273 ideas
| 21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
| A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
| 17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |
| 16281 | Honesty requires philosophical theories we can commit to with our ordinary commonsense [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The maxim of honesty: never put forward a philosophical theory that you yourself cannot believe in your least philosophical and most commonsensical moments. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: I take it as important that this test is according to the philosopher's commonsense, and not according to some populist idea. This would allow, for example, for commonsense to be sensitive to scientific knowledge, or awareness of the logic. |
| 16288 | Analysis reduces primitives and makes understanding explicit (without adding new knowledge) [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The object of analysis is to reduce our burden of primitive notions, and to make tacit understanding explicit - not to bootstrap ourselves into understanding what we didn't understand at all beforehand. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I am particularly keen on the idea of 'making tacit understanding explicit'. I connect this with faith in intuition, and with the coherence view of justification. |
| 17200 | We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17194 | Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundations of reason are notions which explain those things which are common to all, and these things explain the essence of no individual thing, and must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, but under a certain form of eternity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: You have to be totally inspired by this even if you totally disagree with it. |
| 4840 | Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity ('sub quadam aeternitatis specie'). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful, and justly famous, remark. If you don't feel the force (and poetry!) of this, you aren't a philosopher. It is not only appealing, but I don't see how it can fail to be true. Try producing good reasons which only have temporary force. |
| 17213 | In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men necessarily always agree with one another in so far as they live according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I think this was my earliest motivation for getting interested in philosophy. Oddly, the Socratic tradition of philosophy is to challenge and criticise, but the aim is agreement. I sort of believe this idea, despite its wild idealism. |
| 4819 | There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is 'how do you know that?' It has to the sort of a priori commitment we expect from a rationalist philosopher. It seems to me quite an appealing candidate for an axiom of human understanding. |
| 21864 | Truth is its own standard [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Truth is its own standard. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: A gloriously bold solution to all the problems of epistemology. Read the whole of P43S to see the context. |
| 8018 | Spinoza's life shows that love of truth which he proclaims as the highest value [MacIntyre on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's life unites philosophy and practice; he manifests that very impersonal love of truth which he proclaims in his writings as the highest human value. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza has become a secular saint in our times. If the big three values are Beauty, Goodness and Truth, why should the third be given top status? I once heard a philosopher say that truth was the only value. |
| 9651 | Verisimilitude might be explained as being close to the possible world where the truth is exact [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We might explain the closeness to the truth (or 'verisimilitude') in terms of closeness of possible worlds. A theory is close to the truth to the extent that our world resembles some world where that theory is exactly true. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: [Lewis cites Risto Hilpinen for this thought] I am always puzzled why Lewis and co. talk of whole worlds in their accounts. If I am close to the truth about cooking a good omelette, what has the rest of the world got to do with it? |
| 5641 | For Spinoza, 'adequacy' is the intrinsic mark of truth [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza, the intrinsic mark of truth is the property which he calls 'adequacy'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the sort of theory to which early rationalists were confined, and it seems to be no advance on Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. I take it that the coherence theory is a better account of what they were after. |
| 4816 | A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 6) | |
| A reaction: Allowing for his usage of 'idea' and 'object', this seems to be a straightforward commitment to the modern correspondence theory, perhaps the earliest clear statement of it. I agree with him. |
| 20309 | If our ideas are adequate, what follows from them is also adequate [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever ideas follow in the mind from ideas which are adequate in the mind are also adequate. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be Modus Ponens, and he calls it (in Sch 1) 'the foundations of our reasoning'. If 'adequate' ideas are knowledge, then this also seems to say that knowledge is closed under known implication. |
| 15731 | Quantification sometimes commits to 'sets', but sometimes just to pluralities (or 'classes') [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I consider some apparent quantification over sets or classes of whatnots to carry genuine ontological commitment to 'sets' of them, but sometimes it is innocent plural quantification committed only to whatnots, for which I use 'class'. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n37) | |
| A reaction: How do you tell whether you are committed to a set or not? Can I claim an innocent plurality each time, while you accuse me of a guilty set? Can I firmly commit to a set, to be told that I can never manage more than a plurality? |
| 17185 | Mathematics deals with the essences and properties of forms [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics does not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms (figures), …and has placed before us another rule of truth. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: Just what I need - a nice clear assertion of essentialism in mathematics. Many say maths is all necessary, so essence is irrelevant, but I say explanations occur in mathematics, and that points to essentialism. |
| 17222 | The sum of its angles follows from a triangle's nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It follows from the nature of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 57) | |
| A reaction: This is the essentialist view of mathematics, which I take to be connected to explanation, which I take to be connected to the direction of explanation. |
| 17197 | The idea of a triangle involves truths about it, so those are part of its essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the triangle must involve the affirmation that its three angles are equal to two right angles. Therefore this affirmation pertains to the essence of the idea of a triangle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that the essence is what is inescapable when you think of something. Does that mean that brandy is part of the essence of Napoleon? (Presumably not) Spinoza is ignoring the direction of explanation here. |
| 17174 | Outside the mind, there are just things and their properties [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Outside the intellect, there is nothing but substances and their affections. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 04) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close to the very sparse ontology espoused by modern philosophers who take their lead from the logic. |
| 17176 | The more reality a thing has, the more attributes it has [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more reality or being a thing possesses, the more attributes belong to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This commitment to degrees of existence (which I find baffling) is presumably to enable God to be the thing with infinite attributes, and an infinite degree of Being. What percentage of Being would you say you've got (on a good day)? |
| 10470 | There are only two kinds: sets, and possibilia (actual and possible particulars) [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's multi-purpose ontology seems to have only two kinds: sets and possibilia (actual and possible particulars). | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 3 | |
| A reaction: This is awfully like the ontology of his teacher Quine, but with the wicked addition of modal properties. It is no wonder that Lewis was a bit vague about the concrete boundary, as both of his kinds seem to be abstract. His Achilles' Heel? |
| 17179 | There must always be a reason or cause why some triangle does or does not exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason or cause which hinders its existence or which negates it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Spinoza is setting up a defence of the ontological argument, which seems to require that he lower his normal high standards of argument. |
| 17186 | Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) |
| 9650 | Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The idea of supervenience is when there could be no difference of one sort without difference of another sort. ..Clearly this 'could' indicates modality, and without modality we have nothing of interest. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might explain why philosophers are going to be more at home with the concept than neuroscientists would be. |
| 20127 | Laws of nature are universal, so everything must be understood through those laws [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature's laws ....are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal laws and rules. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pref) | |
| A reaction: Leiter calls this Methodological Naturalism, which says that the procedures and findings of philosophy should conform to those of science. I think I'm also a Substantive Naturalist, who says 'that's all there is'. |
| 8909 | Abstractions may well be verbal fictions, in which we ignore some features of an object [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The inevitable hypothesis is that abstractions are verbal fictions. We say we are speaking about abstractions when we are speaking abstractly about the original thing. We are ignoring some features, not introducing a new thing lacking those features. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Thus Lewis ends up pretty close to Locke and the traditional view. This makes abstraction not a feat of platonic perception, in which magical non-material objects are spotted, but a feat of counterfactual imagination. |
| 9057 | Vagueness is semantic indecision: we haven't settled quite what our words are meant to express [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I regard vagueness as semantic indecision: where we speak vaguely, we have not troubled to settle which of some range of precise meanings our words are meant to express. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4 n32) | |
| A reaction: But that seems to leave the problem of how you are going to decide the boundaries of 'heap' or 'bald', if we all agree to become more precise. In law precise boundaries are often drawn a bit arbitrarily, simply because a boundary is needed. |
| 9671 | Whether or not France is hexagonal depends on your standards of precision [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Say that France is hexagonal, and you thereby set the standards of precision low, and you speak the truth; say that France is not hexagonal (preferably on some other occasion) and you set the standards high, and again you speak the truth. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: This is very persuasive. It fits with my views on justification, which are to do with how high I (or more often 'we') decide to set the standards, thereby defining knowledge for that occasion. Hm. Has Lewis cracked vagueness? [P.S. NO!] |
| 15751 | Surely 'slept in by Washington' is a property of some bed? [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: That the most noteworthy property of this bed is that George Washington slept in it - surely this is true on some legitimate conception of properties? | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Wrong! This example is a nice clear test case. This is an absurd slippery slope. A bed he once looked at? I would have thought this was a relation the bed once entered into, and a relation isn't a property. |
| 15735 | Properties don't have degree; they are determinate, and things have varying relations to them [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I have made no place for properties that admit of degree, so that things may have more or less of the same property. There are plain properties, and then there are relations to them. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: An interesting question, little discussed. Elsewhere, Lewis ascribes all vagueness to our inadequate predicates, rather than to the world, which I find quite persuasive. |
| 9656 | The 'abundant' properties are just any bizarre property you fancy [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties are 'sparse' or 'abundant'. The abundant properties may be as extrinsic, as gruesomely gerrymandered, as miscellaneously disjunctive, as you please. They pay no heed to the qualitative joints, but carve things up every which way. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a logician's idea, which is needed for the notion of a set as pure extension, but it has very little to do with what I understand by the word 'property'. Better to call it a 'categorization'. E.g. filing George W. Bush under 'jackal'. |
| 15737 | To be a 'property' is to suit a theoretical role [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To deserve the name of 'property' is to be suited to play the right theoretical role. It is wrong to speak of 'the' role associated with the word 'property', as if it were fully and uncontroversially settled. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Once again I see a chicken-and-egg problem. Surely something has a theoretical role because of its intrinsic character, or its prior definition? How could you formulate a theory if you lacked properties? We don’t meet properties as gaps in theories. |
| 17170 | An 'attribute' is what the intellect takes as constituting an essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'attribute' I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance, as if constituting its essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 4) | |
| A reaction: Note that we would call these 'properties', but Spinoza has a word reserved for the properties of essences. He also has 'modes' of a thing, which are different. |
| 15742 | A disjunctive property can be unnatural, but intrinsic if its disjuncts are intrinsic [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A property can be unnatural by reason of disjunctiveness, as the property of being tripartite-or-liquid-or-cubical is, and it is intrinsic if its disjuncts are. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being utterly, shockingly and disgracefully wrong. A disjunction can't possibly be a property. Can a person have the property of being 'fat or thin'? A disjunction offers candidates for properties, not the properties themselves. |
| 15397 | If a global intrinsic never varies between possible duplicates, all necessary properties are intrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis defines a globally intrinsic property as one that never varies between duplicates across possible worlds. This has the immediate problem that any property that is necessarily had, or necessarily lacked, by every thing will be intrinsic. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.61-2) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties 'Analysis' | |
