consciousness [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Consciousness is defined by intentionality. Through intentionality it transcends itself, it unifies itself by going outside itself. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
A reaction: The standard view for a hundred years was Brentano's idea that intentionality defines the mind. Qualia are the modern rival. If I had to choose I think I would go for intentionality, but they may be naturally and metaphysically inseparable. |
7109 | If you think of '2+2=4' as the content of thought, the self must be united transcendentally [Sartre] |
Full Idea: It is possible that those who think that '2 and 2 make 4' is the content of my representations may be forced to resort to a transcendental and subjective principle of unification - in other words, the I. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
A reaction: He suggests that thoughts themselves unite the mind, externally. If you think of thoughts as internal, you must resort to a transcendental fiction to unify the mind. Personally I think the mind is inherently unified by brain structures. |
7106 | The Ego is not formally or materially part of consciousness, but is outside in the world [Sartre] |
Full Idea: I should like to show here that the Ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness; it is outside, in the world; it is a being in the world, like the Ego of another. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Intro) | |
A reaction: This idea is the germ of what has got modern externalists about the mind (see quotations from Mark Rowlands) interested in Sartre. Personally I think he is wrong, and the Ego is a part of consciousness. It doesn't, though, have sharp boundaries. |
7117 | How could two I's, the reflective and the reflected, communicate with each other? [Sartre] |
Full Idea: If the 'I' is part of consciousness, there will be two I's: the reflective and the reflected. ...but it is unacceptable for any communication to be established between the reflective I and the reflected I, if they are real elements of consciousness. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: If we accept that there are two orders of consciousness (reflective, about itself, and reflected, about the world) it seems reasonable to say that there cannot be an 'I' in both of them. A nice, and intriguing, argument. |
7123 | Knowing yourself requires an exterior viewpoint, which is necessarily false [Sartre] |
Full Idea: 'To know oneself well' is inevitably to look at oneself from the point of view of someone else, in other words from a point of view that is necessarily false. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
A reaction: (This is because the Ego cannot be known from the outside). I agree with Russell that the self is most evident when we are engaged with the world, which implies that you can only acquire self-knowledge by studying those engagements. |
22225 | My ego is more intimate to me, but not more certain than other egos [Sartre] |
Full Idea: My I, in efffect, is no more certain for consciousness than the I of other men. It is only more intimate. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], p.104), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1 | |
A reaction: Not sure how to assess this. Other people seem just as real as I do, when I encounter them, as friend or as foe. And in dealing with them we act as if dealing with their Self (rather than their legs, say). So this idea seems a good one. |
7124 | The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
A reaction: He denies that we know the Ego when engaged with the world, and agrees with Hume that the ego can't be directly known. All that is left is this, which seems to be introspection 'out of the corner of your eye'. Not persuasive. |
7116 | When we are unreflective (as when chasing a tram) there is no 'I' [Sartre] |
Full Idea: There is no 'I' on the unreflected level. When I run after a tram, ...there is no I. There is a consciousness of the tram-needing-to-be-caught, and a non-positional consciousness of consciousness. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: Russell (Idea 5380) says exactly the opposite. My sympathies are more with Russell. I don't just focus on the tram, I focus on the relation between myself and the tram, and that includes my need to catch it, as well as my body. |
7120 | It is theoretically possible that the Ego consists entirely of false memories [Sartre] |
Full Idea: One cannot rule out the metaphysical hypothesis that my Ego is not composed of elements that have existed in reality (ten years or one second ago), but is merely constituted by false memories. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
A reaction: (He mentions the evil demon as a source). The problem that false memories (such as George IV 'remembering' he was at Waterloo, when he wasn't) is well known. But this raises the possibility of all memories being false, yet constituting the person. |
7110 | If the 'I' is transcendental, it unnecessarily splits consciousness in two [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The superfluous transcendental 'I' is actually a hindrance. If it existed, it would violently separate consciousness from itself, it would divide it, slicing through consciousness like an opaque blade. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A)) | |
A reaction: I see no a priori reason why consciousness should not be split in two, if that's how it is. Personally I am happy with a fairly traditional Cartesian view, that the self is the will and understanding, and the rest of consciousness is its working material. |
7115 | Maybe it is the act of reflection that brings 'me' into existence [Sartre] |
Full Idea: Might it not be precisely the reflective act that brings the me into being in reflected consciousness? | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B)) | |
A reaction: He admits some sort of self a second-order entity, but this is 'transcendental', and essentially an illusion. This elimination of the first-order self clears the way for the existential view, that we can create whatever self we want. I disagree. |
7121 | The Ego only appears to reflection, so it is cut off from the World [Sartre] |
Full Idea: The Ego is an object that appears only to reflection, and is thereby radically cut off from the World. | |
From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D)) | |
A reaction: This is the culmination of Sartre's attack (in 1937) on the Ego, paving the way for the freedom of existentialism. Personally I don't accept this picture of the Ego as a second-order fiction. My Ego is part of my relationship with the World. |
6158 | Supervenience of mental and physical properties often comes with token-identity of mental and physical particulars [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: One often finds a supervenience thesis concerning the relation between mental and physical properties combined with a token identity theory concerning the relation between mental and physical particulars. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This brings out the important clarifying point that supervenience is said to be between properties, not substances. The point is that supervenience will always cry out for an explanation, preferably a sensible one. |
