64 ideas
19648 | Since Kant we think we can only access 'correlations' between thinking and being [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The central notion of philosophy since Kant is 'correlation' - that we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: Meillassoux's charge is that philosophy has thereby completely failed to grasp the scientific revolution, which has used mathematics to make objectivity possible. Quine and Putnam would be good examples of what he has in mind. |
19674 | The Copernican Revolution decentres the Earth, but also decentres thinking from reality [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The Copernican Revolution is not so much the decentring of observers in the solar system, but (by the mathematizing of nature) the decentring of thought relative to the world within the process of knowledge. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
A reaction: In other words, I take it, the Copernican Revolution was the discovery of objectivity. That is a very nice addition to my History of Ideas collection. |
19657 | In Kant the thing-in-itself is unknowable, but for us it has become unthinkable [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The major shift that has occurred in the conception of thought from Kant's time to ours is from the unknowability of the thing-in-itself to its unthinkability. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
A reaction: Meillassoux is making the case that philosophy is alienating us more and more from the triumphant realism of the scientific revolution. He says thinking has split from being. He's right. Modern American pragmatists are the worst (not Peirce!). |
3695 | Philosophy is a priori if it is anything [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: My conviction is that philosophy is a priori if it is anything. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], Pref) | |
A reaction: How about knowledge of a posteriori necessities, such as the length of a metre, known by observation of the standard metre in Paris? |
6928 | Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §35) | |
A reaction: The temple of Pythagoras at Solon sounds like an embodiment of this idea. The obvious candidate would be truth, to which philosophers must show almost religious respect. Some what motivates the philosophy of a minimalist (Idea 3750)? |
6918 | Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Philosophy need not care about the conceptions that common usage or misuse attaches to a name; philosophy, however, has to bind itself to the determined nature of things, whose signs are names. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §23) | |
A reaction: I like this attempt to nip ordinary language philosophy in the bud. Indeed I like the notion of philosophy binding itself to the 'determined nature of things' (which sound like essences to me), rather than to their names or descriptions. |
19675 | Since Kant, philosophers have claimed to understand science better than scientists do [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Ever since Kant, to think science as a philosopher has been to claim that science harbours a meaning other than the one delivered by science itself. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
A reaction: The point is that science discovered objectivity (via the mathematising of nature), and Kant utterly rejected objectivity, by enmeshing the human mind in every possible scientific claim. This makes Meillassoux and I very cross. |
6904 | Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The beginning of Descartes' philosophy, namely, the abstraction from sensation and matter, is the beginning of modern speculative philosophy. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
A reaction: In Britain it might be said that modern philosophy begins with a rebellion against Descartes' move. Feuerbach is charting the movement towards idealism. |
6931 | Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Empiricism rightly derives the origin of our ideas from the senses; only it forgets that the most important and essential object of man is man himself. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
A reaction: This seems to nicely pinpoint the objection of most 'continental' philosophy to British empiricism and analytic philosophy. It seems to point towards Husserl's phenomenology as the next step. It is true that empiricists divided person from world. |
3651 | Perceiving necessary connections is the essence of reasoning [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: If one never in fact grasps any necessary connections between anything, it is hard to see what reasoning could possible amount to. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.3) |
19649 | Since Kant, objectivity is defined not by the object, but by the statement's potential universality [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Since Kant, objectivity is no longer defined with reference to the object in itself, but rather with reference to the possible universality of an objective statement. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: Meillassoux disapproves of this, as a betrayal by philosophers of the scientific revolution, which gave us true objectivity (e.g. about how the world was before humanity). |
3700 | Coherence can't be validated by appeal to coherence [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The epistemic authority of coherence cannot itself be established by appeal to coherence. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7 n50) | |
A reaction: The standard approach amongs modern philosophers (following, I think, Kripke) is to insist on 'intuition' as basic, despite all its problems. I have no better suggestion. |
6933 | The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The laws of reality are also the laws of thought. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §45) | |
A reaction: I like this a lot, though it runs contrary to a lot of conventionalist thinking in the twentieth century. Russell, though, agrees with Feuerbach (Idea 5405). There is not much point to thought if it doesn't plug into reality at the roots. |
