87 ideas
| 224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
| 232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
| 8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
| From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
| A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |
| 22285 | Impredicative definitions are circular, but fine for picking out, rather than creating something [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The circularity in a definition where the property being defined is used in the definition is now known as 'impredicativity'. ...Some cases ('the tallest man in the room') are unproblematic, as they pick him out, and don't conjure him into existence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Impred') | |
| A reaction: [part summary] |
| 22301 | The Identity Theory says a proposition is true if it coincides with what makes it true [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The Identity Theory of truth says a proposition is true just in case it coincides with what makes it true. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 23 'Abs') | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is how 'there are trees in the wood' can somehow 'coincide with' or 'be identical to' the situation outside my window. The theory is sort of right, but we will never define the relationship, which is no better than 'corresponds'. |
| 22324 | It has been unfortunate that externalism about truth is equated with correspondence [Potter] |
| Full Idea: There has been an unfortunate tendency in the secondary literature to equate externalism about truth with the correspondence theory. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 65 'Truth') | |
| A reaction: Quite helpful to distinguish internalist from externalist theories of truth. It is certainly the case that robust externalist views of truth have unfortunately been discredited merely because the correspondence account is inadequate. |
| 22279 | Frege's sign |--- meant judgements, but the modern |- turnstile means inference, with intecedents [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Natural deduction systems generally depend on conditional proof, but for Frege everything is asserted unconditionally. The modern turnstile |- is allowed to have antecedents, and hence to represent inference rather than Frege's judgement sign |---. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 03 'Axioms') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Shockingly, Frege's approach seems more psychological than the modern approach. I would say that the whole point of logic is that it has to be conditional, because the truth of the antecedents is irrelevant. |
| 22291 | Deductivism can't explain how the world supports unconditional conclusions [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Deductivism is a good account of large parts of mathematics, but stumbles where mathematics is directly applicable to the world. It fails to explain how we detach the antecedent so as to arrive at unconditional conclusions. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Deduc') | |
| A reaction: I suppose the reply would be that we have designed deductive structures which fit our understanding of reality - so it is all deductive, but selected pragmatically. |
| 22295 | Modern logical truths are true under all interpretations of the non-logical words [Potter] |
| Full Idea: In the modern definition, a 'logical truth' is true under every interpretation of the non-logical words it contains. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 19 'Frege's') | |
| A reaction: What if the non-logical words are nonsense, or are used inconsistently ('good'), or ambiguously ('bank'), or vaguely ('bald'), or with unsure reference ('the greatest philosopher' becomes 'Bentham')? What qualifies as an 'interpretation'? |
| 13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
| Full Idea: Plato (in 'Parmenides') shows that the theory that 'Eide' are substances, and Kant that space and time are substances, and Bradley that relations are substances, all lead to aninomies. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Gilbert Ryle - Are there propositions? 'Objections' |
| 14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
| Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made. | |
| From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §337 |
| 16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If one is, there must also necessarily be number - Necessarily - But if there is number, there would be many, and an unlimited multitude of beings. ..So if all partakes of being, each part of number would also partake of it. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 144a) | |
| A reaction: This seems to commit to numbers having being, then to too many numbers, and hence to too much being - but without backing down and wondering whether numbers had being after all. Aristotle disagreed. |
| 22310 | The formalist defence against Gödel is to reject his metalinguistic concept of truth [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Gödel's theorem does not refute formalism outright, because the committed formalist need not recognise the metalinguistic notion of truth to which the theorem appeals. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 45 'Log') | |
| A reaction: The theorem was prior to Tarski's account of truth. Potter says Gödel avoided explicit mention of truth because of this problem. In general Gödel showed that there are truths outside the formal system (which is all provable). |
| 22298 | Why is fictional arithmetic applicable to the real world? [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Fictionalists struggle to explain why arithmetic is applicable to the real world in a way that other stories are not. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Math') | |
| A reaction: We know why some novels are realistic and others just the opposite. If a novel aimed to 'model' the real world it would be even closer to it. Fictionalists must explain why some fictions are useful. |
