186 ideas
| 2937 | What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) | |
| A reaction: This is either a boring truism, or points towards some sort of verificationism (where we can speak meaninglessly). Compare Ideas 7973 and 6870. |
| 6870 | I say (contrary to Wittgenstein) that philosophy expresses what we thought we must be silent about [Ansell Pearson on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I recognise the incredible force of Wittgenstein's closing statement in the 'Tractatus', but I hold the opposite view: philosophy exists to give expression to that which we think we can only remain silent about. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 7) by Keith Ansell Pearson - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.267 | |
| A reaction: A wonderful remark, with which I totally agree. Compare Idea 1596. I think it is just a fact that philosophers are able to articulate a huge number of ideas which other intelligent people find very interesting but on which they are unable to speak. |
| 2944 | If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of unsubstantiated metaphysical claim that philosophers are always making. |
| 9810 | The 'Tractatus' is a masterpiece of anti-philosophy [Badiou on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' is without doubt one of the masterpieces of anti-philosophy. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Alain Badiou - Mathematics and Philosophy: grand and little p.16 | |
| A reaction: French philosophers do love making wicked remarks like that. It seems that analysis is anti-philosophy, or 'little' philosophy in Badiou's parlance. |
| 2196 | The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) | |
| A reaction: No wonder some people dislike philosophy. There is no question that the human race is often ludicrously over-confident about its attempts to understand, and a careful examination of the situation tends to undermine such confidence. |
| 23459 | This work solves all the main problems, but that has little value [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I believe myself to have found, on all essential points, the final solution of the problems. ….and this work shows how little is achieved when these problems are solved. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is LW's deep pessimism about the value of philosophy, right from the start. You can only idolise LW if you agree with him on this. |
| 23512 | Once you understand my book you will see that it is nonsensical [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who understands me eventually recognises my propositions as nonsensical, when he has used them - as steps - to climb up beyond them. (He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder after he has climbed up it.) | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.54) | |
| A reaction: A much discussed passage. It can't possibly say that his book is pointless, because you can't attain this recognition without climbing his ladder. He speaks like an eastern guru. Perhaps Hume should have ended 'so commit my book to the flames'? |
| 2187 | If we suspect that a philosophical term is meaningless, we should ask what impression it derives from [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we entertain any suspicion that a philosophical term is without any meaning or idea, we need but enquire "from what impression is that supposed idea derived?" | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.17) |
| 2938 | The limits of my language means the limits of my world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The limits of my language means the limits of my world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: This is dangerous rubbish. For a start, if you accept (as you should) the existence of propositions, our heads are full of unarticulated ones. And truth emerges by degrees from what cannot be articulated. |
| 6429 | All complex statements can be resolved into constituents and descriptions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Every statement about complexes can be resolved into a statement about their constituents and into the propositions that describe the complexes completely. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0201) | |
| A reaction: Russell says this embodies Wittgenstein's belief in analysis. Obviously Wittgenstein is making this claim 'in principle', as life is very short, and people are rather dim. I don't know how to begin evaluating such a claim. |
| 23492 | Our language is an aspect of biology, and so its inner logic is opaque [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Everyday language is a part of the human organism and is no less complicated than it. It is not humanly possible to gather immediately from it what the logic of language is. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.002) | |
| A reaction: It is normally assumed that ordinary language philosophy was derived from the later Wittgenstein, but this para in the Tractatus seems to contain the germ of the idea. He is pessimistic about finding logical forms. |
| 23510 | Most philosophical questions arise from failing to understand the logic of language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Most of the propositions and questions of philosophers arise from our failure to understand the logic of our language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.003) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the scope of 'logic' is here. I suppose it means everything about language which is expounded in the Tractatus. I assume this includes Plato and Aristotle? I don't think I agree. It's about concepts, not about logic. |
| 23499 | This book says we should either say it clearly, or shut up [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The whole sense of the book might be summed up in the following words: what can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This also provides the last sentence of his book. I think this is an axiom of modern analytic philosophy. The dream is to clarify everything, and belief that this is possible puts logic centre-stage, as the most precise language available. |
| 2200 | All experimental conclusions assume that the future will be like the past [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 23508 | Science is all the true propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The totality of true propositions is the whole of natural science (or the whole corpus of the natural sciences). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.11) | |
| A reaction: So if it is true, it is science. What about truths about science? What about true speculations beyond science? What about bad science? What about trivial everyday truths? This is said to be a rare precursor of logical positivism in Tractatus. |
| 2939 | If a sign is useless it is meaningless; that is the point of Ockham's maxim [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If a sign is useless it is meaningless. That is the point of Occam's maxim. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.328) |
| 4636 | All reasoning concerning matters of fact is based on analogy (with similar results of similar causes) [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], §82) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Analogy notoriously becomes problematical when you have only one case (or a few) to go on, as when inferring other minds, or God's existence from natural design. |
| 10910 | The best account of truth-making is isomorphism [Wittgenstein, by Mulligan/Simons/Smith] |
| Full Idea: The most sophisticated account of truth-making to have appeared to date is the 'isomorphism' theory of the Tractatus. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Mulligan/Simons/Smith - Truth-makers §5 | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's theory is clearly closely related to Russell's 'congruence' theory of correspondence of around 1912. |
| 23462 | He says the world is the facts because it is the facts which fix all the truths [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein is thinking of the world as what makes truths true. …To get all the truths fixed we need more than the things: we need, as it were, the way things are - that is to say, the facts. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1.12) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 1 | |
| A reaction: Morris says this is 'sometimes suggested'. It strikes me as plausible, and makes LW a key source for the modern truthmaker idea. Perhaps in David Lewis's version of it. The facts include the relations and processes of the things. |
| 18349 | All truths have truth-makers, but only atomic truths correspond to them [Wittgenstein, by Rami] |
| Full Idea: In 1922 Wittgenstein said that every truth has a truth-maker, but only atomic truths correspond to their truth-makers. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Adolph Rami - Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making note 04 | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is what logical atomism is meant to be (cf Russell). The atomic sentences plug into the world, and the rest are constructions from them, making the latter more remote from the truth-makers. |
| 10967 | Wittgenstein's picture theory is the best version of the correspondence theory of truth [Read on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's picture theory is without doubt the best thought-out and developed of all the versions of the correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.1 |
| 7087 | Language is [propositions-elementary propositions-names]; reality is [facts-states of affairs-objects] [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Language consists in propositions, which are made of 'elementary' propositions, which are based ultimately on names. This matches the world of facts, compounded out of 'states of affairs', which are compounded of objects. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is Grayling's summary of the basic idea of the 'Tractatus'. The whole thing seems to be an elaborate version of Russell's 'congruence' account of the correspondence theory of truth. Later Wittgenstein is loss of faith in this theory. |