19666 | If we insist on Sufficient Reason the world will always be a mystery to us [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: So long as we continue to believe that there is a reason why things are the way they are rather than some other way, we will construe this world is a mystery, since no such reason will every be vouchsafed to us. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
A reaction: Giving up sufficient reason sounds like a rather drastic response to this. Put it like this: Will we ever be able to explain absolutely everything? No. So will the world always be a little mysterious to us? Yes, obviously. Is that a problem? No! |
19656 | Non-contradiction is unjustified, so it only reveals a fact about thinking, not about reality? [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The principle of non-contradiction itself is without reason, and consequently it can only be the norm for what is thinkable by us, rather than for what is possible in the absolute sense. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
A reaction: This is not Meillassoux's view, but describes the modern heresy of 'correlationism', which ties all assessments of how reality is to our capacity to think about it. Personally I take logical non-contradiction to derive from non-contradiction in nature. |
19664 | Paraconsistent logics are to prevent computers crashing when data conflicts [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Paraconsistent logics were only developed in order to prevent computers, such as expert medical systems, from deducing anything whatsoever from contradictory data, because of the principle of 'ex falso quodlibet'. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) |
19663 | We can allow contradictions in thought, but not inconsistency [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: For contemporary logicians, it is not non-contradiction that provides the criterion for what is thinkable, but rather inconsistency. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
A reaction: The point is that para-consistent logic might permit isolated contradictions (as true) within a system, but it is only contradiction across the system (inconsistencies) which make the system untenable. |
19665 | Paraconsistent logic is about statements, not about contradictions in reality [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Paraconsistent logics are only ever dealing with contradictions inherent in statements about the world, never with the real contradictions in the world. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
A reaction: Thank goodness for that! I can accept that someone in a doorway is both in the room and not in the room, but not that they are existing in a real state of contradiction. I fear that a few daft people embrace the logic as confirming contradictory reality. |
19677 | What is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: We must establish the thesis that what is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
A reaction: The truth of this thesis would permanently establish mathematics as the only possible language of science. Personally I have no idea how you could prove or assess such a thesis. It is a lovely speculation, though. 'The structure of the possible' (p,127) |
19659 | The absolute is the impossibility of there being a necessary existent [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: We maintain that it is absolutely necessary that every entity might not exist. ...The absolute is the absolute impossibility of a necessary being. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
A reaction: This is the main thesis of his book. The usual candidates for necessary existence are God, and mathematical objects. I am inclined to agree with Meillassoux. |
6919 | Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Absolute thought never extricates itself from itself to become being. Being remains in another world. …If being is to be added to an object of thought, so must something distinct from thought be added to thought itself. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §24/5) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit like a child wishing for the moon. Is he saying he doesn't just want to think about reality - he wants his mental states to BE external reality? The distinction between a thought and its content or intentionality would help here. |
19457 | Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being in the sense in which it is an object of speculative thought is that which is purely and simply unmediated, that is, undetermined; in other words, there is nothing to distinguish and nothing to think of in being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], 26) | |
A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the idea of 'prime matter' used in scholastic Aristotelian philosophy. Matter existing without form is somehow ungraspable, but presented from Hegel onwards as the ultimate mystery. |
6920 | Being posits essence, and my essence is my being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being is the positing of essence. That which is my essence is my being. The fish exists in water; you cannot, however, separate its essence from this being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §27) | |
A reaction: This throws a different light on later (e.g. Heidegger) discussions of 'being', which may map onto Aristotelian discussions of essences. |
6921 | Particularity belongs to being, whereas generality belongs to thought [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Particularity and individuality belong to being, whereas generality belongs to thought. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: This agrees with Russell's view that every sentence (and proposition) must contain a universal (i.e a generality). The very notion of thinking 'about' a horse seems to require a move to the universal concept of a horse. |
6926 | The only true being is of the senses, perception, feeling and love [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Being as an object of being - and only this being is being and deserves the name of being - is the being of the senses, perception, feeling, and love. …Only passion is the hallmark of existence. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
A reaction: This remark seems to make Feuerbach a romantic and anti-Enlightenment figure. I don't see why there shouldn't be just as much 'being' in doing maths as in admiring a landscape. The mention of love links him to Empedocles (Ideas 459 + 630). |
