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All the ideas for 'On the Question of Absolute Undecidability', 'Miscellaneous Observations' and 'Transcendence of the Ego'

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35 ideas

1. Philosophy / H. Continental Philosophy / 2. Phenomenology
Phenomenology assumes that all consciousness is of something [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The essential principle of phenomenology is that 'all consciousness is consciousness of something'.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: This idea is found well before Husserl, in Schopenhauer (Idea 4166). It seems to contradict a thought such as Locke's (Idea 1202), that self-awareness is a separate and distinct criterion for personal identity. Sartre gives a nice account.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 3. Value of Truth
If man sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself, by acting against his own convictions [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Man has his being in truth - if he sacrifices truth he sacrifices himself. Whoever betrays truth betrays himself. It is not a question of lying - but of acting against one's conviction.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 038)
     A reaction: Does he condone lying here, as long as you don't believe the lie? We would call it loss of integrity.
3. Truth / E. Pragmatic Truth / 1. Pragmatic Truth
Delusion and truth differ in their life functions [Novalis]
     Full Idea: The distinction between delusion and truth lies in the difference in their life functions.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 008)
     A reaction: Pure pragmatism, it seems. We might expect doubts about objective truth from a leading light of the Romantic movement.
4. Formal Logic / F. Set Theory ST / 1. Set Theory
Mathematical set theory has many plausible stopping points, such as finitism, and predicativism [Koellner]
     Full Idea: There are many coherent stopping points in the hierarchy of increasingly strong mathematical systems, starting with strict finitism, and moving up through predicativism to the higher reaches of set theory.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], Intro)
'Reflection principles' say the whole truth about sets can't be captured [Koellner]
     Full Idea: Roughly speaking, 'reflection principles' assert that anything true in V [the set hierarchy] falls short of characterising V in that it is true within some earlier level.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 2.1)
5. Theory of Logic / K. Features of Logics / 5. Incompleteness
We have no argument to show a statement is absolutely undecidable [Koellner]
     Full Idea: There is at present no solid argument to the effect that a given statement is absolutely undecidable.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 5.3)
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 5. The Infinite / i. Cardinal infinity
There are at least eleven types of large cardinal, of increasing logical strength [Koellner]
     Full Idea: Some of the standard large cardinals (in order of increasing (logical) strength) are: inaccessible, Mahlo, weakly compact, indescribable, Erdös, measurable, strong, Wodin, supercompact, huge etc. (...and ineffable).
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.4)
     A reaction: [I don't understand how cardinals can have 'logical strength', but I pass it on anyway]
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 4. Axioms for Number / d. Peano arithmetic
PA is consistent as far as we can accept, and we expand axioms to overcome limitations [Koellner]
     Full Idea: To the extent that we are justified in accepting Peano Arithmetic we are justified in accepting its consistency, and so we know how to expand the axiom system so as to overcome the limitation [of Gödel's Second Theorem].
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.1)
     A reaction: Each expansion brings a limitation, but then you can expand again.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 4. Axioms for Number / g. Incompleteness of Arithmetic
Arithmetical undecidability is always settled at the next stage up [Koellner]
     Full Idea: The arithmetical instances of undecidability that arise at one stage of the hierarchy are settled at the next.
     From: Peter Koellner (On the Question of Absolute Undecidability [2006], 1.4)
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 3. Individual Essences
Refinement of senses increasingly distinguishes individuals [Novalis]
     Full Idea: The more our senses are refined, the more capable they become of distinguishing between individuals. The highest sense would be the highest receptivity to particularity in human nature.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 072)
     A reaction: I adore this idea!! It goes into the collection of support I am building for individual essences, against the absurd idea of kinds as essences (when they are actually categorisations). It also accompanies particularism in ethics.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 5. Cogito Critique
The Cogito depends on a second-order experience, of being conscious of consciousness [Sartre]
     Full Idea: We must remember that all authors who have described the Cogito have presented it as a reflective operation, i.e. as second-order. This Cogito is performed by a consciousness directed towards consciousness, which takes consciousness as its object.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: Sartre is raising the nice question of whether the Cogito still works for first-order consciousness, which attends totally to external objects. He claims that it doesn't. Contrast Russell, who says (Idea 5380) that it only works when it is first-order!
The consciousness that says 'I think' is not the consciousness that thinks [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The consciousness that says 'I think' is precisely not the consciousness that thinks.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: All parties seem to be agreed that if we are going to introspect in search of our own ego, we must distinguish between the mental act of instrospection and the mental act of applying the mind to the world. Each gives a different result.
