34 ideas
| 23247 | The need to act produces consciousness, and practical reason is the root of all reason [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness of the real world proceeds from the need to act, not the other way around. …Practical reason is the root of all reason. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Strongly agree with the last part. In my conceptual scheme 'sensible' behaviour (e.g. of animals) precedes, in every way, rational behaviour. Sensible attitudes to quantity and magnitude precede mathematical logic. Minds exist for navigation. |
| 7807 | The laws of thought are true, but they are not the axioms of logic [Bolzano, by George/Van Evra] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano said the 'laws of thought' (identity, contradiction, excluded middle) are true, but nothing of interest follows from them. Logic obeys them, but they are not logic's first principles or axioms. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837], §3) by George / Van Evra - The Rise of Modern Logic | |
| A reaction: An interesting and crucial distinction. For samples of proposed axioms of logic, see Ideas 6408, 7798 and 7797. |
| 23232 | Sufficient reason makes the transition from the particular to the general [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of sufficient reason is the point of transition from the particular, which is itself, to the general, which is outside it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems worth passing on. Personally I would say that we have a knack of generalising, triggered when we spot patterns. |
| 9618 | Bolzano wanted to reduce all of geometry to arithmetic [Bolzano, by Brown,JR] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano if the father of 'arithmetization', which sought to found all of analysis on the concepts of arithmetic and to eliminate geometrical notions entirely (with logicism taking it a step further, by reducing arithmetic to logic). | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch. 3 | |
| A reaction: Brown's book is a defence of geometrical diagrams against Bolzano's approach. Bolzano sounds like the modern heir of Pythagoras, if he thinks that space is essentially numerical. |
| 9830 | Bolzano began the elimination of intuition, by proving something which seemed obvious [Bolzano, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano began the process of eliminating intuition from analysis, by proving something apparently obvious (that as continuous function must be zero at some point). Proof reveals on what a theorem rests, and that it is not intuition. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Kant was the target of Bolzano's attack. Two responses might be to say that many other basic ideas are intuited but impossible to prove, or to say that proof itself depends on intuition, if you dig deep enough. |
| 17265 | Philosophical proofs in mathematics establish truths, and also show their grounds [Bolzano, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical proofs are philosophical in method if they do not only demonstrate that a certain mathematical truth holds but if they also disclose why it holds, that is, if they uncover its grounds. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by Correia,F/Schnieder,B - Grounding: an opinionated introduction 2.3 | |
| A reaction: I aim to defend the role of explanation in mathematics, but this says that this is only if the proofs are 'philosophical', which may be of no interest to mathematicians. Oh well, that's their loss. |
| 23227 | Each object has a precise number of properties, each to a precise degree [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Each object has a definite number of properties, no more, no less. …Each of these objects possesses each of these properties to a definite degree. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine flatly disagrees with this. Fichte offers no grounds for his claim. On the whole I think of properties as psychologically abstracted by us from holistic objects, so there is plenty of room for error. The underlying powers are real. |
| 23228 | The principle of activity and generation is found in a self-moving basic force [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of activity, of generation and becoming in and for itself, is purely in that force itself and not in anything outside it…; the force is not driven or set in motion, it sets itself in motion. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A good account of primitive powers, as self-motivating forces. I can't think what else could be fundamental to nature. This whole passage of Fichte expounds a powers ontology. |
| 23241 | I am myself, but not the external object; so I only sense myself, and not the object [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I sense in myself, not in the object, for I am myself and not the object; therefore I sense only myself and my condition, and not the condition of the object. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why anyone would have total confidence in internal experience and almost no confidence in experience of externals. In daily life I am equally confident about both. In philosophical mode I make equally cautious judgements about both. |
| 21966 | Self-consciousness is the basis of knowledge, and knowing something is knowing myself [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The immediate consciousness of myself is the condition of all other consciousness; and I know a thing only in so far as I know that I know it; no element can enter into the latter cognition which is not contained in the former. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.37), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.2 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as false, and a lot of intellectual contortion would be needed to believe it. Is knowing this pen is in front of me a case of knowing that I have knowledge of this pen, or is it just knowledge of this pen? [cf Kant 1781:A129] |
| 21967 | There is nothing to say about anything which is outside my consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Of any connection beyond the limits of my consciousness I cannot speak. ...I cannot proceed a hair's breadth beyond this consciousness, any more than I can spring out of myself. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.74), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.3 | |