| A reaction: [He also cites Langton and Lewis 1998] To me this is the sort of tangle you get into when you equate properties with predicates. The problem seems to concern necessary predicates (but those may not be necessary properties). |
| 15398 | Global intrinsic may make necessarily coextensive properties both intrinsic or both extrinsic [Cameron on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If a globally intrinsic properties are those that never vary between duplicates across possible worlds, then necessarily coextensive properties will either be both intrinsic or both extrinsic. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.61-2) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties 'Analysis' | |
| A reaction: Presumably this problem would arise if some intrinsic property entailed an extrinsic property (or, less likely, vice versa). These sorts of problems arise when you try to define everything extensionally (even across possible worlds). |
| 15741 | All of the natural properties are included among the intrinsic properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be said that all intrinsic properties are perfectly natural, ...but it can plausibly be said that all perfectly natural properties are intrinsic. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Idea 15742 give the example he uses to support this claim. I like the concept of 'intrinsic' properties, but cannot currently see any use for the concept of 'natural' ones. |
| 15752 | We might try defining the natural properties by a short list of them [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We might try defining the natural properties by a short list, of the mass properties, charge properties, quark properties and flavours... | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n47) | |
| A reaction: He rejects this because of possible natural properties in other possible worlds. Defining anything by a list seems like cheating. Does John, Paul, George and Ringo 'define' something? |
| 14996 | Natural properties give similarity, joint carving, intrinsicness, specificity, homogeneity... [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Sharing of [perfectly natural properties] makes for qualitative similarity, they carve at the joints, they are intrinsic, they are highly specific, the sets of their instances are ipso facto not highly miscellaneous. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: All this sounds like just what I want, but when I read Lewis he seems to be arriving at these natural properties by the wrong route. Too much Hume, too much extensionalism. |
| 15744 | We can't define natural properties by resemblance, if they are used to explain resemblance [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Shall we say that natural properties are the ones whose instances are united by resemblance? - Not if we are going to say that resemblance is the sharing of natural properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: The target of this appears to be the proposal of Quinton. By now I have totally given up on so-called 'natural' properties. Lewis says the circularity (also in Idea 15743) is a reason to treat 'natural' here as primitive (though he rejects that). |
| 15743 | Defining natural properties by means of laws of nature is potentially circular [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Shall we say that natural properties are the ones that figure in laws of nature? - Not if we are going to use naturalness of properties when we draw the line between laws of nature and accidental regularities. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Personally I wouldn't dream of defining anything by saying that it figured in laws of nature. The laws, if there be such (see Mumford) are built up from more fundamental components, such as (perhaps) properties. |
| 15740 | I don't take 'natural' properties to be fixed by the nature of one possible world [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Some people suppose my natural properties are distinguished by nature, and hence natural in one world and not another. I intend properties to be natural or unnatural simpliciter, not relative to one or another world. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5 n44) | |
| A reaction: This is an important warning for the likes of me. I've have begun to doubt the utility of the term 'natural' property, and this reinforces my view. |
| 16262 | Sparse properties rest either on universals, or on tropes, or on primitive naturalness [Lewis, by Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: Lewis surveys three accounts of sparse properties: a set of objects instantiating a single universal; a set of objects having as parts duplicates of some trope; and a set distinguished by a further unanalyzable, primitive characteristic of naturalness. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.60-) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics | |
| A reaction: The very idea of suggesting that a property is some set of objects strikes me as bizarre. I present you with a table full of objects and say that is the complete set of some property. You then have to study the objects to find out what the property is. |
| 17171 | A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'mode' I understand the affections [affectiones] of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 5) | |
| A reaction: The attributes actually make up the essential consitution of the thing, and then the modes are entirely dependent on that essence. This is thoroughly Aristotelian, even though 'substantial forms' had been given up by this date. |
| 15739 | There is the property of belonging to a set, so abundant properties are as numerous as the sets [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The abundant properties far outrun the predicates of any language we could possibly possess. ...Properties are as abundant as the sets, because for any set whatever, there is the property of belonging to that set. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: The idea of calling such things 'properties' strikes me as preposterous, but it is interesting that we confront truths which outrun our predicates. We can't have all of these predicates together, but there is no impediment to any one of them. |
| 10723 | A property is the set of its actual and possible instances [Lewis, by Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Lewis proposes that a property is the set of its actual and possible instances. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 10 | |
| A reaction: I just can't make sense of any proposal that a property is a set. Things fall into natural sets because they have properties. Only a philosopher would believe such a weird proposal as this one. Triangular and trilateral? |
| 15399 | The property of being F is identical with the set of objects, in all possible worlds, which are F [Lewis, by Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Lewis thought that the property of being F was identical with the set of objects, in all possible worlds, which are F. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], §1.5) by Ross P. Cameron - Intrinsic and Extrinsic Properties | |
| A reaction: I can't make head or tail of a theory which says that a property is a set of objects. I'll show you a room full of objects and tell you they are a property. How are you going to work out what the property is? 'Being F' is a predicate, not a property! |
| 15732 | Properties don't seem to be sets, because different properties can have the same set [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The usual objection to taking properties as sets is that different properties may happen to be coextensive. Creatures with hearts are creatures with kidneys. Talking donkeys are flying pigs (since there are none). Yet the properties differ. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the difficulty which Lewis proposes to solve by defining properties across possible situations as well as actual ones, so that the properties can come apart. Nice move. |
| 15733 | Accidentally coextensive properties come apart when we include their possible instances [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: In modal realism, 'accidentally coextensive' properties are not coextensive. They only appear so when we ignore their other-worldly instances. If we consider all instances, then it never can happen that two properties are coextensive but might have been. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear why this 'can never happen'. Maybe even God can't make a hearted creature without kidneys. Lewis is aware of this question. |
| 15734 | If a property is relative, such as being a father or son, then set membership seems relative too [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A property that is instantiated in a relative way (such as being a father or a son) could not be the set of its instances? Is the thing to be included in the set or not? | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: He says philosophers contrive ways to define properties as functions, but he prefers to call such properties 'relations', and define them that way. It never even occurred to me that 'being a son' was one of my properties, but what do I know? |
| 9655 | Trilateral and triangular seem to be coextensive sets in all possible worlds [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can't take a property as sets of this-worldly instances, because two properties may be coextensive. Some say it is just as bad in all possible worlds, if the property is necessary, as when all triangles are trilateral, which seem different. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Renate/cordate is the standard example of the first problem. Lewis seems to equivocate over exactly what is meant by a property. I take the example to be a powerful objection to treating properties as sets. |
| 16290 | I believe in properties, which are sets of possible individuals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I believe in properties. That is, I have my candidates for entities to play the role and deserve the name. My principal candidates are sets of possible individuals. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: I am bewildered by any claim that a property is a 'set'. The property of being a teaspoon is just a large pile of teaspoons (one pile in each possible world)? This is the tyranny of first-order logic in philosophy. Are sets more real than properties? |
| 9653 | It would be easiest to take a property as the set of its instances [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The simplest plan for properties is to take a property just as the set of all its instances. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I find this a weird and counterintuitive proposal. I suppose if you think maths has been reduced to set theory, you might want to reduce everything else, and then we can all go home. I thought things were in sets because of their properties. |
| 9657 | You must accept primitive similarity to like tropes, but tropes give a good account of it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If you will not countenance primitive similarity in any form, then trope theory is not for you. But if you will, then duplication of tropes is an especially satisfactory form of primitive similarity to take. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This presents the question about tropes in a beautifully simple form. Perfect similarities seem fine, but partial similarities (red and pink things) are hard, and abstract reference (pinkness and redness) is even harder. |
| 15750 | Tropes need a similarity primitive, so they cannot be used to explain similarity [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Trope theory cannot analyse similarity, because duplication of tropes is itself a primitive relation of similarity. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: A reasonable reply to this one, I think, is that no one can explain or analyse similarity. To say that the same universal (or bunch of graded universals) is instantiated explains nothing. Maybe type-identity must be primitive in any theory? |
| 15749 | Trope theory (unlike universals) needs a primitive notion of being duplicates [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Trope theory has the drawback that we need the primitive notion of duplicate tropes, whereas with universals we just say that it is one and the same universal through some charged particles. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: The normal term for this primitive is 'perfect resemblance', though that seems to make close resemblance a bit complicated and puzzling. I'm not sure if I understand resemblance as a feature of the world, rather than of our minds. |
| 15748 | Trope theory needs a primitive notion for what unites some tropes [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Trope theory needs a primitive notion - 'instantion' in yet another sense - to say how the tropes that comprise a particle are united. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Any theory which says that objects are just 'bundles' of tropes is asking for trouble. But if you say (with Lowe and others) that tropes are 'modes' of existing entities, you still have to give an account of the entity. |
| 17195 | Things persevere through a force which derives from God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which each thing perseveres in its existence follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 45) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be an ontology of fundamental powers, but with divine backing, similar to that found in Leibniz. Modern powers theorists leave out God, since it doesn't seem to add anything. [Is this the idea of 'conatus'?] Darwin can't explain the force. |
| 17206 | The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The effort by which each thing endeavours to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the sort of thing that Leibniz frequently said. They were much more conscious of the active power of essences than in the scholastic tradition. This is Nietzsche's will to power. Spinoza talks of 'power' in his demonstration of this. |
| 15745 | Universals recur, are multiply located, wholly present, make things overlap, and are held in common [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: One and the same universal recurs; it is multiply located; it is wholly present in both instances, a shared common part whereby the two instances overlap. Being alike by sharing a universal is 'having something in common' in an absolutely literal sense. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: A helpful spelling out of the commitment involved (in Armstrong and others) in belief in universals. To me this is a convenient list of reasons why the whole proposal is nonsense. Why does Lewis take them seriously? |
| 15746 | If particles were just made of universals, similar particles would be the same particle [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that a particle is composed entirely of its several universals, because then another particle exactly like it would have the very same universals, and yet the two particles would not be the same. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is an argument either (implausibly) for haecceities or characterless substrata, or else for tropes (which are all separate, unlike universals). Particles as bundles of universals is not a theory I take seriously. |
| 15747 | Universals aren't parts of things, because that relationship is transitive, and universals need not be [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be said that a universal is instantiated by anything that has it as a part, since the relation of part to whole is transitive. If charge is part of a particle, which is part of an atom, then charge is part of the atom, but an atom isn't charged. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Given the total mystery involved in 'instantiation', it wouldn't surprise me if someone appealed to the part-whole relation, but all moves to explain instantiation are desperate. Make it a primitive, if you must, then tiptoe away. |