| 229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) |
| 21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
| 22287 | If 'concrete' is the negative of 'abstract', that means desires and hallucinations are concrete [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The word 'concrete' is often used as the negative of 'abstract', with the slightly odd consequence that desires and hallucinations are thereby classified as concrete. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 12 'Numb') | |
| A reaction: There is also the even more baffling usage of 'abstract' for the most highly generalised mathematics, leaving lower levels as 'concrete'. I favour the use of 'generalised' wherever possible, rather than 'abstract'. |
| 221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) |
| 22284 | 'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter] |
| Full Idea: From the successor function we can deduce its ancestral, the 'greater than' relation, which is a strict total ordering of the natural numbers. (Frege did not mention this, but Dedekind worked it out, when expounding definition by recursion). | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Def') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If a person denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135c) |
| 227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
| Full Idea: You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 147d) |
| 211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is troubling that if admirable things have abstract ideas, then perhaps everything else must have ideas as well. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
| 228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
| Full Idea: These two ideas, greatness and smallness, exist, do they not? For if they did not exist, they could not be opposites of one another, and could not come into being in things. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 149e) |
| 210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Are there abstract ideas for such things as hair, mud and dirt, which are particularly vile and worthless? That would be quite absurd. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
| 16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me that Plato in the later dialogues, beginning with the second half of 'Parmenides', wants to substitute a theory of genera and theory of principles that constitute these genera for the earlier theory of forms. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: My theory is that the later Plato came under the influence of the brilliant young Aristotle, and this idea is a symptom of it. The theory of 'principles' sounds like hylomorphism to me. |
| 219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
| Full Idea: None of the absolute ideas exists in us, because then it would no longer be absolute. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133c) |
| 220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133e) |
| 218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
| 212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131a) |
| 215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132c) |
| 213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131b) |
| 216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
| Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132e) |
| 214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If you regard the absolute great and the many great things in the same way, will not another appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great? | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132a) |
| 217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for anything to be like an absolute idea, because a third idea will appear to make them alike, and if that is like anything, it will lead to another idea, and so on. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
| 15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
| A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
| 15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5 | |
| A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something? |
| 15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one. | |
| From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2 | |
| A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships. |
| 15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
| A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies. |
| 13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts. |
| 15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
| 22281 | A material conditional cannot capture counterfactual reasoning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: What the material conditional most significantly fails to capture is counterfactual reasoning. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 04 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The point is that counterfactuals say 'if P were the case (which it isn't), then Q'. But that means P is false, and in the material conditional everything follows from a falsehood. A reinterpretation of the conditional might embrace counterfactuals. |
| 22327 | Knowledge from a drunken schoolteacher is from a reliable and unreliable process [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge might result from a reliable and an unreliable process. ...Is something knowledge if you were told it by a drunken schoolteacher? | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 66 'Rel') | |
| A reaction: Nice example. The listener must decide which process to rely on. But how do you decide that, if not by assessing the likely truth of what you are being told? It could be a bad teacher who is inspired by drink. |
| 20043 | Evolutionary explanations look to the past or the group, not to the individual [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In evolutionary explanations you may explain a population trait in terms of what it is for the sake of an individual, or explain it in terms of what it was for the sake of in earlier generations, but never in terms of what the trait is for the sake of. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 2 'Functions') | |
