27 ideas
| 21844 | The history of philosophy is an agent of power: how can you think if you haven't read the great names? [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: The history of philosophy has always been the agent of power in philosophy, and even in thought. It has played the oppressor's role: how can you think without having read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Heidegger. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: I find it hard to relate to this French 1960s obsession with everybody being oppressed in every conceivable way, so that 'liberation' is the only value that matters. If you ask why liberty is needed, you seem to have missed the point. |
| 21849 | Thought should be thrown like a stone from a war-machine [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Thought should be thrown like a stone by a war-machine. …Isn't this what Nietzsche does with an aphorism? | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if philosophy should consist of nothing but aphorisms. |
| 21845 | Philosophy aims to become the official language, supporting orthodoxy and the state [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is shot through with the project of becoming the official language of a Pure State. The exercise of thought thus conforms to the goals of the real State, to the dominant meanings and to the requirements of the established order. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Nietzsche's 'Schopenhauer as Educator' as the source of this] Is Karl Marx included in this generalisation, or Diogenes of Sinope? Is conservative philosophy thereby invalidated? |
| 21839 | When I meet objections I just move on; they never contribute anything [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Not reflection, and objections are even worse. Every time someone puts an objection to me, I want to say: 'OK, OK, let's get on to something else'. Objections have never contributed anything. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: I know it is heresy in analytic philosophy, but I love this! In analytic seminars you can barely complete your first sentence before someone interrupts. It's like road range - the philosophical mind state is always poised to attack, attack. |
| 21841 | We must create new words, and treat them as normal, and as if designating real things. [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Let us create extraordinary words, on condition that they be put to the most ordinary use and that the entity they designate be made to exist in the same way as the most common object. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the attitude of someone creating a computer game. A language game! The idea is to create concepts with which to 'palpitate' our conceptual scheme, in order to reveal it, and thus put it within our power. |
| 21842 | Don't assess ideas for truth or justice; look for another idea, and establish a relationship with it [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: You should not try to find whether an idea is just or correct. You should look for a completely different idea, elsewhere, in another area, so that something passes between the two which is neither in one nor the other. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: Neither relativism nor dialectic. Sounds like just having fun with ideas, but a commentator tells me it is a strategy for liberating our thought, following an agenda created by Nietzsche. |
| 21850 | Dualisms can be undone from within, by tracing connections, and drawing them to a new path [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: It is always possible to undo dualisms from the inside, by tracing the line of flight which passes between the two terms or the two sets …and which draws both into a non-parallel evolution. At least this does not belong to the dialectic. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: Deleuze disliked Hegel's version of the dialectic. Not clear what he means here, but he is evidently groping for an alternative account of the reasoning process, which is interesting. Deleuze hates rigid dualisms. |
| 8472 | Sentential logic is consistent (no contradictions) and complete (entirely provable) [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: Sentential logic has been proved consistent and complete; its consistency means that no contradictions can be derived, and its completeness assures us that every one of the logical truths can be proved. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The situation for quantificational logic is not quite so clear (Orenstein p.98). I do not presume that being consistent and complete makes it necessarily better as a tool in the real world. |
| 8476 | Axiomatization simply picks from among the true sentences a few to play a special role [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: In axiomatizing, we are merely sorting out among the truths of a science those which will play a special role, namely, serve as axioms from which we derive the others. The sentences are already true in a non-conventional or ordinary sense. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: If you were starting from scratch, as Euclidean geometers may have felt they were doing, you might want to decide which are the simplest truths. Axiomatizing an established system is a more advanced activity. |
| 8480 | S4: 'poss that poss that p' implies 'poss that p'; S5: 'poss that nec that p' implies 'nec that p' [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The five systems of propositional modal logic contain successively stronger conceptions of necessity. In S4 'it is poss that it is poss that p' implies 'it is poss that p'. In S5, 'it is poss that it is nec that p' implies 'it is nec that p'. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: C.I. Lewis originated this stuff. Any serious student of modality is probably going to have to pick a system. E.g. Nathan Salmon says that the correct modal logic is even weaker than S4. |
| 8474 | Unlike elementary logic, set theory is not complete [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The incompleteness of set theory contrasts sharply with the completeness of elementary logic. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Quine's reason for abandoning the Frege-Russell logicist programme (quite apart from the problems raised by Gödel. |
| 8465 | Mereology has been exploited by some nominalists to achieve the effects of set theory [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The theory of mereology has had a history of being exploited by nominalists to achieve some of the effects of set theory. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Some writers refer to mereology as a 'theory', and others as an area of study. This appears to be an interesting line of investigation. Orenstein says Quine and Goodman showed its limitations. |
| 8452 | Traditionally, universal sentences had existential import, but were later treated as conditional claims [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: In traditional logic from Aristotle to Kant, universal sentences have existential import, but Brentano and Boole construed them as universal conditionals (such as 'for anything, if it is a man, then it is mortal'). | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I am sympathetic to the idea that even the 'existential' quantifier should be treated as conditional, or fictional. Modern Christians may well routinely quantify over angels, without actually being committed to them. |
