36 ideas
| 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. |
| 11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
| 11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
| 11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
| A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
| 11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
| 11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
| 11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
| 11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
| 11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
| 11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
| 11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
| Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
| From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20959 | Concepts are only analytic once the predicate is absorbed into the subject [Schleiermacher] |
| Full Idea: The difference between analytic and synthetic judgements is an unimportant fluid one. 'Ice melts' is analytic if it is already taken up into the concept of ice, and synthetic if not yet taken up. It is just a different state of the formation of concepts. | |
| From: Friedrich Schleiermacher (Dialektik [1833], p.563), quoted by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 8 'Scientific' | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I wonder if Quine ever encountered this quotation. The idea refers to Kant's notion of analyticity, and makes the good point that predicates only become 'contained in the subject' once the situation is very familiar. |