121 ideas
| 22223 | Being-in-the-world is projection to possibilities, thrownness among them, and fallenness within them [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Being-in-the-world is a phenomenon of 'care' with a tripartite structure: a) projection towards its possibilities, b) thrownness among those possibilities, so Dasein is not free, and c) fallenness among worldly possibilities, to neglect of its own. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit Californian to me. Just living among the world's possibilities is evidently a bad thing, because you could be concentrating on yourself and your own development instead? |
| 22158 | Pheomenology seeks things themselves, without empty theories, problems and concepts [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: 'Phenomenology' can be formulated as 'To the things themselves!' It is opposed to all free-floating constructions and accidental findings, and to conceptions which only seem to have been demonstrated. It is opposed to traditiona' pseudo-problems. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro II.07) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if we are invited to look at the world the way a dog might look at it. I am not at all clear what it to be gained from this approach. |
| 11283 | There is pure deductive reasoning, and explanatory demonstration reasoning [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle distinguishes between deductive reasoning (sullogismos) and demonstration (apodeixis). All demonstration is deductive reasoning, but not all deductive reasoning is demonstration. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], Bk I.2) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds not far off the distinction between single-turnstile (formal proof) and double-turnstile (semantic consequence). Politis says, though, that the key point is the demonstration is explanatory. |
| 15574 | 'Logos' really means 'making something manifest' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger concludes that 'logos' essentially means 'making something manifest'. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 56/33) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§7 | |
| A reaction: It would at least seem to involve revealing the truth of something, though truth doesn't seem to be central to Heidegger's thought. 'Logos' is often translated as 'an account', as well as a 'reason', so Heidegger may be right. |
| 1672 | Maybe everything could be demonstrated, if demonstration can be reciprocal or circular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some optimists think understanding arises only through demonstration, but say there could be demonstration of everything, for it is possible to demonstrate in a circle or reciprocally. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72b16) | |
| A reaction: I'm an optimist in this sense, though what is being described would probably best be called 'large-scale coherence'. Two reciprocal arguments look bad, but a hundred look good. |
| 1684 | Two falsehoods can be contrary to one another [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are falsehoods which are contrary to one another and cannot be the case together e.g. that a man is a horse or a cow. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 88a29) |
| 12145 | Definitions are of what something is, and that is universal [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Definitions are thought to be of what something is, and what something is is in every case universal and positive. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 90b05) | |
| A reaction: This is exhibit A for those who think that Aristotelian essences concern the genus, rather than the particular. I suspect that this idea is best expressed as 'all we can say by way of definition of a particular thing involves the use of universals'. |
| 12075 | An Aristotelian definition is causal [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: An Aristotelian definition is causal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], Bk II.2) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 1.5 | |
| A reaction: [She refers us to Posterior Analytics II.2] This is important if we are tempted to follow a modern line of saying that we want Aristotelian essences, and that these are definitions. We ain't thinking of dictionaries. |
| 12384 | Definition by division needs predicates, which are well ordered and thorough [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: To establish a definition through division, you must aim for three things: you must take what is predicated in what the thing is; you must order these items as first or second; and you must ensure that these are all there are. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 97a23) | |
| A reaction: This gives an indication of the thoroughness that Aristotle expects from a definition. They aren't like dictionary definitions of words. He expects definitions to often be very lengthy (see Idea 12292). |
| 9066 | You can define objects by progressively identifying what is the same and what is different [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Find what is in common among items similar and undifferentiated, then do the same for items of the same kind as the first group but a different form, and so on, till you come to a single account: this will be the definition of the object. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 97b07-14) | |
| A reaction: [His example is distinguishing 'magnanimity' from 'indifference to fortune' among people] Presumably this process works for the formation of new concepts (e.g. in biology), as well as for the definition of familiars in terms of other familiars. |
| 12382 | What it is and why it is are the same; screening defines and explains an eclipse [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What it is and why it is are the same. What is an eclipse? Privation of light from the moon by screening of the earth. Why is there an eclipse? ...What is a harmony? A numerical ratio between high and low. Why do the high and low harmonize? The ratio. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 90a15) | |
| A reaction: This is right at the heart of Aristotelian essentialism, and (I take it) modern scientific essentialism. If you fully know what cigarette tars are, and what human cell structure is, you understand immediately why cigarettes cause cancer. |
| 15569 | Heidegger says truth is historical, and never absolute [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger is a relentless enemy of ahistorical, absolutist concepts of truth. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: I presume that if truth is not absolute then it must be relative, but Polt is a little coy about saying so. For me, anyone who says truth is relative doesn't understand the concept, and is talking about something else. |
| 1668 | An axiom is a principle which must be understood if one is to learn anything [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: An axiom is a principle which must be grasped if anyone is going to learn anything whatever. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72a17) |
| 12376 | Demonstrations by reductio assume excluded middle [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrations by reduction to the impossible assume that everything is asserted or denied. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 77a23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the lynchpin of classical logic. |
| 12373 | Something holds universally when it is proved of an arbitrary and primitive case [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Something holds universally when it is proved of an arbitrary and primitive case. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 73b33) | |
| A reaction: A key idea in mathematical logic, but it always puzzles me. If you snatch a random person in London, and they are extremely tall, does that prove that people of London are extremely tall? How do we know the arbitrary is representative? |
