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All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Beauty: a very short introduction' and 'Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori'

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19 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 5. Modern Philosophy / c. Modern philosophy mid-period
Analytic philosophy loved the necessary a priori analytic, linguistic modality, and rigour [Soames]
     Full Idea: The golden age of analytic philosophy (mid 20th c) was when necessary, a priori and analytic were one, all possibility was linguistic possibility, and the linguistic turn gave philosophy a respectable subject matter (language), and precision and rigour.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.166)
     A reaction: Gently sarcastic, because Soames is part of the team who have put a bomb under this view, and quite right too. Personally I think the biggest enemy in all of this lot is not 'language' but 'rigour'. A will-o-the-wisp philosophers dream of.
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis
If philosophy is analysis of meaning, available to all competent speakers, what's left for philosophers? [Soames]
     Full Idea: If all of philosophy is the analysis of meaning, and meaning is fundamentally transparent to competent speakers, there is little room for philosophically significant explanations and theories, since they will be necessary or a priori, or both.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
     A reaction: He cites the later Wittgenstein as having fallen into this trap. I suppose any area of life can have its specialists, but I take Shakespeare to be a greater master of English than any philosopher I have ever read.
2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 7. Status of Reason
Do aesthetic reasons count as reasons, if they are rejectable without contradiction? [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The judgement of beauty makes a claim about its object, and can be supported by reasons. But the reasons do not compel the judgement and can be rejected without contradiction. So are they reasons or aren't they?
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1)
     A reaction: I suspect that what he is really referring to is evidence rather than reasons.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 2. Defining Truth
Defining truth presupposes that there can be a true definition [Scruton]
     Full Idea: How can you define truth, without already assuming the distinction between a true definition and a false one?
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1)
     A reaction: Don't say we have to accept truth as yet another primitive! Philosophers are out of business if all the basic concepts are primitive. The axiomatic approach to truth is an alternative - by specifying how the primitive should be used.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
Kripkean essential properties and relations are necessary, in all genuinely possible worlds [Soames]
     Full Idea: By (Kripkean) 'essential' properties and relations I mean simply properties and relations that hold necessarily of objects (in all genuinely possible world-states in which the objects exist).
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.168 n5)
     A reaction: This is the standard modern view of essences which I find so unsatisfactory. Kit Fine has helped to take us back to the proper Aristotelian view, where 'necessary' and 'essential' actually have different meanings. Note the inclusion of relations.
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 3. Necessity by Convention
A key achievement of Kripke is showing that important modalities are not linguistic in source [Soames]
     Full Idea: None of Kripke's many achievements is more important than his breaking the spell of the linguistic as the source of philosophically important modalities.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.186)
     A reaction: Put like that, Kripke may have had the single most important thought of modern times. I take good philosophy to be exactly the same as good scientific theorising, in that it all arises out of the nature of reality (and I include logic in that).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 2. Nature of Possible Worlds / a. Nature of possible worlds
Kripkean possible worlds are abstract maximal states in which the real world could have been [Soames]
     Full Idea: For the Kripkean possible states of the world are not alternate concrete universes, but abstract objects. Metaphysically possible world-states are maximally complete ways the real concrete universe could have been.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.167)
     A reaction: This is probably clearer about the Kripkean view than Kripke ever is, but then that is part of Soames's mission. It sounds like the right way to conceive possible worlds. At least there is some commitment there, rather than instrumentalism about them.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 10. Two-Dimensional Semantics
Two-dimensionalism reinstates descriptivism, and reconnects necessity and apriority to analyticity [Soames]
     Full Idea: Two-dimensionalism is a fundamentally anti-Kripkean attempt to reinstate descriptivism about names and natural kind terms, to reconnect necessity and apriority to analyticity, and return philosophy to analytic paradigms of its golden age.
     From: Scott Soames (Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori [2006], p.183)
     A reaction: I presume this is right, and it is so frustrating that you need Soames to spell it out, when Chalmers is much more low-key. Philosophers hate telling you what their real game is. Why is that?
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
The pleasure taken in beauty also aims at understanding and valuing [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Like the pleasure in friendship, the pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1)
     A reaction: At least he is trying to pin down the way in which aesthetic pleasure is phenomenologically different from other kinds of pleasure.
Art gives us imaginary worlds which we can view impartially [Scruton]
     Full Idea: One aim of art is to present imaginary worlds, towards which we can adopt, as part of the integral aesthetic attitude, a posture of impartial concern.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5)
     A reaction: It connects to the pleasure of watching people when they don't know they are being watched (such as watching the street from a restaurant window). Scruton's suggestion makes art resemble examples in philosophy. Cf the Frege-Geach problem in ethics.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty
Maybe 'beauty' is too loaded, and we should talk of fittingness or harmony [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Maybe we can understand the 'beauty' of a building better if we describe it in another and less loaded way, as a form of fittingness or harmony.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1)
     A reaction: Almost everyone accepts the word 'beauty' for some things, such as a beautiful face, or goal, or steak. I remember a female interviewer writing that, reluctantly, the only appropriate word she could find for Nureyev's face was 'beautiful'.
Beauty shows us what we should want in order to achieve human fulfilment [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Beauty speaks to us of human fulfilment: not of things that we want, but of things that we ought to want, because human nature requires them. Such, at least, is my belief.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7)
     A reaction: I'm not sure how this works with a beautiful natural landscape. And what should I see that I ought to desire after viewing a great Rembrandt self-portrait? That I don't want to end up looking as bleak as that? Hm. Lofty words.
Beauty is rationally founded, inviting meaning, comparison and self-reflection [Scruton]
     Full Idea: Beauty is rationally founded; it challenges us to find meaning in its object, to make critical comparisons, and to examine our own lives and emotions in the light of what we find.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 9)
     A reaction: This is the Kantian tradition, and I'm not finding it very persuasive. It seems to place the value of beauty in what we do with it afterwards, and he seems to make beauty a necessary stepping stone to virtue. I see beauty as more sui generis.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 5. Natural Beauty
Natural beauty reassures us that the world is where we belong [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The experience of natural beauty is not a sense of 'how nice!' or 'how pleasant!' It contains a reassurance that this world is a right and fitting place to be - a home in which our human powers and prospects find confirmation.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 2)
     A reaction: To call it a 'reassurance' and 'confirmation' sounds like theism, anthropomorphism, or the pathetic fallacy. That said, this is certainly a heart-warming idea, and hence must contain a grain of truth.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression
Croce says art makes inarticulate intuitions conscious; rival views say the audience is the main concern [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The Croce model is of an inarticulate inner state (an 'intuition') becoming articulate and conscious through artistic expression. The rival model is fitting thing together so as to create links which resonate in the audience's feelings.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5)
     A reaction: The first model tells you nothing about how the artist imagines the audience reacting. The second model tells you nothing about what matters personally to the artist. A good theory must do both!
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value
Beauty (unlike truth and goodness) is questionable as an ultimate value [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The status of beauty as an ultimate value is questionable, in the way that the status of truth and goodness are not.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1)
     A reaction: We suspect that a love of beauty may be a bit parochial, where it is hard to conceive of living creatures anywhere in the cosmos who don't value the other two.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
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.
25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 5. Sexual Morality
Prostitution is wrong because it hardens the soul, since soul and body are one [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The condemnation of prostitution was not just puritan bigotry; it was a recognition of a profound truth, that you and your body are not two things but one, and by selling the body you harden your soul.
     From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7)
     A reaction: No one, I imagine, who condones or even enthuses about prostitution would hope that their own daughter followed the profession, so there is something wrong with it. But must an enthusiastic and cheerful prostitute necessarily have a hard soul?
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
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.