31 ideas
| 7740 | There exists a realm, beyond objects and ideas, of non-spatio-temporal thoughts [Frege, by Weiner] |
| Full Idea: There is, in addition to the external world of physical objects and the internal world of ideas, a third realm of non-spatio-temporal objective objects, among which are thoughts. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Joan Weiner - Frege Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Platonism, and, in particular, to give a Platonic existent status to propositions. Personally I believe in propositions, but as glimpses of how our brains actually work, not as mystical objects. |
| 19466 | The word 'true' seems to be unique and indefinable [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It seems likely that the content of the word 'true' is sui generis and indefinable | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60)) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I associate with Davidson, though fans of Axiomatic Truth give up defining it, and just describe how it behaves. Defining it is very elusive, but I don't accept that nothing can be said about the contents of the concept of truth. |
| 19465 | There cannot be complete correspondence, because ideas and reality are quite different [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It is essential that the reality shall be distinct from the idea. But then there can be no complete correspondence, no complete truth. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327 (60)) | |
| A reaction: He thinks that logic can give a perfect account of truth, or at least the extension of truth, where ordinary language will always fail. I wonder what he would have thought of Tarski's theory? |
| 19468 | The property of truth in 'It is true that I smell violets' adds nothing to 'I smell violets' [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The sentence 'I smell the scent of violets' has just the same content as 'It is true that I smell the scent of violets'. So it seems that nothing is added to the thought by my ascribing to it the property of truth. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.328 (61)) | |
| A reaction: This idea predates Ramsey's similar proposal, for which, oddly, Ramsey always seems to get the credit. To a logician they may have identical content, but pragmatically they are likely to differ in context. 'True' certainly doesn't add to the thought. |
| 19470 | Thoughts in the 'third realm' cannot be sensed, and do not need an owner to exist [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Thoughts are neither things in the external world nor ideas. A third realm must be recognised. Anything in this realm has it in common with ideas that it cannot be perceived by the senses, and does not need an owner to belong with his consciousness. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.337(69)) | |
| A reaction: This important idea is the creed for modern platonists. We don't have to accept Forms, or any particular content, but there is a mode of existence which is distinct from both mental and physical, and is the residence of 'abstracta'. I deny it! |
| 19471 | A fact is a thought that is true [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A fact is a thought that is true. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.342(74)) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me as pretty obvious that facts are not thoughts, because they concern the contents of thoughts. You can't discuss facts without the notion of what a thought is 'about'. If I think about my garden, the relevant fact is aspects of my garden. |
| 16665 | There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: Beyond the entities there are certain real 'modes', which are positive, and in their own right act on those entities, giving them something that is outside their whole essence as individuals existing in reality. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
| A reaction: Suárez is apparently the first person to formulate a proper account of properties as 'modes' of a thing, rather than as accidents which are separate, or are wholly integrated into a thing. A typical compromise proposal in philosophy. Can modes act? |
| 16666 | A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: The inherence of quantity is called its mode, because it affects that quantity, which serves to ultimately determine the state and character of its existence, but does not add to it any new proper entity, but only modifies the preexisting entity. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
| A reaction: He seems to present mode as a very active thing, like someone who gives it a coat of paint, or hammers it into a new shape. I don't see how a 'mode' can have any ontological status at all. To exist, there has to be some way to exist. |
| 9877 | Late Frege saw his non-actual objective objects as exclusively thoughts and senses [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Earlier, Frege divided objects into subjective, actual objective, and non-actual objective; in the 'Grundgesetze' he emphasised logical objects; but in 'The Thought' the non-actual objects become exclusively thoughts and their constituent senses. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.18 | |
| A reaction: Sounds to me like Frege was finally waking up and taking a dose of common sense. The Equator is the standard example of a non-actual objective object. |
| 16667 | Substances are incomplete unless they have modes [Suárez, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: In the view of Suárez, substances are radically incomplete entities that cannot exist at all until determined in various ways by things of another kind, modes. …Modes are regarded as completers for their subjects. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
| A reaction: This is correct. In order to be a piece of clay it needs a shape, a mass, a colour etc. Treating clay as an object independently from its shape is a misunderstanding. |
| 17007 | Forms must rule over faculties and accidents, and are the source of action and unity [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: A form is required that, as it were, rules over all those faculties and accidents, and is the source of all actions and natural motions of such a being, and in which the whole variety of accidents and powers has its root and unity. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.1.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4 | |
| A reaction: Pasnau emphasises that this is scholastics giving a very physical and causal emphasis to forms, which made them vulnerable to doubts among the new experiment physicists. Pasnau says forms are 'metaphysical', following Leibniz. |
| 16780 | Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: In a tree the part of the form that is in the leaf is not the same character as the part that is in the fruit., but yet they are partial forms, and apt to be united ….to compose one complete form of the whole. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.30), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 26.6 | |
| A reaction: This is a common scholastic view, the main opponent of which was Aquinas, who says each thing only has one form. Do leaves have different DNA from the bark or the fruit? Presumably not (since I only have one DNA), which supports Aquinas. |
| 16758 | The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: The most powerful arguments establishing substantial forms are based on the necessity, for the perfect constitution of a natural being, that all the faculties and operations of that being are rooted in one essential principle. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.64), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4 | |
| A reaction: Note Idea 15756, that this stability not only applies to biological entities (the usual Aristotelian examples), but also to non-living natural kinds. We might say that the drive for survival is someone united around a single entity. |