| 4702 | The account of truth in the 'Tractatus' seems a perfect example of the correspondence theory [Wittgenstein, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's account in the 'Tractatus' is often taken as a paradigm instance of a sophisticated correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This might explain why I am so much more drawn to the 'Tractatus' than to the later relativistic anti-philosophical mind-eliminitavist, meaning-eliminativist Wittgenstein. |
| 7056 | Pictures reach out to or feel reality, touching at the edges, correlating in its parts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A picture attaches to reality by reaching out to it; it is laid against reality like a measure; only the end-points actually touch the object; the pictorial relationship consists of correlations of picture's elements with things, the picture's feelers. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.1511-5) | |
| A reaction: (somewhat compressed). This is Wittgenstein's so-called 'picture theory' of meaning (replaced later by 'meaning is use'). It is perhaps better seen as an account of the correspondence theory of truth. Compare Russell's 'congruence' view (Idea 5427). |
| 23483 | Proposition elements correlate with objects, but the whole picture does not correspond to a fact [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: Correlation need only be between elements of the picture and things in reality; it is not also required that there be a correspondence between the picture as a whole and a fact in reality - so things can be depicted falsely. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.15121) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 3C | |
| A reaction: To turn his picture theory into a correspondence theory of truth would need a further step, of saying the proposition is true when the two structures coincide. I don't think LW says that. |
| 23502 | Logic fills the world, to its limits [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Logic pervades the world: the limits of the world are also its limits. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.61) | |
| A reaction: This is a gospel belief for hardcore analytic philosophy. Hence Williamson writes a book on modal logic as metaphysics. |
| 23504 | Logic concerns everything that is subject to law; the rest is accident [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The exploration of logic means the exploration of everything that is subject to law. And outside logic everything is accidental. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Why should laws be logical? Legislatures can pass whimsical laws. Does he mean that the laws of nature are logically necessary? He can't just mean logical laws. |
| 6428 | Wittgenstein is right that logic is just tautologies [Wittgenstein, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: I think Wittgenstein is right when he says (in the 'Tractatus') that logic consists wholly of tautologies. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Bertrand Russell - My Philosophical Development Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Despite Russell's support, I find this hard to accept. While a 'pure' or 'Platonist' logic may be hard to demonstrate or believe, I have a strong gut feeling that logic is more of a natural phenomenon than a human convention. |
| 11062 | Logic is a priori because it is impossible to think illogically [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What makes logic a priori is the impossibility of illogical thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.4731) | |
| A reaction: That places the a priori aspect of it in us (in the epistemology), rather than in the necessity of the logic (the ontology), which is as Kripke says it should be. |
| 18277 | If q implies p, that is justified by q and p, not by some 'laws' of inference [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If p follows from q, I can make an inference from q to p, deduce p from q. The nature of the inference can be gathered only from the two propositions. They are the only possible justification of the inference. 'Laws of Inference' would be superfluous. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.132) | |
| A reaction: That seems to imply that each inference is judged on its particulars. But logic aims to be general. There seem to be 'laws' at a more complex level in the logic. |
| 18162 | The propositions of logic are analytic tautologies [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The propositions of logic are tautologies. Therefore the propositions of logic say nothing. (They are the analytic propositions). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.1) |
| 7537 | Wittgenstein convinced Russell that logic is tautologies, not Platonic forms [Wittgenstein, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Russell took a Platonist view of logic, but reading the 'Tractatus' convinced him that logic was purely linguistic, so-called 'logical truths' being nothing more than tautologies. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: If p-and-q and p-or-q are both tautologies, how do you explain the difference between them? The first is an indicative proposition about the actual world, but the second is modal. They are asserting very different things. |
| 23496 | Two colours in the same place is ruled out by the logical structure of colour [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The simultaneous presence of two colours in the same place in the visual field is impossible, in fact logically impossible, since it is ruled out by the logical structure of colour. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.3751) | |
| A reaction: This sounds the wrong way around. We derive our concept of the logic of colour from experiencing the total incompatibility of two colours in the same location. What if each of our eyes saw a different colour? |
| 18154 | The sign of identity is not allowed in 'Tractatus' [Wittgenstein, by Bostock] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' does not allow the introduction of a sign for identity. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 9.B.4 |
| 13429 | The identity sign is not essential in logical notation, if every sign has a different meaning [Wittgenstein, by Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein discovered that the sign of identity is not a necessary constituent of logical notation, but can be replaced by the convention that different signs must have different meanings. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Frank P. Ramsey - The Foundations of Mathematics p.139 | |
| A reaction: [Ramsey cites p.139 - need to track down the modern reference] Hence in modern logic it is usually necessary to say that we are using 'classical logic with identity', since the use of identity is very convenient, and reasonably harmless (I think). |
| 18268 | Apparent logical form may not be real logical form [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The apparent logical form of the proposition need not be its real logical form. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.0031), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 6 'The incom' | |
| A reaction: This is one of the key doctrines of modern analytic philosophy. |
| 10905 | My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' do not represent [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: My fundamental idea is that the 'logical constants' do not represent; that the logic of facts does not allow of representation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.0312) | |
| A reaction: This seems to a firm rebuttal of any sort of platonism about logic, and implies a purely formal account. |
| 23493 | 'Not' isn't an object, because not-not-p would then differ from p [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If there were an object called 'not', it would follow that 'not-not-p' would say something different from what 'p' said, just because the one proposition would then be about 'not', and the other would not. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.44) | |
| A reaction: That is, the first proposition would be about not-p, and the second would be about p. Assuming we can say what such things are 'about'. A rather good argument that the connectives are not entities. P and double-negated P should be indistinguishable. |
| 7784 | 'Object' is a pseudo-concept, properly indicated in logic by the variable x [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The variable name ‘x’ is the proper sign of the pseudo-concept object. Wherever the word ‘object’ (‘thing’, ‘entity’, etc.) is rightly used, it is expressed in logical symbolism by the variable name. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.1272) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of Quine's famous dictum (Idea 1610). I am not persuaded that because logic must handle an object as a variable, that it follows that we are dealing with a pseudo-concept. Let logic limp behind life. |
| 23506 | Names are primitive, and cannot be analysed [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A name cannot be dissected any further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.26) | |
| A reaction: All logicians and analytic philosophers seem to agree on this. He means terms which pick out specific objects. |
| 7089 | A name is primitive, and its meaning is the object [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A name means an object; an object is its meaning. ...A name cannot be dissected further by means of a definition: it is a primitive sign. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.203/3.26) | |
| A reaction: This is the optimistic view of names, that they are the point at which language plugs into the world (Russell preferred demonstratives for that job). Kripke's baptismal view of names has the same aspiration. |
| 9467 | Wittgenstein tried unsuccessfully to reduce quantifiers to conjunctions and disjunctions [Wittgenstein, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein reduces the universal quantifier to conjunctions of singular predications, and the existential quantifier to disjunctions of singular predications. ..This is nowadays understood as a failed effort. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Dale Jacquette - Intro to III: Quantifiers p.143 | |
| A reaction: The problem this meets has something to do with infinite objects. In a domain of three objects it looks like a perfectly plausible strategy. 'All' is all three, and 'Some' is at least one of the three. |
| 15089 | Logical proof just explicates complicated tautologies [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Proof in logic is merely a mechanical expedient to facilitate recognition of tautologies in complicated cases. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.1262) |
| 13830 | Logical truths are just 'by-products' of the introduction rules for logical constants [Wittgenstein, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's by-product theory is that the meanings of the logical constants are conveyed by their introduction rules, and these rules have as a by-product the class of logical truths. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ian Hacking - What is Logic? §03 | |
| A reaction: I find this approach highly plausible. All the truths about chess openings are just a by-product of the original rules. |
| 19292 | Logic doesn't split into primitive and derived propositions; they all have the same status [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: All the propositions of logic are of equal status: it is not the case that some of them are essentially primitive propositions and others essentially derived propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.127) | |
| A reaction: So axioms are conventional. This specifically contradicts the claims of Frege and the earlier Russell. Their view is that logic has an explanatory essence, found in some core axioms or rules or concepts. I agree with them. |
| 18160 | The concept of number is just what all numbers have in common [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The concept of number is simply what is common to all numbers, the general form of number. The concept of number is the variable number. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.022) |
| 18153 | A number is a repeated operation [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A number is the index of an operation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.021) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, this means that a number indicates how many times some basic operation has been performed. Bostock 2009:286 expounds the idea. |
| 18161 | The theory of classes is superfluous in mathematics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The theory of classes is completely superfluous in mathematics. This is connected with the fact that the generality required in mathematics is not accidental generality. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.031) | |
| A reaction: This fits Russell's no-class theory, which rests everything instead on propositional functions. |
| 2197 | Reason assists experience in discovering laws, and in measuring their application [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Abstract reasonings are employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of natural laws, or to determine their influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any precise degree of distance or quantity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.27) |
| 6849 | Wittgenstein hated logicism, and described it as a cancerous growth [Wittgenstein, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein didn't just have an arguments against logicism; he hated logicism, and described is as a cancerous growth. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Ray Monk - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.12 | |
| A reaction: This appears to have been part of an inexplicable personal antipathy towards Russell. Wittgenstein appears to have developed a dislike of all reductionist ideas in philosophy. |
| 23509 | The logic of the world is shown by tautologies in logic, and by equations in mathematics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The logic of the world, which is shown in tautologies by the propositions of logic, is shown in equations by mathematics. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.22) | |
| A reaction: White observes that this is Wittgenstein distinguishing logic from mathematics, and thus distancing himself from logicism. But see T 6.2. |
| 13133 | The world is facts, not things. Facts determine the world, and the world divides into facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world is the totality of facts, not of things. The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts. The totality of facts determines what is the case, and what is not the case. ..The world divides into facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1 - 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is said to be a radical new ontology, because the facts are held to be prior to the things and their properties, which are presumably abstractions from the primitive facts. The modern heir of this is Armstrong's 'states of affairs'. |
| 7700 | We can't think about the abstract idea of triangles, but only of particular triangles [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Let any man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isoceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.122) | |
| A reaction: I think there is a basic error in this. I admit that I can only imagine a particular triangle, but it doesn't follow that I am thinking about one triangle. Ontology/epistemology confusion. I picture a shape while believing the shape to be irrelevant. |
| 7090 | The 'Tractatus' is an extreme example of 'Logical Atomism' [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: The 'Tractatus' is an uncompromising, indeed an extreme, example of 'Logical Atomism' | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Russell talked about his 'logical atomism' after 1918, but this reminds us that Wittgenstein was fulfilling a task set for him by Russell. Wittgenstein's atoms are names-plus-objects, Russell's are demonstratives-plus-sensedata. |
| 23464 | In atomic facts the objects hang together like chain links [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In an atomic fact [Sachverhalt] the objects hang one in another, like the links of a chain | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.03), quoted by Homer - The Iliad | |
| A reaction: So the world consists of facts, but the facts are composed of objects. The point seems to be that the truths of language refer to the facts, rather than to the objects. Objects 'don't hang' together in the fact of a chance encounter. |
| 23471 | The structure of an atomic fact is how its objects combine; this possibility is its form [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The way in which objects hang together in the atomic fact is the structure of the atomic fact. …The form is the possibility of the structure. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.032-3) | |
| A reaction: I very much like the way LW adds a modal dimension to his ontology. Why doesn't he talk of 'relations', rather than 'hanging together'? |
| 21682 | If a proposition is elementary, no other elementary proposition contradicts it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is a sign of a proposition's being elementary that there can be no elementary proposition contradicting it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.211) | |
| A reaction: It is a hallmark of atomic atoms that they have no relations with other atoms, but are wholly independent. This obviously invites the question of how they are united. Are logical connectives intrinsically relational logical atoms? |
| 22319 | Analysis must end in elementary propositions, which are combinations of names [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is obvious that in the analysis of propositions we must come to elementary propositions, which consist of names in immediate combination. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.221), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 50 'Indep' | |
| A reaction: Not clear about 'combinations of names'. Does that include predicates? How do you combine two names? |
| 21683 | Nothing can be inferred from an elementary proposition [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: From an elementary proposition no other can be inferred. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.134) | |
| A reaction: Russell was not so sure. This is the sort of remark that elicits from me the question that extravagent metaphysics also provokes - 'how on earth does he know what he claims to be true?'. |
| 23473 | Do his existent facts constitute the world, or determine the world? [Morris,M on Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein's writing here is loose, and he seems to be conflating two claims: 1) The totality of existent facts is the world (everything that is the case), and 2) The totality of existent facts determines everything that is the case (the world). | |
| From: comment on Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.04) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 1E | |
| A reaction: [Also 2.06 and 2.063] Morris says he must actually mean the second version. |
| 22311 | The world is determined by the facts, and there are no further facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world is determined by the facts, and by these being all the facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 1.11), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 47 'Mole' | |
| A reaction: He is denying negative facts (also written to Russell in 1919). Best approached through truthmakers, I suspect. There is no truthmaker for the supposed factual claim 'there are birds on Mars' - so it is a fact that there are no birds on Mars. |
| 22313 | The existence of atomic facts is a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The existence of atomic facts we also call a positive fact, their non-existence a negative fact. b...The existence and non-existence of atomic facts is the reality. ...[2.063] the total reality is the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.06), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 47 'Mole' | |
| A reaction: Potter observes that he denies negative facts in a1919 letter to Russell, and at 1.11, but then affirms them at 2.06. |
| 22314 | On white paper a black spot is a positive fact and a white spot a negative fact [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: On white paper, the fact that a point is black corresponds to a positive fact; to the fact that a point is white (not black), a negative fact. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.063), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 08 'Judg' | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere Wittgenstein is ambiguous as to whether he believes in negative facts [qv]. |
| 7969 | The order of numbers is an internal relation, not an external one [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The order of the number-series is not governed by an external relation but by an internal relation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.1252) | |
| A reaction: He seems to mean something like a tautology (see Idea 7968). It is, I take it, part of the concept of any given integer that it has a place in the series. But do the concepts arise self-evidently, or from nature? |
| 7968 | A relation is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should not possess it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A relation is internal if it is unthinkable that its object should not possess it. (This shade of blue and that one stand, eo ipso, in the internal relation of lighter to darker. It is unthinkable that these two objects should not stand in this relation). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.123) | |
| A reaction: An epistemological definition. If only one shade of blue existed, would it still have this internal relation? Are things therefore full of potential internal relations with non-existent things? |
| 13602 | We cannot form an idea of a 'power', and the word is without meaning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We can have no idea of connexion or power at all, and these words are absolutely without any meaning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.58) | |
| A reaction: I would say that this ignores a phenomenon of which Hume is well aware, which is the power of our own minds to generate thoughts and actions. Hume seems to be employing a verificationist theory of meaning |
| 23466 | Objects are the substance of the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Objects make up the substance of the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.021) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't say here that the objects are physical, and may be including Frege's abstract objects. His concept of substance seems more like Spinoza than Aristotle. |
| 23467 | Objects are simple [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Objects are simple | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.02) | |
| A reaction: Presumably all his objects are 'simples', and what we think of as normal objects are counted by LW as 'facts'. |
| 23468 | Apart from the facts, there is only substance [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Substance is what remains independently of what is the case. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.024) | |
| A reaction: He sees what is the case as comprised of objects, so substance is even more basic. It seems close to Spinoza's single-substance view. |
| 22321 | To know an object we must know the form and content of its internal properties [Wittgenstein, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein explicitly said that to know an object I must know all its internal properties. ...Internal properties have form and content; form is 'possibility of occurrence in atomic facts' (2.0141), content is its being that specific object (2.0233). | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.01231) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 52 'Simp' | |
| A reaction: [check original quote] This seems to be an essentialist view of (formal) objects. See Potter 347-9 for discussion. The 'external properties' of an object are the atomic facts in which it occurs. |
| 6056 | Identity is not a relation between objects [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is self-evident that identity is not a relation between objects. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5301) | |
| A reaction: Part of Wittgenstein's claim that identity statements are 'pseudo-propositions'. See, in reply, the ideas of McGinn on identity. This was part of the drive that led to the extremes of logical positivism, killing metaphysics for two generations. |
| 22322 | You can't define identity by same predicates, because two objects with same predicates is assertable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Russell's definition of identity [x is y if any predicate of x is a predicate of y] won't do, because then one cannot say that two objects have all their properties in common | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5302), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 53 'Ident' | |
| A reaction: [The Russell is in Principia] Good. Even if Leibniz is right that no two obejcts have identical properties, it is at least meaningful to consider the possibility. Russell makes it an impossibility, rather than a contingent fact. |
| 6057 | Two things can't be identical, and self-identity is an empty concept [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Roughly speaking, to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5303) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein's attack on identity. It is best (following McGinn) to only speak of resemblance between two things (possibly to a very high degree, as in two electrons). Self-identity just is identity; you can drop the word 'identity', but not the concept. |
| 9442 | The only necessity is logical necessity [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The only necessity that exists is logical necessity. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.37) | |
| A reaction: For Wittgenstein that will mean conventional necessity. He is taking a standard Humean view of these things. |
| 2216 | We transfer the frequency of past observations to our future predictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where different effects have been found to follow from causes, which are to appearance exactly similar, all these various effects must occur to the mind in the same proportion in transferring the past to the future. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.47) |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as chance in the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.46) |
| 23495 | The tautologies of logic show the logic of language and the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The fact that the propositions of logic are tautologies shows the formal - logical - properties of language and the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.12) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extraordinarily hubristic remark (philosophically speaking), especially coming from a work which famously throws away its own ladder. He is very much pursuing Kant's project. |
| 23487 | What is thinkable is possible [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What is thinkable is possible too. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 3.02) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from a context!] The modern tide has turned against this idea. The more clearly you understand the facts, the more restricted the possibilities become. If you think the impossible is possible, it is because you are bad at thinking. |
| 23470 | Each thing is in a space of possible facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Each thing is, as it were, in a space of possible states of affairs. This space I can imagine as empty, but not of the thing without the space. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.013) | |
| A reaction: A clear echo of Kant on natural space. LW calls it 'logical space' (1.13). I take this to be exactly the concept of the space of possibilities which contains the modern notion of possible worlds. |
| 23507 | Unlike the modern view of a set of worlds, Wittgenstein thinks of a structured manifold of them [Wittgenstein, by White,RM] |
| Full Idea: In 'Tractatus' Wittgenstein is not just thinking of a set of possible worlds (in the modern account), but of a structured manifold within which each 'possible world' is located. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Roger M. White - Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' 3 'Positions' | |
| A reaction: So the modern view has the neutrality of a merely formal system, but LW is thinking of them as the modal structure of reality. |
| 23469 | An imagined world must have something in common with the real world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is obvious that an imagined world, however different it may be from the real one, must have something - a form - in common with it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.022) | |
| A reaction: It is clear that Wittgenstein had a concept of possible worlds close to the modern view. |
| 11027 | To know an object you must know all its possible occurrences [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If I know an object I also know all its possible occurrences in states of affairs. (Every one of those possibilities must be part of the nature of the object.) A new possibility cannot be discovered later. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0123) | |
| A reaction: The requirement that you know them 'all' seems absurd, especially if we need science to discover them. I take this idea to be extremely important, and essentially Aristotelian (connecting with the notion of 'potentiality'). We need to know the powers. |
| 23465 | The 'form' of an object is its possible roles in facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of its occurrence in atomic facts is the form of the object. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0141) | |
| A reaction: Morris says this picks up the idea from Kant. We might now label the 'form' as the 'modal profile' of the object (a phrase I like). The modern issues over transworld identity seem to be a development of this thought. |
| 12869 | Two objects may only differ in being different [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If two objects have the same logical form, the only distinction between them, apart from their external properties, is that they are different. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.0233) | |
| A reaction: This isn't a commitment to haecceities, but it seems to be flirting with the idea. See Simons 1987:241. Kit Fine picks up the idea that objects, as well as sentences, might have 'logical form'. How can being 'different' be primitive? Spatial location? |
| 2209 | Belief is stronger, clearer and steadier than imagination [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.40) |
| 2207 | Belief can't be a concept plus an idea, or we could add the idea to fictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What is the difference between fiction and belief? It can't be a peculiar idea annexed to a conception which commands our assent, and is wanting to fiction, for then the mind could voluntarily annex this idea to any fiction, and believe what it pleases. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2208 | Belief is just a particular feeling attached to ideas of objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When an object is present to memory or senses, custom carries the imagination to that object which is usually conjoined with it. This carries a feeling different from the loose reveries of fantasy, and in this consists the whole nature of belief. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2213 | Beliefs are built up by resemblance, contiguity and causation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief, where it reaches beyond the memory or senses, arises from resemblance, contiguity or causation, with the same transition of thought and vivacity of conception. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.44) |
| 3661 | 'Natural beliefs' are unavoidable, whatever our judgements [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume has a doctrine of "natural belief", about the sorts of things we can't help believing, in 'common' or everyday life, irrespective of our philosophical conclusions. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 23503 | Strict solipsism is pure realism, with the self as a mere point in surrounding reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Solipsism, when its implications are followed out strictly, coincides with pure realism. The self of solipsism shrinks to a point without extension, and there remains the reality co-ordinated with it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.64) | |
| A reaction: Despite this, Michael Morris is more inclined to see him as an idealist. It is not clear whether the present account of solipsism is idealist or realist. Berkeley seemed to think his idealism was true realism. Can reality be co-ordinated with a point? |
| 16907 | If the truth doesn't follow from self-evidence, then self-evidence cannot justify a truth [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If the truth of a proposition does not follow from the fact that it is self-evident to us, then its self-evidence in no way justifies our belief in its truth. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.1363), quoted by Robin Jeshion - Frege's Notion of Self-Evidence 4 | |
| A reaction: Frege seems to have taken self-evidence as intrinsic justification, but Wittgenstein seems to demand a supporting inference. But what is it all based on? Stipulative definitions? |
| 23479 | The Tractatus aims to reveal the necessities, without appealing to synthetic a priori truths [Wittgenstein, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: We can see the 'Tractatus' as an attempt to make sense of what is necessarily true of the world - in general, and not just in the mathematical case - without appealing to synthetic a priori truths. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus 2H | |
| A reaction: Morris sees the Tractatus as firmly in the Kantian tradition, and exploring Kant's main project in the first Critique. |
| 23501 | There is no a priori order of things [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Whatever we can describe at all could be other than it is. There is no a priori order of things. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.634) | |
| A reaction: This is his rejection of Kant's dream, of inferring truths about the world by self-examination. However, compare Idea 23495. He clings to the faith that logic reveals 'something' about reality. |
| 7088 | Logic and maths can't say anything about the world, since, as tautologies, they are consistent with all realities [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Neither logical nor mathematical propositions say anything about the world, because in virtue of their always being true they are consistent with any way the world could happen to be. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This became the standard view for twentieth century empiricists, and appeared to rule out a priori synthetic knowledge forever. Kripke's proposal that there are a posteriori necessities, however, changes the picture. |
| 2191 | Relations of ideas are known by thought, independently from the world [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Relations of Ideas are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 16909 | Logic is a priori because we cannot think illogically [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: That logic is a priori consists in the fact that we cannot think illogically. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.4731), quoted by Robin Jeshion - Frege's Notion of Self-Evidence 4 | |
| A reaction: A rather startling claim. Presumably we have to say that when we draw a stupid inference, then we weren't really 'thinking'? |
| 23485 | No pictures are true a priori [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There are no pictures that are true a priori. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.225) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the growing modern doubts about the scope or possibility of a priori knowledge. A 'picture' here is the mental model which is the meaning of a proposition. |
| 2239 | If secondary qualities (e.g. hardness) are in the mind, so are primary qualities like extension [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed that all sensible qualities of objects, such as hard or hot, are secondary, and exist in the mind and not in objects; but then this also follows for the primary qualities of extension and solidity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.122) | |
| A reaction: he mentions Berkeley |
| 2237 | It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Men instinctively suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one is nothing but representations of the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2192 | All reasoning about facts is causal; nothing else goes beyond memory and senses [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond of our memory and senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.22) |
| 2184 | All ideas are copies of impressions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) |
| 23631 | Hume is loose when he says perceptions of different strength are different species [Reid on Hume] |
| Full Idea: When Hume divides all perceptions into two classes or species, distinguished by their degrees of force and vivacity, this is loose and unphilosophical. To differ in species is one thing, to differ in degree is another. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary 1 | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's 'impressions' and 'ideas'. As usual with Reid, this is a very astute criticism. Reid is a direct realist, so his solution is to view ideas as weakened impressions. If impressions are strong ideas, you get idealism (which is bad!). |
| 2182 | Impressions are our livelier perceptions, Ideas the less lively ones [Hume] |
| Full Idea: 'Impressions' are our more lively perceptions, when we hear, see, feel, love, hate, desire or will. 'Ideas' are less lively perceptions, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) |
| 2190 | All objects of enquiry are Relations of Ideas, or Matters of Fact [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2246 | If books don't relate ideas or explain facts, commit them to the flames [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we take in hand any volume of divinity or metaphysics, ask 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Or experimental reason on matters of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2189 | All ideas are connected by Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection between ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], III.19) |