| 17192 | The 'universal' term 'man' is just imagining whatever is the same in a multitude of men [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Confused notions called 'universal', such as 'man', have arisen because so many images of individual men are formed that they exceed the power of imagination, ...so it imagines that only in which all of them agree, ...expressed by the name 'man'. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This strikes me as correct. I don't see how you can discuss universals without bringing in the way in which human psychology operates. |
| 17188 | A thing is unified if its parts produce a single effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of individuals so unite in one action that they are all simultaneously the cause of one effect, I consider them all, so far, as one individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. If a mob burn down a town, is that one effect, making the mob one thing? If a ball breaks a window, is that one effect, or a multitude of knock-on effects? Spinoza's view is very coarse-grained. |
| 5639 | Spinoza implies that thought is impossible without the notion of substance [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Without the notion of substance, according to Spinoza, thought itself becomes impossible. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.2 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza's strategy here looks like the right way to approach metaphysics. To what extent is it possible to change our conceptual scheme? Quine seems to imply that there is no limit; Davidson seems to imply that it is impossible. |
| 21857 | Substance is the power of self-actualisation [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza a substance is not a 'thing', but the power of actualising its own existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Does this say anything? |
| 4813 | Substance is that of which an independent conception can be formed [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By substance I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking blurring of epistemology and ontology. He eventually settles for it being a concept rather than a fact of nature. It still begs a thousand questions, but it probably leads to monads and logical atoms. |
| 9667 | Mereological composition is unrestricted: any class of things has a mereological sum [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I claim that mereological composition is unrestricted: any old class of things has a mereological sum. Whenever there are some things, even out of different possible worlds, there is something composed of just those things. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: To say the least, a rather unusual usage for the English word 'thing'. I presume that Lewis is in the grip of a slippery slope problem - that there is no way to define the borderline between things and non-things. Presumably 'class' is unrestricted too. |
| 13268 | There are no restrictions on composition, because they would be vague, and composition can't be vague [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Lewis says that if not every class has a fusion then there must be a restriction on composition. The only plausible restrictions would be vague ones, which is impossible, because then whether composition occurs would be vague. So every class has a fusion. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.212-3) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 9.1 | |
| A reaction: This is Lewis's key argument in favour of unrestricted composition, his Vagueness Argument. Why can't composition be vague? If you gradually reassemble a broken mirror, at what point does the mirror acquire its unity? |
| 4828 | The essence of a thing is what is required for it to exist or be conceived [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many assert that that without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This is one Aristotelian idea that won't go away, despite the seventeenth century onslaught. It seems obvious that natural kinds, natural objects and human artefacts have properties that can be divided into essential and non-essential. |
| 17187 | Essence gives existence and conception to things, and is inseparable from them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To the essence of anything pertains ...that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which in its turn cannot be nor be conceived without the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 2) | |
| A reaction: Note that essence concerns not only what things are, but also our ability to conceive them. |
| 13793 | An essential property is one possessed by all counterparts [Lewis, by Elder] |
| Full Idea: For Lewis, if a property possessed by a given individual or kind is missing in some of the contextually relevant counterparts, that property is accidental to the individual or kind; if it is possessed by all of them, that property is essential. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 248-263) by Crawford L. Elder - Real Natures and Familiar Objects 1.4 | |
| A reaction: This is a sophisticated version of the idea that essential properties are just necessary properties. It might make sense with a very sparse view of properties (mainly causal ones), but I think of essences as quite different from necessities. |
| 17191 | Nothing is essential if it is in every part, and is common to everything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That which is common to everything, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, forms the essence of no individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because treating essences as mere necessary properties threatens to include utter trivia and universal generalities, just because they are necessary. Rejecting things as 'trivial' by stipulation won't do. |
| 17184 | All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this is because it is analytic that essences produce effects, since that is the point of the concept of an essence - as the source of the explanations of the effects. |
| 9663 | A thing 'perdures' if it has separate temporal parts, and 'endures' if it is wholly present at different times [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Something 'perdures' iff it persists by having different temporal parts, or stages, at different times, though no one part of it is wholly present at more than one time; whereas it 'endures' iff it persists by being wholly present at more than one time. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher would come up with a concept like perdurance. I'm thinking about this one, and will get back to you in a later-numbered idea... He compares perdurance to the way a road persists through space. |
| 14737 | Properties cannot be relations to times, if there are temporary properties which are intrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: The problem of 'temporary intrinsics' is that in one model we think of properties as relations to times (I am 'bent' relative to now), but change sometime involves intrinsic properties. I am just plain bent, not bent with respect to something else. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], p.202-4) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism | |
| A reaction: [I've compressed Sider's summary] The question of whether intrinsic properties endure over time runs in parallel with the question of whether objects endure over time, and the two issues cannot be separated. |
| 9664 | Endurance is the wrong account, because things change intrinsic properties like shape [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The principal and decisive objection to endurance, as an account of the persistence of ordinary things, is the problem of temporary intrinsics. Persisting things change their intrinsic properties, such as their shape. My own shape keeps changing. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably if something was going to endure through time it would need a shape. If it has no particular shape, it lacks identity? Lewis discusses the problem at length. Why is a precise shape essential to anything? |
| 9665 | There are three responses to the problem that intrinsic shapes do not endure [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The problem for the endurance view of temporary intrinsic properties like shape is met be either saying shape is a disguised relational property, or only present properties are intrinsic, or the shapes belong to different things (perdurance). | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly implausible to deny that shape is a feature of all physical objects. Or it appears to be. Shapes are hard to pin down at the quantum level. How do you sharply divide moments for the perdurance view? ... |
| 17205 | Only an external cause can destroy something [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing cannot be destroyed except by an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 04) |
| 19280 | I can ask questions which create a context in which origin ceases to be essential [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If I ask how things would be if Saul Kripke had come from no sperm and egg, but was brought by a stork, that makes sense. I create a context that makes my question make sense, which is a context that makes origin not to be essential. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why delivery by a stork doesn't just count as a different origin, and hence it turns out to be essential to Kripke. If Kripke were a necessary being (and he's a good candidate), then he would have no origin. |
| 15968 | Identity is simple - absolutely everything is self-identical, and nothing is identical to another thing [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Identity is utterly simple and unproblematic. Everything is identical to itself; nothing is ever identical to anything except itself. There is never any problem about what makes something identical to itself; nothing can ever fail to be. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I have great problems with expressing this concept as a thing being 'identical to itself'. I will always say that it 'has an identity'. But then it is problematical, because what constitutes an identity? When do dispersing clouds lose it? |
| 15969 | Two things can never be identical, so there is no problem [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is never any problem about what makes two things identical; two things can never be identical. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This expresses Lewis's preference for usage of the word 'identity', rather than a simple solution. It pays no attention to type-identity, which is an obvious phenomenon. In some sense, it is just obvious that two electrons are 'identical'. |
| 17175 | There cannot be two substances with the same attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 05) | |
| A reaction: This is the Identity of Indiscernibles. |
| 17173 | Two substances can't be the same if they have different attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: This is the contrapositive of Leibniz's Law (i.e of the Indiscernibility of Identicals). Same things must have same attributes, so if the attributes differ they can't be the same things. |
| 17183 | Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is said to be impossible either because the essence of the thing itself or its definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause exists determinate to the production of such a thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Is the contradiction in nature or in logic? How can he be sure that there doesn't exist some causeless thing? |
| 4299 | Contingency is an illusion, resulting from our inadequate understanding [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The common notion of 'contingency' is for Spinoza an illusion, which derives from the fact that our view of reality is often inadequate and incomplete. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.8 | |
| A reaction: The crux is if there could another universe with different natural laws. Spinoza is in no position to deny the possibility. Cosmologists assume it is possible, and run computer simulations to test it. There is 'metaphysical' and 'natural' necessity. |
| 4824 | We only call things 'contingent' in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: A very good remark. Growing up is largely a realisation of the necessity of human affairs that you thought could be otherwise. (Forgive the pessimism!) As metaphysics, I find this appealing, too. |
| 4839 | Reason naturally regards things as necessary, and only imagination considers them contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary; ..hence, it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or to the past, as contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting claim, which seems to be central to rationalism. The empiricist response must be that imagination (which is founded on experience) is a better guide to metaphysical status than pure reason can ever be. |
| 4822 | Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the response of the empiricist: how does he know that? Hume says he can't know it, and Leibniz says he knows it a priori. Traditionally, 'necessary' is the dubious term, but maybe it is 'contingent' which is meaningless. |
| 17182 | Necessity is in reference to essence or to cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is called necessary either in reference to its essence or its cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: I like any proposal that necessity should be 'in reference to' something, rather than being free-standing. I like to add necessary 'for' something, which is often conceptual necessity. Roots are necessary for trees. |
| 4818 | People who are ignorant of true causes imagine anything can change into anything else [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who are ignorant of true causes make complete confusion - thinking that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as seed, and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself can be guilty of this, but it strikes me as a key idea. Humean scepticism about causation seems to me the product of eighteenth century ignorance about the mechanisms of cause and effect which have since been uncovered by science. |
| 20310 | Error does not result from imagining, but from lacking the evidence of impossibility [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea which excludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17 s) | |
| A reaction: These may be the wisest words I have yet found on conceivability and possibility. My example is imagining a bonfire on the moon, which seems possible until you fully grasp what fire is. |
| 9660 | The impossible can be imagined as long as it is a bit vague [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Imaginability is a poor criterion of possibility. We can imagine the impossible provided we do not imagine it in perfect detail and all the time. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: In general I agree, but Williamson nicely opposes this view. The fact is that we derive most of our understanding of what is possible from imagination. We just have to realise that we can get it wrong, and so must attend to detail. |
| 9669 | There are no free-floating possibilia; they have mates in a world, giving them extrinsic properties [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There are no free-floating possibilia. Every possibility is part of a world - exactly one world - and thus comes surrounded by worldmates, and fully equipped with extrinsic properties in virtue of its relations to them. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a key claim in the possible worlds understanding of modality, contrary to the more common sense and normal language claim that a possibility is an isolated thing. |
| 16133 | Possible worlds can contain contradictions if such worlds are seen as fictions [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If worlds were like stories or story-tellers, there would indeed be room for worlds according to which contradictions are true. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2 n3) | |
