24 ideas
| 9247 | Life will be lived better if it has no meaning [Camus] |
| Full Idea: Life will be lived all the better if it has no meaning. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs free') | |
| A reaction: One image of the good life is that of a successful wild animal, for which existence is not a problem, merely a constant activity and pursuit. Maybe life begins to acquire meaning once we realise that meaning should not be sought directly. |
| 6707 | Suicide - whether life is worth living - is the one serious philosophical problem [Camus] |
| Full Idea: There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide. Judgine whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], p.11) | |
| A reaction: What a wonderful thesis for a book. In Idea 2682 there is the possibility of life being worth living, but not worth a huge amount of effort. It is better to call Camus' question the first question, rather than the only question. |
| 9245 | To an absurd mind reason is useless, and there is nothing beyond reason [Camus] |
| Full Idea: To an absurd mind reason is useless, and there is nothing beyond reason. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Phil Suic') | |
| A reaction: But there is, surely, intuition and instinct? Read Keats's Letters. There is good living through upbringing and habit. Read Aristotle. If you like Camus' thought, you will love Chuang Tzu. Personally I am a child of the Enlightenment. |
| 11064 | Classes can be reduced to propositional functions [Russell, by Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Russell held that classes can be reduced to propositional functions. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Robert Hanna - Rationality and Logic 2.4 | |
| A reaction: The exact nature of a propositional function is disputed amongst Russell scholars (though it is roughly an open sentence of the form 'x is red'). |
| 9244 | Logic is easy, but what about logic to the point of death? [Camus] |
| Full Idea: It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end. The only problem that interests me is: is there a logic to the point of death? | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs and Suic') | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely hand grenade to lob into an analytical logic class! It is very hard to get logicians to actually ascribe a clear value to their activity. They tend to present it as a marginal private game, and yet it has high status. |
| 6407 | The class of classes which lack self-membership leads to a contradiction [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The class of teaspoons isn't a teaspoon, so isn't a member of itself; but the class of non-teaspoons is a member of itself. The class of all classes which are not members of themselves is a member of itself if it isn't a member of itself! Paradox. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: A very compressed version of Russell's famous paradox, often known as the 'barber' paradox. Russell developed his Theory of Types in an attempt to counter the paradox. Frege's response was to despair of his own theory. |
| 10418 | Type theory seems an extreme reaction, since self-exemplification is often innocuous [Swoyer on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Russell's reaction to his paradox (by creating his theory of types) seems extreme, because many cases of self-exemplification are innocuous. The property of being a property is itself a property. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Chris Swoyer - Properties 7.5 | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it is not enough that 'many cases' are innocuous. We are starting from philosophy of mathematics, where precision is essentially. General views about properties come later. |
| 10047 | Russell's improvements blocked mathematics as well as paradoxes, and needed further axioms [Russell, by Musgrave] |
| Full Idea: Unfortunately, Russell's new logic, as well as preventing the deduction of paradoxes, also prevented the deduction of mathematics, so he supplemented it with additional axioms, of Infinity, of Choice, and of Reducibility. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Alan Musgrave - Logicism Revisited §2 | |
| A reaction: The first axiom seems to be an empirical hypothesis, and the second has turned out to be independent of logic and set theory. |
| 23478 | Type theory means that features shared by different levels cannot be expressed [Morris,M on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Russell's theory of types avoided the paradoxes, but it had the result that features common to different levels of the hierarchy become uncapturable (since any attempt to capture them would involve a predicate which disobeyed the hierarchy restrictions). | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 2H |
| 21718 | Ramified types can be defended as a system of intensional logic, with a 'no class' view of sets [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
| Full Idea: A defence of the ramified theory of types comes in seeing it as a system of intensional logic which includes the 'no class' account of sets, and indeed the whole development of mathematics, as just a part. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by Bernard Linsky - Russell's Metaphysical Logic 6.1 | |
| A reaction: So Linsky's basic project is to save logicism, by resting on intensional logic (rather than extensional logic and set theory). I'm not aware that Linsky has acquired followers for this. Maybe Crispin Wright has commented? |
| 18126 | A set does not exist unless at least one of its specifications is predicative [Russell, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: The idea is that the same set may well have different canonical specifications, i.e. there may be different ways of stating its membership conditions, and so long as one of these is predicative all is well. If none are, the supposed set does not exist. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 |
| 18128 | Russell is a conceptualist here, saying some abstracta only exist because definitions create them [Russell, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: It is a conceptualist approach that Russell is relying on. ...The view is that some abstract objects ...exist only because they are definable. It is the definition that would (if permitted) somehow bring them into existence. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 | |
