Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Selections from Prison Notebooks' and 'Essential Attribution'

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17 ideas

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism
Aristotelian essentialism involves a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of modal operators [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Aristotelian essentialism may best be understood on a 'natural' or 'causal' interpretation of the modal operators.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.189)
     A reaction: I record this because I very much like the sound of it, though I have yet to fully understand it.
Aristotelian essentialism is about shared properties, individuating essentialism about distinctive properties [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: An object must have some of its natural properties in this world. Some of those it has in common with objects of some proximate kind (Aristotelian essentialism), and others individuate it from objects of the same kind (individuating essentialism).
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193)
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / b. Essence not necessities
Essentialist sentences are not theorems of modal logic, and can even be false [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: In the range of modal systems for which Saul Kripke has provided a semantics, no essentialist sentence is a theorem. Furthermore, there are models for which such sentences are demonstrably false.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.188)
'Essentially' won't replace 'necessarily' for vacuous properties like snub-nosed or self-identical [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: We would never use 'is essentially' for 'is necessarily' where vacuous properties are concerned, as in 'Socrates is essentially snub-nosed' or 'Socrates is essentially Socrates'.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193)
     A reaction: This simple point does us a huge service in rescuing the word 'essential' from several hundred years of misguided philosophy.
'Is essentially' has a different meaning from 'is necessarily', as they often cannot be substituted [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: There seems to be surface synonymy between 'is essentially' and de re occurrences of 'is necessarily', but intersubstitution often fails to preserve sense (as in 'Winston is essentially a cyclist' and 'Winston is necessarily a cyclist').
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.193)
     A reaction: Clearly the two sentences have different meanings, with 'essentially' being a comment about the nature of Winston, and 'necessarily' probably being a comment about the circumstances in which he finds himself. Very nice. See also Idea 11186.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
If essences are objects with only essential properties, they are elusive in possible worlds [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Some philosophers make a metaphysical shift, by inventing objects (individual concepts, forms, substances) called 'essences', which have only essential properties, and then worry when they can't locate them by rummaging around in possible worlds.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192)
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / a. Possible worlds
The use of possible worlds is to sort properties (not to individuate objects) [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: The usefulness of talk about possible worlds is not for purposes of individuating the object - that can be done in this world; such talk is a way of sorting its properties.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.192)
     A reaction: 'Possible worlds are a device for sorting properties' sounds to me like a promising slogan. Ruth Marcus originated rigid designation, before Kripke came up with the label.
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / b. Rigid designation
In possible worlds, names are just neutral unvarying pegs for truths and predicates [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: The strategem of talk about possible worlds is that truth assignments of sentences and extensions of predicates may vary, but individual names don't alter their reference (unless they don't refer). They are a neutral peg for descriptions.
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.194)
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues
The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna]
     Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom.
     From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88)
     A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate').
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 1. Purpose of a State
The state should produce higher civilisations for all, in tune with the economic apparatus [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The role of the State is always that of creating new and higher types of civilisation; of adapting the 'civilisation' and the morality of the broades popular masses to the necessities of the continuous development of the economic apparatus of production.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Collective')
     A reaction: This makes education virtually the prime role of the state. Reminiscent of Sir John Reith's original dream, in the 1930s, for the BBC. Many marxists feel that the economy is in direct conflict with morality and civilisation.
24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 2. State Legitimacy / d. General will
Eventually political parties lose touch with the class they represent, which is dangerous [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: At a certain point in their lives, social classes become detached from their traditional parties. In that particular form ...the parties are no longer recognised by their class as its exopression. ...The field is then open for violent solutions.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parties')
     A reaction: Left wing parties pursue ideologies that don't connect with the actual current interests of the working class, and righ wing parties are taken over by rich elites who don't value safe traditonal communities. (This thought is resonant in the 2018 UK).
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / a. Autocracy
Caesarism emerges when two forces in society are paralysed in conflict [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: Caesarism (as the emergence of a 'heroic' personality) expresses a situation in which the forces in conflict balance each other in a catastrophic manner ...which can only terminate in their reciprocal destruction.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Caesarism')
     A reaction: He goes on to distinguish progressive and reactionary versions of Caesarism. Gramsci's interest is in the circumstances that throw up such people. Marx had identified 'Bonapartism'.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / c. Despotism
Totalitarian parties cut their members off from other cultural organisations [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: A totalitarian party ensures that members find in that particular party all the satisfactions that they formerly found in a multiplicity of organisations. They break the threads that bind them to extraneous cultural organisms.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Organisation')
     A reaction: British parties traditionally had a 'club house', where you could do most of your socialising. Presumably Nazis left the church, and various interest groups.
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 3. Government / a. Government
What is the function of a parliament? Does it even constitute a part of the State structure? [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The question has to be asked: do parliaments, even in fact constitute a part of the State structure? In other words, what is the real function?
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Parliament')
     A reaction: Nice question. In the UK it is only the cabinet which has active power. Backbench MPs are usually very frustrated, especially if their party has a comfortable majority, and their vote is not precious. They are privileged lobbyists.
24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / g. Liberalism critique
Liberalism's weakness is its powerful rigid bureaucracy [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: Liberalism's weakness is the bureacracy - the crystallisation of the leading personnel - which exercises power, and at a certain point it becomes a caste.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'Hegemony')
     A reaction: This sounds more like what is called 'the Establishment' in Britain, which is the hidden controllers of power, rather than the administrators (whose role is only despised by right-wingers).
25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 2. Political equality
Perfect political equality requires economic equality [Gramsci]
     Full Idea: The idea that complete and perfect political equality cannot exist without economic equality ...remains correct.
     From: Antonio Gramsci (Selections from Prison Notebooks [1971], 2 'The State')
     A reaction: In the west we are living in a period (2018) when the top 0.1% of the wealthy are racing away, creating huge inequality. Their wealth controls the media, and it seems unrestrainable. The belief that we live in a 'democracy' is an illusion.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism
Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Being gold or being a man is not accidental. ..Such essences are dispositional properties of a very special kind: if an object had such a property and ceased to have it, it would have ceased to exist or have changed (as if gold is transmuted to lead).
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.202)
     A reaction: Ruth Marcus is an important founder of modern scientific essentialism, by not only proposing the notion we call rigid designation, but by explicitly defending the essential identities that seem to emerge from modal logic.