| A reaction: Most existing fictions contain tiny contradictions, but we might ask whether that thereby disqualifies them from depicting genuinely 'possible' worlds. |
| 16132 | On mountains or in worlds, reporting contradictions is contradictory, so no such truths can be reported [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To tell the alleged truth about contradictory things that happen on a mountain is just contradicting yourself, but you can't tell the truth by contradicting yourself. There is no mountain where contradictions are true, and impossible worlds are no better. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2 n3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He says this works for any 'restricted' domain like a mountain or a real world, but that it wouldn't apply in an unrestricted fictional world. |
| 16283 | For me, all worlds are equal, with each being actual relative to itself [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: For me, all the worlds are on an equal footing in that each is actual relative to itself and none is actual relative to any other. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Lewis says the world we call 'actual' is simply a matter of how our indexicals refer. That sounds the wrong way round to me (as so often with Lewis). |
| 12255 | For Lewis there is no real possibility, since all possibilities are actual [Oderberg on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Lewis-style modal realism eliminates all real possibility since on his account everything is actual relative to its own world. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by David S. Oderberg - Real Essentialism 6.2 | |
| A reaction: Since it is possible for me to be in New York and in Chicago, but not both at once, his possibilities have to be kept apart, even though they are actual. I expect my visit to Chicago to remain as only a possibility. |
| 9219 | Lewis posits possible worlds just as Quine says that physics needs numbers and sets [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's argument for possible worlds parallels Quine's for the existence of sets: our best overall empirical theory, mathematical physics, quantifies over real numbers, so we have reason to posit real numbers, or the sets to which they may be reduced. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.6 | |
| A reaction: They both strike me as suspect. Indeed, the extreme implausibility of Lewis's conclusion throws doubt on Quine's original strategy. I'm happy to work with sets and possible worlds, and only worry about ontological commitment at a later stage. |
| 15022 | If possible worlds really exist, then they are part of actuality [Sider on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The familiar complaint against Lewis is that if his worlds existed, they'd be part of actuality. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 11.5 | |
| A reaction: Sider presents that as rather superficial, but it sounds a pretty good objection to me. Lewis would note that only our world has the indexical features which he says pick out actuality. Real possible worlds might lack indexical features? |
| 10469 | A world is a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A world is a maximal mereological sum of spatiotemporally interrelated things. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: (I wonder what Lewis's account of space was?) A mereological sum is "the least inclusive thing that includes all the parts" (p.69). It is maximal when all 'worldmates' are parts. But then 'worldmates' are defined as parts, so it threatens circularity. |
| 16441 | Lewis rejects actualism because he identifies properties with sets [Lewis, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: It is the identification of properties with sets that rules out, for Lewis, an actualist account of possible worlds. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Mere Possibilities 1.1 | |
| A reaction: I suppose the sets which are the properties have to include all the possible red things as well as the actual one. This escapes the renate/cordate problem. |
| 16282 | Ersatzers say we have one world, and abstract representations of how it might have been [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The ersatzers say that instead of an incredible plurality of concrete worlds, we can have one world only, and countless abstract entities representing ways that this world might have been. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Put me down as an ersatzer. They seem to be the same as Actualists. Are worlds other possible worlds, or ways 'this world might have been'? Not the same. Does actuality constrain what is possible? (Barcan formula?) |
| 16284 | Ersatz worlds represent either through language, or by models, or magically [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I distinguish three principal ways ersatz worlds represent: linguistic, in which they are like stories or theories; pictorial, like pictures or isomorphic scale models; or magical, in which it is just their nature to represent. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I think I incline to the 'model' view. The linguistic version means animals can't assess possibilities. I take modelling to be basic to what a mind is, and what a mind is for. |
| 16286 | Linguistic possible worlds need a complete supply of unique names for each thing [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There are two difficulties with Carnap's taking possible worlds as linguistic. Everything must have a name, or our state-descriptions will be silent about nameless things, and nothing may have two names, or we may affirm and deny a predicate of one thing. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea of possible worlds as linguistic has no appeal for me, so this problem doesn't surprise or bother me, but it sounds fairly terminal for the project. |
| 16287 | Maximal consistency for a world seems a modal distinction, concerning what could be true together [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An ersatz world must be maximally consistent (hence destroyed by an additional sentences), …but that is prima facie a modal distinction: a set of sentences is consistent iff those sentences, as interpreted, could all be true together. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This is indicative of Lewis's motivation for his project, which is to eliminate modal facts from the world. Only a vast multitude of non-modal concrete worlds can satisfy all the contraints. Cf many-worlds quantum mechanics for non-locality. |
| 9662 | Linguistic possible worlds have problems of inconsistencies, no indiscernibles, and vocabulary [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic representations of possible worlds have three problems: some descriptions are inconsistent (which worlds cannot be); we cannot have indiscernible descriptions (though some worlds might be so); and descriptions are limited by vocabulary. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Lewis is wonderful at getting problems clearly on the table. I take the idea of possible worlds as linguistic entities to be a non-starter, because (as usual) animals do it too, when they think of possibilities, which even the dimmest ones must do. |
| 7690 | If sets exist, then defining worlds as proposition sets implies an odd distinction between existing and actual [Jacquette on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If sets exist, then the conventional concept of a logically possible world as a proposition set requires a counterintuitive distinction between existence and actuality, between what exists and what is actual. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints the obvious difficulty that most people have with Lewis's claim that possible worlds exist. Russell's claim that universals 'subsist' (Idea 5409) is a similar attempt to have two different sorts of existence in your ontology. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 14404 | The counterpart relation is sortal-relative, so objects need not be a certain way [Lewis, by Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Lewis takes the counterpart relation to be sortal-relative, so he (no less than Quine) denies that objects, qua existing, are necessarily a certain way. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Trenton Merricks - Truth and Ontology 5.III n10 | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that there could be two different versions of the same possible world (certainly not!), or that worlds are entirely created by our concepts rather than by what is actually possible. |
| 5440 | A counterpart in a possible world is sufficiently similar, and more similar than anything else [Lewis, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: 'Jack could have been taller' implies a different Jack in a different world, so Lewis defines a counterpart in a possible world as an individual sufficiently similar to Jack, and more similar to Jack than anything else in that world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.115 | |
| A reaction: If we say something like "I could have been twins" or "I could have been a genius" in another world, it would need an odd concept of my personal identity for it to remain identical in those counterfactual situations. Lewis has a point. |
| 5441 | Why should statements about what my 'counterpart' could have done interest me? [Mautner on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If I only have counterparts in possible worlds who are not identical to me, statements about what I could have done will seem irrelevant to me, because they will be about someone else. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.115 | |
| A reaction: We might rephrase the statement as "I could have been the person who did x". Presumably my counterpart is not just any stranger, but someone I could have been. "I could have been a brick" - now that seems irrelevant to me! |
| 16291 | In counterpart theory 'Humphrey' doesn't name one being, but a mereological sum of many beings [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: For the counterpart theorist, the trick is to say that 'Humphrey' names not the Humphrey of our world, and not the Humphrey of another, but rather the trans-world individual who is the mereological sum of all those local Humphreys. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: On Lewis's perdurantism Humphrey is a 'spacetime worm' across his lifetime. Now we are adding all the possible Humphreys to the sum. I'm losing track of Humphrey's shape. |
| 11903 | Extreme haecceitists could say I might have been a poached egg, but it is too remote to consider [Lewis, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Lewis's strategy for defending extreme haecceitism is that supposed impossibilities (that I might have been a poached egg) could be reconstrued as genuine possibilities that are so remote from reality that they are ignored. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 239-) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 9.3 | |
| A reaction: Not a promising route. Wiggins asks: if you think I could have been a poached egg, start by defining more precisely this 'I' to which we are referring. The definition will blatantly exclude any possibility of my poachedegghood. |
| 15129 | Haecceitism implies de re differences but qualitative identity [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If two worlds differ in what they represent de re concerning some individual, but do not differ qualitatively in any way, I shall call that a haecceitist difference. Haecceitism, then, says there are at least some haecceitist differences between worlds. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Lewis bases this view on Kaplan. My brief summary of this is that 'identity may be hidden'. If all electrons are different, what distinguishes them? |
| 9670 | Extreme haecceitism says you might possibly be a poached egg [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme version of haecceitism says that anything could possibly have any qualitative character; for instance, there is a world according to which you are a poached egg. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably a plausible haecceitist view would have to be combined with essentialism, given that the possibility that I might be a poached egg is beyond my intuitive grasp. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |
| 5640 | Spinoza's three levels of knowledge are perception/imagination, then principles, then intuitions [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza there are three levels of knowledge: first, sense perception or imagination, second, reasoned reflection leading to principles, and third (the highest), intuition, in which the adequacy of an idea is immediately known. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This notion of rising levels of knowledge has an obvious background in Plato. The third level is clearly rationalist, where empiricists would probably never aspire to rise above level two. I share the empiricist suspicion of level three. |
| 17211 | Understanding is the sole aim of reason, and the only profit for the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting that which conduces to understanding. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 26) | |
| A reaction: I wish philosophers would agree that the aim of their subject is to achieve broad and general understanding of reality - and nothing else. If you want to change the world, that isn't philosophy. If you think understanding is impossible, drop philosophy. |
| 21801 | Unlike Descartes' atomism, Spinoza held a holistic view of belief [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Descartes, who held an atomist theory of belief (that we can assent to a belief quite independently of our other beliefs), Spinoza endorsed a holistic theory of belief - that our degree of affirmation is essentially determined by our other ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49S) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Since I am a fan of the coherence theory of justification, I seem obligated to accept a fairly holistic account of the acceptance of beliefs. Descartes is a foundationalist. |
| 17193 | True ideas intrinsically involve the highest degree of certainty [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: No one who has a true idea is ignorant that a true idea involves the highest certitude; to have a true idea signifying just this, to know a thing perfectly or as well as possible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43) | |
| A reaction: This wildly optimistic view is found in rationalists of the period. Rationalism only becomes tolerable if fallibilism is added to it. See Bonjour. |
| 21863 | You only know you are certain of something when you actually are certain of it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first certain about it? | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question, which concerns how you get to the state of full understanding or certainty in the first place. Spinoza thinks only certainty counts as knowledge, which seems to derive from Descartes. I prefer Peirce. |
| 17199 | A man who assents without doubt to a falsehood is not certain, but lacks a cause to make him waver [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This is a seventeenth century rationalist desperate to say that the reason can deliver certainty, in the face of idiots who are totally certain about astrology, fairies and what not. Vain hope, I'm afraid. Fallibilist rationalism is required. |
| 5638 | 'I think' is useless, because it is contingent, and limited to the first person [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'I think' was useless to Spinoza, because it expresses a merely contingent proposition, where certainty must be founded in necessity, and because it refers to the first person, when truth comes from rising above our own mentality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I find both of these criticisms very appealing. One might simply say that the starting point of philosophy is not the process of thinking, but the contents of thinking. Descartes' move is like astronomers becoming obsessed with telescopes. |