19662 | It is necessarily contingent that there is one thing rather than another - so something must exist [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: It is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
A reaction: The great charm of metaphysics is the array of serious answers to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. You'll need to read Meillassoux's book to understand this one. |
19654 | We must give up the modern criterion of existence, which is a correlation between thought and being [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: It is incumbent upon us to break with the ontological requisite of the moderns, according to which 'to be is to be a correlate'. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
A reaction: He blames Kant for this pernicious idea, which has driven philosophy away from realist science, when it should be supporting and joining it. As a realist I agree, and find Meillassoux very illuminating on the subject. |
3697 | The concept of possibility is prior to that of necessity [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: While necessity and possibility are interdefinable concepts, it is the idea of a possible world or situation which is intuitively primary. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.3) |
19660 | Possible non-being which must be realised is 'precariousness'; absolute contingency might never not-be [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: My term 'precariousness' designates a possibility of not-being which must eventually be realised. By contrast, absolute contingency designates a pure possibility; one which may never be realised. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
A reaction: I thoroughly approve of this distinction, because I have often enountered the assumption that all contingency is precariousness, and I have never seen why that should be so. In Aquinas's Third Way, for example. The 6 on a die may never come up. |
19671 | The idea of chance relies on unalterable physical laws [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The very notion of chance is only conceivable on condition that there are unalterable physical laws. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
A reaction: Laws might be contingent, even though they never alter. Chance in horse racing relies on the stability of whole institution of horse racing. |
6908 | Consciousness is absolute reality, and everything exists through consciousness [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Consciousness is the absolute reality, the measure of all existence; all that exists, exists only as being for consciousness, as comprehended in consciousness; for consciousness is first and foremost being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
A reaction: This is Feuerbach declaring himself in favour of idealism even as he was trying to rebel against it, and move towards a more sensuous and human view of the world. I just see idealists as confusing ontology and epistemology. |
19651 | Unlike speculative idealism, transcendental idealism assumes the mind is embodied [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: What distinguishes transcendental idealism from speculative idealism is the fact that the former does not posit the existence of the transcendental subject apart from its bodily individuation. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: These modern French philosophers explain things so much more clearly than the English! The 'speculative' version is seen in Berkeley. On p.17 he says transcendental idealism is 'civilised', and speculative idealism is 'uncouth'. |
6932 | Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Only through communication and conversation between man and man do ideas arise; not alone, but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
A reaction: This is a strikingly modern view of the solipsism problem, and is close in spirit to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (Ideas 4143 +4158). Feuerbach is interested in universals rather than rules. I prefer Feuerbach. |
19647 | The aspects of objects that can be mathematical allow it to have objective properties [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: All aspects of the object that can give rise to a mathematical thought rather than to a perception or a sensation can be meaningfully turned into the properties of the thing not only as it is with me, but also as it is without me. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: This is Meillassoux's spin on the primary/secondary distinction, which he places at the heart of the scientific revolution. Cartesian dualism offers a separate space for the secondary qualities. He is appalled when philosophers reject the distinction. |
6935 | In man the lowest senses of smell and taste elevate themselves to intellectual acts [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Even the lowest senses, smell and taste, elevate themselves in man to intellectual and scientific acts. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
A reaction: Since Darwin we have, I am glad to say, lost this need to distinguish what is 'low' or 'high', and to try to show that even our 'lowest' functions are on the 'high' side. Personally, though, I still need the low/high distinction in moral thinking. |
3704 | Moderate rationalists believe in fallible a priori justification [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Moderate rationalism preserves a priori justification, but rejects the idea that it is infallible. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) |
3707 | Our rules of thought can only be judged by pure rational insight [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Criteria or rules do not somehow apply to themselves. They must be judged by the sort of rational insight or intuition that the rationalist is advocating. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §5.2) |
3696 | A priori justification requires understanding but no experience [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: A proposition will count as being justified a priori as long as no appeal to experience is needed for the proposition to be justified - once it is understood. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §1.2) | |
A reaction: Could you 'understand' that a square cannot be circular without appeal to experience? I'm losing faith in the pure a priori. |
3706 | A priori justification can vary in degree [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: A priori justification can vary in degree. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.5) | |
A reaction: This idea, which I trace back at least to Russell, seems to me one of breakthrough ideas in modern thought. It means that a priori knowledge can be reconnected with a posteriori knowledge. |
3703 | You can't explain away a priori justification as analyticity, and you can't totally give it up [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Moderate empiricists try unsuccessfully to explain a priori justification by means of analyticity, and radical empiricist attempts to dispense with a priori justification end in nearly total scepticism. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §4.1) | |
A reaction: My working theory is neither of the above. Because we can abstract from the physical world, we can directly see/experience generalised (and even necessary) truths about it. |
3699 | The induction problem blocks any attempted proof of physical statements [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The attempt to prove physical statements on the basis of sensory evidence is defeated by the problem of induction. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.6) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a logician's use of the word 'prove', which would be a pretty forlorn hope. Insofar as experience proves anything, fully sensing a chair proves its existence. |
3701 | Externalist theories of justification don't require believers to have reasons for their beliefs [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: An externalist theory of epistemic justification or warrant need not involve the possession by the believer of anything like a reason for thinking that their belief is true. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
A reaction: That is the problem with externalism. If the believer does not have a reason, then why would they believe? Externalists are interesting on justification, but daft about belief. Why do I believe I know something, when I can't recall how I learnt it? |
3702 | Externalism means we have no reason to believe, which is strong scepticism [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: If externalism is the final story, we have no reason to think that any of our beliefs are true, which amounts to a very strong and intuitively implausible version of scepticism. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.7) | |
A reaction: A very good point. I may, like a cat, know many things, with good external support, but as soon as I ask sceptical questions, I sink without trace if I lack internal reasons. |
19652 | How can we mathematically describe a world that lacks humans? [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: How is mathematical discourse able to describe a reality where humanity is absent? | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: He is referring to the prehistoric world. He takes this to be a key question about the laws of nature. We extrapolate mathematically from the experienced world, relying on the stability of the laws. Must they be necessary to be stable? No, it seems. |
3709 | Induction must go beyond the evidence, in order to explain why the evidence occurred [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: Inductive explanations must be conceived of as something stronger than mere Humean constant conjunction; …anything less than this will not explain why the inductive evidence occurred in the first place. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §7.7) |
19668 | Hume's question is whether experimental science will still be valid tomorrow [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Hume's question can be formulated as follows: can we demonstrate that the experimental science which is possible today will still be possible tomorrow? | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
A reaction: Could there be deep universal changes going on in nature which science could never, even in principle, detect? |
19650 | The transcendental subject is not an entity, but a set of conditions making science possible [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The transcendental subject simply cannot be said to exist; which is to say that the subject is not an entity, but rather a set of conditions rendering objective scientific knowledge of entities possible. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
A reaction: Meillassoux treats this as part of the Kantian Disaster, which made an accurate account of the scientific revolution impossible for philosophers. Kant's ego seems to have primarily an epistemological role. |
3708 | All thought represents either properties or indexicals [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: I assume that the contents of thought can be accounted for by appeal to just two general sorts of ingredient - properties (including relations) and indexicals. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §6.7) | |
A reaction: I don't accept that relations are a type of properties. Since he does not include objects or substances, I take it that he considers objects to be bundles of properties. |
6925 | The new philosophy thinks of the concrete in a concrete (not a abstract) manner [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The new philosophy is the philosophy that thinks of the concrete not in an abstract, but in a concrete manner. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §31) | |
A reaction: This leads to placing a high value on art, and on virtuous action through particulars rather than principles, and on empirical science. The only problem is that what he proposes is impossible. To think 'about' is to abstract from the particulars. |
3698 | Indeterminacy of translation is actually indeterminacy of meaning and belief [Bonjour] |
Full Idea: The thesis of the indeterminacy of translation would be better described as the thesis of the indeterminacy of meaning and belief. | |
From: Laurence Bonjour (In Defence of Pure Reason [1998], §3.5) | |
A reaction: Not necessarily. It is not incoherent to believe that the target people have a coherent and stable system of meaning and belief, but finding its translation indeterminate because it is holistic, and rooted in a way of life. |
6924 | Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish. |
6927 | If you love nothing, it doesn't matter whether something exists or not [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: To him who loves nothing it is all the same whether something does or does not exist. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be quite a good motto for the aim of education - just get them to love something, no matter what (well, almost!). Loving something, even if it is train-spotting, seems a good route to human happiness. |
6934 | Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit extravagent. The capacity of man to use universals in thought seems crucial to Feuerbach (though he doesn't directly address the problem). 'We are particulars with access to universals' sounds better. |
6936 | The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man and man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §59) | |
A reaction: In English provincial suburbs (where I live) it is astonishing how little interest in and need for their neighbours people seem to have. People seem to survive without community. Most of us, though, think full human happiness needs community. |
19667 | If the laws of nature are contingent, shouldn't we already have noticed it? [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: The standard objection is that if the laws of nature were actually contingent, we would already have noticed it. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
A reaction: Meillassoux offers a sustained argument that the laws of nature are necessarily contingent. In Idea 19660 he distinguishes contingencies that must change from those that merely could change. |
19670 | Why are contingent laws of nature stable? [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: We must ask how we are to explain the manifest stability of physical laws, given that we take these to be contingent? | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
A reaction: Meissalloux offers a very deep and subtle answer to this question... It is based on the possibilities of chaos being an uncountable infinity... It is a very nice question, which physicists might be able to answer, without help from philosophy. |
6913 | God's existence cannot be separated from essence and concept, which can only be thought as existing [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is the being in which existence cannot be separated from essence and concept and which cannot be thought except as existing. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §18) | |
A reaction: This shows how faith in God endured through the Idealist movement by means of the Ontological Argument, despite the criticisms of Hume and Kant. To me this now appears as an odd abberation in the history of human thought. |
19653 | The ontological proof of a necessary God ensures a reality external to the mind [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Since Descartes conceives of God as existing necessarily, whether I exist to think of him or not, Descartes assures me of a possible access to an absolute reality - a Great Outdoors that is not a correlate of my thought. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
A reaction: His point is that the ontological argument should be seen as part of the scientific revolution, and not an anomaly within it. Interesting. |
6923 | God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God is what man would like to be. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
A reaction: It is hard to see how even the most devout person could deny the truth of this. Perhaps the essential hallmark of humanity is a desire to be different from the way we are. |
6903 | If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: If God is only an object of man, what is revealed to us in his essence? Nothing but the essence of man. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §07) | |
A reaction: It is important to distinguish here between what we could know about God, and what we think God might actually be like. We may well only be able to read the essence of man into God, but we might speculate that God is more than that. |
6911 | God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: God exists, but he is for us a tabula rasa, an empty being, a mere idea; God, as we conceive and think of him, is our ego, our mind, and our essence. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
A reaction: He accepted God's existence because of the Ontological Argument. This is a little stronger than Hume's view (Idea 2185), because Hume seems to be talking about imagining God, but Feuerbach says this is our understanding of God. |
19658 | Now that the absolute is unthinkable, even atheism is just another religious belief (though nihilist) [Meillassoux] |
Full Idea: Once the absolute has become unthinkable, even atheism, which also targets God's inexistence in the manner of an absolute, is reduced to a mere belief, and hence to a religion, albeit of the nihilist kind. | |
From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
A reaction: An interesting claim. Rather hard to agree or disagree, though the idea that atheism must qualify as a religion seems odd. If it is unqualified it does have the grand quality of a religion, but if it is fallibilist it just seems like an attitude. |
6902 | Catholicism concerns God in himself, Protestantism what God is for man [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Protestantism is no longer concerned, as Catholicism is, about what God is in himself, but about what he is for man. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §02) | |
A reaction: It is certainly true that the major religions in their origins seem to be almost exclusively concerned with God alone, and have little interest in human life (or morality). |
6905 | Absolute idealism is the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism [Feuerbach] |
Full Idea: Absolute idealism is nothing but the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism. | |
From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
A reaction: In general it seems an accurate commentary that during the eighteenth century philosophers on the continent were designing a religion without God. Kantian duty tries to replace the authority of God with pure reason. |