33 ideas
| 19579 | The history of philosophy is just experiments in how to do philosophy [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: The history of philosophy up to now is nothing but a history of attempts to discover how to do philosophy. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 01) | |
| A reaction: I take post-Fregean analytic metaphysics to be another experiment in how to do philosophy. I suspect that the experiment of Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida etc has been a failure. |
| 19583 | Philosophy only begins when it studies itself [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: All philosophy begins where philosophizing philosophises itself. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 79) | |
| A reaction: The modern trend for doing metaphilosophy strikes me as wholly admirable, though I suspect that the enemies of philosophy (who are legion) see it as a decadence. |
| 14480 | Maybe analytic truths do not require truth-makers, as they place no demands on the world [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: It is a venerable view that analytic claims do not require truth-makers, as they place no demands on the world, but this claim has often been challenged. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: She offers two challenges (bottom p.68), but I would have thought that the best response is that the meanings of the words themselves constitute truthmakers - perhaps via the essence of each word, as Fine suggests. |
| 14471 | Analytical entailments arise from combinations of meanings and inference rules [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytically entail' means entail in virtue of the meanings of the expressions involved and rules of inference. So 'Jones bought a house' analytically entails 'Jones bought a building'. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: Quine wouldn't like this, but it sounds OK to me. Thomasson uses this as a key tool in her claim that common sense objects must exist. |
| 19581 | A problem is a solid mass, which the mind must break up [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: A problem is a solid, synthetic mass which is broken up by means of the penetrating power of the mind. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 04) |
| 19584 | Whoever first counted to two must have seen the possibility of infinite counting [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Whoever first understood how to count to two, even if he still found it difficult to keep on counting, saw nonetheless the possibility of infinite counting according to the same laws. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 84) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it is the discerning of the 'law' which triggers this. Is the key concept 'addition' or 'successor' (or are those the same?). |
| 22025 | Novalis thought self-consciousness cannot disclose 'being', because we are temporal creatures [Novalis, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Novalis came to think that the kind of existence , or 'being', that is disclosed in self-consciousness remains, as it were, forever out of our reach because of the kind of temporal creatures we are. | |
| From: report of Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 06 | |
| A reaction: It looks here as if Novalis kicked Heidegger's Dasein into the long grass before it even got started, but maybe they have different notions of 'being', with Novalis seeking timeless being, and Heidegger, influenced by Bergson, accepting temporality. |
| 14493 | Existence might require playing a role in explanation, or in a causal story, or being composed in some way [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: A higher standard for saying that entities exist might require that they play an essential role in explanation, or must figure in any complete causal story, or exist according to some uniform and nonarbitrary principle of composition. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: I am struck by the first of these three. If I am defending the notion that essence depends on Aristotle's account of explanation, then if we add that existence also depends on explanation, we get a criterion for the existence of essences. Yay. |
| 14491 | Rival ontological claims can both be true, if there are analytic relationships between them [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Where there are analytic interrelations among our claims, distinct ontological claims may be true without rivalry, redundancy, or reduction. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 10) | |
| A reaction: Thus we might, I suppose, that it is analytically necessary that a lump of clay has a shape, and that a statue be made of something. Interesting. |
| 14489 | Theories do not avoid commitment to entities by avoiding certain terms or concepts [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: A theory does not avoid commitment to any entities by avoiding use of certain terms or concepts. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a salutary warning to those who apply the notion of ontological commitment rather naively. |
| 14485 | Ordinary objects may be not indispensable, but they are nearly unavoidable [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: I do not argue that ordinary objects are indispensable, but rather that they are (nearly) unavoidable. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 09) | |
| A reaction: Disappointing, given the blurb and title of the book, but put in those terms it will be hard to disagree. Clearly ordinary objects figure in the most useful way for us to talk. I wonder whether we have a clear ontology of 'simples' in which they vanish. |
| 14487 | The simple existence conditions for objects are established by our practices, and are met [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: The existence conditions for ordinary objects are established by our practices, and they are quite minimal, so it is rather obvious that they are fulfilled, and so there are such things. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 09.3) | |
| A reaction: This is one of her main arguments. The same argument would have worked for witches or ghosts in certain cultures. |
| 21651 | It is analytic that if simples are arranged chair-wise, then there is a chair [Thomasson, by Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Thomasson argues that the existence of ordinary objects follows analytically from the distribution of simples, assuming that there are any simples. It is an analytic truth that if there are simples arranged chair-wise, then there is a chair. | |
| From: report of Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007]) by Thomas Hofweber - Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics 07.3 | |
| A reaction: But how do you distinguish when simples are arranged nearly chair-wise from the point where they click into place as actually chair-wise? What is the criterion? |
| 14486 | Eliminativists haven't found existence conditions for chairs, beyond those of the word 'chair' [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: The eliminativist cannot claim to have 'discovered' some real existence conditions for chairs beyond those entailed by the semantic rules associated with ordinary use of the word 'chair'. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 09.3) | |
| A reaction: It is difficult to understand atoms arranged 'chairwise' or 'baseballwise' if you don't already know what a chair or a baseball are. |
| 14467 | Ordinary objects are rejected, to avoid contradictions, or for greater economy in thought [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Objections to ordinary objects are the Causal Redundancy claim (objects lack causal powers), the Anti-Colocation view (statues and lumps overlap), Sorites arguments, a more economical ontology, or a more scientific ontology. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [my summary of two paragraphs] The chief exponents of these views are Van Inwagen and Merricks. Before you glibly accept ordinary objects, you must focus on producing a really strict ontology. These arguments all have real force. |
