45 ideas
| 23247 | The need to act produces consciousness, and practical reason is the root of all reason [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness of the real world proceeds from the need to act, not the other way around. …Practical reason is the root of all reason. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Strongly agree with the last part. In my conceptual scheme 'sensible' behaviour (e.g. of animals) precedes, in every way, rational behaviour. Sensible attitudes to quantity and magnitude precede mathematical logic. Minds exist for navigation. |
| 23232 | Sufficient reason makes the transition from the particular to the general [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of sufficient reason is the point of transition from the particular, which is itself, to the general, which is outside it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems worth passing on. Personally I would say that we have a knack of generalising, triggered when we spot patterns. |
| 23227 | Each object has a precise number of properties, each to a precise degree [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Each object has a definite number of properties, no more, no less. …Each of these objects possesses each of these properties to a definite degree. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Quine flatly disagrees with this. Fichte offers no grounds for his claim. On the whole I think of properties as psychologically abstracted by us from holistic objects, so there is plenty of room for error. The underlying powers are real. |
| 23228 | The principle of activity and generation is found in a self-moving basic force [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The principle of activity, of generation and becoming in and for itself, is purely in that force itself and not in anything outside it…; the force is not driven or set in motion, it sets itself in motion. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A good account of primitive powers, as self-motivating forces. I can't think what else could be fundamental to nature. This whole passage of Fichte expounds a powers ontology. |
| 23241 | I am myself, but not the external object; so I only sense myself, and not the object [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I sense in myself, not in the object, for I am myself and not the object; therefore I sense only myself and my condition, and not the condition of the object. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why anyone would have total confidence in internal experience and almost no confidence in experience of externals. In daily life I am equally confident about both. In philosophical mode I make equally cautious judgements about both. |
| 21969 | Awareness of reality comes from the free activity of consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: It is the necessary faith in our freedom of power, in our own real activity, and in the definite laws of human action, which lies at the root of all our consciousness of a reality external to ourselves. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.98), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.4 | |
| A reaction: I'd love to know what the 'laws of human action' are. Is it what Hume was trying to do? Moore says there is an 'element of self-creation' in Fichte's account of the source of reality. This is Descartes' dream argument biting back. |
| 21966 | Self-consciousness is the basis of knowledge, and knowing something is knowing myself [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: The immediate consciousness of myself is the condition of all other consciousness; and I know a thing only in so far as I know that I know it; no element can enter into the latter cognition which is not contained in the former. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.37), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.2 | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as false, and a lot of intellectual contortion would be needed to believe it. Is knowing this pen is in front of me a case of knowing that I have knowledge of this pen, or is it just knowledge of this pen? [cf Kant 1781:A129] |
| 21967 | There is nothing to say about anything which is outside my consciousness [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Of any connection beyond the limits of my consciousness I cannot speak. ...I cannot proceed a hair's breadth beyond this consciousness, any more than I can spring out of myself. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], p.74), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 06.3 | |
| A reaction: I can't see that this is any different from the idealism of Berkeley, although they get there from different starting points. Idealist seem unable to even begin explaining consciousness. |
| 23231 | I immediately know myself, and anything beyond that is an inference [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Immediately I know only of myself. What I am able to know beyond that I am only able to know through inference. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A direct descendant of the Cartesian Cogito, I assume. Personally, if I bang my head on a beam I take the beam to be a full paid-up member of reality. Is it not possible that he also knows himself through inference? Do animals infer reality? |
| 23246 | Faith is not knowledge; it is a decision of the will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Faith is no knowledge, but a decision of the will to recognise the validity of knowledge. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: What matters is the grounds for the decision. Mad conspiracy theories are decisions of the will which are false. Legitimate faith is an intuition of coherence which cannot be fully articulated. |
| 23245 | Knowledge can't be its own foundation; there has to be regress of higher and higher authorities [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: No knowledge can be its own foundation and proof. Every knowledge presupposes something still higher as its foundation, and this ascent has no end. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: A metaphor that's hard to visualise! He must have in mind a priori as well as empirical knowledge. The 'higher' levels don't seem to be God, but some region of absolute rationality, to which free minds have access. I think. |