| 4831 | If the body is affected by an external object, the mind can't help believing that the object exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: This is like one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', and seems to me a powerful idea. One of the basic questions of epistemology is, apart from the question 'which beliefs can I justify?', also 'which beliefs can I never abandon?' Skip the scepticism? |
| 4865 | The eyes of the mind are proofs [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The eyes of the mind … are none other than proofs. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful slogan for rationalists! Technically it sounds a bit dodgy, as steps seem to be required for a proof, whereas the eyes of the mind presumably offer a priori intuitions, or clear and distinct conceptions. In essence, he is right. |
| 20306 | Once we have experienced two feelings together, one will always give rise to the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by one of them, it will also be affected by the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr14) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as better expressed than Hume's version, which relies on examples. It is more generalised than Hume, since it will cover contiguity and resemblance and causation, all under the heading of the arising affects. |
| 4835 | Anyone who knows, must know that they know, and even know that they know that they know.. [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: A delightfully bold claim! This is 'super internalism', but it seems to require that we must be certain in order to know, whereas I think my own view is internalist but 'fallibilist' - I know, while admitting I could be wrong. |
| 20308 | Encounters with things confuse the mind, and internal comparisons bring clarity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind has only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and external bodies, as long as it is perceived from fortuitous encounters with things, ...and not internally, from the agreements, differences and oppositions of a number of things at once. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29s) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is a very nice expression of the commitment to coherence as justification, typical of the rationalist view of things. Empiricists are trapped in an excessively atomistic concept of knowledge (one impression or sense datum at a time). |
| 16279 | General causal theories of knowledge are refuted by mathematics [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Causal accounts of knowledge are all very well in their place, but if they are put forward as general theories, then mathematics refutes them. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: You might have some sort of notion of an abstraction from causation which mimicked it in the mathematics case. Lots of things seem to be 'forced' in mathematics. Call it 'ersatz causation'. Necessities are enforcers. |
| 9661 | Induction is just reasonable methods of inferring the unobserved from the observed [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I use the word 'induction' broadly, to cover all the methods we deem reasonable for forming beliefs about the unobserved parts of our world on the basis of experience with the observed parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Good. Attempts to be precise about it seem to be hopeless and invite paradoxes. Personally I just define it as 'learning from experience', because that makes what we do continuous with the behaviour of other sensible animals. |
| 9652 | To just expect unexamined emeralds to be grue would be totally unreasonable [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Some beliefs are just unreasonable in a strong sense. Think of the man who, for no special reason, expects unexamined emeralds to be grue. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice converse way of seeing the point that 'grue' is such an totally artificial predicate. I still say that the most illuminating point is that grue is not a colour, so seeing a grue thing is no confirmation at all. |
| 4312 | To understand a phenomenon, we must understand why it is necessary, not merely contingent [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Adequate understanding of a phenomenon, for Spinoza, involves a complete understanding of its causes, and this in turn involves a dissolving of the illusion of contingency and a recognition of the necessity of its being thus and not otherwise. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.168 | |
| A reaction: This is the appeal of the rationalist dream. We want a god-like grasp of things, not a superficial perception of what seems to be going on. |
| 9658 | An explanation tells us how an event was caused [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An explanation, I think, is an account of etiology: it tells us something about how an event was caused. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Will this cover mathematical explanations? Numbers would have to have causal powers. |
| 16280 | Often explanaton seeks fundamental laws, rather than causal histories [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes the pursuit of explanation is more the pursuit of unified and general fundamental laws than of information about the causal histories of events. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree, given the 'sometimes'. I don't think that Newton's Law of Gravity (say), with its lovely equation, actually explained anything at all about gravity. Finding the law closes the quest for an accurate description of what happens. |
| 16274 | If the well-ordering of a pack of cards was by shuffling, the explanation would make it more surprising [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Suppose you find in a hotel room a pack of cards in exactly standard order. Not surprising - maybe it's a new deck, or someone arranged them. Not so. They got that way by being fairly shuffled. The explanation would make the explanandum more surprising. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] A lovely Lewisian example, that instantly makes big trouble for the (implausible) view that a cause is something which increases the likelihood of a thing. |
| 4833 | The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 19) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Aristotle's claim that the 'psuché' is the 'form' of the body. Spinoza is appealingly modern in his view. The mapping of the body (our prioprioceptic sense) strikes me as central to the nature of the mind. |
| 16198 | Knowledge is the essence of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 36 n) | |
| A reaction: This is in a context of discussing the human relation to God. See Keith Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' for an exploration of this idea. (@BenedictSpinoza came up with this one) |
| 17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will and the intellect are one and the same. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will is distinguished from the intellect, the latter being finite, the former infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By the will I understand a faculty of affirming or denying, but not a desire; a faculty, I say, by which the mind affirms or denies that which is true or false. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This is to be compared with the empiricist tendency to say that there are nothing but desires. On the whole I'm with Spinoza here. Hobbes thinKs of actions in the world, but Spinoza sees the will as operating in the process of reasoning. |
| 21805 | Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held a bundle theory of the mind, according to which our mind is but a bundle 'composed of a great many ideas'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 15) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that the mind lacks unity, and also lacks a Self. Spinoza doesn't say much about this view. |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many things are observed in brutes which far surpass human sagacity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: Lovely - especially in an age when animals were being actively downgraded (e.g. by Descartes) in order to upgrade man. |
| 17212 | To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) | |
| A reaction: A possible epigraph for this website. Perhaps it should be required by law that this be printed on the frontispiece of every philosophy book ever published. |
| 21804 | Faculties are either fictions, or the abstract universals of ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Faculties are either complete fictions, or nothing but metaphysical beings or universals, which are used to forming from particulars (as 'stoneness' is to a stone). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: So they are, at best, the sources of our concepts. Does that mean one faculty for each concept, or one huge concept-generating faculty? |
| 4832 | If the body is affected by two things together, the imagining of one will conjure up the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the other also. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Very interesting to see a great rationalist philosopher making an observation right at the heart of Hume's theory of knowledge (associationism). Clearly an associationist theory of psychology need not imply a materialist (connectionist) theory of mind. |
| 21869 | Our own force of persevering is nothing in comparison with external forces [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which a man perserveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This states the obvious, but is important as a way of viewing things. I think Nietzsche's notion of Will to Power comes in here, as a unified account of both forces. |
| 20307 | As far as possible, everything tries to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its own being. ...[7] The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: This is covered by his word 'conatus'. Obviously this covers plants as well as sentient beings. Mountains have no power to persevere. Since Spinoza sees this as basic, he is not far from Nietzsche. |
| 21803 | The conatus (striving) of mind and body together is appetite, which is the essence of man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When striving [conatus] is related to the Mind it is called Will, but when related to the Mind and Body it is called Appetite. This Appetite is the essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote this preservation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza seems to see 'conatus' as a fairly unified thing, where Nietzsche sees the will to power as a combination of many competing 'drives'. I think Nietzsche is closer to the truth. |
| 4836 | The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of Hume's 'bundle of perceptions' report of introspection. It is in tune with a modern 'animalist' view of a person, and with a view of the mind as a map of the body and its environs. Is he a sceptic about personal identity? |
| 21861 | Self-knowledge needs perception of the affections of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: 'The ideas of the affections of the body' seems to be twice removed from the actual body, so I am not crystal clear what this says. The idea of knowing yourself with no involvement at all of the body seems absurd. |
| 17216 | The poet who forgot his own tragedies was no longer the same man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that he cannot very well be said to be the same man, as was the case with a certain Spanish poet ...who was so oblivious of his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had composed were his own. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 39) | |
| A reaction: This seems to need Locke's distinction between 'man' and 'person', since the poor poet was clearly the same human being. Spinoza places huge emphasis on the intellect as the essence of the man. |
| 4814 | A thing is free if it acts by necessity of its own nature, and the act is determined by itself alone [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That thing is called free which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 7) | |
| A reaction: This points to the obvious thought that nothing is independent enough to achieve freedom. Our concept of nature is of almost endless interdependence. God seems the only thing that could possibly qualify, though some might say humans could. |
| 21802 | An act of will can only occur if it has been caused, which implies a regress of causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each volition can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined by another cause, and this cause again by another, and so on, to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Acts of will are usually responses to situations, so it seems a bit simplistic to think that they are all spontaneous sui generis causal events. That argument won't work, of course, for a random volition that is out of context. |
| 4837 | 'Free will' is a misunderstanding arising from awareness of our actions, but ignorance of their causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I have recently come to totally agree with this. The whole concept of free will seems to me incoherent, and Spinoza pinpoints the error. We aren't equipped to know the origins of the thoughts that arrive in our consciousnesses. |
| 4843 | Would we die if we lacked free will, and were poised between equal foods? Yes! [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected, if a man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst. ..Personally I am ready to admit that he would die. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: A nicely defiant way of demonstrating his rejection of free will. I have to agree with him. Even if there were such a thing as 'free will', it is hard to see how it could act as a tie-breaker. Which way would it freely decide? |
| 4844 | The mind is not free to remember or forget anything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: An interesting little corrective if you were thinking that your total control over you mind proved that you had free will. Once you face up to your lack of control of the memory process, you begin to realise how little of your mind even feels controlled. |
| 4311 | We think we are free because we don't know the causes of our desires and choices [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetites, yet never give a thought to the causes which dispose them to desire or to exercise the will as they do, since they are wholly unaware of them. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates the determinist idea nicely. In the end we just choose, but we have no idea why we prefer one reason to another, or simply opt for one thing rather than another. |
| 7828 | The actual world is the only one God could have created [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Said to be a "notorious" proposition. This is a key idea in philosophy because it represents (like solipsism) one of the extremes - there is no such thing as contingency, and that all things are necessary. It is daft not to take Spinoza seriously on this. |
| 21860 | Ideas and things have identical connections and order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: I hadn't registered until Beth Lord pointed it out that this is Spinoza's parallelism of the mental and the physicalism, which seems to be roughly the same as the views of Leibniz and Malebranche, but with a different explanation. |
| 4308 | Mind and body are one thing, seen sometimes as thought and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: I suppose we might now call this 'property dualism'. It is odd that when you examine one property, the other is nowhere to be seen. |
| 4846 | We are incapable of formulating an idea which excludes the existence of our body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea which excludes the existence of our body cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: A fascinating claim. At the heart of Descartes is an unspoken thought experiment exploring the possibility of a disembodied mind. This is a beautiful challenge to the very concept of such a thing, and points to a grealty superior theory of mind. |