| A reaction: So my ears are for the sake of my ability to hear, but that does not explain why I have ears. Should we say there is 'impersonal teleology' here, but no 'personal teleology'? Interesting. |
| 20058 | Not all explanation is causal. We don't explain a painting's beauty, or the irrationality of root-2, that way [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Not all explanation is causal. Explaining the beauty of a painting is not explaining why something happened. or why a move in chess is illegal, or why the square root of two is not a rational number. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Argument') | |
| A reaction: It is surely plausible that the illegality of the chess move is caused (or 'determined', as I prefer to say) by the laws created for chess. The painting example seems right, though; what determined its configuration (think Pollock!) does not explain it. |
| 22273 | Traditionally there are twelve categories of judgement, in groups of three [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The traditional categorisation of judgements (until at least 1800) was as universal, particular or singular; as affirmative, negative or infinite; as categorical, hypothetical or disjunctive; or as problematic, assertoric or apodictic. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 02 'Trans') | |
| A reaction: Arranging these things in neat groups of three seems to originate with the stoics. Making distinctions like this is very much the job of a philosopher, but arranging them in neat equinumerous groups is intellectual tyranny. |
| 22290 | The phrase 'the concept "horse"' can't refer to a concept, because it is saturated [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Frege's mirroring principle (that the structure of thoughts mirrors that of language) has the uncomfortable consequence that since the phrase 'the concept "horse"' is saturated, it cannot refer to something unsaturated, which includes concepts. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 16 'Conc') |
| 22283 | Compositionality should rely on the parsing tree, which may contain more than sentence components [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Compositionality is best seen as saying the semantic value of a string is explained by the strings lower down its parsing tree. It is unimportant whether a string is always parsed in terms of its own substrings. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: That is, the analysis must explain the meaning, but the analysis can contain more than the actual ingredients of the sentence (which would be too strict). |
| 22282 | 'Direct compositonality' says the components wholly explain a sentence meaning [Potter] |
| Full Idea: Some authors urge the strong notion of 'direct compositionality', which requires that the content of a sentence be explained in terms of the contents of the component parts of that very sentence. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 05 'Sem') | |
| A reaction: The alternative is that meaning is fully explained by an analysis, but that may contain more than the actual components of the sentence. |
| 22296 | Compositionality is more welcome in logic than in linguistics (which is more contextual) [Potter] |
| Full Idea: The principle of compositionality is more popular among philosophers of logic than of language, because the subtle context-sensitivity or ordinary language makes providing a compositional semantics for it a daunting challenge. | |
| From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 21 'Lang') | |
| A reaction: Logicians love breaking complex entities down into simple atomic parts. Linguistics tries to pin down something much more elusive. |
| 20035 | Philosophy of action studies the nature of agency, and of deliberate actions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of action is concerned with the nature of agency: what it is to be a full-blown agent, and what it is to realise one's agency in acting deliberately on things. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Being') | |
| A reaction: 'Full-blown' invites the question of whether there could be a higher level of agency, beyond the capacity of human beings. Perhaps AI should design a theoretical machine that taps into those higher levels, if we can conceive of them. Meta-coherence! |
| 20084 | Agency is causal processes that are sensitive to justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: My conclusion is that wherever you can identify causal processes that are sensitive to the recommendations of systems of justification, there you have found agency. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9b 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: [the last paragraph of his book] Justification seems an awfully grand notion for a bee pollinating a flower, and I don't see human action as profoundly different. A reason might be a bad justification, but it might not even aspire to be a justification. |
| 20061 | Mental states and actions need to be separate, if one is to cause the other [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If psychological states and action results cannot be identified independently of one another, then it does not make sense to describe one as causing the other. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: This summarises a widely cited unease about the causal theory of action. Any account in action theory will need to separate out some components and explain their interrelation. Otherwise actions are primitives, and we can walk away. |
| 20079 | Are actions bodily movements, or a sequence of intention-movement-result? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Are actions identical with bodily movements? Or are they identical with sequences of things starting inside the agent's mind with their intentions, going through their body movements and finishing with the external results being achieved? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'What is action') | |