| 12790 | Generalisations must be invariant to explain anything [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: A generalisation is explanatory if and only if it is invariant. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Jim Woodward 2003] I dislike the idea that generalisations and regularities explain anything at all, but this rule sounds like a bare minimum for being taken seriously in the space of explanations. |
| 12789 | Biological functions are explained by disposition, or by causal role [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: The main alternative to the dispositional theory of biological functions (which confer a survival-enhancing propensity) is the etiological theory (effects are functions if they play a role in the causal history of that very component). | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: [Bigelow/Pargetter 1987 for the first, Mitchell 2003 for the second] The second one sounds a bit circular, but on the whole a I prefer causal explanations to dispositional explanations. |
| 14386 | Mechanisms are ontologically dependent on regularities [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: Mechanisms are ontologically dependent on the existence of regularities. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the Humean rearguard action in favour of the regularity account of laws. Wrong, but a nice paper. This point shows why only powers (despite their vagueness!) are the only candidate for the bottom level of explanation. |
| 12787 | Mechanisms can't explain on their own, as their models rest on pragmatic regularities [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: To model a mechanism one must incorporate pragmatic laws. ...As valuable as the concept of mechanism and mechanistic explanation are, they cannot replace regularities nor undermine their relevance for scientific explanation. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 12786 for 'pragmatic laws'] I just don't see how the observation of a regularity is any sort of explanation. I just take a regularity to be something interesting which needs to be explained. |
| 14384 | We can show that regularities and pragmatic laws are more basic than mechanisms [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: Summary: mechanisms depend on regularities, there may be regularities without mechanisms, models of mechanisms must incorporate pragmatic laws, and pragmatic laws do not depend epistemologically on mechanistic models. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14382 for 'pragmatic' laws. I'm quite keen on mechanisms, so this is an arrow close to the heart, but at this point I say that my ultimate allegiance is to powers, not to mechanisms. |
| 14388 | Mechanisms must produce macro-level regularities, but that needs micro-level regularities [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can count as a mechanism unless it produces some macro-level regular behaviour. To produce macro-level regular behaviour, it has to rely on micro-level regularities. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §5) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Leuridan's argument that regularities are more basic than mechanisms. It doesn't follow, though, that the more basic a thing is the more explanatory work it can do. I say mechanisms explain more than low-level regularities do. |
| 14389 | There is nothing wrong with an infinite regress of mechanisms and regularities [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: I see nothing metaphysically wrong in an infinite ontological regress of mechanisms and regularities. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §5) | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty unusual view, and I can't accept it. My revulsion at this regress is precisely the reason why I believe in powers, as the bottom level of explanation. |
| 23242 | Consciousness has two parts, passively receiving sensation, and actively causing productions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My immediate consciousness is composed of two constituent parts, the consciousness of my passivity, the sensation; and the consciousness of my activity, in the production of an object according to the principle of causality. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: Kind of obvious, but unusual to make this sharp binary division. Modern neuroscience strongly militates against any and every simple binary division of brain activities. |
| 23240 | We can't know by sight or hearing without realising that we are doing so [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. Could you not perhaps know an object through sight or hearing without knowing that you are seeing or hearing? A. Not at all. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the traditional view which seemed to be demolished by the discovery of blindsight. In the light of modern brain research, the views of the mind found in past philosophers mostly seem very naïve. |
| 23243 | Consciousness of external things is always accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of self [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Q. So that constantly and under all circumstances my consciousness of things outside of me is accompanied by an unnoticed consciousness of myself? A. Quite so. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 2) | |
| A reaction: He should be more cautious about asserting the existence of something 'unnoticed'. The Earth's core is unnoticed by me, but there is plenty of evidence for it. Not so sure about unnoticed self. Still, I think central control of the mind is indispensable. |
| 23244 | Forming purposes is absolutely free, and produces something from nothing [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: My thinking and originating of a purpose is in its nature absolutely free and brings forth something from nothing. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: Modern fans of free will are more equivocal in their assertions, and would be uncomfortable bluntly claiming to 'get something from nothing'. But that's what free will is! Embrace it, or run for your life. |