| 4834 | Mind and body are the same thing, sometimes seen as thought, and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of body and body, that is, mind and body, are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: This is an appealingly modern view, but a bit glib. Phenomenologically, the mind seen as thought and the body seen as extension are about as wildly different as it is possible to be. This needs explanation. |
| 23951 | Emotion is a modification of bodily energy, controlling our actions [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By emotion [affectus] I understand the modification of energy of the body by which the power of action is aided or restrained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]), quoted by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] Solomon gives this as the earliest version of the 'hydraulic' model of emotions, later found in Freud and Jung. Very unusual to give a wholly physical account of these psychic states. |
| 4849 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain and desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I recognise only three primitive or primary emotions, namely, pleasure, pain and desire. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IIIEm Df 4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but hard to justify. Presumably one can analyse fear as desire for no pain, and grief as desire for the return of pleasure, etc. It is a nice exercise in introspective psychology, but I don't feel much wiser for it. |
| 23990 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire [Spinoza, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held that the three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III P59) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: If you are aiming for a minimal list, this is quite good. One active, one good passive, one bad passive. Output and input. |
| 17203 | Minds are subject to passions if they have inadequate ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 01) | |
| A reaction: An exceptionally intellectualist view of emotions! |
| 4864 | An emotion is only bad if it hinders us from thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is only bad or hurtful, in so far as it hinders the mind from being able to think. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This sounds sensible. It fits Spinoza's quasi-stoicism that he should be happy with emotion (as natural), but also that true 'living by nature' requires control by reason. Only a wild romantic would think emotion better than judgement as a guide. |
| 7832 | Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza says the only way to overcome emotions is with higher emotions, thus distinguishing himself from the Stoics, who argued that the only thing to do with the surly crowd of human emotions is to have them all shot. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: The modern view would certainly be that the Stoics were responsible for massive problems in European civilization (thought the Buddhist have similar views). Emotions are now seen as integral even to very pure reasoning. |
| 4863 | An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a little optimistic, but it is also obviously true, in the sense that the only proper control we have of our own behaviour is through thought and judgement, which presuppose awareness of what needs controlling. |
| 4841 | People make calculation mistakes by misjudging the figures, not calculating them wrongly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When men make mistakes in calculation, they have one set of figures in their mind, and another on the paper. If we could see into their minds, they do not make a mistake. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 47) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully optimistic assertion of faith in reason! He seems to imply an infallibility in reason, which seems a bit implausible. If I make 7+6=14, MUST I have muddled the 6 with a 7? Presumably Spinoza was good at arithmetic. |
| 21807 | Ideas are powerful entities, which can produce further ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza conceives of ideas as intrinsically powerful entities, which have a capacity to produce further ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 6 | |
| A reaction: Is the idea the source of the entire philosophy of Hegel? I find Hegel's claim to infer huge chains of ideas from very simple origins quite implausible. I also rather doubt whether a wholly isolated idea can produce a further idea. |
| 4830 | An 'idea' is a mental conception which is actively formed by the mind in thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'idea', I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing (this is not a passive perception with regard to the object, but expresses an activity of the mind). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 3) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting as a seventeenth century attempt to grapple with the nature of thought. Spinoza sees it as of the essence of mind, since it is what the mind contributes, rather than what happens to the mind when it experiences. |
| 4842 | Ideas are not images formed in the brain, but are the conceptions of thought [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be equating 'ideas' with what we now call 'concepts', which presumably makes Spinoza less open to criticism than other philosophers of his time, for postulating baffling mental copies of the world. |
| 20311 | An idea involves affirmation or negation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea, insofar as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49 sII) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza clearly distinguishes ideas from images, and here seems to identify ideas with propositions. Nowadays we say these are 'true or false', but Spinoza is more personal and psychological. I prefer his way of putting it. |
| 8901 | Abstraction is usually explained either by example, or conflation, or abstraction, or negatively [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction is usually explained in one of four ways: the Way of Example (cf. donkeys and numbers), the Way of Conflation (same as sets), the Negative Way (non-spatial and non-causal) or the Way of Abstraction (incomplete descriptions). | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: [Compressed; a footnote dismisses Dummett's fifth way] Example has blurred boundaries, and explains nothing. Gerrymandered sets don't produce concepts. Negative accounts explain nothing. So it's the Way of Abstraction! |
| 8904 | The Way of Abstraction says an incomplete description of a concrete entity is the complete abstraction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The Way of Abstraction says abstract entities are abstractions from concrete entities; they result from somehow subtracting specificity, so that an incomplete description of the original concrete entity is a complete description of the abstraction. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: Defined like this, it rather looks as if abstractions would be entirely verbal - which may well be the correct situation, except that higher animals seem capable of minimal levels of abstraction. This Way is denigrated by Frege and Geach. |
| 8938 | The Way of Example compares donkeys and numbers, but what is the difference, and what are numbers? [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The Way of Example says concrete entities are things like donkeys and puddles, but abstract entities are things like numbers. That gives us little guidance. There are no uncontroversial accounts of numbers, and donkeys and number differ in too many ways. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: That demolishes that fairly swiftly. It may be unfair to demand an agreed account of numbers, but the respect(s) in which donkeys and numbers differ needs to be spelled out before anything useful has been said. |
| 8903 | Abstracta can be causal: sets can be causes or effects; there can be universal effects; events may be sets [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Is it true that sets or universals cannot enter into causal interaction? Why can't we say that a set of things causes something, or something causes a set of effects? Or positive charge has characteristic effects? Or an event is a sort of set? | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: This idea, and 8902, form a devastating critique of attempts to define abstraction in a purely negative way, as non-spatial and non-causal. Only a drastic revision of widely held views about sets, universals and events could save that account. |
| 8902 | If abstractions are non-spatial, then both sets and universals seem to have locations [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If abstract entities are not located, then a set of things does seem to have a location, though perhaps a divided one; and universals, if they are wholly present in each particular, are where their instances are, so negation can't define abstraction. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: He admits that non-spatial accounts of sets and universals are possible, but the jury is out on both of them, and more cautious theories, even if they are realist, will give them both locations. A good argument. |
| 8905 | If universals or tropes are parts of things, then abstraction picks out those parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A theory of non-spatiotemporal parts of things, whether recurring universals or non-recurring tropes, makes good sense of some abstractions. Unit negative charge is a universal common to particles, and an abstraction by being part of them. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: He cautiously refers to 'some' abstractions. It is one of Donald Williams's proud boasts concerning his trope theory that it will handle this problem well. I'm not sure that we should be saying that abstractions are actually concrete bits of things. |
| 8906 | If we can abstract the extrinsic relations and features of objects, abstraction isn't universals or tropes [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Why can't we abstract a highly extrinsic aspect of something, say its surname, or its spatiotemporal location, or its role in a causal network, or its role in some body of theory? But these are unsuitable candidates for being genuine universals or tropes. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: (This is a criticism of the proposal in Idea 8905) Obviously we can abstract such things. In particular the role in a causal network is a function, which is a central example of an abstract idea. Russell keeps reminding us that relations are universals. |
| 8907 | The abstract direction of a line is the equivalence class of it and all lines parallel to it [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can abstract the direction of a line by taking the direction as the equivalence class of that line and all lines parallel to it. There is no subtraction of detail, but a multiplication of it; by swamping it, the specifics of the original line get lost. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: You can ask how wide a line is, but not how wide a direction is, so a detail IS being subtracted. I don't see how you can define the concept of a banana by just saying it is 'every object which is equivalent to a banana'. 'Parallel' is an abstraction. |
| 8908 | For most sets, the concept of equivalence is too artificial to explain abstraction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Most sets cannot be regarded as abstractions by equivalence: most sets are equivalence classes only under thoroughly artificial equivalence. (And the empty set is not an equivalence class at all). | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: [Recorded for further investigation..] My intuitions certainly cry out against such a thin logical notion giving a decent explanation of such a rich activity as abstraction. |
| 16289 | We can't account for an abstraction as 'from' something if the something doesn't exist [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We cannot really be talking about the things whence an abstraction-like entity is abstracted if there are no such things. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like a killer blow, but I don't think so. I can't think of a concept which doesn't have a possible basis in reality, assuming that it might be a complex assemblage of abstracted components. |
| 16278 | A particular functional role is what gives content to a thought [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Anything that is a thinker at all has a thought with a certain content in virtue of being in a state which occupies a certain functional role. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: So often Lewis seems to get things the wrong way round. Maybe if you invert his entire (fabulously consistent) philosophy, you get the right answer? I take the content to be what makes the role possible. |
| 9654 | A proposition is a set of entire possible worlds which instantiate a particular property [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I identify propositions with certain properties - namely, with those that are instantiated only by entire possible worlds. Then if properties generally are the sets of their instances, a proposition is a set of possible worlds. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't get this. How can the proposition that tomatoes are edible be an entire set of possible worlds? The proposition seems to be about tomatoes, and nothing else. Should we talk of 'possibilities', rather than of 'possible worlds'? |
| 15736 | A proposition is the property of being a possible world where it holds true [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I identify propositions with properties that are instantiated only by entire possible worlds. If properties are the sets of their instances, a proposition is a set of possible worlds. A proposition is the property of being a world where it holds. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is so far away from my concept of a proposition (as a truth-evaluable representational mental event) that I struggle to compute it. So the proposition that I am sitting here is the property of 'being the actual world'. Eh? |
| 15738 | Propositions can't have syntactic structure if they are just sets of worlds [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If it is central to 'proposition' that there be quasi-syntactic structure, so that there are subject-predicate, or negative, or conjunctive, or quantified propositions, then sets of possible worlds will not do. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: He proposes 'more complicated set-theoretic constructions out of possibilia' instead. I am very much committed to propositions having quasi-syntactic structure. |
| 4838 | Claiming that actions depend on the will is meaningless; no one knows what the will is [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Saying that human actions depend on the will is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond to. What the will is, and how it moves the body, no one knows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: As so often, the rationalist Spinoza agrees with many empiricists about this one. If there is no such thing as the will, then there isn't much prospect of it being free, thought one might talk about 'freedom of thought' instead. |
| 4309 | Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same' [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.159 | |
| A reaction: The 'will' is certainly a dubious concept, though it seems involved with desire and actual. In a sense, I suppose, all pursuits of reason are acts of will. |
| 20305 | Whenever we act, then desire is our very essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is agreed to be determined, from any affection of it, to do something. ...Desire is appetite, together with the consciousness of it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def of Aff I) | |
| A reaction: [I think that is the gist of it!] This sounds a bit circular, but seems to say that actions are almost entireoy the expression of desires. |
| 21868 | We love or hate people more strongly because we think they are free [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Because men consider themselves to be free, they have a greater love or hate toward one another than toward other things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 49S) | |