| 12363 | Everything is either asserted or denied truly [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Of the fact that everything is either asserted or denied truly, we must believe that it is the case. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 71a14) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this means that every assertion which could possibly be asserted must come out as either true or false. This will have to include any assertions with vague objects or predicates, and any universal assertions, and negative assertions. |
| 13004 | Aristotle's axioms (unlike Euclid's) are assumptions awaiting proof [Aristotle, by Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's way with axioms, rather than Euclid's, is as assumptions which we are willing to agree on while awaiting an opportunity to prove them | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 76b23-) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.07 | |
| A reaction: Euclid's are understood as basic self-evident truths which will be accepted by everyone, though the famous parallel line postulate undermined that. The modern view of axioms is a set of minimum theorems that imply the others. I like Aristotle. |
| 17867 | If a concept is not compact, it will not be presentable to finite minds [Almog] |
| Full Idea: If the notion of 'logically following' in your language is not compact, it will not be locally presentable to finite minds. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 02) |
| 12377 | Mathematics is concerned with forms, not with superficial properties [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics is concerned with forms [eide]: its objects are not said of any underlying subject - for even if geometrical objects are said of some underlying subject, still it is not as being said of an underlying subject that they are studied. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 79a08) | |
| A reaction: Since forms turn out to be essences, in 'Metaphysics', this indicates an essentialist view of mathematics. |
| 12372 | The essence of a triangle comes from the line, mentioned in any account of triangles [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Something holds of an item in itself if it holds of it in what it is - e.g., line of triangles and point of lines (their essence comes from these items, which inhere in the account which says what they are). | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 73a35) | |
| A reaction: A helpful illustration of how a definition gives us the essence of something. You could not define triangles without mentioning straight lines. The lines are necessary features, but they are essential for any explanation, and for proper understanding. |
| 17877 | The number series is primitive, not the result of some set theoretic axioms [Almog] |
| Full Idea: On Skolem's account, to 'get' the natural numbers - that primal structure - do not 'look for it' as the satisfier of some abstract (set-theoretic) axiomatic essence; start with that primitive structure. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 12) | |
| A reaction: [Skolem 1922 and 1923] Almog says the numbers are just 0,1,2,3,4..., and not some underlying axioms. That makes it sound as if they have nothing in common, and that the successor relation is a coincidence. |
| 12369 | A unit is what is quantitatively indivisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Arithmeticians posit that a unit is what is quantitatively indivisible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72a22) | |
| A reaction: Presumably indeterminate stuff like water is non-quantitatively divisible (e.g. Moses divides the Red Sea), as are general abstracta (curved shapes from rectilinear ones). Does 'quantitative' presupposes units, making the idea circular? |
| 21897 | Reducing being to the study of beings too readily accepts the modern scientific view [Heidegger, by May] |
| Full Idea: Continental philosophers, following Heidegger, see in the attempt to reduce the question of being to that of beings a symptom of an age that is too ready to accept the terms in which science conceives the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Todd May - Gilles Deleuze 1.04 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I take the idea that this is a failing of the modern age to be ridiculous, since I take it to be the key metaphysical move made by Aristotle. Neverthless, Aristotle is closely in tune with modern science. For 'beings', read 'objects'. |
| 15573 | For us, Being is constituted by awareness of other sorts of Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We are Dasein - the entity who possesses - as constitutive for its understanding of existence - an understanding of the Being of all entities of a character other than its own. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 34/13), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to connect to the emerging 'externalist' view of mind that comes with the external view of content coming from Purnam's Twin Earth idea. |
| 9273 | Heidegger turns to 'Being' to affirm the uniqueness of humans in the world [Heidegger, by Gray] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger turns to 'Being' for the same reason that Christians turn to God - to affirm the unique place of humans in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John Gray - Straw Dogs 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the first remark I have encountered that makes sense of Heidegger's Being to me! It places Heidegger as a modernist philosopher, trying to grapple with the decline of religion. I'll stick with Bertrand Russell on that. |
| 22157 | Dasein is a mode of Being distinguished by concern for its own Being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which does not just occur among other entities. Rather it is ontically distinguished by the fact that, in its very Being, that Being is an issue for it. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], Intro I.04) | |
| A reaction: How do you distinguish the Being of normal humans from the Being of someone in a deep coma, who has no existential issues? Has that Dasein ceased to be? Why does angst create a new mode of Being, but flying doesn't? |
| 8137 | Dasein is ahead of itself in the world, and alongside encountered entities [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The formal existential totality of Dasein's ontological structural whole is: the Being of Dasein means ahead-of-itself-Being-already-in-(the-world) as Being-alongside (entities encountered within-the-world). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6 41) | |
| A reaction: If you find that thought really illuminating, you are probably on the wrong website. However, the thought that we exist 'ahead of ourselves' might be a fruitful line for existentialists to explore. |
| 21951 | In company with others one's Dasein dissolves, and even the others themselves dissolve [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: This being-with-one-another dissolves one's own Dasein completely into the kind of being of 'the others', in such a way, indeed, that the others, as distinguishable and explicit, vanish more and more. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.164), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 5 | |
| A reaction: He seems to be describing the psychology of someone who joins a small crowd which gradually increases in size. I take this relation to others to be the basic existential dilemma, of retaining individual authenticity within a community. |
| 20745 | 'Dasein' expresses not 'what' the entity is, but its being [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When we designate this entity with the term 'Dasein' we are expressing not its 'what' (as if it were a table, house, or tree) but its being. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.297), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Phenomenology' | |
| A reaction: Presumably analytic discussions of persons try to be too objective. Heidegger is trying to capture the thought at the heart of Kierkegaard's existentialism. Objectivity and subjectivity are never in conflict. Is there really a different mode of existence? |