| 23237 | The capacity for freedom is above the laws of nature, with its own power of purpose and will [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This capacity [for freedom], once it exists, is in the servitude of a power which is higher than nature and quite free of its laws, the power of purposes, and the will. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: You would think this could only refer to God, but he in fact is referring to the power of human free will. The clearest statement I have found of the weird human exceptionalism implied by a strong commitment to free will. |
| 23235 | I want independent control of the fundamental cause of my decisions [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be independent - not to be in and through another but to be something for myself: and as such I want myself to be the fundamental cause of all my determinations. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this sums up the absurdity of the concept of free will. The only reason he gives for his passionate belief in free will is that he desperately wants some imagined 'fundamental cause' for his action, and he wants full control of that chimera. |
| 23230 | Nature contains a fundamental force of thought [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: There is an original force of thought in nature just as there is an original formative force. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I think this idea is false, but it helps to understand Fichte. |
| 23233 | The will is awareness of one of our inner natural forces [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: To will is to be immediately conscious of the activity of one of our inner natural forces. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: A more Nietzschean view would be that to will is to be conscious of the victor among our inner natural drives. It can't just be awareness of one force, because the will feels conflicts. |
| 2705 | How can intuitionists distinguish universal convictions from local cultural ones? [Hare] |
| Full Idea: There are convictions which are common to most societies; but there are others which are not, and no way is given by intuitionists of telling which are the authoritative data. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.454) | |
| A reaction: It seems unfair on intuitionists to say they haven't given a way to evaluate such things, given that they have offered intuition. The issue is what exactly they mean by 'intuition'. |
| 2712 | You can't use intuitions to decide which intuitions you should cultivate [Hare] |
| Full Idea: If it comes to deciding what intuitions and dispositions to cultivate, we cannot rely on the intuitions themselves, as intuitionists do. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.461) | |
| A reaction: Makes intuitionists sound a bit dim. Surely Hume identifies dispositions (such as benevolence) which should be cultivated, because they self-evidently improve social life? |
| 23234 | I cannot change the nature which has been determined for me [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I cannot will the intention of making myself something other than what I am determined to be by nature, for I don't make myself at all but nature makes me and whatever I become. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a lot more accurate than Sartre's claim that we can re-make ourselves, but Fichte doesn't seem quite right. Don't I get any credit at all if I give up smoking, or train myself to treat someone more sympathetically? |
| 23239 | The self is, apart from outward behaviour, a drive in your nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: This 'you' for which you show such a lively interest is, so far as it is not overt behaviour, at least a drive in your own peculiar nature. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: I assume this use of 'drive' is the origin of Nietzsche's picture of such things, focused on the basic will to power. I like Fichte's emphasis on active forces as the basis of nature. |
| 2706 | Emotivists mistakenly think all disagreements are about facts, and so there are no moral reasons [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Emotivists concluded too hastily that because naturalism and intuitionism are false, you cannot reason about moral questions, because they assumed that the only questions you can reason about are factual ones. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: Personally I have a naturalistic view of ethics (based on successful functioning, as indicated by Aristotle), so not my prob. Why can't we reason about expressive emotions? We reason about art. |
| 2708 | An 'ought' statement implies universal application [Hare] |
| Full Idea: In any 'ought' statement there is implicit a principle which says that the statement applies to all precisely similar situations. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.456) | |
| A reaction: No two situations can ever be 'precisely' similar. Indeed, 'precisely similar' may be an oxymoron (at least for situations). Kantians presumably like this idea. |
| 2704 | If morality is just a natural or intuitive description, that leads to relativism [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Non-descriptivists (e.g. prescriptivists) reject descriptivism in its naturalist or intuitionist form, because they are both destined to collapse into relativism. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.453) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear from this why prescriptism would not also turn out to be relativist, if it includes evaluations along with facts. |