6168 | The content of a thought is just the meaning of a sentence [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: The content of the thought that the sky is blue is simply the meaning of the sentence "The sky is blue". | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to imply that it is logically impossible for a non-language-speaker, such as a chimpanzee, to think that the sky is the same colour as the water. If we allow propositions, we might be able to keep meanings without the sentences. |
6167 | Action is bodily movement caused by intentional states [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: An action is a bodily movement that is caused by intentional states such as beliefs, desires and so on. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: A useful definition, and clearly one that has no truck with attempts at giving behaviourist definitions of action. The definition of a 'moral action' needs to be built on this one. Particular types of belief and desire, presumably. |
22703 | We don't often respond to events in art as if they were real events [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: We routinely do not respond to art as if we were as if we were real-life spectators of its events. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'rejection') | |
A reaction: This strikes me as one of the basic facts about aesthetics, and especially of narrative art. People sometimes encounter terrible events on the street, only to find someone is making a film. |
22702 | Audiences can be too moral [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: An audience can be overly moralistic. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
A reaction: People can be too moral in real life as well. Goody Two Shoes. |
22696 | 'Autonomism' says the morality is irrelevant to the aesthetics [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: 'Autonomism' is the theory that the intrinsic moral merits and defects of an artwork are irrelevant to its aesthetic value. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], Intro) | |
A reaction: This contrasts with 'moralism', which says the ethics is part of the aesthetics. Autonomism seems to be the modern academic label for art for art's sake. In nineteenth century novels the ethics are central; in modernist novels they seem to be irrelevant. |
22697 | Moral defects of art can be among its aesthetic virtues [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: To put my claim most provocatively: the moral defects in a work of art can be among its aesthetic virtues. This claim has been called 'immoralism'. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], Intro) | |
A reaction: To describe sympathetic descriptions of vile moral behaviour as 'defects' may be a misunderstanding. If a work sets out to promote wickedness, then its wickedness isn't a defect in the work. It could be a masterpiece of corruption. |
22700 | Immoral art encourages immoral emotions [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: Humean moralism includes the view that immoral art prescribes unethical emotional responses. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'emotional') | |
A reaction: [He cites Hume's 'On the Standard of Taste'] 'Prescribes' is tricky. Is a vivid description of wicked events, given without comment, a prescription? What if the commentary condemns, but the description entices? Trust the work itself, said Lawrence. |
22699 | Moderate moralism says moral qualities can sometimes also be aesthetic qualities [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: Noël Carroll's moderate moralism maintains that some moral defects in artworks are aesthetic defects, and some moral virtues are aesthetic merits. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'How moderate') | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that moralist critics are confusing morality and wisdom. We don't admire novels for hammering on about goodness. We admire their insight into characters and actions, of which the most interesting aspects happen to be moral. |
22698 | We can judge art ethically, or rate its ethical influence, or assess its quality via its ethics [Jacobson,D] |
Full Idea: Ethical criticism includes 1) ethical judgements of art works, 2) assessment of an art work's role in moral education, or 3) bringing moral praise or censure to bear on the aesthetic evaluation. | |
From: Daniel Jacobson (Ethical Criticism and the Vice of Moderation [2006], 'What is') | |
A reaction: [a compressed summary of Jacobson. He cites Levinson 1998 and Carroll 2000 as examples of ethical criticism] |
6177 | Moral intuition seems unevenly distributed between people [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: The faculty of moral intuition seems to be unevenly distributed between people. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This would be a good argument if it was thought that the source of moral intuitions was divine, but people vary enormously in their intuitions about maths, about character, about danger. If you believe in any intuition at all, you must accept its variety. |
6156 | The 17th century reintroduced atoms as mathematical modes of Euclidean space [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: The seventeenth century revolution reintroduced the classical concept of the atom in somewhat new attire as an essentially mathematical entity whose primary qualities could be precisely quantified as modes or aspects of Euclidean space. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Obviously this very abstract view of atoms didn't last, once they began to identify specific physical atoms, such as oxygen. This view fits in with Newton's use of pure (abstract) points such as the 'centre of gravity'. |
6170 | Natural kinds are defined by their real essence, as in gold having atomic number 79 [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: Part of what it means to be a natural kind is that they are defined by a real essence, a constitution that marks them out as the substance they are (as water is essentially H2O, and gold essentially has atomic number 79). | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: A 'real essence' would be the opposite of a 'conventional essence', which is just a human way of seeing things. |
6178 | It is common to see the value of nature in one feature, such as life, diversity, or integrity [Rowlands] |
Full Idea: In recent environmental philosophy it is common to see the value of nature identified with one or another natural feature of the environment: life, diversity, ecosystemic integrity and so on. | |
From: Mark Rowlands (Externalism [2003], Ch.11) | |
A reaction: This thought seems to be asking for the Open Question argument. What is so good about life, or diversity? Our strongest intuition must be that the survival of the ecosystem, and whatever makes that possible, is the highest value. |