19 ideas
| 7548 | Classes, grouped by a convenient property, are logical constructions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Classes or series of particulars, collected together on account of some property which makes it convenient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125) | |
| A reaction: When does a construction become 'logical' instead of arbitrary? What is it about a property that makes it 'convenient'? At this point Russell seems to have built his ontology on classes, and the edifice was crumbling, thanks to Wittgenstein. |
| 7545 | Visible things are physical and external, but only exist when viewed [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I believe that common sense is right in regarding what we see as physical and (in one of several possible senses) outside the mind, but is probably wrong in supposing that it continues to exist when we are no longer looking at it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This remark (in 1915) is a bit startling from a philosopher well known for his robustly realist stance. Just one of his phases! It seems very counterintuitive - that objects really exist externally, but only when viewed. Schrödinger's Cat? |
| 7553 | Sense-data are purely physical [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Sense-data are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.138) | |
| A reaction: Once this account of sense-data becomes fully clear, it also becomes apparent what a dualist theory it is. The mind is a cinema, I am the audience, and sense-data are the screen. There has to be a big logical gap between viewer and screen. |
| 7549 | If my body literally lost its mind, the object seen when I see a flash would still exist [Russell] |
| Full Idea: My meaning may be made plainer by saying that if my body could remain in exactly the same state in which it is, though my mind had ceased to exist, precisely that object which I now see when I see a flash would exist, though I should not see it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Zombies, 70 years before Robert Kirk! Sense-data are physical. It is interesting to see a philosopher as committed to empiricism, anti-spiritualism and the priority of science as this, still presenting an essentially dualist picture of perception. |
| 23029 | Knowledge is secured by the relations between its parts, through differences and identities [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: What gives reality and stability to our knowledge is the reality and stability of the relations established between its parts..…by the differences and identities with other things which have similarly achieved comparative fixity and substantiality. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: Although I don't sympathise with Green's idealist metaphysics, and nevertheless think that this internalist account of knowledge is correct. |
| 7546 | A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell. |
| 7550 | We could probably, in principle, infer minds from brains, and brains from minds [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It seems not improbable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.131) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a very good summary of the claim that mind is reducible to brain, which is the essence of physicalism. Had he been born a little later, Russell would have taken a harder line with physicalism. |
| 23046 | States only have full authority if they heed the claims of human fellowship [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: The claim of the state is only absolutely paramount on the supposition that in its commands and prohibitions it takes account of all the claims that arise out of human fellowship. | |
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §146), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: He rejects the idea of the general will in ordinary political activity, so it is not clear how this condition could ever be met in practice. Hideous governments just pay lip service to 'human fellowship'. How could you tell whether they believe it? |
| 23051 | Equality also implies liberty, because equality must be of opportunity as well as possessions [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Liberty was essential, not only as a means to equality, but as part of it. …because the opportunity which was to be equalised was not merely to have and to be happy, but to do and to realise. It was 'the right of man to make the best of himself'. | |
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: This nicely identifies the core idea of civilised liberalism (as opposed to the crazy self-seeking kind). I think 'give people the right to make the best of themselves' makes a good slogan, because it implies ensuring that they have the means. |
| 23028 | The highest political efforts express our deeper social spirit [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Political effort in all its highest forms is the expression of a belief in the reality of the social spirit as the deeper element in the individual. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: Although Green is rather literally spiritual, if we express it as a central aspect of human nature, this idea strikes me as correct. Writing in 2021, I am totally bewildered by the entire absence of any 'higher' forms of political expression. |
| 23054 | Communism is wrong because it restricts the freedom of individuals to contribute to the community [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Green condemned pure communism, not in the name of any abstract rights of the individual, but of the right of the community itself to the best that individuals can contribute through the free and spontaneous exercise of their powers of self-expression. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: Interesting. In a very authoritarian communist state it does seem that citizens are less able to contribute to the general good. But extreme liberty seems also to undermine the general good. Hm. |
| 23047 | Original common ownership is securing private property, not denying it [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Common ownership in early societies is not the denial of a man's private property in the products of his own labour, but the only way under the circumstances of securing it. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §218) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: This is announced with some confidence, but it is very speculative. I think there is some truth in Locke's thought that putting work into a creation creates natural ownership. But who owns the raw materials? Why is work valued highly? |
| 7825 | The politics of Leibniz was the reunification of Christianity [Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: The politics of Leibniz may be summed up in one word: theocracy. The specific agenda motivating much of his work was to reunite the Protestant and Catholic churches | |
| From: Matthew Stewart (The Courtier and the Heretic [2007], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This would be a typical project for a rationalist philosopher, who thinks that good reasoning will gradually converge on the one truth. |
| 23042 | National spirit only exists in the individuals who embody it [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: A national spirit cannot exist apart from the individuals who embody it. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: We see this in football supporters. They are thrilled by the glory of a great victory, but the reality is just the thrill of the players, and the exuberance in each supporter's mind. There is no further entity called the 'glory'. Green was a liberal. |
| 23048 | The ground of property ownership is not force but the power to use it for social ends [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: It is not the power of forcible tenure but the power of utilisation for social ends that is the ground of the permanent recognition that constitutes a right to property. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: Tell that to the aristocratic owners of British grouse moors! This just seems to be wishful thinking. Does that mean that I have no right to property if my ends are not 'social'? |
| 23049 | Property is needed by all citizens, to empower them to achieve social goods [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: The rationale of property is that every one should be secured by society in the power of getting and keeping the means of realising a will which in possibility is a will directed to social good. | |
| From: T.H. Green (Lectures on the Principles of Political Obligation [1882], §220), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: An interesting argument. If you want free citizens in a liberal society to be capable of achieving social good, you must allow them the right to acquire the means of doing so. |
| 7547 | Matter requires a division into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A true theory of matter requires a division of things into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125) | |
| A reaction: The division of matter in space seems decidable by physicists, but the division in time seems a bit arbitrary (unless it is quanta of time?). Russell focuses on observable qualities, but are there also intrinsic qualities? |
| 7551 | Matter is a logical construction [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We must regard matter as a logical construction. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.132) | |
| A reaction: A logical construction is a fancy way of saying a best explanation (but with Ockham's Razor hanging over it). A key component missing from Russell's account is that we can directly experience matter, because we are made of it. |
| 7552 | Six dimensions are needed for a particular, three within its own space, and three to locate that space [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The world of particulars is a six-dimensional space, where six co-ordinates will be required to assign the position of any particular, three to assign its position in its own space, and three to assign the position of its space among the other spaces. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.134) | |
| A reaction: Not a proposal that has caught on. One might connect the idea with the notion of 'frames of reference' in Einstein's Special Theory. Inside a frame of reference, three co-ordinates are needed; but where is the frame of reference? |