| 2703 | Descriptivism say ethical meaning is just truth-conditions; prescriptivism adds an evaluation [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Ethical descriptivism is the view that ethical sentence-meaning is wholly determined by truth-conditions. …Prescriptivists think there is a further element of meaning, which expresses prescriptions or evaluations or attitudes which we assent to. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.452) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand either of these. If all meaning consists of truth-conditions, that will apply to ethics. If meaning includes evaluations, that will apply to non-ethics. |
| 2707 | If there can be contradictory prescriptions, then reasoning must be involved [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists claim that there are rules of reasoning which govern non-descriptive as well as descriptive speech acts. The standard example is possible logical inconsistency between contradictory prescriptions. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.455) | |
| A reaction: The example doesn't seem very good. Inconsistency can appear in any area of thought, but that isn't enough to infer full 'rules of reasoning'. I could desire two incompatible crazy things. |
| 2711 | Prescriptivism implies a commitment, but descriptivism doesn't [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Prescriptivists hold that moral judgements commit the speaker to motivations and actions, but non-moral facts by themselves do not do this. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.459) | |
| A reaction: Surely hunger motivates to action? I suppose the key word is 'commit'. But lazy people are allowed to make moral judgements. |
| 2709 | Prescriptivism sees 'ought' statements as imperatives which are universalisable [Hare] |
| Full Idea: Universal prescriptivists hold that 'ought'-judgements are prescriptive like plain imperatives, but differ from them in being universalisable. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.457) | |
| A reaction: Sounds a bit tautological. Which comes first, the normativity or the universalisability? |
| 23238 | If life lacks love it becomes destruction [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Only in love is there life; without it there is death and annihilation. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: He gives not context of justification for this sudden claim. Watching from a melancholy distance the current 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, I take this idea to be a profound truth. If you let go of love, you float away down a dark stream. |
| 2710 | Moral judgements must invoke some sort of principle [Hare] |
| Full Idea: To make moral judgements is implicitly to invoke some principle, however specific. | |
| From: Richard M. Hare (Universal Prescriptivism [1991], p.458) |
| 23236 | Freedom means making yourself become true to your essential nature [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: I want to be free means: I myself want to make myself be whatever I will be. I would therefore …already have to be, in a certain sense, what I am to become, so that I could make myself be it. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is much closer to the existenial picture of the malleable self, which Fichte arrives out once he commits to his desperate desire to have free will. [Not sure if my gist captures what he says]. |
| 23229 | Nature is wholly interconnected, and the tiniest change affects everything [Fichte] |
| Full Idea: Nature is an interconnected whole; …you could shift no grain of sand from its spot without thereby, perhaps invisibly to your eyes, changing something in all parts of the immeasurable whole. | |
| From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like idealist daydreaming, but might it actually be true with respect to gravity? |
| 14387 | Rather than dispositions, functions may be the element that brought a thing into existence [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: The dispositional theory of biological functions is not unquestioned. The main alternative is the etiological theory: a component's effect is a function of that component if it has played an essential role in the causal history of its existence. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites S.D. Mitchell 2003] Presumably this account is meant to fit into a theory of evolution in biology. The obvious problem is where something comes into existence for one reason, and then acquires a new function (such as piano-playing). |
| 14382 | Pragmatic laws allow prediction and explanation, to the extent that reality is stable [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: A generalization is a 'pragmatic law' if it allows of prediction, explanation and manipulation, even if it fails to satisfy the traditional criteria. To this end, it should describe a stable regularity, but not necessarily a universal and necessary one. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §1) | |
| A reaction: I am tempted to say of this that all laws are pragmatic, given that it is rather hard to know whether reality is stable. The universal laws consist of saying that IF reality stays stable in certain ways, certain outcomes will ensue necessarily. |
| 14385 | Strict regularities are rarely discovered in life sciences [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: Strict regularities are rarely if ever discovered in the life sciences. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §2) | |
| A reaction: This is elementary once it is pointed out, but too much philosophy have science has aimed at the model provided by the equations of fundamental physics. Science is a broad church, to employ an entertaining metaphor. |
| 14383 | A 'law of nature' is just a regularity, not some entity that causes the regularity [Leuridan] |
| Full Idea: By 'law of nature' or 'natural law' I mean a generalization describing a regularity, not some metaphysical entity that produces or is responsible for that regularity. | |
| From: Bert Leuridan (Can Mechanisms Replace Laws of Nature? [2010], §1 n1) | |
| A reaction: I take the second version to be a relic of a religious world view, and having no place in a naturalistic metaphysic. The regularity view is then the only player in the field, and the question is, can we do more? Can't we explain regularities? |