| 14479 | To individuate people we need conventions, but conventions are made up by people [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: The conventionalist faces paradox if they hold that conventions are logically prior to people (since this plurality requires conventions of individuation), and people are logically prior to conventions (if they make up the conventions). | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: [Sidelle is the spokesman for conventionalism] The best defence would be to deny the second part, and say that conventions emerge from whatever is there, but only conventions can individuate the bits of what is there. |
| 14481 | Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: In a 'modally plenitudinous' ontology, wherever there is an object at all, there are objects with intrinsic modal properties instantiating every consistent modal profile. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03.5) | |
| A reaction: [She cites K.Bennett, Hawley, Rea, Sidelle] I love this. At last a label for the view I have been espousing. I am a Modal Plenitudinist. I must get a badge made. |
| 14482 | If the statue and the lump are two objects, they require separate properties, so we could add their masses [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: An objection to the idea that statues are not identical to material lumps of stuff is the proliferation of instances of properties shared by those objects. If the mass of the statue is 500kg, and the mass of the lump is 500kg, do we have 1000kg? | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; she cites Rea 1997 and Zimmerman 1995] To wriggle out of this we would have to understand 'object' rather differently, so that an independent mass is not intrinsic to it. I leave this as an exercise for the reader. |
| 14483 | Given the similarity of statue and lump, what could possibly ground their modal properties? [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: The 'grounding problem' is that given all that the statue and the lump have in common, what could possibly ground their different modal properties? | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 04.4) | |
| A reaction: Their modal properties are, of course, different, because only one of them could survive squashing. Thomasson suggests their difference of sort, but I'm not sure what that means, separately from what they actually are. |
| 14476 | Identity claims between objects are only well-formed if the categories are specified [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Identity claims are only well-formed and truth-evaluable if the terms flanking the statement are associated with a certain category of entity each is to refer to, which disambiguates the reference and identity-criteria. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03) | |
| A reaction: The first of her two criteria for identity. She is buying the full Wiggins package. |
| 14477 | Identical entities must be of the same category, and meet the criteria for the category [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Identity claims are only true if the entities referred to are of the same category, and meet the criteria of identity appropriate for things of that category. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03) | |
| A reaction: This may be a little too optimistic about having a set of clear-cut and reasonably objective categories to work with, but attempts at establishing metaphysical categories have not gone especially well. |
| 14478 | Modal Conventionalism says modality is analytic, not intrinsic to the world, and linguistic [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Modal Conventionalism has at least three theses: 1) modal truths are either analytic truths, or combine analytic and empirical truths, 2) modal properties are not intrinsic features of the world, 3) modal propositions depend on linguistic conventions. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Alan Sidelle 1989 for this view] I disagree mainly with number 2), since I take dispositions to be key intrinsic features of nature, and I interpret dispositions as modal properties. |
| 22067 | Poetry is true idealism, and the self-consciousness of the universe [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Poetry is true idealism - contemplation of the world as contemplation of a large mind - self-consciousness of the universe. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], vol 3 p.640), quoted by Ernst Behler - Early German Romanticism | |
| A reaction: It looks like the step from Fichte's idealism to the Absolute is poetry, which embraces the ultimate Spinozan substance through imagination. Or something... |
| 14466 | A chief task of philosophy is making reflective sense of our common sense worldview [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Showing how, reflectively, we can make sense of our unreflective common sense worldview is arguably one of the chief tasks of philosophy. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Maybe. The obvious problem is that when you look at weird and remote cultures like the Aztecs, what counts as 'common sense' might be a bit different. She is talking of ordinary objects, though, where her point is reasonable. |
| 14475 | How can causal theories of reference handle nonexistence claims? [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Pure causal theories of reference have problems in handling nonexistence claims | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a very sound reason for shifting from a direct causal baptism view to one in which the baptism takes place by a social consensus. So there is a consensus about 'unicorns', but obviously no baptism. See Evans's 'Madagascar' example. |
| 14474 | Pure causal theories of reference have the 'qua problem', of what sort of things is being referred to [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Pure causal theories of reference face the 'qua problem' - that it may be radically indeterminate what the term refers to unless there is some very basic concept of what sort of thing is being referred to. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: She cites Dummett and Wiggins on this. There is an obvious problem that when I say 'look at that!' there are all sorts of conventions at work if my reference is to succeed. |
| 14488 | Analyticity is revealed through redundancy, as in 'He bought a house and a building' [Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: The analytic interrelations among elements of language become evident through redundancy. It is redundant to utter 'He bought a house and a building', since buying a house analytically entails that he bought a building. | |
| From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: This appears to concern necessary class membership. It is only linguistically redundant if the class membership is obvious. Houses are familiar, uranium samples are not. |
| 19585 | Every person has his own language [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Every person has his own language. Language is the expression of the spirit. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 91) | |
| A reaction: Nice to see someone enthusiastically affirming what was later famously denied, and maybe even disproved. |
| 19582 | Morality and philosophy are mutually dependent [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Without philosophy there is no true morality, and without morality no philosophy. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 21) | |
| A reaction: Challenging! Maybe unthinking people drift in a sea of vague untethered morality, and people who seem to have a genuine moral strength are always rooted in some sort of philosophy. Maybe. Is the passion for philosophy a moral passion? |
| 22027 | Life isn't given to us like a novel - we write the novel [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Life must not be a novel that is given to us, but one that is made by us. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 99) | |
| A reaction: The roots of existentialism are in the Romantic movement. Sartre seems to have taken this idea literally. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 19580 | If the pupil really yearns for the truth, they only need a hint [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: If a pupil genuinely desires truth is requires only a hint to show him how to find what he is seeking. | |
| From: Novalis (Logological Fragments I [1798], 02) | |
| A reaction: The tricky job for the teacher or supervisor is assessing whether the pupil genuinely desires truth, or needs motivating. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |