47 ideas
9331 | How do we determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? [Horwich] |
Full Idea: How are we to determine which of the sentences containing a term comprise its definition? | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §2) | |
A reaction: Nice question. If I say 'philosophy is the love of wisdom' and 'philosophy bores me', why should one be part of its definition and the other not? What if I stipulated that the second one is part of my definition, and the first one isn't? |
3942 | I do not believe in the existence of anything, if I see no reason to believe it [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: It is to me a sufficient reason not to believe the existence of anything, if I see no reason for believing it. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.205) | |
A reaction: This may just be a reasonable application of Ockham's Razor, but I fear that Berkeley painted himself into corner by demanding too many 'reasons' for everything. |
3952 | I know that nothing inconsistent can exist [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: I know that nothing inconsistent can exist. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.224) | |
A reaction: Fine, but the problem is to assess with confidence what is inconsistent. Human imagination seems to be the test for existence. But what else can we do? |
3959 | There is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: There is no other substance, in a strict sense, than spirit. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.257) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of idealism. Why is he so confident of making this assertion. Note the addition, though, of 'in a strict' sense. He is presenting an epistemological claim as if it was an ontological one. |
3946 | A thing is shown to be impossible if a contradiction is demonstrated within its definition [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: A thing is shown to be impossible when a repugnancy is demonstrated between the ideas comprehended in its definition. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.214) | |
A reaction: The problem is always that imagination is needed to see the 'repugnancy', and that is relative and limited. |
12432 | Explanation of necessity must rest on something necessary or something contingent [Hale] |
Full Idea: The dilemma is that to give the ultimate source of any necessity, we must either appeal to something which could not have been otherwise (i.e. is itself necessary), or advert to something which could have been otherwise (i.e. is itself merely contingent). | |
From: Bob Hale (The Source of Necessity [2002], p.301) | |
A reaction: [Hale is summarising Blackburn's view, and going on to disagree with it] Hale looks for a third way, but Blackburn seems to face us with quite a plausible dilemma. |
12434 | Why is this necessary, and what is necessity in general; why is this necessary truth true, and why necessary? [Hale] |
Full Idea: We must distinguish between explaining particular necessities and explaining necessity in general; and we ought to distinguish between explaining, in regard to any necessary truth, why it is true, and explaining why it is necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (The Source of Necessity [2002], p.308) | |
A reaction: Useful. The pluralist view I associate with Fine says we can explain types of necessity, but not necessity in general. If we seek truthmakers, there is a special case of what adds the necessity to the truth. |
12435 | The explanation of a necessity can be by a truth (which may only happen to be a necessary truth) [Hale] |
Full Idea: My claim is that there are non-transitive explanations of necessities, where what explains is indeed necessary, but what explains the necessity of the explanandum is not the explanation's necessity, but its truth simpliciter. | |
From: Bob Hale (The Source of Necessity [2002], p.311) | |
A reaction: The big idea is to avoid a regress of necessities. The actual truths he proposes are essentialist. An interesting proposal. It might depend on how one views essences (as giving identity, or causal power) |
12433 | If necessity rests on linguistic conventions, those are contingent, so there is no necessity [Hale] |
Full Idea: If the alleged necessity, e,g, 2+2=4, really does depend upon a convention governing the use of the words in which we state it, and the existence of that convention is merely a contingent matter, then it can't after all be necessary. | |
From: Bob Hale (The Source of Necessity [2002], p.302) | |
A reaction: [Hale is citing Blackburn for this claim] Hale suggests replies, by keeping truth and meaning separate, and involving laws of logic. Blackburn clearly has a good point. |
12436 | Concept-identities explain how we know necessities, not why they are necessary [Hale] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that identity-relations among concepts have more to do with explaining how we know that vixens are female foxes etc., than with explaining why it is necessary, and, more generally, with explaining why some necessities are knowable a priori. | |
From: Bob Hale (The Source of Necessity [2002], P.313) | |
A reaction: Hale rejects the conceptual and conventional accounts of necessity, in favour of the essentialist view. This strikes me as a good suggestion of Hale's, since I agree with him about the essentialism. |
3958 | Since our ideas vary when the real things are said to be unchanged, they cannot be true copies [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: As our ideas are perpetually varied, without any change in the supposed real things, it necessarily follows that they cannot all be true copies of them. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.239) | |
A reaction: This seems a good objection to any direct or naïve realist view. Colours get darker as the sun goes down, and objects become blurred as they recede into the distance. |
3943 | If existence is perceived directly, by which sense; if indirectly, how is it inferred from direct perception? [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Either you perceive the being of matter immediately, or mediately; if immediately, pray inform me by which of the senses you perceive it; if mediately, let me know by what reasonings it is inferred from those things which you perceive immediately. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.208) | |
A reaction: A problem for strong empiricists, and he is right that existence can't be directly perceived, but it seems a good explanation (for which some reason can be shown), and supports a more rationalist view. |
3931 | Sensible objects are just sets of sensible qualities [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Sensible things are nothing else but so many sensible qualities. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.154) | |
A reaction: As it stands this is phenomenalism, but Berkeley eventually votes for idealism. He should acknowledge possible sensations which aren't actually experienced. |
5192 | Berkeley did not deny material things; he merely said they must be defined through sensations [Berkeley, by Ayer] |
Full Idea: Berkeley did not (as we are commonly told) deny the reality of material things. ..What Berkeley discovered was that material things must be defined in terms of sense-contents. | |
From: report of George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to be a rather debatable attempt to claim that Berkeley was a phenomenalist (like Ayer), rather than an idealist. Try ideas 3942, 3944, 3945, 3957, 3959 in this database. |
5174 | Berkeley needed a phenomenalist account of the self, as well as of material things [Ayer on Berkeley] |
Full Idea: The considerations which make it necessary, as Berkeley saw, to give a phenomenalist account of material things, make it necessary also, as Berkeley did not see, to give a phenomenalist account of the self. | |
From: comment on George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.7 | |
A reaction: Phenomenalism involves 'possible' experiences as well as actual ones. That could add up to quite a rich and stable account of the self, as opposed to Hume's notorious introspection, which only saw an actual shifting 'bundle' of experience. |
1103 | 'To be is to be perceived' is a simple confusion of experience with its objects [Russell on Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Berkeley thinks 'to be is to be perceived', and only God provides continuity. He has simply confused the experience of perception with the thing being perceived. Ideas have content. | |
From: comment on George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy |
6403 | For Berkelely, reality is ideas and a community of minds, including God's [Berkeley, by Grayling] |
Full Idea: Berkeley's thesis is that reality ultimately consists of a community of minds and their ideas; one of the minds (God) is infinite, and causes most of the ideas. | |
From: report of George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
A reaction: I think Russell nicely pinpoints what is wrong with Berekely, which is that he confuses ideas with their contents. If I think about my garden, the garden is real (probably), which is the content, and they idea is just a way of thinking. |
3936 | Time is measured by the succession of ideas in our minds [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Time is measured by the succession of ideas in our minds. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.172) | |
A reaction: But we distinguish between subjective time (which flies when you are having fun), and objective time, judged from observation of clocks and nature. |
3930 | There is no such thing as 'material substance' [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: That there is no such thing as what philosophers call 'material substance', I am seriously persuaded. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.150) | |
A reaction: I'm sorry, but I can't do with this. It confuses epistemology with ontology. Ontology is a matter of judgement; epistemology is the evidence on which we base it. We know sensations; personally I judge that there are material substances. What about you? |
3939 | I conceive a tree in my mind, but I cannot prove that its existence can be conceived outside a mind [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: I may conceive in my own thoughts the idea of a tree, but that is all. And this is far from proving that I can conceive it existing out of the minds of all spirits. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.184) | |
A reaction: If Berkeley has based a world view on this point, then his mistake is to require a 'proof'. Aristotle explained why you can't prove everything (not to mention Gödel). |
3945 | There is nothing in nature which needs the concept of matter to explain it [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: I challenge you to show me that thing in nature which needs matter to explain or account for it. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.212) | |
A reaction: I disagree. Physics is a good theory for explaining why we have perceptions. Failing that there is not even a glimmer of an explanation of our experiences. |
3947 | Perceptions are ideas, and ideas exist in the mind, so objects only exist in the mind [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Wood, fire, water, flesh, iron, are things that I know, and only known because I perceive them by my senses; these are immediately perceived, and so are ideas; ideas cannot exist without the mind; their existence consists therefore in being perceived. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.220) | |
A reaction: This makes no distinction between an idea and its content. Berkeley fails to grasp the weird concept of intentionality. Trees aren't in my head, just because I think about them! |
9333 | A priori belief is not necessarily a priori justification, or a priori knowledge [Horwich] |
Full Idea: It is one thing to believe something a priori and another for this belief to be epistemically justified. The latter is required for a priori knowledge. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
A reaction: Personally I would agree with this, because I don't think anything should count as knowledge if it doesn't have supporting reasons, but fans of a priori knowledge presumably think that certain basic facts are just known. They are a priori justified. |
9342 | Understanding needs a priori commitment [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Understanding is itself based on a priori commitment. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
A reaction: This sounds plausible, but needs more justification than Horwich offers. This is the sort of New Rationalist idea I associate with Bonjour. The crucial feature of the New lot is, I take it, their fallibilism. All understanding is provisional. |
9332 | Meaning is generated by a priori commitment to truth, not the other way around [Horwich] |
Full Idea: Our a priori commitment to certain sentences is not really explained by our knowledge of a word's meaning. It is the other way around. We accept a priori that the sentences are true, and thereby provide it with meaning. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §8) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a lovely trump card, but how on earth do you decide that a sentence is true if you don't know what it means? Personally I would take it that we are committed to the truth of a proposition, before we have a sentence for it. |
9341 | Meanings and concepts cannot give a priori knowledge, because they may be unacceptable [Horwich] |
Full Idea: A priori knowledge of logic and mathematics cannot derive from meanings or concepts, because someone may possess such concepts, and yet disagree with us about them. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §12) | |
A reaction: A good argument. The thing to focus on is not whether such ideas are a priori, but whether they are knowledge. I think we should employ the word 'intuition' for a priori candidates for knowledge, and demand further justification for actual knowledge. |
9334 | If we stipulate the meaning of 'number' to make Hume's Principle true, we first need Hume's Principle [Horwich] |
Full Idea: If we stipulate the meaning of 'the number of x's' so that it makes Hume's Principle true, we must accept Hume's Principle. But a precondition for this stipulation is that Hume's Principle be accepted a priori. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §9) | |
A reaction: Yet another modern Quinean argument that all attempts at defining things are circular. I am beginning to think that the only a priori knowledge we have is of when a group of ideas is coherent. Calling it 'intuition' might be more accurate. |
9339 | A priori knowledge (e.g. classical logic) may derive from the innate structure of our minds [Horwich] |
Full Idea: One potential source of a priori knowledge is the innate structure of our minds. We might, for example, have an a priori commitment to classical logic. | |
From: Paul Horwich (Stipulation, Meaning and Apriority [2000], §11) | |
A reaction: Horwich points out that to be knowledge it must also say that we ought to believe it. I'm wondering whether if we divided the whole territory of the a priori up into intuitions and then coherent justifications, the whole problem would go away. |
3933 | Primary qualities (such as shape, solidity, mass) are held to really exist, unlike secondary qualities [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Sensible qualities are by philosophers divided into primary and secondary; the former are extension, figure, solidity, gravity, motion and rest, which exist really in bodies. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.169) | |
A reaction: A crucial distinction, which anti-realists such as Berkeley end up denying. I think it is a good distinction, and philosophers should fight to preserve it. |
3934 | A mite would see its own foot as large, though we would see it as tiny [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: A mite must be supposed to see his own foot as a body of some considerable dimension, though they appear to you scarcely discernible. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.170) | |
A reaction: Berkeley is confused. Hot is secondary, but temperature is primary. Bigness is secondary, size primay. Midgets and tall people don't disagree over the size of a table. |
3935 | The apparent size of an object varies with its distance away, so that can't be a property of the object [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: As we approach to or recede from an object, the visible extension varies, being at one distance ten or a hundred times greater than at another; doth it not follow that it is not really inherent in the object? | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.171) | |
A reaction: Berkeley is confused, because he is too literally empirical. Qualities are not self-evidently primary or secondary, but are judged so after comparisons (e.g. with testimony, or with the other senses). |
3937 | 'Solidity' is either not a sensible quality at all, or it is clearly relative to our senses [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: By 'solidity' either you do not mean any sensible quality, and so it is beside our enquiry; or if you do, it must be hardness or resistance, which are plainly relative to our senses. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.173) | |
A reaction: Berkeley fails to recognise that a quality can have primary and secondary aspects (hot/high temperature). He is right that primary qualities are not directly perceived. They are judgements. |
3940 | Distance is not directly perceived by sight [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Distance is not properly and immediately perceived by sight. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.186) | |
A reaction: Interestingly, if secondary qualities are not strictly perceptions of the object, and primary qualities are not directly perceived, then we don't seem to perceive anything at all. Perhaps we should drop the concept of 'perception'? |
3957 | Immediate objects of perception, which some treat as appearances, I treat as the real things themselves [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Those immediate objects of perception, which, according to you, are only appearances of things, I take to be the real things themselves. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.237) | |
A reaction: If that is a judgement, which it seems to be, it is a strange one. Realists offer a much better explanation of perceptions. |
3953 | Real things and imaginary or dreamed things differ because the latter are much fainter [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: The difference between real things, and chimeras formed by the imagination, or the visions of a dream, is that the latter are faint and indistinct. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.225) | |