| 2186 | We cannot form the idea of something we haven't experienced [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. ….A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the relish of wine. ….A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.15) |
| 2702 | Only madmen dispute the authority of experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: None but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.31) |
| 2217 | When definitions are pushed to the limit, only experience can make them precise [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas and still find some ambiguity and obscurity, how can we render them altogether precise and determinate? Produce the impressions or original sentiments from which the ideas were copied. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.49) |
| 2194 | How could Adam predict he would drown in water or burn in fire? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 2183 | We can only invent a golden mountain by combining experiences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense or experience. For example, a golden mountain or a virtuous horse come from joining ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) | |
| A reaction: The example of the Golden Mountain comes from Aguinas Quodlibeta 8.2.1. The original idea is in Sextus Empiricus. |
| 2205 | You couldn't reason at all if you lacked experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: An unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely unexperienced. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36 n.1) |
| 23421 | If a person had a gap in their experience of blue shades, they could imaginatively fill it in [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a person to be perfectly acquainted with all colours, except one particular shade of blue. It must be possible for him to raise up from his own imagination the idea of that particular shade, though never conveyed to him by the senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.16) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He dismisses this as 'so singular it is scarcely worth observing', but it is crucial. It isn't 'singular'. We do it all the time, by extrapolating from experiences and interpolating between them. Thus we extend knowledge beyond experience. |
| 3902 | Hume mistakenly lumps sensations and perceptions together as 'impressions' [Scruton on Hume] |
| Full Idea: The greatest weakness in Hume's philosophy is his use of the term 'impression' to refer to both sensations and perceptions. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 24 |
| 2206 | Reasons for belief must eventually terminate in experience, or they are without foundation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If I ask why you believe some fact, you must tell me a reason, which will be some other fact, connected with it. But this process must terminate in a fact which is present to your memory or senses; or you must allow that the belief is without foundation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.37) | |
| A reaction: A classic quotation of empirical foundationalism. The rival view would be that the process does not terminate at all, but nevertheless builds up a persuasive picture which is foundational. |
| 2235 | There is no certain supreme principle, or infallible rule of inference [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no original supreme principle that is self-evident and convincing; nor, if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by those very faculties of which sceptics are supposed to be already diffident. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.116) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the chief exponent of empirical foundationalism attacking rational foundationalism. The problem of 'advancing beyond' basic beliefs is also a problem for Hume's position. |
| 10328 | We think testimony matches reality because of experience, not some a priori connection [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.i.89) | |
| A reaction: Well he would say that, wouldn't he? If there is no connection in testimony, presumably there can be no a priori connection with private experience, but there is a danger of never getting started, and ending in anti-realism. |
| 2230 | Good testimony needs education, integrity, motive and agreement [Hume, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Reliable testimony needs a good number of educated people, all of undoubted integrity, who have a lot to lose if they are caught lying, reporting very public events. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.II.92) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice checklist for flying saucer sightings etc: education, integrity, lying risky, very public. If any of those fail, it comes down to likelihood (apply Bayes?) and character assessment. |
| 2238 | Reason can never show that experiences are connected to external objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that perceptions are connected with any external objects. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.121) |
| 2242 | Mitigated scepticism draws attention to the limitations of human reason, and encourages modesty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A mitigated scepticism … can make dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, and inspire them with more modesty and reserve. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.129) |
| 6591 | Doubts can't exist if they are inexpressible or unanswerable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Doubt can exist only where a question exists, a question only where an answer can exist, and an answer only where something can be said. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.51) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree with any of that. It is typical of the phase when philosophers were mesmerised by language. Cats look puzzled sometimes. A glimmering of doubt may be pre-linguistic, inexpressible and unanswerable, but still feels like a doubt. |
| 2243 | Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Mitigated scepticism is an advantage to mankind, as it limits our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.130) |
| 2236 | Examples of illusion only show that sense experience needs correction by reason [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Trite sceptical examples, such as the oar bent in water, or double images when the eye is pressed, are only sufficient to prove that senses alone are not dependable, but we must correct their evidence with reason. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2241 | The main objection to scepticism is that no good can come of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism is that no durable good can ever result from it. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.128) |
| 2240 | It is a very extravagant aim of the sceptics to destroy reason and argument by means of reason and argument [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may seem a very extravagant attempt of the sceptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grand scope of all their enquiries and disputes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.124) |
| 17665 | The 'Tractatus' is instrumentalist about laws of nature [Wittgenstein, by Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein is an instrumentalist about laws of nature in 'Tractatus'. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by David M. Armstrong - What is a Law of Nature? 01.3 | |
| A reaction: [I record this, but don't know the reference] |
| 2941 | Induction accepts the simplest law that fits our experiences [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The procedure of induction consists in accepting as true the simplest law that can be reconciled with our experiences. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.363) |
| 2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
| 2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
| 2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
| 2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
| 2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
| 6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
| 3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
| Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
| 17673 | The modern worldview is based on the illusion that laws explain nature [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The whole modern conception of the world is founded on the illusion that the so-called laws of nature are the explanations of natural phenomena. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.371) | |
| A reaction: Love it! Not only does it say that lawlike explanation is wrong, but it registers that this is a profound feature of the modern view of the world, and not just a slightly misguided philosophical theory. |
| 2210 | A picture of a friend strengthens our idea of him, by resemblance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) |
| 17712 | General ideas are the connection by resemblance to some particular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], I.VII.17), quoted by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: This is close to Berkeley's idea that we can only grasp particulars. Personally I think the idea of (psychological) abstraction is unavoidable. Irrelevant features of particulars need to ignored. |
| 8544 | Hume does not distinguish real resemblances among degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume regarded the notion of resemblance as unproblematic, ..but any two objects share infinitely many Cambridge (whimsical relational) properties, and resemble in infinite ways. He needs real resemblance, which needs degrees of resemblance. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See Idea 191. We forgive Hume, because he is a pioneer, but this is obviously right. Draw a line between 'real' resemblances and rest will be tricky, and bad news for regularity accounts of laws and causation. |
| 2211 | When I am close to (contiguous with) home, I feel its presence more nearly [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When I am a few miles from home, whatever relates to it touches me more nearly than when I am two hundred leagues distance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.42) |
| 2212 | An object made by a saint is the best way to produce thoughts of him [Hume] |
| Full Idea: One of the best reliques which a devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a saint, because they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.43) |
| 2214 | Our awareness of patterns of causation is too important to be left to slow and uncertain reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our inference of like effects from like causes is so essential to the subsistence of human creatures that it is unlikely to be trusted to the fallacious deductions of reasoning, which are slow, develop late, and are liable to error. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.45) |
| 2940 | The subject stands outside our understanding of the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The subject does not belong to the world; rather, it is a limit of the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.632) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. We must not confuse epistemology with ontology, but the perceived world exists between two limits - the farthest reaches of my perceptions, and the farthest reaches of myself. I wish I could clearly disentangle the nearer border. Dasein? |
| 23498 | The modern idea of the subjective soul is composite, and impossible [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Therre is no such thing as the soul - the subject, etc. - as it is conceived in the superficial psychology of the present day. Indeed a composite soul would no longer be a soul. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5421) | |
| A reaction: This seems to endorse Descartes' claim about the essential unity of the mind. I think Hume is in the background of LW's thought. Presumably the psychologist offered a 'composite' view. Prior discussion of belief leads into this remark. |
| 2222 | The doctrine of free will arises from a false sensation we have of freedom in many actions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in many of our actions. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.72) |
| 2223 | Liberty is merely acting according to the will, which anyone can do if they are not in chains [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By liberty we can only mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will, …which is universally allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.73) |
| 3655 | Hume makes determinism less rigid by removing the necessity from causation [Trusted on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's account of the causal relation makes determinism less rigid because there is no longer a logical necessity in the succession of events. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.II.75) by Jennifer Trusted - Free Will and Responsibility Ch.4 |
| 23475 | The form of a proposition must show why nonsense is unjudgeable [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The correct explanation of the form of the proposition 'A judges p' must show that it is impossible to judge a nonsense. (Russell's theory does not satisfy this condition). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.5422) | |
| A reaction: In Notebooks p.96 LW gives the example 'this table penholders the book'. I take it Russell wanted judgement to impose unified meaning on sentences, but LW shows that assembling meaning must precede judgement. LW is right. |
| 7084 | What can be said is what can be thought, so language shows the limits of thought [Wittgenstein, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In Wittgenstein's view, what can be said is the same as what can be thought; so that once one has grasped the nature of language, one has shown the limit beyond which language and thought become nonsense. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921]) by A.C. Grayling - Wittgenstein Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I just don't believe that what is thinkable is limited to what is expressible. A lot of philosophy is the struggle to find expression for thoughts which are just beyond the edge of current language. See Idea 6870. |
| 23482 | The 'form' of the picture is its possible combinations [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The form of depiction is the possibility that the things are combined with one another as are the elements of the picture. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.151) | |
| A reaction: This is why 'model' (or even 'simulation'?) is a better term than 'picture' for his proposal. Pictures are fixed, but models can be adjusted. |
| 8172 | To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: To understand a proposition means to know what is the case if it is true. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.024) | |
| A reaction: This established the Frege truth-conditions theory of meaning, which was expanded by Davidson, and then possible worlds semantics. You can't assess truth without knowing meaning. Dummett says the two go together. |
| 7086 | Good philosophy asserts science, and demonstrates the meaninglessness of metaphysics [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The correct method in philosophy would be to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science, and whenever someone wanted to say something metaphysical, to show that he had failed to give a meaning to signs in his propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.53) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the germ of logical positivism, picked up by the Vienna Circle, and passed on the Ayer and co. How, though, do you 'show' that a sign is meaningless? Very abstract ideas are too far away from experience to be analysed that way. |
| 23511 | Propositions use old expressions for a new sense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition must use old expressions to communicate a new sense. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: A nicely expressed affirmation of the principle of compositionality. It entails that the propositions can be either true or false, according to LW. |
| 23488 | Propositions are understood via their constituents [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition is understood by anyone who understands its constituents. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.024) | |
| A reaction: The 'constituents' had better include the grammatical relationships. Otherwise it's 'rearrange these words to make a well known saying'. That said, this strikes me as an important truth about language. We assemble sentence meanings. |
| 23486 | Pictures are possible situations in logical space [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A picture represents a possible situation in logical space. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 2.202) | |
| A reaction: This seems pretty close to the idea that propositions are sets of possible worlds (though that seems to add unnecessary extra baggage). If they just picture situations, why does he mention logical space? Within the limits of possible picturing? |
| 23497 | Solipsism is correct, but can only be shown, not said, by the limits of my personal language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: What the solipsist means is quite correct; only it cannot be said, but makes itself manifest. The world is my world: this is manifest in the fact that the limits of language (of that language which I alone understand) mean the limits of my world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 5.62) | |
| A reaction: I take it that LW later showed that the remark in brackets is absurd, using his Private Language argument. Commentators seem unclear about how seriously to take this claim. |
| 23489 | We translate by means of proposition constituents, not by whole propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When translating one language into another, we do not proceed by translating each proposition of the one into a proposition of the other, but merely by translating the constituents of propositions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 4.025) | |
| A reaction: This seems opposed to Quine's later holistic view of translating whole languages. Is he objecting to Frege's context principle? |
| 2220 | Only experience teaches us about our wills [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.52) | |
| A reaction: I can, of course, produce inductive generalisations about what my will can achieve, based on some limited experiences. "I know I can master that". Hobbes (and others) say we have no experience of a 'will'. Hume should be more sceptical! |
| 2224 | Praise and blame can only be given if an action proceeds from a person's character and disposition [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where actions proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor his infamy, if evil. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) |
| 2943 | Ethics cannot be put into words [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Ethics cannot be put into words. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.421) | |
| A reaction: Nonsense. There is lots of good writing about ethics. This is evasive mysticism. |