Is the Cogito reporting an immediate experience of doubting, or the whole enterprise of doubting? [Sartre]
     Full Idea: When Descartes says 'I doubt therefore I am', is he talking about the spontaneous doubt that reflective consciousness grasps in its instantaneous character, or is he talking of the enterprise of doubting? This ambiguity can lead to serious errors.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (B))
     A reaction: Interesting. The obvious response is that it is about the immediate experience, but that leads to the problem of an instantaneous ego, which can't be justified over time. The 'enterprise' gives an enduring ego, but it is a more intellectual concept.
12. Knowledge Sources / C. Rationalism / 1. Rationalism
Experiences tests reason, and reason tests experience [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Experience is the test of the rational - and vice versa.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 010)
     A reaction: A wonderful remark. Surely we can't ignore our need to test claims of pure logic by filling in the variables with concrete instances, to assess validity? And philosophy without examples is doomed to be abstract waffle. Coherence is the combined aim.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 4. Other Minds / b. Scepticism of other minds
A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself [Sartre]
     Full Idea: A consciousness can conceive of no other consciousness than itself.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Conc (1))
     A reaction: This is why we don't know what it is like to be a bat. This seems right, though it looks like a contingent truth, and yet Sartre seems to offer it as a necessary truth. Can God conceive of my consciousness?
We can never, even in principle, grasp other minds, because the Ego is self-conceiving [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The Ego can be conceived only through itself and this is why we cannot grasp the consciousness of another (for this reason alone, and not because bodies separate us).
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: Interesting. This makes telepathy a logical impossibility, and the body the only possible route for the communication between two minds. But, is Sartre is right, how do bodily events penetrate the inturned world of the Ego?
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
The eternal truth of 2+2=4 is what gives unity to the mind which regularly thinks it [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The unity of the thousand active consciousnesses through which I have added two and two to make four, is the transcendent object '2+2=4'. Without the permanence of this eternal truth, it would be impossible to conceive of a real unity of mind.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
     A reaction: This is the germ of externalism, here presented as a Platonic attitude to arithmetic, rather than being about water or gold. He claims that internalist attitudes to unity are fictions. I am inclined to think he is wrong, and that unity is biological.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 1. Consciousness / f. Higher-order thought
Consciousness exists as consciousness of itself [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The existence of consciousness is an absolute, because consciousness is consciousness of itself; the type of existence that consciousness has is that it is consciousness of itself.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
     A reaction: I find this unconvincing. Anyone analysis the nature of the mind should think as much about animal minds as human minds. It seems obvious to me that there is likely to be an animal consciousness which is entirely of environment and its body.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
Since we are a consciousness, Sartre entirely rejected the unconscious mind [Sartre, by Daigle]
     Full Idea: Sartre refused, denied and fought against the unconscious. Since we are consciousness, there cannot be such a thing as unconsciousness.
     From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1
     A reaction: The modern view is increasingly opposed to this, as neuroscience and psychology uncover hidden motives etc. Sartre's view is still legitimate, though. An unconscious motive is not more my motive than a law of the land is part of me?
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / a. Nature of intentionality
Intentionality defines, transcends and unites consciousness [Sartre]
     Full Idea: Consciousness is defined by intentionality. Through intentionality it transcends itself, it unifies itself by going outside itself.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
     A reaction: The standard view for a hundred years was Brentano's idea that intentionality defines the mind. Qualia are the modern rival. If I had to choose I think I would go for intentionality, but they may be naturally and metaphysically inseparable.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self
If you think of '2+2=4' as the content of thought, the self must be united transcendentally [Sartre]
     Full Idea: It is possible that those who think that '2 and 2 make 4' is the content of my representations may be forced to resort to a transcendental and subjective principle of unification - in other words, the I.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
     A reaction: He suggests that thoughts themselves unite the mind, externally. If you think of thoughts as internal, you must resort to a transcendental fiction to unify the mind. Personally I think the mind is inherently unified by brain structures.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 6. Self as Higher Awareness
The Ego is not formally or materially part of consciousness, but is outside in the world [Sartre]
     Full Idea: I should like to show here that the Ego is neither formally nor materially in consciousness; it is outside, in the world; it is a being in the world, like the Ego of another.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], Intro)
     A reaction: This idea is the germ of what has got modern externalists about the mind (see quotations from Mark Rowlands) interested in Sartre. Personally I think he is wrong, and the Ego is a part of consciousness. It doesn't, though, have sharp boundaries.
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 2. Knowing the Self
How could two I's, the reflective and the reflected, communicate with each other? [Sartre]
     Full Idea: If the 'I' is part of consciousness, there will be two I's: the reflective and the reflected. ...but it is unacceptable for any communication to be established between the reflective I and the reflected I, if they are real elements of consciousness.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: If we accept that there are two orders of consciousness (reflective, about itself, and reflected, about the world) it seems reasonable to say that there cannot be an 'I' in both of them. A nice, and intriguing, argument.
