28 ideas
| 7578 | I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: I conceived it my task to create difficulties everywhere. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Author') | |
| A reaction: Nice. It is like Socrates's image of himself as the 'gadfly' of Athens. The interesting question is always to see what the rest of society makes of having someone in their midst who sees it as their social role to 'create difficulties'. |
| 22047 | Wherever there is painless contradiction there is also comedy [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Wherever there is contradiction, the comical is also present. ...The tragic is the suffering contradiction, the comical is the painless contradiction. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.459), quoted by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 13 | |
| A reaction: He is not saying that this is the only source of comedy. I once heard an adult say that there is one thing that is always funny, and that is a fart. |
| 22092 | Kierkegaard's truth draws on authenticity, fidelity and honesty [Kierkegaard, by Carlisle] |
| Full Idea: Kierkegaard offers a different interpretation of truth, which draws on the notions of authenticity, fidelity and honesty. | |
| From: report of Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 4 | |
| A reaction: This notion of truth, meaning 'the real thing' (as in 'she was a true scholar'), seems to begin with Hegel. I suggest we use the word 'genuine' for that, and save 'truth' for its traditional role. It is disastrous to blur the simple concept of truth. |
| 15999 | Pure truth is for infinite beings only; I prefer endless striving for truth [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: If God held all truth enclosed in his right hand, and in his left hand the ever-striving drive for truth, even if erring forever, and he were to say Choose! I would humbly fall at his left hand and say Father, give! Pure truth is for infinite beings only. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.106) | |
| A reaction: A sobering realistic thought of our own limitations; Kierkegaard allows that there is no limit to how far we can strive for truth. Just that truth is comprehended by infinite beings (if any), not by mere mortals. [SY] |
| 20313 | The highest truth we can get is uncertainty held fast by an inward passion [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: An objective uncertainty held fast in an appropriation-process of the most passionate inwardness is the truth, the highest truth available for an existing individual. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] Offered as a definition of truth, knowing how strange and paradoxical it sounds. If we view all life as subjectivity, then there can of course be nothing more to truth than passionate conviction. Personally I think thought can be objective. |
| 17884 | 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) |
| 17893 | '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) |
| 17894 | 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) |
| 17890 | 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] |
| 17887 | 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. |
| 17891 | 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) |
| 21339 | We want the ontology of relations, not just a formal way of specifying them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A satisfying account of relations must be ontologically serious. This means refusing to rest content with abstract specifications of relations as sets of ordered n-tuples. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A set of ordered entities would give the extension of a relation, which wouldn't, among other things, explain co-extensive relations (if all the people to my left were also taller than me). Heil's is a general cry from the heart about formal philosophy. |
| 21349 | Two people are indirectly related by height; the direct relation is internal, between properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If Simmias is taller than Socrates, they are indirectly related; they are related via their possession of properties that are themselves directly - and internally - related. Hence relational truths are made true by non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a strategy for reducing external relations to internal relations, which are intrinsic to objects, which thus reduces the ontology. Heil is not endorsing it, but cites Kit Fine 2000. The germ of this idea is in Plato. |
| 21340 | Maybe all the other features of the world can be reduced to relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A striking idea is that relations are ontologically primary: monadic, non-relational features of the world are constituted by relations. A view of this kind is defended by Peirce, and contemporary 'structural realists' like Ladyman. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Relational') | |
| A reaction: I can't make sense of this proposal, which seems to offer relations with no relata. What is a relation? What is it made of? How do you individuate two instances of a relations, without reference to the relata? |
| 21348 | In the case of 5 and 6, their relational truthmaker is just the numbers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We might say that the truthmakers for 'six is greater than five' are six and five themselves. On this view, truthmakers for one class of relational truths are non-relational features of the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Founding') | |
| A reaction: That seems to be a good way of expressing the existence of an internal relation. |
| 21351 | Truthmaking is a clear example of an internal relation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaking is a paradigmatic internal relation: if you have a truthbearer, a representation, and you have the world as the truthbearer represents it as being, you have truthmaking, you have the truthbearer's being true. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: It is nice to have an example of an internal relation other than numbers, and closer to the concrete world. Is the relation between the world and facts about the world the same thing, or another example? |
| 21344 | If R internally relates a and b, and you have a and b, you thereby have R [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A simple way to think about internal relations is: if R internally relates a and b, then, if you have a and b, you thereby have R. If you have six and you have five, you thereby have six's being greater than five. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'External') | |