| A reaction: If bodily movements are crucial, this presumably eliminates speech acts. Speech or writing may involve some movement, but the movement is almost irrelevant to the nature of the action. Telepathy would do equally well. |
| 20080 | If one action leads to another, does it cause it, or is it part of it? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: When we do one action 'by' doing another, either the first action causes the process of the second, or the first action is part of the process of the second | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'What is by') | |
| A reaction: Stout says the second view is preferable, because pressing a switch does not cause my action of turning on the light (though it does cause the light to come on). |
| 20059 | I do actions, but not events, so actions are not events [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: I do not do an event; I do an action; so actions are not events. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Are actions') | |
| A reaction: Sounds conclusive, but it places a lot of weight on the concepts of 'I' and 'do', which leaves room for some discussion. This point is opposed to the causal theory of action, because causation concerns events. |
| 20081 | Bicycle riding is not just bodily movement - you also have to be on the bicycle [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: You do not ride a bicycle just by moving your body in a certain way. You have to be on the bicycle to move in the right sort of way | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'Are body') | |
| A reaction: My favourite philosophical ideas are simple and conclusive. He also observes that walking involves the ground being walked on. In complex actions 'feedback' with the environment is involved. |
| 20039 | The causal theory says that actions are intentional when intention (or belief-desire) causes the act [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The causal theory of action asserts that what characterises intentional action is the agent's intentions, or perhaps their beliefs and desires, causing their behaviour in the appropriate way. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Outline') | |
| A reaction: The agent's intentions are either sui generis (see Bratman), or reducible to beliefs and desires (as in Hume). The classic problem for the causal theory is said to be 'deviant causal chains'. |
| 20047 | Deciding what to do usually involves consulting the world, not our own minds [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In the vast majority of actions you need to look outwards to work out what you should do. An exam invigilator should consult the clock to design when to end the exam, not her state of mind. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The belief-') | |
| A reaction: Stout defends externalist intentions. I remain unconvinced. It is no good looking at a clock if you don't form a belief about what it says, and the belief is obviously closer than the clock to the action. Intellectual virtue requires checking the facts. |
| 20065 | Should we study intentions in their own right, or only as part of intentional action? [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Should we try to understand what it is to have an intention in terms of what it is to act intentionally, or should we try to understand what it is to have an intention independently of what it is to act intentionally? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Acting') | |
| A reaction: Since you can have an intention to act, and yet fail to act, it seems possible to isolate intentions, but not to say a lot about them. Intention may be different prior to actions, and during actions. Early Davidson offered the derived view. |
| 20067 | You can have incompatible desires, but your intentions really ought to be consistent [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Intentions are unlike desires. You can simultaneously desire two things that you know are incompatible. But when you form intentions you are embarking on a course of action, and there is a much stronger requirement of consistency. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Relationship') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why anyone would identify intentions with desires. I would quite like to visit Japan, but have no current intention of doing so. I assume that the belief-plus-desire theory doesn't deny that an uninteresting intention is also needed. |
| 20078 | The normativity of intentions would be obvious if they were internal promises [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: One way to incorporate this [normative] feature of intentions would be to treat them like internal promises. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 8 'Intention') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. The concept of a promise is obviously closely linked to an intention. If you tell your companion exactly where you intend your golf ball to land, you can thereby be held accountable, in a manner resembling a promise (but not a promise). |
| 20044 | The rationalistic approach says actions are intentional when subject to justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The rationalistic approach to agency says that what characterises intentional action is that it is subject to justification. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 2 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: [Anscombe is the chief articulator of this view] This seems to incorporate action into an entirely intellectual and even moral framework. |
| 20036 | Intentional agency is seen in internal precursors of action, and in external reasons for the act [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible that we find something characteristic of intentional agency when we look inward to the mental precursors of actions, and also when we look outward, to the sensitivity of action to what the environment gives us reasons to do. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'How') | |