| A reaction: A very penetrating remark. If we abandon the concept of free will, I suspect that we will all become much more easy-going and tolerant, but the thought that feelings of love might also decline is a sobering one. |
| 17202 | We are the source of an action if only our nature can explain the action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that we act when anything is done, either within us or without us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is to say, when from our nature anything follows which by that nature alone can be clearly and distinctly understood. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def 2) | |
| A reaction: I like that one a lot. The point is to get a concept of responsibility that doesn't need free will, and to distinguish the thief from the kleptomaniac. Does kleptomania derive from a person's true nature? Essentialism in action. |
| 21865 | We act when it follows from our nature, and is understood in that way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We act when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through this alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def2) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it links actions to our essential natures, and because it focuses on understanding the action, which must involve explaining the action. This is the root of responsibility, not something called 'free will'. BUT SEE 17202. |
| 21873 | Men only agree in nature if they are guided by reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of the guiding idea of the Enlightenment - that consensus is the defining characteristic of rationality. Spinoza's politics emerges from this idea. |
| 21872 | We seek our own advantage, and virtue is doing this rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 24) | |
| A reaction: The influence of stoicism is obvious here, that we live according to our nature, but our nature is rational. Spinoza doesn't seem to understand the pure altruism of lovers and parents. |
| 17189 | The essence of man is modifications of the nature of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: Not an idea you hear much these days! |
| 17207 | By 'good' I mean what brings us ever closer to our model of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'good' I understand everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: Unusual, and I'm not sure I understand it. His ideal largely concerns the intellect ruling the emotion |
| 8019 | Along with his pantheism, Spinoza equates ethics with the study of human nature [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The counterpart of understanding God as identical with Nature is understanding ethics as the study not of divine precepts but of our own nature and of what necessarily moves us. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: As stated here, this seems wrong. We should approach ethics through Aristotle, but not through Freud. That is, virtues can be inferred from human nature, but the actual facts of human nature may be grubby and unpalatable. |
| 17229 | If infancy in humans was very rare, we would consider it a pitiful natural defect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of human beings were born adult, and only a few here and there were born infants, everyone would pity the infants, because we should then consider infancy not as a thing natural and necessary, but as a defect or fault of nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of the new objectivity about human beings that emerged in the Enlightenment. He could have said the same about old age. |
| 4845 | We don't want things because they are good; we judge things to be good because we want them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: Shocking, coming from a leading rationalist philosopher. It sounds more like Hume. Surely rationalism should put our capacity for judgement centre-stage? But Spinoza was a determinist. Is Kantian freedom of judgement required? Deterministic judgement? |
| 17217 | Love is joy with an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to quite capture the pain that some people find in love. |
| 4848 | Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 13) | |
| A reaction: Not a definition to give us inspirational guidance! Sounds like grumpy old Hobbes. This is the 'love' of a heroin addict for a syringe. Personally I see love as having a rational aspect, which puts it 'under the aspect of eternity' (as Spinoza said!). |
| 7833 | Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This looks like a very seventeenth century view. There was a steady move from cynicism through to the optimism of the eighteenth century. I just don't agree that self-interest is the "sole" source of value, though we should never underestimate it. |
| 17224 | If our ideas were wholly adequate, we would have no concept of evil [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 64) | |
| A reaction: There is some sort of notion of the wholly rational and benign community here, where living well is the single communal thought. It's sort of true. Good people don't even think about wickedness. |
| 21870 | Music is good for a melancholic, bad for a mourner, and indifferent to the deaf [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: One and the same thing can, at the same time, be good and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: This sounds neat and obvious, but both the mourner and the deaf person might well acknowledge that music is a good thing, while failing to appreciate it at the time. I accept that a concert was good, even if I didn't attend it. |
| 4860 | Man's highest happiness consists of perfecting his understanding, or reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In life it is before all things useful to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 04) | |
| A reaction: I fear that only a highly intelligent person like Spinoza would suggest this. The genius of Jesus is to say that if you don't have a powerful intellect you can still be happy by having a pure and loving heart. The Spinoza route is better, if possible. |
| 4847 | Pleasure is a passive state in which the mind increases in perfection [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By pleasure I shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a greater perfection. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: A rather bizarre definition! He seems to be defining it as a state and as a process in the same sentence. It sounds to me like both a hedonist's charter, and nonsense. I'm with Plato and Aristotle, that pleasure is dangerous as it warps the mind. |
| 4859 | Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 59) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the incipient epicureanism found in enlightenment figures who are drifting towards atheism (of which his contemporaries accused Spinoza). Sadism? Grief is good pain. I'm too happy to be cruel. |
| 4851 | Reason demands nothing contrary to nature, and so it demands self-love [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Maybe nature seems to demand self-love, but I don't see why reason should demand it, only why reason should not deny it. There is no point in denying something unavoidable. However, if we don't love ourselves, no one else is likely to. |
| 17220 | Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope, for no one endeavours to preserve his being for the same of any end. [Pr 53: Humility is not a virtue] | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 52) | |
| A reaction: You can sense here that Spinoza was not a family man. |
| 4852 | Both virtue and happiness are based on the preservation of one's own being [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza never actually says so, but this seems to me to point to a Hobbesian social contract account of virtue - that is, that virtue is not an ideal, but a strategy. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian view, that it is an ideal revealed to us by nature. |
| 17214 | To act virtuously is to act rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To act in conformity to virtue is to act according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: This Kantian ideal always seems to be missing foundational values or feelings. If something is judged to be rubbish, I throw it away. |
| 21871 | The more we strive for our own advantage, the more virtuous we are [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: Beth Lord says this is his key ethical idea. Our conatus (striving) is the essence of our nature, and virtue is the perfect expression of our essence. Presumably the destruction of others in competition is also bad for us. |
| 17210 | All virtue is founded on self-preservation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The endeavour after self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 22) | |
| A reaction: This fits in perfectly with modern evolutionary ethics. |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: This is pure stoicism, and shows that Spinoza is in many ways the culmination of the seventeenth century stoic revival (e.g. in the art of Poussin). I love the idea that right reason and nature are in perfect harmony. I wonder why? |
| 17221 | A man ignorant of himself is ignorant of all of the virtues [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The man who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of the foundation of all the virtues, and consequently is ignorant of all the virtues. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 56) | |
| A reaction: This would appeal to Aristotle, for whom the social virtues are an aspect of one's own character, and not a calculation made about externals. |
| 17225 | In a free man, choosing flight can show as much strength of mind as fighting [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Flight at the proper time, just as well as fighting, is to be reckoned as showing strength of mind in a man who is free; that is to say, a free man chooses flight by the same strength or presence of mind as that by which he chooses battle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 69) | |
| A reaction: I wonder why showing 'strength of mind' is a virtue? |
| 17219 | A person unmoved by either reason or pity to help others is rightly called 'inhuman' [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who is moved neither by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike a man. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Calling someone 'inhuman' doesn't seem like much of a condemnation. Nietzschean aristocrats may take pride in being above the mere 'human'. We gather here that if reason failed to motivate helping others, then pity would be a good thing. |
| 4857 | Pity is a bad and useless thing, as it is a pain, and rational people perform good deeds without it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity is a pain, and is therefore in itself bad; only at the dictation of reason are we able to perform any action, which we know for certain to be good; thus, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of both Kant's and Bentham's views. It is, however, unclear why a wholly rational and unfeeling person should be motivated to prevent other people's pain. It also don't think it follows that because it is painful it is bad. |
| 17223 | Pity is not a virtue, but at least it shows a desire to live uprightly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity, like shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is present in the man who is possessed with shame. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 58) | |
| A reaction: And yet, in so far as I am rational, it seems that I should endeavour to suppress pity and replace it with right reason. Does Spinoza feel loyalty to the human race, I wonder? |
| 17218 | People who live according to reason should avoid pity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A man who lives according to the dictates of reason endeavours as much as possible to prevent himself from being touched by pity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Since pity seems to give rise to some thoroughly good actions, I am not quite clear how reason would give rise to those same actions unaided. The alleviation of another's pain seems to have no pure motivation, if there is no empathy. |
| 17228 | Rational people judge money by needs, and live contented with very little [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 29) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself lived up to this, being incredibly austere in his personal life. |
| 4853 | Rational people are self-interested, but also desire the same goods for other people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men who are governed by reason - that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason - desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and so are just, faithful and honourable in their conduct. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: This is pulling a rather Kantian rabbit out of a very social contract hat. It chimes in with Aristotle's account of self-interest, which leads to good civic virtues. True Kantianism is self-abnegating, but Spinoza lets selfishness take the lead. |
| 4858 | A rational person will want others to have the goods he seeks for himself [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who lives under the guidance of reason, desires for others the good which he seeks for himself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 51) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a very Kantian idea. It implies that all rational people desire similar goods, but it is rational to collect stamps but not want other people to do so as well. I don't think you should want what I want for Christmas. |
| 4855 | If people are obedient to reason, they will live in harmony [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men insofar as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful slogan for a belief which has gripped me since I was a child. It embodies the frustration of philosophers from Plato onwards, and it may well be childishly idealistic. Politics is the art of the possible, said R.A.B. Butler. |
| 21874 | The ideal for human preservation is unanimity among people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18S) | |
| A reaction: There has never been a more glorious vision of a unified people than this, which epitomises Enlightenment optimism. It may be a little on the optimistic side. We might at least hope that rational education encourages the convergence. |
| 8020 | Only self-knowledge can liberate us [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza, self-knowledge, and only self-knowledge, liberates. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza was a determinist, as far as ultimate inner freedom is concerned. The massive continental philosophers' effort of phenomenology and deconstruction seems to be premissed on this idea. Freedom seems to be their highest value. |
| 7412 | Spinoza extended Hobbes's natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions [Spinoza, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: It was Spinoza who extended the idea of natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions, and he did so knowing that he was transforming Hobbes's theory. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Hobbes had stuck to self-preservation. His problem was how to draw a line, saying that was a natural right, but there wasn't a natural right to a good bottle of claret. Spinoza's drastic solutions suggests that the whole approach is wrong. |
| 17227 | Slavery is a disgraceful crime [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Slavery is a disgraceful crime. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 21) | |
| A reaction: Note the date of this - when the slave trade is just getting going, and long before it is threatened or criticised. |
| 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. |
| 17226 | The best use of talent is to teach other people to live rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under the direct authority of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 09) | |