| 8134 | The word 'dasein' is used to mean 'the manner of Being which man possesses', and also the human creature [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger borrows a common German word 'dasein', meaning 'being' or 'existence', to refer both to 'the manner of Being which... man... possesses', and to the creature which possesses it. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.32) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This just strikes me as an elementary ontological mistake. Because something has startling properties it doesn't follow that we have a different type of Being. Magnets don't have a different type of being from ordinary iron. |
| 8135 | 'Dasein' is Being which is laid claim to, and which matters to its owner [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: We each of us not only have Dasein (our kind of Being), but we can lay claim to it. Also the Dasein of a thing 'is an issue for it' - we care about the kinds of creatures we can make ourselves into. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.67) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Heidegger says other more puzzling things about Dasein. The second half of the idea is what makes Heidegger an existentialist, and an inspiration for Sartre. |
| 21948 | Dasein is being which can understand itself, and possess itself in a way allowing authenticity [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein is an entity which, in its very being, comports itself understandingly towards that being. ...Mineness belongs to an existent Dasein, and belongs to it as the condition which makes authenticity and inauthenticity possible. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.78), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: He might eventually persuade me that Dasein is so different from mere material being that it deserves a category of its own. But a reductive account of mind is also a reductive account of being. |
| 7680 | Ontology is possible only as phenomenology [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is possible only as phenomenology. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.31), quoted by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Jacquette argues against this claim. The idea seems to be the ultimate extension of Kant, and it is not a big move to say that the only real phenomenology we can discuss is our semantics. Wrong, wrong, wrong. |
| 22161 | Readiness-to-hand defines things in themselves ontologically [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Readiness-to-hand is the way in which entities as they are 'in themselves' are defined ontologico-categorially. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is a direct reference to the problem idealists had with the thing-in-itself. It seems that the reality of a thing consists of the strengthened relationship it has with Dasein, which sounds fairly idealist to me. |
| 18910 | To seek truth, study the real connections between subjects and attributes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If, however, one is aiming at truth, one must be guided by the real connexions of subjects and attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 81b22), quoted by George Engelbretsen - Trees, Terms and Truth 3 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a warning that predicates that indicate mere 'Cambridge properties' (such as relations, locations, coincidences etc) have nothing to do with ontology. See Shoemaker on properties. |
| 1675 | Separate Forms aren't needed for logic, but universals (one holding of many) are essential [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There need be no forms (one item apart from the many) for demonstrations. But there must be universals, where one thing holds of the many. Without universals there are no middle terms, and so no demonstrations. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 77a05) |
| 1677 | We can forget the Forms, as they are irrelevant, and not needed in giving demonstrations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We can say goodbye to the forms. They are nonny-noes; and if there are any they are irrelevant - for demonstrations are not concerned with them. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 83a34) |
| 1687 | Why are being terrestrial and a biped combined in the definition of man, but being literate and musical aren't? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why will a man be a two-footed terrestrial animal and not an animal and terrestrial? Assumptions do not make it necessary that what is predicated form a unity - rather, it is as if the same man were musical and literate. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 92a30) |
| 1681 | Units are positionless substances, and points are substances with position [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A unit is a positionless substance, and a point a substance having position. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 87a36) |
| 15576 | Heidegger seeks a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger tries to develop a non-traditional concept of essence as 'essential unfolding' ('wesen' as a verb). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§25-7 |
| 12146 | Definitions recognise essences, so are not themselves essences [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If a definition is the recognition of some essence, it is clear that such items are not essences. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 90b17) | |
| A reaction: So definitions are not themselves essences (as some modern thinkers claim). The idea seems obvious to me, but it is a warning against a simplistic view of Aristotelian essences, and a reminder that such things are real, not verbal. |
| 17871 | Fregean meanings are analogous to conceptual essence, defining a kind [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Ever since Frege, semantic definitionalists have posited a meaning ('sinn') for a name; the meaning/sinn is their semantic analog to the conceptual essence, as ontologically defining of the kind. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 07) |
| 17866 | Essential definition aims at existence conditions and structural truths [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist encapsulating formula is meant to be existence-exhaustive (an attribute the satisfaction of which is logically necessary and sufficient to be the thing) and truth-exhaustive (promising all the structural truths). | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 01) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] If he thinks essentialism means that one short phrase can achieve all this, then it is not surprising that Almog renounces his former essentialism in this essay. He may, however, have misunderstood. He should reread Aristotle. |
| 17868 | Surface accounts aren't exhaustive as they always allow unintended twin cases [Almog] |
| Full Idea: A surface-functional characterisation is not exhaustive. It allows unintended twins, alien intruders with different structures - water lookalikes that are not H2O and lookalike infinite structures that are not the natural numbers. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 03) | |
| A reaction: He rests this on the claim in mathematical logic that fully expressive systems are always non-categorical (having unintended twins). Set theory is not fully categorical, but Peano Arithmetic is. Almog's main anti-essentialist argument. |
| 17872 | Definitionalists rely on snapshot-concepts, instead of on the real processes [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The definitionalist errs by abstracting away from differences cosmic processes, freezing real, dynamic processes in snapshot-concepts. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 08) | |
| A reaction: You could hardly do science at all if you didn't 'abstract away from the differences in cosmic processes'. We can't write about sea-waves, because they all differ slightly? 'Electron' is a snapshot concept. |