Knowing yourself requires an exterior viewpoint, which is necessarily false [Sartre]
     Full Idea: 'To know oneself well' is inevitably to look at oneself from the point of view of someone else, in other words from a point of view that is necessarily false.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: (This is because the Ego cannot be known from the outside). I agree with Russell that the self is most evident when we are engaged with the world, which implies that you can only acquire self-knowledge by studying those engagements.
My ego is more intimate to me, but not more certain than other egos [Sartre]
     Full Idea: My I, in efffect, is no more certain for consciousness than the I of other men. It is only more intimate.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], p.104), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.1
     A reaction: Not sure how to assess this. Other people seem just as real as I do, when I encounter them, as friend or as foe. And in dealing with them we act as if dealing with their Self (rather than their legs, say). So this idea seems a good one.
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The Ego never appears except when we are not looking for it.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: He denies that we know the Ego when engaged with the world, and agrees with Hume that the ego can't be directly known. All that is left is this, which seems to be introspection 'out of the corner of your eye'. Not persuasive.
When we are unreflective (as when chasing a tram) there is no 'I' [Sartre]
     Full Idea: There is no 'I' on the unreflected level. When I run after a tram, ...there is no I. There is a consciousness of the tram-needing-to-be-caught, and a non-positional consciousness of consciousness.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: Russell (Idea 5380) says exactly the opposite. My sympathies are more with Russell. I don't just focus on the tram, I focus on the relation between myself and the tram, and that includes my need to catch it, as well as my body.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self
It is theoretically possible that the Ego consists entirely of false memories [Sartre]
     Full Idea: One cannot rule out the metaphysical hypothesis that my Ego is not composed of elements that have existed in reality (ten years or one second ago), but is merely constituted by false memories.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: (He mentions the evil demon as a source). The problem that false memories (such as George IV 'remembering' he was at Waterloo, when he wasn't) is well known. But this raises the possibility of all memories being false, yet constituting the person.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 4. Split Consciousness
If the 'I' is transcendental, it unnecessarily splits consciousness in two [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The superfluous transcendental 'I' is actually a hindrance. If it existed, it would violently separate consciousness from itself, it would divide it, slicing through consciousness like an opaque blade.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (A))
     A reaction: I see no a priori reason why consciousness should not be split in two, if that's how it is. Personally I am happy with a fairly traditional Cartesian view, that the self is the will and understanding, and the rest of consciousness is its working material.
16. Persons / E. Rejecting the Self / 4. Denial of the Self
Maybe it is the act of reflection that brings 'me' into existence [Sartre]
     Full Idea: Might it not be precisely the reflective act that brings the me into being in reflected consciousness?
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], I (B))
     A reaction: He admits some sort of self a second-order entity, but this is 'transcendental', and essentially an illusion. This elimination of the first-order self clears the way for the existential view, that we can create whatever self we want. I disagree.
The Ego only appears to reflection, so it is cut off from the World [Sartre]
     Full Idea: The Ego is an object that appears only to reflection, and is thereby radically cut off from the World.
     From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Transcendence of the Ego [1937], II (D))
     A reaction: This is the culmination of Sartre's attack (in 1937) on the Ego, paving the way for the freedom of existentialism. Personally I don't accept this picture of the Ego as a second-order fiction. My Ego is part of my relationship with the World.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind
The seat of the soul is where our inner and outer worlds interpenetrate [Novalis]
     Full Idea: The seat of the soul is the point where the inner and the outer worlds touch. Wherever they penetrate each other - it is there at every point of penetration.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 020)
     A reaction: I surmise that Spinoza's dual-aspect monism is behind this interesting remark. See the related idea from Schopenhauer.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection
Everything is a chaotic unity, then we abstract, then we reunify the world into a free alliance [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Before abstraction everything is one - but one as chaos is - after abstraction everything is again unified - but in a free alliance of independent, self-determined beings. A crowd has become a society - a chaos is transformed into a manifold world.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 094)
     A reaction: Personally I take (unfashionably) psychological abstraction to one of the key foundations of human thought, so I love this idea, which gives a huge picture of how the abstracting mind relates to reality.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty
Only self-illuminated perfect individuals are beautiful [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Everything beautiful is a self-illuminated, perfect individual.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 101)
     A reaction: It is a commonplace to describe something beautiful as being 'perfect'. Unfinished masterpieces are interesting exceptions. Are only 'individuals' beautiful? Is unity a necessary condition of beauty? Bad art fails to be self-illuminated.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / a. Religious Belief
Religion needs an intermediary, because none of us can connect directly to a godhead [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Nothing is more indispensable for true religious feeling than an intermediary - which connects us to the godhead. The human being is absolutely incapable of sustaining an immediate relation with this.
     From: Novalis (Miscellaneous Observations [1798], 073)
     A reaction: I take this to be a defence of priests and organised religion, and an implied attack on protestants who give centrality to private prayer and conscience.