| 8475 | The substitution view of quantification says a sentence is true when there is a substitution instance [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The substitution view of quantification explains 'there-is-an-x-such-that x is a man' as true when it has a true substitution instance, as in the case of 'Socrates is a man', so the quantifier can be read as 'it is sometimes true that'. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The word 'true' crops up twice here. The alternative (existential-referential) view cites objects, so the substitution view is a more linguistic approach. |
| 21838 | Before we seek solutions, it is important to invent problems [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: The art of constructing a problem is very important: you invent a problem, a problem-position, before finding a solution. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that Deleuze prefers problems to solutions, so the activity of exploring the problem is all that really matters. Sceptics accuse philosophers of inventing pseudo-problems. We must first know why 'problematising' is good. |
| 8454 | The whole numbers are 'natural'; 'rational' numbers include fractions; the 'reals' include root-2 etc. [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The 'natural' numbers are the whole numbers 1, 2, 3 and so on. The 'rational' numbers consist of the natural numbers plus the fractions. The 'real' numbers include the others, plus numbers such a pi and root-2, which cannot be expressed as fractions. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The 'irrational' numbers involved entities such as root-minus-1. Philosophical discussions in ontology tend to focus on the existence of the real numbers. |
| 8473 | The logicists held that is-a-member-of is a logical constant, making set theory part of logic [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The question to be posed is whether is-a-member-of should be considered a logical constant, that is, does logic include set theory. Frege, Russell and Whitehead held that it did. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This is obviously the key element in the logicist programme. The objection seems to be that while first-order logic is consistent and complete, set theory is not at all like that, and so is part of a different world. |
| 21847 | Before Being there is politics [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Before Being there is politics. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: [He says he is quoting Felix Guattari] I can only think that this is a very Marxist view - that politics permeates and dictates everything. This seems to tell me that I am forever controlled by something so deep and vast that I can never understand it. |
| 8458 | Just individuals in Nominalism; add sets for Extensionalism; add properties, concepts etc for Intensionalism [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: Modest ontologies are Nominalism (Goodman), admitting only concrete individuals; and Extensionalism (Quine/Davidson) which admits individuals and sets; but Intensionalists (Frege/Carnap/Church/Marcus/Kripke) may have propositions, properties, concepts. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I don't like sets, because of Idea 7035. Even the ontology of individuals could collapse dramatically (see the ideas of Merricks, e.g. 6124). The intensional items may be real enough, but needn't have a place at the ontological high table. |
| 8457 | The Principle of Conservatism says we should violate the minimum number of background beliefs [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: The principle of conservatism in choosing between theories is a maxim of minimal mutilation, stating that of competing theories, all other things being equal, choose the one that violates the fewest background beliefs held. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: In this sense, all rational people should be conservatives. The idea is a modern variant of Hume's objection to miracles (Idea 2227). A Kuhnian 'paradigm shift' is the dramatic moment when this principle no longer seems appropriate. |
| 21840 | A meeting of man and animal can be deterritorialization (like a wasp with an orchid) [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: The wasp becomes part of the orchid's reproductive apparatus at the same time as the orchid becomes the sexual organ of the wasp. …There are becomings where a man and an animal only meet on the trajectory of a common but asymmetrical deterritorialization. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: [second bit compressed] The point here is to illustrate 'deterritorialization', a term which Deleuze got from Guattari. It seems to be where the margins of your being become unclear. Recall the externalist, anti-individualist view of mind. |
| 21843 | People consist of many undetermined lines, some rigid, some supple, some 'lines of flight' [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: Things, people, are made up of varied lines, and they do not necessarily know which line they are on or where they should make the line which they are tracing pass; there is a whole geography in people, with rigid lines, supple lines, lines of flight etc. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], I) | |
| A reaction: An example of Deleuze creating a novel concept, in order to generate a liberating way of seeing our lives. His big focus is on 'lines of flight' (which, I think, are less restrained by local culture than the others). |
| 8477 | People presume meanings exist because they confuse meaning and reference [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: A good part of the confidence people have that there are meanings rests on the confusion of meaning and reference. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: An important point. Everyone assumes that sentences link to the world, but Frege shows that that is not part of meaning. Words like prepositions and conjunctions ('to', 'and') don't have 'a meaning' apart from their function and use. |
| 8471 | Three ways for 'Socrates is human' to be true are nominalist, platonist, or Montague's way [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: 'Socrates is human' is true if 1) subject referent is identical with a predicate referent (Nominalism), 2) subject reference member of the predicate set, or the subject has that property (Platonism), 3) predicate set a member of the subject set (Montague) | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Orenstein offers these as alternatives to Quine's 'inscrutability of reference' thesis, which makes the sense unanalysable. |
| 8484 | If two people believe the same proposition, this implies the existence of propositions [Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: If we can say 'there exists a p such that John believes p and Barbara believes p', logical forms such as this are cited as evidence for our ontological commitment to propositions. | |
| From: Alex Orenstein (W.V. Quine [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Opponents of propositions (such as Quine) will, of course, attempt to revise the logical form to eliminate the quantification over propositions. See Orenstein's outline on p.171. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 21848 | Some lines (of flight) are becomings which escape the system [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There are lines which do not amount to the path of a point, which break free from structure - lines of flight, becomings, without future or past, without memory, which resist the binary machine. …The rhizome is all this. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (A Conversation: what is it? What is it for? [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: The binary machine enforces simplistic either/or choices. I assume the 'lines' are to replace the Self, with something much more indeterminate, active and changing. |