| 17039 | The predicates of a thing's nature are necessary to it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is predicated in what something is is necessary. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 96b03) | |
| A reaction: This does NOT say that the essence is just the necessities. He goes on to say to say separately that certain properties of a triplet are part of the essence, as well as being necessary. This shows the nature of a thing is also necessary. |
| 11994 | Aristotelian essences are properties mentioned at the starting point of a science [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: As Aristotle uses the term 'essence', only those properties which are mentioned in or relatively close to the starting points of the science will be essential. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation II | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the correct way to understand Aristotelian essence - as something understood by its role in scientific explanations. We may, of course, work back to the starting point of a science, by disentangling the mess in the middle. |
| 17870 | Alien 'tigers' can't be tigers if they are not related to our tigers [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Animals roaming jungles on some planet at the other end of the galaxy with the tiger-look and the tiger genetic make-up but with a disjoint evolutionary history are not the same species as the earthly tigers. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 10) | |
| A reaction: I disagree. If two independent cultures build boats, they are both boats. If we manufacture a tiger which can breed with other tigers, we've made a tiger. His 'tigers' would scream for explanation, precisely because they are tigers. If not, no puzzle. |
| 17869 | Kripke and Putnam offer an intermediary between real and nominal essences [Almog] |
| Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam offer us enhanced essences, still formulable in one short sentence and locally graspable. They offer between Locke's mind-boggling definitive real essence and his mind-friendly but not definitive nominal essence. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 04) | |
| A reaction: The solution is to add a 'deep structure' which serves both ends. |
| 17876 | Individual essences are just cobbled together classificatory predicates [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The key for the essentialist is classificatory predication. It is only a subsequent extension of this prime idea that leads us to cobble together enough such essential predications to make an individuative essential property. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 11) | |
| A reaction: So the essence is just a cross-reference of all the ways we can think of to classify it? I don't think so. Which are the essential classifications? |
| 12381 | What is necessary cannot be otherwise [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is necessary cannot be otherwise. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 88b32) | |
| A reaction: If the next interesting question is the source of necessity, then the question seems to be 'what prevents it from being otherwise?'. |
| 1690 | A stone travels upwards by a forced necessity, and downwards by natural necessity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are two types of necessity, one according to nature and impulse, the other by force and contrary to impulse. A stone travels upwards and downwards from different necessities. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 94b38) |
| 12072 | For Aristotle knowledge is explanatory, involving understanding, and principles or causes [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, knowledge is explanatory, for to know something is to understand it, and to understand something is to grasp its principles or causes. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Thus the kind of 'knowledge' displayed in quiz shows would not count as knowledge at all, if it was mere recall of facts. To know is to be able to explain, which is to be able to teach. See Idea 11241. |
| 12073 | 'Episteme' means grasping causes, universal judgments, explanation, and teaching [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, a person who has 'episteme' grasps the cause of a given phenomenon, can make a universal judgment about it, can explain it, and can teach others about it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 1.2 | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the context in which we should understand what Aristotle means by an 'essence' - it is the source of all of the above, so it both makes a thing what it is, and explains why it shares features with other such things. |
| 12378 | The reason why is the key to knowledge [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Study of the reason why has the most importance for knowledge. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 79a24) | |
| A reaction: I take the study of reasons for belief to be much more central to epistemology than finding ways to answer radical sceptics about the basic possibility of knowledge. |
| 12364 | We understand a thing when we know its explanation and its necessity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We understand something simpliciter when we think we know of the explanation because of which the object holds that it is its explanation, and also that it is not possible for it to be otherwise. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 71b10) | |
| A reaction: The second half sounds odd, since we ought to understand that something could have been otherwise, and knowing whether or not it could have been otherwise is part of the understanding. It sounds like Spinozan determinism. |
| 12366 | We only understand something when we know its explanation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We only understand something when we know its explanation. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 71b30) | |
| A reaction: If we believe that the whole aim of philosophy is 'understanding' (Idea 543) - and if it isn't then I am not sure what the aim is, and alternative aims seem a lot less interesting - then we should care very much about explanations, as well as reasons. |
| 15578 | Propositions don't provide understanding, because the understanding must come first [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: Propositions are not a good clue to the essence of understanding, because we must already understand things before we formulate propositions about them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.31) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: I like this, because I think the most important aspects of our thought and understanding are entirely non-verbal - even in cases where they seem to be highly specific and verbal. We don't understand ourselves at all! |
| 12370 | Some understanding, of immediate items, is indemonstrable [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Not all understanding is demonstrative: rather, in the case of immediate items understanding is indemonstrable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72b19) | |
| A reaction: These are the foundations of Aristotle's epistemology, and I take it that they can be both empiricist and rationalist - sense experiences, and a priori intuitions. |
| 1685 | No one has mere belief about something if they think it HAS to be true [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No one holds something as an opinion when he thinks that it is impossible for it to be otherwise - for then he thinks he understands it. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 89a07) |
| 1673 | Knowledge proceeds from principles, so it is hard to know if we know [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is difficult to know whether you know something or not. For it is difficult to know whether or not our knowledge of something proceeds from its principles - and this is what it is to know something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 76a25) |