| A reaction: I can't see that this is any different from the idealism of Berkeley, although they get there from different starting points. Idealist seem unable to even begin explaining consciousness. |
| 21969 | Awareness of reality comes from the free activity of consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: It is the necessary faith in our freedom of power, in our own real activity, and in the definite laws of human action, which lies at the root of all our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.98), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.4 | |
| A reaction: I'd love to know what the 'laws of human action' are. Is it what Hume was trying to do? Moore says there is an 'element of self-creation' in Fichte's account of the source of reality. This is Descartes' dream argument biting back. |
| 23231 | I immediately know myself, and anything beyond that is an inference [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Immediately I know only of myself. What I am able to know beyond that I am only able to know through inference. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A direct descendant of the Cartesian Cogito, I assume. Personally, if I bang my head on a beam I take the beam to be a full paid-up member of reality. Is it not possible that he also knows himself through inference? Do animals infer reality? |
| 9185 | Bolzano wanted to avoid Kantian intuitions, and prove everything that could be proved [Bolzano, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano was determined to expel Kantian intuition from analysis, and to prove from first principles anything that could be proved, no matter how obvious it might seem when thought of in geometrical terms. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by Michael Dummett - The Philosophy of Mathematics 2.3 | |
| A reaction: This is characteristic of the Enlightenment Project, well after the Enlightenment. It is a step towards Frege's attack on 'psychologism' in mathematics. The problem is that it led us into a spurious platonism. We live in troubled times. |
| 23246 | Faith is not knowledge; it is a decision of the will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Faith is no knowledge, but a decision of the will to recognise the validity of knowledge. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: What matters is the grounds for the decision. Mad conspiracy theories are decisions of the will which are false. Legitimate faith is an intuition of coherence which cannot be fully articulated. |
| 23245 | Knowledge can't be its own foundation; there has to be regress of higher and higher authorities [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: No knowledge can be its own foundation and proof. Every knowledge presupposes something still higher as its foundation, and this ascent has no end. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: A metaphor that's hard to visualise! He must have in mind a priori as well as empirical knowledge. The 'higher' levels don't seem to be God, but some region of absolute rationality, to which free minds have access. I think. |
| 23242 | Consciousness has two parts, passively receiving sensation, and actively causing productions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My immediate consciousness is composed of two constituent parts, the consciousness of my passivity, the sensation; and the consciousness of my activity, in the production of an object according to the principle of causality. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: Kind of obvious, but unusual to make this sharp binary division. Modern neuroscience strongly militates against any and every simple binary division of brain activities. |
| 23240 | We can't know by sight or hearing without realising that we are doing so [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. Could you not perhaps know an object through sight or hearing without knowing that you are seeing or hearing? A. Not at all. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the traditional view which seemed to be demolished by the discovery of blindsight. In the light of modern brain research, the views of the mind found in past philosophers mostly seem very naïve. |
| 23243 | Consciousness of external things is always accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. So that constantly and under all circumstances my consciousness of things outside of me is accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of myself? A. Quite so. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: He should be more cautious about asserting the existence of something 'unnoticed'. The Earth's core is unnoticed by me, but there is plenty of evidence for it. Not so sure about unnoticed self. Still, I think central control of the mind is indispensable. |
| 23244 | Forming purposes is absolutely free, and produces something from nothing [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My thinking and originating of a purpose is in its nature absolutely free and brings forth something from nothing. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Modern fans of free will are more equivocal in their assertions, and would be uncomfortable bluntly claiming to 'get something from nothing'. But that's what free will is! Embrace it, or run for your life. |
| 23237 | The capacity for freedom is above the laws of nature, with its own power of purpose and will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This capacity [for freedom], once it exists, is in the servitude of a power which is higher than nature and quite free of its laws, the power of purposes, and the will. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: You would think this could only refer to God, but he in fact is referring to the power of human free will. The clearest statement I have found of the weird human exceptionalism implied by a strong commitment to free will. |
| 23235 | I want independent control of the fundamental cause of my decisions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be independent - not to be in and through another but to be something for myself: and as such I want myself to be the fundamental cause of all my determinations. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this sums up the absurdity of the concept of free will. The only reason he gives for his passionate belief in free will is that he desperately wants some imagined 'fundamental cause' for his action, and he wants full control of that chimera. |
