10 ideas
| 8923 | Numbers are identified by their main properties and relations, involving the successor function [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The mathematically significant properties and relations of natural numbers arise from the successor function that orders them; the natural numbers are identified simply as the objects that answer to this basic function. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §1) | |
| A reaction: So Julius Caesar would be a number if he was the successor of Pompey the Great? I would have thought that counting should be mentioned - cardinality as well as ordinality. Presumably Peano's Axioms are being referred to. |
| 8926 | For mathematical objects to be positions, positions themselves must exist first [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: The identification of mathematical objects with positions in structures rests upon the prior credibility of the thesis that positions are objects in their own right. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds devastating, but something has to get the whole thing off the ground. This is why Resnik's word 'patterns' is so appealing. Patterns stare you in the face, and they don't change if all the objects making it up are replaced by others. |
| 24016 | Consciousness always transcends itself [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: It is of the essence of consciousness to transcend itself | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
| A reaction: As usual, I am a bit baffled by these sorts of pronouncement. Sounds like an oxymoron to me. Maybe it is a development of Schopenhauer's thought. |
| 24013 | An emotion and its object form a unity, so emotion is a mode of apprehension [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Emotion returns to its object every moment, and feeds upon it. …The emotional subject and the object of the emotion are united in an indissoluble synthesis. Emotion is a specific manner of apprehending the world. …[39] It is a transformation of the world. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
| A reaction: The last sentence is the essence (or existence?) of Sartre's core theory of the emotions. They are, it seems, a mode of perception, like a colour filter added to a camera. I don't think I agree. I see them as a response to perceptions, not part of them. |
| 24017 | Emotion is one of our modes of understanding our Being-in-the-World [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Emotion is not an accident, it is a mode of our conscious existence, one of the ways in which consciousness understands (in Heidegger's sense of verstehen) its Being-in-the-World. …It has a meaning. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
| A reaction: Calling emotions a 'mode' suggests that this way of understanding is intermittent, which seems wrong. Even performing arithmetical calculations is coloured by emotions, so they go deeper than a 'mode'. |
| 24014 | Emotions are a sort of bodily incantation which brings a magic to the world [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Joy is the magical behaviour which tries, by incantation, to realise the possession of the desired object as an instantaneous totality. [47] Emotions are all reducible to the constitution of a magic world by using our bodies as instruments of incantation. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
| A reaction: I can't pretend to understand this, but I am reminded of the fact that the so-called primary qualities of perception are innately boring, and it is only the secondary qualities (like colour and smell) which make the world interesting. |
| 24015 | Emotions makes us believe in and live in a new world [Sartre] |
| Full Idea: Emotion is a phenomenon of belief. Consciousness does not limit itself to the projection of affective meanings upon the world around it; it lives the new world it has thereby constituted. | |
| From: Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939], §III) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an implied anti-realism in this, since the emotions prevent us from relating more objectively to the world. The 'magic' seems to be compulsory. |
| 20491 | States have a monopoly of legitimate violence [Sartre, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Max Weber observed that states possess a monopoly of legitimate violence. | |
| From: report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Sketch for a Theory of the Emotions [1939]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 2 'State' | |
| A reaction: This sounds rather hair-raising, and often is, but it sounds quite good if we describe it as a denial of legitimate violence to individual citizens. Hobbes would like it, since individual violence breaches some sort of natural contract. Guns in USA. |
| 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. |