| 22159 | If we posit 'I' as the starting point, we miss the mind's phenomenal content [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: One of our first tasks will be to prove that if we posit an 'I' or subject as that which is proximally given, we shall completely miss the phenomenal content of Dasein. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.1.10) | |
| A reaction: Descartes had thrown doubt on the informativeness of the phenomena, so presumably your phenomenologist is not interested in whether they reveal any truth. So why are unreliable phenomena of any interest? |
| 22160 | Our relationship to a hammer strengthens when we use [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The less we stare at the hammer-Thing, and the more we seize hold of it and use it, the more primordial does our relationship to it become. ...The kind of Being which equipment possesses... we call 'readiness-to-hand' [Zuhandenheit]. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.3.15) | |
| A reaction: This example would be well at home in the writings of the pragmatists. It is also an important example for existentialists. In analytic philosophy we might say the experience combines perception with direct exerience of causation. |
| 12379 | You cannot understand anything through perception [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: You cannot understand anything through perception. Demonstrations are universal, and universals cannot be perceived. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 87b28) |
| 16725 | Some knowledge is lost if you lose a sense, and there is no way the knowledge can be replaced [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The loss of any one of the senses entails the loss of a corresponding portion of knowledge, and since we learn either by induction or by demonstration, this knowledge cannot be acquired. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 81a37) | |
| A reaction: This suggests Jackson's 'knowledge argument', that raw experience contains some genuine knowledge, for which there is no mechanistic substitute. Not that I accept…. |
| 15580 | There are no raw sense-data - our experiences are of the sound or colour of something [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We always take a noise as the sound of something; we always take a hue as the color of something. We simply do not experience raw, uninterpreted sense-data - these are the inventions of philosophers. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 207/163-4), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§31-3 | |
| A reaction: This is something like the modern view of sense-data as promoted by John McDowell, rather than the experiential atoms of Russell and Moore. Experience is holistic, but that doesn't mean we can't analyse it into components. |
| 20749 | Perceived objects always appear in a context [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The perceptual 'something' is always in the middle of something else, it always forms part of a 'field'. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.4), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: Sounds like our knowledge of electrons. Nice point. Standard analytic discussions of perceiving a glass always treat it in isolation, when it is on an expensive table near a brandy bottle. Or near a hammer. |
| 23309 | Aristotle's concepts of understanding and explanation mean he is not a pure empiricist [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It is a certain notion of understanding and, correspondingly, explanation which makes Aristotle think that knowledge, properly speaking, could not be a matter of mere experience. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.160 | |
| A reaction: Frede says this means that Aristotle is a rationalist, though few empiricists think understanding is 'merely' a matter of experience. My own epistemology is Explanatory Empiricism, which I see as more empiricist than rationalist. |
| 1693 | Animals may have some knowledge if they retain perception, but understanding requires reasons to be given [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In some animals the perception is retained, and in some not. Without retention knowledge is impossible. Some animals go further and form an account based on the perception. This leads to memory and experience, and so to either skill or understanding. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 99b35-) |
| 9067 | Many memories of the same item form a single experience [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When it occurs often in connection with the same item, ..memories which are many in number form a single experience. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 100a05) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle at his most empirical. He is not describing an operation of the understanding, but a process of association. The process he alludes to is at the heart of the abstractionist view of concept-formation. |
| 1671 | Sceptics say justification is an infinite regress, or it stops at the unknowable [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Sceptics say that there is either an infinite regress of ideas based on one another, or things come to a stop at primitives which are unknowable (because they can't be demonstrated). | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72b09) | |
| A reaction: This is one strand of what eventually becomes the classic Agrippa's Trilemma (Idea 8850). For Aristotle's view on this one, see Idea 562. |
| 1670 | When you understand basics, you can't be persuaded to change your mind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who understands anything simpliciter (as basic) must be incapable of being persuaded to change his mind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72b04) | |
| A reaction: A typical Aristotle test which seems rather odd to us. Surely I can change my mind, and decide that something is not basic after all? But, says Aristotle, then you didn't really think it was basic. |
| 22163 | The scandal of philosophy is expecting to prove reality when the prover's Being is vague [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof [of external things] has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again. ...The kind of Being of the entity which does the proving has not been made definite enough. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.43a) | |
| A reaction: The 'scandal' was a remark of Kant's. Presumably Heidegger's exploration of Dasein aims to establish the Being of the prover sufficiently to solve this problem (via phenomenology). |
| 1674 | All demonstration is concerned with existence, axioms and properties [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All demonstrative science [apodeiktike episteme] is concerned with three things: what it posits to exist (the kind), the axioms (primitives basic to demonstration), and the attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 76b12) |
| 24068 | Demonstration is more than entailment, as the explanatory order must match the causal order [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's demonstration encompasses more than deductive entailment, in that the explanatory order of priority represented in a successful demonstration must mirror precisely the causal order of priority in the phenomena in question. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Form, Matter and Substance 4.5 | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I presume this is correct, but is not an aspect I had registered. In Metaphysics his essentialist explanations are causal, so it all hangs together. |
| 17310 | Aristotle gets asymmetric consequence from demonstration, which reflects real causal priority [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's system, the relevant notion of asymmetric consequence that is operative in his model of scientific explanation is that of demonstration. ...It is a theoretical/linguistic reflection of an asymmetric real-world relation of causal priority. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Varieties of Ontological Dependence 7.3 n7 | |