| A reaction: Speaking as a retired philosophy teacher, I think this is an excellent idea, but then I would, wouldn't I? What if you turn a nice warm-hearted friendly young person into a chillingly detached heartless reasoner? |
| 4854 | It is impossible that the necessity of a person's nature should produce a desire for non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this is very paradoxical, but it fits with evolutionary theory, which seems to make it almost inconceivable to naturally desire suicide. The desire to live is universal, and only circumstances can create an artifiical contradictory desire. |
| 17215 | Animals feel, but that doesn't mean we can't use them for our pleasure and profit [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I by no means deny that brutes feel, but I do deny that on this account it is unlawful for us to consult our own profit by using them for our own pleasure and treating them as is most convenient for us, inasmuch as they do not agree in nature with us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: Something a bit chilling about this. What if I decided that some people did 'not agree with my nature'? Presumably pleasure includes hunting? What was his attitude to bear-baiting? |
| 17190 | We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We may easily conceive the whole of nature to be one individual. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Lem 7) |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 1587 | Spinoza strongly attacked teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Ethics' Spinoza shows his enormous hostility to teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.77 |
| 1588 | For Spinoza eyes don't act for purposes, but follow mechanical necessity [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle would be perfectly happy with the idea that the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have purposes, but obey the laws of mechanical necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.79 | |
| A reaction: My view is that eyes wouldn't exist if they didn't see, which places them in a different category from inorganic matter. |
| 12731 | Final causes are figments of human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All final causes are nothing but human fictions. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: You can see why Spinoza was rather controversial in the late seventeenth century, when he says things as bold as this, even though he is echoing Descartes. The latter's proposal (Idea 12730) is methodological, whereas this idea is metaphysical. |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If an infinite line be measured out in feet, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part was only an inch; therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: This seems to anticipate Cantor. Spinoza's point seemed bewildering then, but is now accepted as a standard feature of the concept of infinity. |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature only one substance exists, and it is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to render the concept of 'substance' redundant, since all the interest is now in the attributes (or whatever) of this one substance, and we must work to discount the appearance of there being numerous substances (e.g. you and me). |
| 4850 | A final cause is simply a human desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: A rather vicious swipe at Aristotle! It chimes in with the modern scientific view of the world (mostly associated with Hume), that nature has no intrinsic values or aims. On the large scale, Spinoza is right, but nature can still show us what has value. |
| 9659 | Causation is when at the closest world without the cause, there is no effect either [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If it is the case at world W that if event C had not occurred, E would not have occurred either, then the counterfactual means that at the closest worlds to W at which C does not occur, E does not occur either. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a very Humean account, though updated, which sees nothing more to causation than transworld regularities. To me that is just describing the evidence for causation, not giving an account of it (even if the latter is impossible). |
| 4815 | From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 3) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulate the view against which Hume was rebelling. However, nowadays no one thinks Spinoza is self-evidently wrong. How are we to distinguish between a cause and a coincident event? We must claim natural necessity. |
| 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. |
| 9666 | It is quite implausible that the future is unreal, as that would terminate everything [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to believe that any philosopher means it when they say the future is unreal. If anyone is right that there is no future, that moment is their last, and it is the end of everything. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: A bit simplistic. I might say 'there will be a future time, but it doesn't exist now'. That's the peculiar thing about time. If I say New York doesn't exist, then clearly I can't visit it. The London 2012 Olympic Stadium is going to exist. |
| 7835 | The key question for Spinoza is: is his God really a God? [Stewart,M on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The single most important question that can be raised about Spinoza's philosophy is: Is his God really a God? | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Novalis called Spinoza a "God-intoxicated man", but this question shows why many of Spinoza's contemporaries (and later) considered him to be an atheist. The general modern answer by commentators to the question appears to be 'No!'. |
| 17231 | God feels no emotions, of joy or sorrow [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is free from passions, neither is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: The general Christian view is that God has great compassion for human suffering, as Jesus appears to have had. Spinoza was very very intellectual. |
| 21859 | God has no purpose, because God lacks nothing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If God works to obtain an end, He necessarily seeks something of which he stands in need. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: The point is that a being with infinite attributes cannot be in need of anything, and hence God merely exists, but does not have a purpose. Hence falling in line with God's purposes cannot be an aim of a human religion. |
| 4823 | God does not act according to the freedom of the will [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God does not act according to the freedom of the will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am struck by the idea that even if God had 'free will', I can't see how He would be sure of the fact (the unperceived puppetmaster!). However, I have actually come to the conclusion that a fotally 'free' will is an incoherent concept. |
| 17172 | God is a substance with infinite attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) |
| 12928 | Spinoza's God is just power and necessity, without perfection or wisdom [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The Spinozist view allows God infinite power only, not granting him either perfection or wisdom, and dismisses searches for final causes and explains everything through brute necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 73 | |
| A reaction: It takes a genius like Leibniz to explain so clearly what Spinoza was up to. Some call Spinoza 'God-intoxicated', but others say he is an incipient atheist. The latter is probably closer to the truth. |
| 7571 | Spinoza's God is not a person [Spinoza, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's God is not a person. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This will be the central reason why Spinoza was so controversial, because such a view instantly makes religion pointless, despite retaining a core of theism. |
| 4314 | God is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: God, asserts Spinoza, is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.179 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more plausible conception of God than the anthropomorphic one of him as the perfect parent who dotes on his offspring. |
| 7609 | God is the sum and principle of all eternal laws [Spinoza, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza God is simply the principle of law, the sum of all the eternal laws in existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems at variance with the usual view, that Spinoza identifies God with the single substance which makes up nature, and that he is hence a pantheist. Compare the above idea with Idea 4829, for example. Spinoza's God seems close to Aristotle's. |
| 19435 | God is not loveable for producing without choice and by necessity; God is loveable for his goodness [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing loveable in a God who produces without choice and by necessity, without discrimination of good and evil. The true love of God is founded not in necessity but in goodness. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) by Gottfried Leibniz - Comments on Spinoza's Philosophy | |
| A reaction: This responds to Spinoza's claims about an 'intellectual' love of God. But why do we love people. It is possible that it is always for their goodness, but might we not love a great mathematician, simply for their wonderful mathematics? |
| 4825 | To say that God promotes what is good is false, as it sets up a goal beyond God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good are very far from the truth. For they seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God looks to as an exemplar or goal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: That is, Spinoza agrees with Euthyphro, and disagrees with Socrates (see Idea 337). Personally I agree with Socrates, but then I am not 'intoxicated with God' as Spinoza was. If God isn't good, why worship Him? |
| 21856 | Spinoza says a substance of infinite attributes cannot fail to exist [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza does not argue from the concept of God to his existence; he argues that a substance of infinite attributes cannot not exist. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Lord is explicit that this is NOT the argument used by Anselm and Descartes. I'm not clear why there has to be a substance of infinite attributes, but presumably that is explained somewhere. |
| 17178 | Denial of God is denial that his essence involves existence, which is absurd [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. If this be denied, conceive that God does not exist. But then his essence does not involve existence, which is absurd. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Not a very powerful version of the ontological argument. Gaunilo offered an island which has existence as part of its essence, which would pass the same test. |
| 21858 | God is being as such, and you cannot conceive of the non-existence of being [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that you cannot conceive the non-existence of God because you cannot conceive the non-existence of being. God, or a substance of infinite attributes, is being as such. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics I P11 | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why I cannot conceive of nothing whatever existing. I can conceive of my fridge being empty, so conceiving non-being is not off limits. Not that inconceivability is an infallible guide to impossibility… |
| 4820 | God must necessarily exist, because no reason can be given for his non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing necessarily exists if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence. No cause can be given which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, so we must conclude that he necessarily exists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of any reason why there shouldn't be a giant rat which fills a large proportion of the universe. Indeed, it may be the missing 'dark matter'. So presumably it has necessary existence. Proving non-existence is obviously tricky. |
| 17169 | Some things makes me conceive of it as a thing whose essence requires its existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 1) | |
| A reaction: Obviously he has God in mind, but might this apply to abstract existence. Can I conceive of the number seven, while also conceiving that there is no such number? Compare Pegasus. |
| 4817 | If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 7) | |
| A reaction: This points straight at the modern question of whether conceivability is a sufficient test for possibility. Personally I am close to Hume on this one. Necessary existence may not be ridiculous, but it is beyond human capacity to assert its occurrence. |
| 4827 | Priests reject as heretics anyone who tries to understand miracles in a natural way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who seeks the true cause of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is denounced as an impious heretic by those whom the masses adore as interpreters of nature and gods. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: A rather bitter personal remark, by someone who was driven out of Amsterdam as a heretic. Presumably the heresy is not aggressive a priori naturalism, but mere openness to the possibility of natural explanations of miracles. |
| 12757 | That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That God is the very nature or substance of all things is the sort of doctrine of ill repute which a recent writer, subtle indeed, though profane, either introduced to the world or revived. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I) by Gottfried Leibniz - On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) §08 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a comment on Spinoza. Leibniz seems to have spent his whole life in shock after his meeting with Spinoza. |
| 4829 | The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between being a part of something which totally fails to communicate with the whole, and being separate from the whole? Spinoza's proposal strikes me as daft. |
| 17181 | God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 25) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Leibniz's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are not imposed by God from outside, but are rooted with nature, in the essences of what has been created (which is modern scientific essentialism). |
| 17180 | Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: Presumably atheists are not very good at conceiving, because they don't understand properly. This is the pantheism for which Spinoza became famous, or notorious. Critics said he was a closet atheist. |
| 7836 | In Spinoza, one could substitute 'nature' or 'substance' for the word 'God' throughout [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza's 'Ethics' one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance", or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: This claim, if correct, is the clearest statement of why we should really consider Spinoza one of the first atheists, despite his endless use of the word 'God'. |
| 7831 | Spinoza's theory of mind implies that there is no immortality [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: A final (and for his contemporaries, dreadful) consequence of Spinoza's theory of the mind is that there is no personal immortality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: For Spinoza's view of the mind, see Idea 4308. The denial of immortality would also seem to be a consequence of modern emergentist views of the mind, which is espoused by religious people looking for a compromise between dualism and science. |
| 21876 | After death, something eternal remains of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds contrary to Spinoza's monism of mind and body, but he seems to mean little more than that minds are reabsorbed into the whole. See Beth Lord's commentary [p.146]. Compare stoics on the subject. |