A reaction: In Hume this becomes 'impressions' and 'ideas'. It does raise the question of WHY some ideas are not as faint as others. |
3938 | Geometry is originally perceived by senses, and so is not purely intellectual [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Figures and extension, being originally perceived by sense, do not belong to pure intellect. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.176) | |
A reaction: Is the square root of 169 less 'pure' in my mind if I learn it from laying out bricks instead of by thinking about numbers? Confusion of how you learn with what you learn? |
3944 | It is possible that we could perceive everything as we do now, but nothing actually existed. [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: We might perceive all things just as we do now, though there was no matter in the world. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.209) | |
A reaction: An old Greek argument. Now we have an explanation of experience, but we wouldn't if nothing existed. Which doesn't prove that anything exists. Is some explanation always preferable to none? Cf. religion. |
3932 | A hot hand and a cold hand will have different experiences in the same tepid water [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Suppose now one of your hands hot, and the other cold, and that they are both at once put into the same vessel of water, in an intermediate state; will not the water seem cold to one hand, and warm to the other? | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], I p.158) | |
A reaction: A nice clear example of how some relativism must be acknowledged. It feels hot, but what is its temperature in degrees C? |
3948 | Experience tells me that other minds exist independently from my own [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: It is plain that other minds have an existence exterior to my mind, since I find them by experience to be independent of it. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.220) | |
A reaction: This is a surprising claim from Berkeley. If trees only exist through their experience in my mind, why don't other minds exist in the same way? |
3941 | How can that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: How can that which is unthinking be a cause of thought? | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.203) | |
A reaction: Presumably, though, he thinks that thought can cause 'that which is unthinking' to move'. He likes one half of the interaction problem (which supports dualism), but avoids the other half. |
5374 | Berkeley probably used 'idea' to mean both the act of apprehension and the thing apprehended [Russell on Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Berkeley seems to have confused the colour of the thing apprehended with the act of apprehension; probably either of these would have been called an 'idea' be Berkeley. | |
From: comment on George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy | |
A reaction: If we are saying that Berkeley's error was entirely verbal, there is a chicken-and-egg problem. He was an idealist, so he wouldn't have thought that there were two separate concepts behind the word 'idea'. Russell merely asserts that there are. |
3954 | Immorality is not in the action, but in the deviation of the will from moral law [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Sin or moral turpitude doth not consist in the outward physical action or motion, but in the internal deviation of the will from the laws of reason and religion. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.227) | |
A reaction: A Kantian view (that the only good thing is a good will). It is a very empiricist (and anti-Greek) view to deny that actions have any intrinsic value. |
3950 | There must be a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: I immediately and necessarily conclude the being of a God, because all sensible things must be perceived by him. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.198) | |
A reaction: Daft. This contradicts Berkeley's whole empiricist position, that existence depends on known experience. Who knows whether God is thinking about trees? |
3951 | There must be a God, because I and my ideas are not independent [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: From the dependency I find in myself and my ideas, I do by an act of reason necessarily infer the existence of a God. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.222) | |
A reaction: No. Hume answered this, by showing how big abstract ideas are built up from experience. This is a future bishop's wish-fulfilment. |
3949 | It has been proved that creation is the workmanship of God, from its beauty and usefulness [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Divines and philosophers have proved beyond all controversy, from the beauty and usefulness of the several parts of creation, that it was the workmanship of God. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], II p.198) | |
A reaction: Not convincing. Beauty is probably a sublimation of sexual desire (or an echo of the human mind in the external world, in music), and utility is relative to homo sapiens, I presume. |
3956 | People are responsible because they have limited power, though this ultimately derives from God [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: Thinking rational beings, in the production of motions, have the use of limited powers, ultimately derived from God, but immediately under the direction of their own wills, which is sufficient to entitle them to all the guilt of their own actions. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.228) | |
A reaction: An episcopal evasion. A classic attempt to have cake and eat it. Either God is in charge or he isn't. |
3955 | If sin is not just physical, we don't consider God the origin of sin because he causes physical events [Berkeley] |
Full Idea: If sin doth not consist of purely physical actions, the making God a cause of all such actions, is not making him the author of sin. | |
From: George Berkeley (Three Dialogues of Hylas and Philonous [1713], III p.227) | |
A reaction: An equivocation. If responsibility resides in consciousness, God is presumably conscious, and we can judge the events he causes. |