| A reaction: The asymmetry is required for explanation, and for grounding. |
| 21359 | Aristotle doesn't actually apply his theory of demonstration to his practical science [Leroi on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is a conflict between the syllogistic theory of demonstration of the Posterior Analytics, with its austere programme of certainties, and how Aristotle actually does science. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Armand Marie LeRoi - The Lagoon: how Aristotle invented science 104 | |
| A reaction: Leroi observes that there are no demonstrations anywhere in the biological writings. Biology probably lends itself least to such an approach. |
| 1667 | Premises must be true, primitive and immediate, and prior to and explanatory of conclusions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrative understanding must proceed from items which are true and primitive and immediate and more familiar and prior to and explanatory of the conclusions. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 71b22) |
| 12365 | We can know by demonstration, which is a scientific deduction leading to understanding [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We know things through demonstration, by which I mean a scientific deduction, and by 'scientific' I mean a deduction by possessing which we understand something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 71b17) | |
| A reaction: This is a distinctively Aristotelian account of what science aims at, and which seems to have dropped out of modern accounts of science, which are still under the influence of logical positivism. Time to revive it. |
| 10918 | Demonstrative understanding rests on necessary features of the thing in itself [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If demonstrative understanding proceeds from necessary principles, and whatever holds of an object in itself is necessary, then it is clear that demonstrative deductions will proceed from certain items of this sort. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 74b05-) | |
| A reaction: This is the characterization of the essence of something in terms of what counts as a good explanation of that thing. Although explanation is a bit subjective, I like this approach, because you will dig down to the source of the powers of the thing. |
| 12374 | Demonstrations must be necessary, and that depends on the middle term [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you understand something demonstratively, it must hold from necessity, so it is plain that your demonstration must proceed through a middle term which is necessary. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 75a13) | |
| A reaction: How can a middle 'term' be necessary, if it is not a proposition? Presumably Socrates is necessarily a man, and men are necessarily mortal, so it is the predication which is necessary. |
| 12148 | Demonstrations are syllogisms which give explanations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Demonstrations are probative deductions [sullogismos] which give the explanation [aitias] and the reason why. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 85b24) | |
| A reaction: This notion seems to have slipped out of modern philosophy of science, because (while scientists have just pressed on) philosophers of science have raised so many sceptical questions that they have, I would say, lost the plot. |
| 1679 | Universal demonstrations are about thought; particular demonstrations lead to perceptions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Universal demonstrations are objects of thought, particular demonstrations terminate in perception. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 86a30) |
| 1680 | Demonstration is better with fewer presuppositions, and it is quicker if these are familiar [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A demonstration is superior if it depends on fewer suppositions or propositions - for if these are familiar, knowledge will come more quickly, and this is preferable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 86a35) |
| 1691 | Aim to get definitions of the primitive components, thus establishing the kind, and work towards the attributes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Divide a whole into its primitives, then try to get definitions of these. Thus you establish the kind, and then study the attributes through the primitive common items. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 96b16) |
| 12383 | There must be definitions before demonstration is possible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no demonstration of anything of which there is no definition. Definitions are of what something is, i.e. of its essence, but all demonstrations clearly suppose and assume what a thing is. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 90b30) | |
| A reaction: Note that while essentialism rests on definitions, the job is not yet complete once the definitions are done. With good definitions, it should be easy to show how the pieces of the jigsaw fit together. |
| 12147 | The principles of demonstrations are definitions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The principles of demonstrations are definitions. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 90b25) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a key idea linking Aristotle's desire to understand the world, by using demonstrations to reach good explanations. Definitions turn out to rest on essences, so our understanding of the world rests on essences. |
| 12371 | A demonstration is a deduction which proceeds from necessities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A demonstration is a deduction which proceeds from necessities. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 73a24) | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere he tells us that demonstration that brings understanding (Idea 12365), so this is an interesting gloss. He says that the middle term of the syllogism gives the understanding, but necessities reside in the whole propositions of the premisses. |
| 1683 | We learn universals from many particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is from many particulars that the universal becomes plain. Universals are valuable because they make the explanation plain. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 88a05) |
| 12367 | What is most universal is furthest away, and the particulars are nearest [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is most universal is furthest away, and the particulars are nearest. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72a05) | |
| A reaction: This is the puzzle that bother Aristotle about explanation, that we can only grasp the universals, when we want to explain the particulars. |
| 12380 | Universals are valuable because they make the explanations plain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Universals are valuable because they make the explanations plain. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 88a06) | |
| A reaction: Everything in Aristotle comes back to human capacity to understand. There seems to be an ideal explanation consisting entirely of particulars, but humans are not equipped to grasp it. We think in a broad brush way. |
| 12385 | Are particulars explained more by universals, or by other particulars? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Which of the middle terms is explanatory for the particulars - the one which is primitive in the direction of the universal, or the one which is primitive in the direction of the particular? | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 99b09) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear about this, but it shows Aristotle wrestling with the issue of whether explanations are of particulars or universals, and whether they employ particulars as well as employing universals. The particular must be defined! |