| A reaction: I'm suddenly thinking that predicativism is rather interesting. Being of an anti-platonist persuasion about abstract 'objects', I take some story about how we generate them to be needed. Psychological abstraction seems right, but a bit vague. |
| 18124 | Vicious Circle says if it is expressed using the whole collection, it can't be in the collection [Russell, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: The Vicious Circle Principle says, roughly, that whatever involves, or presupposes, or is only definable in terms of, all of a collection cannot itself be one of the collection. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Mathematical logic and theory of types [1908], p.63,75) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 8.1 | |
| A reaction: This is Bostock's paraphrase of Russell, because Russell never quite puts it clearly. The response is the requirement to be 'predicative'. Bostock emphasises that it mainly concerns definitions. The Principle 'always leads to hierarchies'. |
| 9249 | Whether we are free is uninteresting; we can only experience our freedom [Camus] |
| Full Idea: Knowing whether or not a man is free doesn't interest me. I can only experience my own freedom. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs free') | |
| A reaction: Camus has the right idea. Personally I think you could drop the word 'freedom', and just say that I am confronted by the need to make decisions. |
| 9253 | The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it [Camus] |
| Full Idea: The human heart has a tiresome tendency to label as fate only what crushes it. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Appendix') | |
| A reaction: Nice. It might just as much be fate that you live a happy bourgeois life, as that you inadvertently murder your own father at a crossroads. But you can't avoid the powerful awareness of fate when a road accident occurs. |
| 9250 | Discussing ethics is pointless; moral people behave badly, and integrity doesn't need rules [Camus] |
| Full Idea: There can be no question of holding forth on ethics. I have seen people behave badly with great morality and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs Man') | |
| A reaction: I don't agree. If someone 'behaves badly with great morality' there is something wrong with their morality, and I want to know what it is. The last part is more plausible, and could be a motto for Particularism. Rules dangerously over-simplify life. |
| 9252 | The more one loves the stronger the absurd grows [Camus] |
| Full Idea: The more one loves the stronger the absurd grows. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Don Juan') | |
| A reaction: A penetrating remark, to be placed as a contrary to the remarks of Harry Frankfurt on love. But if the absurd increases the intensity of life, as Camus thinks, then they both make love the great life-affirmation, but in different ways. |
| 9251 | One can be virtuous through a whim [Camus] |
| Full Idea: One can be virtuous through a whim. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs Man') | |
| A reaction: A nice remark. Obviously neither Aristotle nor Kant would be too impressed by someone who did this, and Aristotle would certainly say that it is not really virtue, but merely right behaviour. I agree with Aristotle. |
| 7903 | 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'). |
| 9243 | If we believe existence is absurd, this should dictate our conduct [Camus] |
| Full Idea: What a man believes to be true must determine his action. Belief in the absurdity of existence must then dictate his conduct. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs and Suic') | |
| A reaction: It is intriguing to speculate what the appropriate conduct is. Presumably it is wild existential gestures, like sticking a knife through your hand. Suicide will be an obvious temptation. But bourgeois life might be equally appropriate. |
| 6708 | Happiness and the absurd go together, each leading to the other [Camus] |
| Full Idea: Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth; they are inseparable; it would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery; it happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], p.110) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I understand this, but I understand the experience of absurdity, and I can see that somehow one feels a bit more alive when one acknowledges the absurdity of it all. Meta-meta-thought is the highest form of human life, I say. |
| 9242 | Essential problems either risk death, or intensify the passion of life [Camus] |
| Full Idea: The essential problems are those that run the risk of leading to death, or those that intensify the passion of living. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs and Suic') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be distinctively existentialist, in a way that a cool concern for great truths are not ranked as so important. Ranking dangerous problems as crucial seems somehow trivial for a philosopher. Intensity of life is more impressive. |
| 9246 | Danger and integrity are not in the leap of faith, but in remaining poised just before the leap [Camus] |
| Full Idea: The leap of faith does not represent an extreme danger as Kierkegaard would like it to do. The danger, on the contrary, lies in the subtle instant that precedes the leap. Being able to remain on the dizzying crest - that is integrity. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Phil Suic') | |
| A reaction: I have always found that a thrilling thought. It perfectly distinguishes atheist existentialism from religious existentialism. It is Camus' best image for how the Absurd can be a life affirming idea, rather than a sort of nihilism. Life gains intensity. |
| 9248 | It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will [Camus] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to die unreconciled and not of one's own free will. Suicide is a repudiation. | |
| From: Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus [1942], 'Abs free') | |
| A reaction: Camus' whole book addresses the question of suicide. He suggests that life can be redeemed and become livable if you squarely face up to the absurdity of it, and the gap between what we hope for and what we get. |