| A reaction: This is Stout staking a claim for his partly externalist view of agency. I warm less and less to the various forms of externalism. How often does the environment 'give us reasons' to do things? How can we act, without internalising those reasons? |
| 20066 | Speech needs sustained intentions, but not prior intentions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The intentional action of including the word 'big' in a sentence does not require a prior intention to say it. What is required is that you say it with the intention of saying it. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Relationship') | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but makes it a lot harder to say what an intention is, and to separate it out for inspection. You can't speak a good English sentence while withdrawing the intention involved. |
| 20073 | Bratman has to treat shared intentions as interrelated individual intentions [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Bratman has to construe what we think of as shared intentions as not literally involving shared intentions, but as involving interrelating of individual intentions. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Conclusion') | |
| A reaction: Stout rejects this, for an account based on adaptability of behaviour. To me, naturalism and sparse ontology favour Bratman (1984) . I like my idea that shared intentions are conditional individual intentions. If the group refuses, I drop the intention. |
| 20069 | A request to pass the salt shares an intention that the request be passed on [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: When one person says to another 'please pass the salt', and the other engages with this utterance and understands it, they share the intention that this request is passed from the first person to the second. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: Simple and intriguing. We form an intention, and then ask someone else to take over our intention. When the second person takes over the intention, I give up the intention to acquire the salt, because it is on its way. It's political. |
| 20070 | An individual cannot express the intention that a group do something like moving a piano [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is unnatural to describe an individual as intending that the group do something together. ...What could possibly express my intention that we move the piano upstairs? | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: Two possible answers: it makes sense if I have great authority within the group. 'I'm going to move the piano - you take that end'. Or, such expressions are implicitly conditional - 'I intend to move the piano (if you will also intend it)'. |
| 20071 | An intention is a goal to which behaviour is adapted, for an individual or for a group [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: An individual intention is a goal to which an individual's behaviour adapts. A shared intention is a goal to which a group of people's behaviour collectively adapts. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Shared') | |
| A reaction: This is part of Stout's externalist approach to actions. One would have thought that an intention was a state of mind, not a goal in the world. The individual's goal can be psychological, but a group's goal has to be an abstraction. |
| 20038 | If the action of walking is just an act of will, then movement of the legs seems irrelevant [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If volitionism identifies the action with an act of will, this has the unpalatable consequence (for a Cartesian dualist) that walking does not happen in the material world. It would be the same act of walking if you had no legs, or no body at all. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 1 'Volitionism') | |
| A reaction: Is this attacking a caricature version of volitionism? Descartes would hardly subscribe to the view that no legs are needed for walking. If my legs spasmodically move without an act of will, we typically deny that this is an action. |
| 20052 | If you don't mention an agent, you aren't talking about action [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Once you lose the agent from an account of action it stops being an account of action at all. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'Agent') | |
| A reaction: [he refers to Richard Taylor 1966] This could be correct without implying that agents offer a unique mode of causation. The concept of 'agent' is reducible. |
| 20050 | Most philosophers see causation as by an event or state in the agent, rather than the whole agent [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Most philosophers are uneasy with understanding the causal aspect of actions in terms of an 'agent' making something happen. They prefer to think of some event in the agent, or state of the agent, making something happen. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'The causal') | |
| A reaction: There is a bit of a regress if you ask what caused the event or state of affairs. It is tempting to stop the buck at the whole agent, or else carry the reduction on down to neurons, physics and the outside world. |
| 20077 | If you can judge one act as best, then do another, this supports an inward-looking view of agency [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Weakness of will is a threat to the outward-looking approach to agency. It seems you can hold one thing to be the thing to do, and at the same time do something else. Many regard this as a decisive reason to follow a more inward-looking approach. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 8 'Weakness') | |
| A reaction: It hadn't struck me before that weakness of will is a tool for developing an accurate account of what is involved in normal agency. Some facts that guide action are internal to the agent, such as greed for sugary cakes. |