| 1689 | Explanation is of the status of a thing, inferences to it, initiation of change, and purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are four sorts of explanation: what it is to be something, that if certain items hold it is necessary for this to hold, what initiated the change, and the purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 94a21) | |
| A reaction: This might be summed up as: 'we want to know the essence, the necessary conditions, the cause, and the purpose'. Can anyone improve on that as the aims of explanation? The second explanation (necessary preconditions) isn't in 'Physics' - Idea 8332. |
| 1686 | What we seek and understand are facts, reasons, existence, and identity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The things we seek are equal in number to those we understand: the fact, the reason why, if something is, and what something is. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 89b24) |
| 12357 | Explanation and generality are inseparable [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, explanation and generality are fellow-travellers. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE]) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance X.11 | |
| A reaction: This isn't 'lawlike' explanation, but it is interestingly close to it. It seems to be based on the fact that predicates are universals, so we can only state truths in general terms. |
| 1669 | The foundation or source is stronger than the thing it causes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Something always holds better because of that because of which it holds - e.g. that because of which we love something is better loved. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72a30) |
| 1678 | Universals give better explanations, because they are self-explanatory and primitive [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Universals are more explanatory (for something which holds in itself is itself explanatory of itself; and universals are primitive; hence universals are explanatory) - so universal demonstrations are better. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 85b25) |
| 21949 | Having thoughts and feelings need engagement in the world [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger argues that having thoughts and feelings is only possible for entity that is actually engaged in the world. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an a priori exclusion of the possibility of a brain in a vat. I guess the ancestor of this idea is Schopenhauer. |
| 22222 | Dasein finds itself already amongst others [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: The world is a world shared with others, so that far from being a solipsistic ego ...Dasein finds itself already amongst others. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.226 | |
| A reaction: Phenomenologists don't seem bothered about the problem of knowing other minds. If you take something for granted, it ceases to be a problem to be solved! |
| 8136 | If we work and play with other people, they are bound to be 'Dasein', intelligent agents [Heidegger, by Cooper,DE] |
| Full Idea: How do I know that other people have minds? The question is a bad one. Precisely because I encounter them at work, play and the like, it is guaranteed that they, too, are Dasein, intelligent agents. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.153-) by David E. Cooper - Heidegger Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I've seen film of someone playing peek-a-boo with a bonobo ape, so presumably they have Dasein. It might be easier for the AI community to aim at building a robot with Dasein, than one which was simply conscious. |
| 22164 | When Dasein grasps something it exists externally alongside the thing [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: When Dasein directs itself towards something and grasps it, it does not somehow first get out of an inner sphere in which it has been proximally encapsulated, but its primary kind of Being is such that it is always 'outside' alongside entities. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.2.13) | |
| A reaction: This is the first plausible fruit of phenomenology I have been able to discover. Analysing the passive mind is not very promising, but seeing what happens when we become more proactive is revealing. |
| 9068 | Perception creates primitive immediate principles by building a series of firm concepts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Primitive immediate principles ...come about from perception - as in a battle, when a rout has occurred, first one man makes a stand, then another, and then another, until a position of strength is reached. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 100a12) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers don't create imagery like that any more. This empiricist account of how concepts and universals are created is part of a campaign against Plato's theory of forms. [Idea 9069 continues his idea] |
| 9069 | A perception lodging in the soul creates a primitive universal, which becomes generalised [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When one undifferentiated item in perception makes a stand, there is a primitive universal in the soul; for although you perceive particulars, perception is of universals - e.g. of man, not of Callias the man. One animal makes a stand, until animal does. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 100a15-) | |
| A reaction: This is the quintessential account of abstractionism, with the claim that primitive universals arise directly in perception, but only in repeated perception. How the soul does it is a mystery to Aristotle, just as associations are a mystery to Hume. |
| 22162 | There is an everyday self, and an authentic self, when it is grasped in its own way [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: The self of everyday Dasein is the they-self [das Man-selbst], which we distinguish from the authentic self - that is, from the Self which has been taken hold of in its own way. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.4.27) | |
| A reaction: To a novice this sounds like a requirement for increased self-consciousness during daily activity. 'Be a good animal, true to your animal self' said one of Lawrence's characters. |
| 20114 | Everyone is other, and no one is himself [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Everyone is other, and no one is himself. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.165), quoted by Rüdiger Safranski - Nietzsche: a philosophical biography 09 | |
| A reaction: Safranski describes this as the idea of 'structural self-evasion'. He detects the same idea in Nietzsche's 'Daybreak'. |
| 15577 | Moods are more fundamentally revealing than theories - as when fear reveals a threat [Heidegger, by Polt] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger moods are disclosive; they show us things in a more fundamental way than theoretical propositions ever can. For example, fear reveals something as a threat. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.5.30) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§30 | |
| A reaction: Most modern students of emotion seem to agree. Even though they may not have specific content, it is always possible to consider the underlying cause of the mood. |
| 17873 | Water must be related to water, just as tigers must be related to tigers [Almog] |
| Full Idea: It is a blindspot to say that to be a tiger one must come from tigers, but to be water one needn't come from water. ...The error lies in not appreciating that to be water one still must come from somewhere in the cosmos, indeed, from hydrogen and oxygen. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], 09) | |
| A reaction: A unified picture is indeed desirable, but a better solution is to say that the essence of a tiger is in its structure, not in its origins. There are many ways to produce an artefact. There could be many ways to produce a tiger. |