| 16743 | We can get at the essential nature of 'quantity' by knowing bulk and extension [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: We can say that the form that gives corporeal bulk [molem] or extension to things is the essential nature of quantity. To have bulk is to expel a similar bulk from the same space. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 539 | |
| A reaction: This is one step away from asking why, once we knew the bulk and extension of the thing, we would still have any interest in trying to grasp something called its 'quantity'. |
| 16742 | We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5 | |
| A reaction: It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things? |
| 22143 | Identity does not exclude possible or imagined difference [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: To be really the same excludes being really other, but does not exclude being other modally or mentally. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.65) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: So the statue and the clay are identical, but they could become separate, or be imagined as separate. |
| 22144 | Real Essential distinction: A and B are of different natural kinds [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The Real Essential distinction says if A and B are not of the same natural kind, then they are essentially distinct. This is the highest degree of distinction. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: Boulter says Peter is essentially distinct from a cabbage, because neither has the nature of the other. |
| 22146 | Minor Real distinction: B needs A, but A doesn't need B [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The Minor Real distinction is if A can exist without B, but B ceases to exist without A. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: This is one-way independence. Boulter's example is Peter and Peter's actual weight. |
| 22145 | Major Real distinction: A and B have independent existences [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The Major Real distinction is if A can exist in the real order without B, and B can exist in the real order without A. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: Boulter's example is the distinction between Peter and Paul, where their identity of kind is irrelevant. This is two-way independence. |
| 22147 | Conceptual/Mental distinction: one thing can be conceived of in two different ways [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The Conceptual or Mental distinction is when A and B are actually identical but we have two different ways of conceiving them. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: This is the Morning and Evening Star. I bet Frege never read Suarez. This seems to be Spinoza's concept of mind/body. |
| 22148 | Modal distinction: A isn't B or its property, but still needs B [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The Modal distinction is when A is not B or a property of B, but still could not possibly exist without B. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: Duns Scotus proposed in, Ockham rejected it, but Suarez supports it. Suarez proposes that light's dependence on the Sun is distinct from the light itself, in this 'modal' way. |
| 22149 | Scholastics assess possibility by what has actually happened in reality [Suárez, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: The scholastic view is that Actuality is our only guide to possibility in the real order. One knows that it is possible to separate A and B if one knows that A and B have actually been separated or are separate. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
| A reaction: It may be possible to separate A and B even though it has never happened, but it is hard to see how we could know that. (But if I put my pen down where it has never been before, I know I can pick it up again, even though this has not previously happened). |
| 19469 | We grasp thoughts (thinking), decide they are true (judgement), and manifest the judgement (assertion) [Frege] |
| Full Idea: We distinguish the grasp of a thought, which is 'thinking', from the acknowledgement of the truth of a thought, which is the act of 'judgement', from the manifestation of this judgement, which is an 'assertion'. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.329 (62)) |
| 8162 | Thoughts have their own realm of reality - 'sense' (as opposed to the realm of 'reference') [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, thoughts belong to a special realm of reality, which he called the 'realm of sense' and distinguished from the 'realm of reference'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
| A reaction: A thought is, for Frege, a proposition. There is a halfway Platonism possible here, where the 'realm' for such things exists, but within that realm the objects might be conventional, or some such. Real possible worlds containing fictions! |
| 9818 | A thought is distinguished from other things by a capacity to be true or false [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: On Frege's view, what distinguishes thoughts from everything else is that they may meaningfully be called 'true' and 'false'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: A lot of thinking is imagistic, and while the image may or may not truly picture the world, we tend to think that the truth or otherwise of daydreaming is simply irrelevant. Does Frege take all thought to be propositional? |
| 16379 | Thoughts about myself are understood one way to me, and another when communicated [Frege] |
| Full Idea: When Dr Lauben thinks he has been wounded, ..only Dr Lauben can grasp thoughts determined in this way. But he cannot communicate a thought which only he can grasp. To say 'I have been wounded' he must use 'I' in a sense graspable by others. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 16.1 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to be the first, and very influential, attempt to explain the unusual and revealing semantics of indexicals. It seems to be the ultimate source of 2-D semantics, by introducing two modes of meaning for one term. |
| 19467 | A 'thought' is something for which the question of truth can arise; thoughts are senses of sentences [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I call a 'thought' something for which the question of truth can arise at all. ...So I can say: thoughts are senses of sentences, without wishing to assert that the sense of every sentence is a thought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.327-8 (61)) | |
| A reaction: This builds on his distinction between sense and reference. The reference of every truth sentence is just 'the true', and the sense is the proposition. The concept of a proposition seems indispensable to logic, I would say. |
| 19472 | A sentence is only a thought if it is complete, and has a time-specification [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Only a sentence with the time-specification filled out, a sentence complete in every respect, expresses a thought. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (The Thought: a Logical Enquiry [1918], p.343(76)) | |
| A reaction: I take the 'every respect' to include the avoidance of ambiguity, and some sort of perspicacious reference for the terms. I wish philosophers would focus on the thoughts in their subject, and not nit-pick about the sentences. Does he mean 'utterances'? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 16682 | Other things could occupy the same location as an angel [Suárez] |
| Full Idea: An angelic substance could be penetrated by other bodies in the same location. | |
| From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.2.21), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.3 | |
| A reaction: So am I co-located with an angel right now? |