| 20046 | For an ascetic a powerful desire for something is a reason not to implement it [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: If wanting something most were the same as having the most powerful feelings about it, then as an ascetic (rejecting what you most powerfully desire), your wanting most to eat a bun would be your reason for not eating the bun. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The belief-') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like reason overruling desire, but the asceticism can always be characterised as a meta-desire. |
| 20049 | Maybe your emotions arise from you motivations, rather than being their cause [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Instead of assuming that your motivation depends on your emotional state, we might say that your emotional state depends on how you are motivated to act. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'Emotions') | |
| A reaction: [He says this move is made by Kant, Thomas Nagel and McDowell] Stout favours the view that it is external facts which mainly give rise to actions, and presumably these facts are intrinsically motivating, prior to any emotions. I don't disagree. |
| 20060 | Beliefs, desires and intentions are not events, so can't figure in causal relations [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: Beliefs, desires and intentions are states of mind rather than events, but events are the only things that figure in causal relations. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Do beliefs') | |
| A reaction: This is exactly why we have the concept of 'the will' - because it is a mental state to which we attribute active causal powers. We then have to explain how this 'will' is related to the other mental states (which presume motivate or drive it?). |
| 20055 | A standard view says that the explanation of an action is showing its rational justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The idea running through the work of Aristotle, Kant, Anscombe and Davidson is that explanation of action involves justifying that action or making it rationally intelligible. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Psychological') | |
| A reaction: Stout goes on to say that instead you could give the 'rationalisation' of the action, which is psychological facts which explain the action, without justifying it. The earlier view may seem a little optimistic and intellectualist. |
| 20056 | In order to be causal, an agent's reasons must be internalised as psychological states [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: It is widely accepted that to get involved in the causal process of acting an agent's reasons must be internalised as psychological states. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 5 'Psychological') | |
| A reaction: This doesn't say whether the 'psychological states' have to be fully conscious. That seems unlikely, given the speed with which we perform some sequences of actions, such as when driving a car, or playing a musical instrument. |
| 20053 | An action is only yours if you produce it, rather than some state or event within you [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: For action to be properly yours it must be you who is the causal originator of the action, rather than some state or event within you. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 4 'Agent') | |
| A reaction: [He invokes Chisholm 1966] The idea here is that we require not only 'agent causation', but that the concept of agent must include free will. It seems right we ought to know whether or not an action is 'mine'. Nothing too fancy is needed for this! |
| 20048 | There may be a justification relative to a person's view, and yet no absolute justification [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In a relativistic notion of justification, in a particular system, there is a reason for a vandal to smash public property, even though, using an absolute conception of justification, there is no reason for him to do so. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 3 'The difference') | |
| A reaction: I suppose Kantians would say that the aim of morality is to make your personal (relative) justification coincide with what seems to be the absolute justification. |
| 20068 | Describing a death as a side-effect rather than a goal may just be good public relations [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: The real signficance of the doctrine of double effect can be public relations. You can put a better spin on an action by describing a death as an unfortunate collateral consequence, rather than as a goal of the action | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 7 'Doctrine') | |
| A reaction: The problem is that it the principle is usually invoked in situations where it is not clear where some bad effect is intended, and it is very easy to lie in such situations. In football, we can never quite decide whether a dangerous tackle was intended. |
| 222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a) |
| 225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
| 233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
| 231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
| 2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
| 20083 | Aristotelian causation involves potentiality inputs into processes (rather than a pair of events) [Stout,R] |
| Full Idea: In the Aristotelian approach to causation (unlike the Humean approach, involving separate events), A might cause B by being an input into some process (realisation of potentiality) that results in B. | |
| From: Rowland Stout (Action [2005], 9 'Trying') | |
| A reaction: Stout relies quite heavily on this view for his account of human action. I like processes, so am sympathetic to this view. If there are two separate events, it is not surprising that Hume could find nothing to bridge the gap between them. |
| 234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |
| Full Idea: There must be knowledge of the one, or else not even the meaning of the words 'if the one does not exist' would be known. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 160d) |