| 9070 | We learn primitives and universals by induction from perceptions [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We must get to know the primitives by induction; for this is the way in which perception instils universals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 100b04) | |
| A reaction: This statement is so strongly empirical it could have come from John Stuart Mill. The modern post-Fregean view of universals is essentially platonist - that they have a life and logic of their own, and their method of acquisition is irrelevant. |
| 12368 | Negation takes something away from something [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The part of a contradictory pair which says something of something is an affirmation; the part which takes something from something is a negation. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 72a14) | |
| A reaction: So affirmation is predication about an object ['Fa'], and negation is denial of predication. We have a scope problem: there is nothing which is F [¬∃x(Fx)], or there is a thing which is not-F [∃x(¬Fx)]. Aristotle seems to mean the latter. |
| 1692 | If you shouldn't argue in metaphors, then you shouldn't try to define them either [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you should not argue in metaphors, it is plain too that you should neither define by metaphors nor define what is said in metaphors; for then you will necessarily argue in metaphors. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 97b37) | |
| A reaction: Impeccable logic, but seeing a similarity can be a wonderful shortcut to seeing a great truth. |
| 20748 | We do not add value to naked things; its involvement is disclosed in understanding it [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: We do not throw a 'signification' over some naked thing which is present-at-hand, we do not stick a value on it; but when something is encountered as such, the thing in question has an involvement which is disclosed in our understanding of the world. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], p.190-1), quoted by George Dickie - The Myth of the Aesthetic Attitude 3 'Undoing' | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophy and science have tried to dismantle experience, and Heidegger wants to put it back together. I would say there is a big difference between encountering a thing (which is a bit facty), and understanding it (which is more valuey). |
| 22166 | Dasein has the potential to be itself, but must be shown this in the midst of ordinariness [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Because Dasein is lost in the 'they', it must first find itself. It must be 'shown' to itself in its possible authenticity. In terms of its possibility, Dasein is already a potentiality-for-Being-its-self, but it needs to have this potentiality attested. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], II.2.54) | |
| A reaction: I wish there was some criterion for knowing when you are being yourself and when you are not. |
| 22165 | Anxiety reveals the possibility and individuality of Dasein [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety discloses Dasein as Being-possible, and indeed as the only kind of thing which it can be of its own accord as something individualised in individualisation. | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], I.6.40) | |
| A reaction: Is sounds like insecurity, as a sort of trauma that shocks one into self-realisation. The idea means very little to me personally. |
| 21952 | Anxiety about death frees me to live my own life [Heidegger, by Wrathall] |
| Full Idea: For Heidegger, as a consequence of my anxiety in the face of death, I am set free to live my life as my own rather than doing things merely because others expect me to do them. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 7 | |
| A reaction: Contrary to Epicurus, Heidegger thinks anxiety about death is a good thing. The point is, I suppose, that we all die alone, and people who are very socially contrained need to face up to death in order to grasp their autonomy. |
| 22224 | Anxiety is the uncanniness felt when constantly fleeing from asserting one's own freedom [Heidegger, by Caputo] |
| Full Idea: Anxiety [angst] is the disturbing sense of uncanniness by which Dasein is overtaken (thrownness) when it discovers there is nothing other than its own freedom to sustain its projects (projection), and from which Dasein constantly takes flight (falling). | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by John D. Caputo - Heidegger p.227 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Kierkegaard's idea, unamended. In my experience anxiety only comes when I am forced into making decisions by worldly situations. An 'existential crisis' is a sort of blankness appearing where a future life was supposed to be. |
| 15572 | Being what it is (essentia) must be conceived in terms of Being (existence) [Heidegger] |
| Full Idea: Dasein's Being-what-it-is (essentia) must….be conceived in terms of its Being (existentia). | |
| From: Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 67/42), quoted by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the origin of Sartre's famous slogan 'existence before essence'. It seems to be a rebellion against Husserl's quest for essences. |
| 20453 | Heidegger says we must either choose an inauthentic hero, or choose yourself as hero [Heidegger, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Heidegger says you must choose your hero; either you choose 'das Man', the inauthentic life, or you choose yourself - the point being that you have to choose yourself as your hero in order to be authentic. | |
| From: report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927]) by Simon Critchley - Impossible Objects: interviews 5 | |
| A reaction: If Nietzsche's 'Ecce Homo' is the model for choosing yourself as hero, I am not too sure about this idea. Needing a hero seems awfully German and romantic. Ein Heldenleben. Be your own anit-hero (like a standup comedian)? |
| 12375 | Whatever holds of a kind intrinsically holds of it necessarily [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In each kind, whatever holds of something in itself and as such holds of it from necessity. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 75a30) | |
| A reaction: This seems to confirm the view that essential properties are necessary, but it does not, of course, follow that all necessary properties are essential properties (e.g. trivial necessities are not essential). |
| 17864 | Defining an essence comes no where near giving a thing's nature [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The natures of things are neither exhausted nor even partially given by 'defining essences'. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A better criticism of essentialism. 'Natures' is a much vaguer word than 'essences', however, because the latter refers to what is stable and important, whereas natures could include any aspect. Being ticklish is in my nature, but not in my essence. |
| 17863 | Essences promise to reveal reality, but actually drive us away from it [Almog] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist line (one I trace to Aristotle, Descartes and Kripke) is driving us away from, not closer to, the real nature of things. It promised a sort of Hubble telescope - essences - able to reveal the deep structure of reality. | |
| From: Joseph Almog (Nature Without Essence [2010], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I suspect this is tilting at a straw man. No one thinks we should hunt for essences instead of doing normal science. 'Essence' just labels what you've got when you succeed. |
| 1688 | Properties must be proved, but not essence; but existents are not a kind, so existence isn't part of essence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Everything which a thing is must be proved through a demonstration - except its essence. But existence is not the essence of anything; for the things that exist do not constitute a kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Posterior Analytics [c.327 BCE], 92b14) |