| 23230 | Nature contains a fundamental force of thought [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: There is an original force of thought in nature just as there is an original formative force. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this idea is false, but it helps to understand Fichte. |
| 22276 | Bolzano saw propositions as objective entities, existing independently of us [Bolzano, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano took the entities of which truth is predicated to be not propositions in the subjective sense but 'propositions-in-themselves' - objective entities existing independent of our apprehension. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 02 'Emp' | |
| A reaction: A serious mistake. Presumably the objective propositions are all true (or there would be endless infinities of them). So what is assessed in the case of error? Something other than the objective propositions! We assess these other things! |
| 17264 | Propositions are abstract structures of concepts, ready for judgement or assertion [Bolzano, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| Full Idea: Bolzano conceived of propositions as abstract objects which are structured compounds of concepts and potential contents of judgements and assertions. | |
| From: report of Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837]) by Correia,F/Schnieder,B - Grounding: an opinionated introduction 2.3 | |
| A reaction: Personally I think of propositions as brain events, the constituents of thought about the world, but that needn't contradict the view of them as 'abstract'. |
| 12232 | A 'proposition' is the sense of a linguistic expression, and can be true or false [Bolzano] |
| Full Idea: What I mean by 'propositions' is not what the grammarians call a proposition, namely the linguistic expression, but the mere sense of this expression, is what is meant by proposition in itself or object proposition. This sense can be true or false. | |
| From: Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837], Pref?) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the origin of what we understand by 'proposition'. The disputes are over whether such things exists, and whether they are features of minds or features of the world (resembling facts). |
| 12233 | The ground of a pure conceptual truth is only in other conceptual truths [Bolzano] |
| Full Idea: We can find the ground of a pure conceptual truth only in other conceptual truths. | |
| From: Bernard Bolzano (Theory of Science (Wissenschaftslehre, 4 vols) [1837], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere he insists that these grounds must be in 'truths', and not just in the attributes of the concepts of involved. This conflicts with Kit Fine's view, that the concepts themselves are the source of conceptual truth and necessity. |
| 23233 | The will is awareness of one of our inner natural forces [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: To will is to be immediately conscious of the activity of one of our inner natural forces. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A more Nietzschean view would be that to will is to be conscious of the victor among our inner natural drives. It can't just be awareness of one force, because the will feels conflicts. |
| 23234 | I cannot change the nature which has been determined for me [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I cannot will the intention of making myself something other than what I am determined to be by nature, for I don't make myself at all but nature makes me and whatever I become. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a lot more accurate than Sartre's claim that we can re-make ourselves, but Fichte doesn't seem quite right. Don't I get any credit at all if I give up smoking, or train myself to treat someone more sympathetically? |
| 23239 | The self is, apart from outward behaviour, a drive in your nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This 'you' for which you show such a lively interest is, so far as it is not overt behaviour, at least a drive in your own peculiar nature. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I assume this use of 'drive' is the origin of Nietzsche's picture of such things, focused on the basic will to power. I like Fichte's emphasis on active forces as the basis of nature. |
| 1590 | The just man does not harm his enemies, but benefits everyone [Plato] |
| Full Idea: First, Socrates, you told me justice is harming your enemies and helping your friends. But later it seemed that the just man, since everything he does is for someone's benefit, never harms anyone. | |
| From: Plato (Clitophon [c.372 BCE], 410b) | |
| A reaction: Socrates certainly didn't subscribe to the first view, which is the traditional consensus in Greek culture. In general Socrates agreed with the views later promoted by Jesus. |
| 23238 | If life lacks love it becomes destruction [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Only in love is there life; without it there is death and annihilation. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: He gives not context of justification for this sudden claim. Watching from a melancholy distance the current 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I take this idea to be a profound truth. If you let go of love, you float away down a dark stream. |
| 23236 | Freedom means making yourself become true to your essential nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be free means: I myself want to make myself be whatever I will be. I would therefore …already have to be, in a certain sense, what I am to become, so that I could make myself be it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is much closer to the existenial picture of the malleable self, which Fichte arrives out once he commits to his desperate desire to have free will. [Not sure if my gist captures what he says]. |
| 23229 | Nature is wholly interconnected, and the tiniest change affects everything [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Nature is an interconnected whole; …you could shift no grain of sand from its spot without thereby, perhaps invisibly to your eyes, changing something in all parts of the immeasurable whole. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like idealist daydreaming, but might it actually be true with respect to gravity? |