| A reaction: This seems to work a lot better for abstracta than for physical objects, where I am struggling to think of a parallel example. Parenthood? Temporal relations between things? Acorn and oak? |
| 21350 | If properties are powers, then causal relations are internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: On the conception that properties are powers, it is no longer obvious that causal relations are external relations. Given the powers - all the powers in play - you have the manifestations. | |
| From: John Heil (Relations [2009], 'Causal') | |
| A reaction: This also delivers on a plate the necessity felt to be in causal relations, because the relation is inevitable once you are given the relata. But can you have an accidental (rather than essential) internal relation? Not in the case of numbers. |
| 20742 | The real subject is ethical, not cognitive [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The real subject is not the cognitive subject …the real subject is the ethically existing subject. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], p.281), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 2 'Subjective' | |
| A reaction: Perhaps we should say the essence of the self is its drive to live, not its drive to know. Just getting through the day is top priority, and ethics don’t figure much for the solitary person. But each activity, such as cooking, has its virtues. |
| 7579 | While big metaphysics is complete without ethics, personal philosophy emphasises ethics [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: While the Hegelian philosophy goes on and is finished without having an Ethics, the more simple philosophy which is propounded by an existing individual for existing individuals, will more especially emphasis the ethical. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of the Socratic revolution, which shifted philosophy from the study of nature to the study of personal virtue. However, if we look for ethical teachings in existentialism, there often seems to be a black hole in the middle. |
| 7581 | Speculative philosophy loses the individual in a vast vision of humanity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Being an individual man is a thing that has been abolished, and every speculative philosopher confuses himself with humanity at large, whereby he becomes infinitely great - and at the same time nothing at all. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 4840. This is a beautiful statement of the motivation for existentialism. The sort of philosophers who love mathematics (Plato, Descartes, Leibniz, Russell) love losing themselves in abstractions. This is the rebellion. |
| 20314 | People want to lose themselves in movements and history, instead of being individuals [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Everything must attach itself so as to be part of some movement; men are determined to lose themselves in the totality of things, in world-history, fascinated and deceived by a magic witchery; no one wants to be an individual human being. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [Bk 711] I presume 'world-history' refers to the exhilerating ideas of Hegel. Right now [2017] I would say we have far too much of people only wanting to be individuals, with insufficient attention to our social nature. |
| 7582 | Becoming what one is is a huge difficulty, because we strongly aspire to be something else [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Striving to become what one already is is a very difficult task, the most difficult of all, because every human being has a strong natural bent and passion to become something more and different. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: Presumably most people continually drift between vanity and low self-esteem, and between unattainable daydreams and powerless immediate reality. That creates the stage on which Kierkegaard's interesting battle would have to be fought. |
| 7586 | God does not think or exist; God creates, and is eternal [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: God does not think, He creates; God does not exist, he is eternal. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Thinker') | |
| A reaction: The sort of nicely challenging remarks we pay philosophers to come up with. I don't understand the second claim, but the first one certainly avoids all paradoxes that arise if God experiences all the intrinsic problems of thinking. |
| 20312 | God cannot be demonstrated objectively, because God is a subject, only existing inwardly [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Choosing the objective way enters upon the entire approximation-process by which it is proposed to bring God to light objectively. But this is in all eternity impossible, because God is a subject, and therefore exist only for subjectivity in inwardness. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846]) | |
| A reaction: [pg in 711] This seems to have something like Wittgenstein's problem with a private language - that with no external peer-review it is unclear what the commitment is. |
| 7580 | Pantheism destroys the distinction between good and evil [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: So called pantheistic systems have often been characterised and challenged by the assertion that they abrogate the distinction between good and evil. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Lessing') | |
| A reaction: He will have Spinoza in mind. Interesting. Obviously this criticism would come from someone who thought that the traditional deity was the only source of goodness. Good/evil isn't all-or-nothing. A monistic system could contain them. |
| 7583 | Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Faith is the highest passion in the sphere of human subjectivity. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Subjective') | |
| A reaction: The word 'highest' should always ring alarm bells. The worst sort of religious fanatics seem to be in the grip of this 'high' passion. The early twenty-first century is an echo of eighteenth century England, with its dislike of religious 'enthusiasm'. |
| 7584 | Without risk there is no faith [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: Without risk there is no faith. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Concluding Unscientific Postscript [1846], 'Inwardness') | |
| A reaction: Remarks like this make you realise that Kierkegaard is just as much of a romantic as most of the other nineteenth century philosophers. Plunge into the dark unknown of the human psyche, in order to intensify and heighten human life. |