| 2225 | If you deny all necessity and causation, then our character is not responsible for our crime [Hume] |
| Full Idea: According to the principle which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a man is pure and unattainted after having committed the most horrid of crimes, since his actions are not derived from his character. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: The idea that responsibility involves actions which are 'derived from his character' strikes me as good. Once you give up free will, it is almost the only sensible way to go. |
| 2226 | Repentance gets rid of guilt, which shows that responsibility arose from the criminal principles in the mind [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Repentance and reformation can wipe off every crime, but that is because criminal acts prove criminal principles in the mind, so alteration of these principles removes that proof, and the acts cease to be criminal. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: A bit overstated, because a heinous crime will always taint our impression of someone's character. The person may cease to be criminal, but surely not the original acts? |
| 2942 | The sense of the world must lie outside the world [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The sense of the world must lie outside the world. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [1921], 6.41) | |
| A reaction: Since I don't believe that anything 'lies outside the world' I can't make sense of this. He implies that the Self lies outside of the world (to the point of solipsism), so I suppose that's it. |
| 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'). |
| 2233 | No government has ever suffered by being too tolerant of philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A state ought to tolerate every principle of philosophy, nor is there any instance that a government has suffered in its political interests by such indulgence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.114) |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 2245 | A priori it looks as if a cause could have absolutely any effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we just reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 4772 | If a singular effect is studied, its cause can only be inferred from the types of events involved [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Only when two species of objects are constantly conjoined can we infer one from the other; were an entirely singular effect presented, which could not be comprehended under a species, I do not see that we could form any conjecture concerning its cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: A key issue in causation. Note that Hume is willing to discuss causation in a freakishly unique happening, but only if he can spot a 'type' in the each of the events. I don't like it, but the man has a good point… |
| 8341 | Hume never even suggests that there is no such thing as causation [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: At no point (in Sect VII of 'Enquiries') does Hume even hint at the thesis that there is (or even might be) no such thing as causation. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion 21.3 | |
| A reaction: If, as some people think, Hume is a phenomenalist, then we wouldn't expect him to actually deny the existence of such things. The standard position (cf. Ayer on religion) is that such things are not even worth mentioning. |
| 8344 | At first Hume said qualities are the causal entities, but later he said events [Hume, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: In the Enquiries Hume clearly suggests that causes and effects are entities that can be named or described by singular terms; probably events, since one can follow another; but in the Treatise it seems to be the quality or circumstance which is the cause. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: A quality would have to have an associated power if it was going to trigger an effect. But then so would an event (unless inertia carried across?). Qualities are more distinct. Events can last for years. |
| 3662 | Hume says we can only know constant conjunctions, not that that's what causation IS [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's regularity theory of causation is only a theory about causation so far as we can know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects, not about causation as it is in the objects. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 4771 | In both of Hume's definitions, causation is extrinsic to the sequence of events [Psillos on Hume] |
| Full Idea: What needs to be stressed is that in both of Hume's definitions of cause, an individual sequence of events is deemed causal only because something extrinsic to the sequence occurs (be it conjunctions, or a mental link). | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §1.9 | |
| A reaction: Simple but important. Hume's basic claim is that there is no 'causation' in events, apart from the events themselves. Hence no necessity, on top of the apparent contingency. |
| 5194 | Hume's definition of cause as constantly joined thoughts can't cover undiscovered laws [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's second definition of cause (one object always 'conveys the thought' of another) implies that it is inconceivable that there should be causal laws which have never yet been thought of, and this is not so. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a good criticism of Hume, but also a bit of a problem for a strong empiricist like Ayer. There may also be causal laws which we cannot discover, but logical positivism will not allow me to speculate about that. |
| 2221 | A cause is either similar events following one another, or an experience always suggesting a second experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second, or, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) |
| 2234 | It is only when two species of thing are constantly conjoined that we can infer one from the other [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is only when two species of object are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: what is a species? |
| 2193 | No causes can be known a priori, but only from experience of constant conjunctions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Without exception, knowledge of cause and effect is not attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 8422 | Cause is where if the first object had not been, the second had not existed [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We may define a cause to be where .....if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.60) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's second definition, cited by Lewis as the ancestor of his counterfactual theory. It feels all wrong to me. 'If there had been no window, there would have been no window-breakage'? |
| 2218 | In observing causes we can never observe any necessary connections or binding qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able to discover any power or necessary connexion, any quality which binds the effect to the cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.50) |
| 15249 | Hume never shows how a strong habit could generate the concept of necessity [Harré/Madden on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's contemporary critics are correct. He never really shows how it is possible for a habit, however strong it may be, to generate the concept of necessity. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful objection which hadn't occurred to me. Presumably eighteenth century critics are referred to? I suppose if a necessity is what 'cannot be otherwise', a very deeply ingrained habit might seem that way - but in me, not in the world. |
| 8339 | Hume's regularity theory of causation is epistemological; he believed in some sort of natural necessity [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Regularity theory of causation is about causation as we know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects. As far as causation as it is in the objects is concerned, Hume firmly believed in some sort of natural necessity or causal power. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C | |
| A reaction: Strawson's controversial reinterpretation of Hume. We are confusing his epistemology with his ontology. Hume is simply being sceptical about our ability to bridge the gap to achieve understanding of natural necessity. A very different view of Hume. |
| 2244 | It can never be a logical contradiction to assert the non-existence of something thought to exist [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Whatever 'is' may 'not be'. No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction. The non-existence of any being, without exception, is as clear and distinct an idea as its existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2232 | You can't infer the cause to be any greater than its effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we infer a cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other. …a body of ten ounces raised in a scale proves the counterbalance exceeds ten ounces, but not that it exceeds a hundred. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.105) |
| 2227 | A miracle violates laws which have been established by continuous unchanging experience, so should be ignored [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imagined. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2228 | All experience must be against a supposed miracle, or it wouldn't be called 'a miracle' [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2229 | To establish a miracle the falseness of the evidence must be a greater miracle than the claimed miraculous event [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.91) |
| 2185 | The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.14) |