29 ideas
| 15575 | Knowledge is not a static set of correct propositions, but a continuing search for better interpretations [Polt] |
| Full Idea: Thanks to Heidegger, hermeneutics has gained wider acceptance - that knowledge is not a static set of correct propositions, but a continuing search for better interpretations. | |
| From: Richard Polt (Heidegger: an introduction [1999], 3.§7) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure if I understand the notion of a search that has a refusal to actually find anything as one of its basic principles. |
| 15787 | Maybe Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: It might be said that Ockham's Razor is a purely aesthetic principle. | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 02) | |
| A reaction: I don't buy this, if it meant to be dismissive of the relevance of the principle to truth. A deep question might be, what is so aesthetically attractive about simplicity? I'm inclined to think that application of the Razor has delivered terrific results. |
| 15784 | The Razor seems irrelevant for Meinongians, who allow absolutely everything to exist [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: A Meinongian has already posited everything that could, or even could not, be; how, then, can any subsequent brandishing of Ockham's Razor be to the point? | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 02) | |
| A reaction: See the ideas of Alexius Meinong. Presumably these crazy Meinongians must make some distinction between what actually exists in front of your nose, and the rest. So the Razor can use that distinction too. |
| 23853 | Truth is not a object we love - it is the radiant manifestation of reality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Love of truth is not a correct form of expression. Truth is not an object of love. It is not an object at all. …Truth is the radiant manifestation of reality. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Wow! Love that one! |
| 23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
| A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |
| 15792 | Maybe non-existent objects are sets of properties [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Meinong's Objects have sometimes been construed as sets of properties. | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
| A reaction: [Lycan cites Castañeda and T.Parsons] You still seem to have the problem with any 'bundle' theory of anything. A non-existent object is as much intended to be an object as anything on my desk right now. It just fails to be. |
| 15568 | When we consider possibilities, there must be something we are considering [Polt] |
| Full Idea: We would hardly want to say that a possibility is nothing, since surely we are considering something when we consider possibilities. | |
| From: Richard Polt (Heidegger: an introduction [1999], 1) | |
| A reaction: A nice contribution to the issue of whether modality is a feature of actuality. I would prefer to say that we can self-evidently utter truths and falsehoods about what is or is not possible, in nature, in logic, and maybe in metaphysics. |
| 15795 | Treating possible worlds as mental needs more actual mental events [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: A mentalistic approach to possible worlds is daunted by the paucity of actual mental events. | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
| A reaction: Why do they have to be actual, any more than memories have to be conscious? The mental events just need to be available when you need them. They are never all required simultaneously. This isn't mathematical logic! |
| 15796 | Possible worlds must be made of intensional objects like propositions or properties [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I believe the only promising choice of actual entities to serve as 'worlds' is that of sets of intensional objects, such as propositions or properties with stipulated interrelations. | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 12) | |
| A reaction: This is mainly in response to Lewis's construction of them out of actual concrete objects. It strikes me as a bogus problem. It is just a convenient way to think precisely about possibilities, and occasionally outruns our mental capacity. |
| 15794 | If 'worlds' are sentences, and possibility their consistency, consistency may rely on possibility [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If a 'world' is understood as a set of sentences, then possibility may be understood as consistency, ...but this seems circular, in that 'consistency' of sentences cannot adequately be defined save in terms of possibility. | |
| From: William Lycan (The Trouble with Possible Worlds [1979], 09) | |
| A reaction: [Carnap and Hintikka propose the view, Lewis 'Counterfactuals' p.85 objects] Worlds as sentences is not, of course, the same as worlds as propositions. There is a lot of circularity around in 'possible' worlds. |
| 23848 | The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The aesthete's point of view is sacreligious, not only in matters of religion but even in those of art. It consists in amusing oneself with beauty by handling it and looking at it. Beauty is something to be eaten: it is a food. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Country') | |
| A reaction: She is endorsing the 'food' view against the 'handling' view. Beauty should nourish, she says. |
| 23854 | Beauty is the proof of what is good [Weil] |
| Full Idea: When the subject in question is the good, beauty is a rigorous and positive proof. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Purest platonism! It is incomprehensible to say 'this thing is evil, but it is beautiful'. But there are plenty of things which strike me as beautiful, without connecting that in any way to moral goodness. |
| 23837 | Respect is our only obligation, which can only be expressed through deeds, not words [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Humans have only one obligation: respect. The obligation is only performed if the respect is effectively expressed in a real, not a fictitious, way; and this can only be done through the medium of Man's earthly needs. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: She says man's 'eternal destiny' imposes this obligation. I read this as saying that you should not imagine that you treat people respectfully if you are merely polite to them. Col. Pickering and Eliza Doolittle! Respect is the supreme virtue. |
| 23844 | The most important human need is to have multiple roots [Weil] |
| Full Idea: To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognised need of the human soul. …Every human being needs to have multiple roots. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Uprootedness') | |
| A reaction: Agree. I think we are just like trees, in that we need roots to grow well, and plenty of space to fully flourish. Identifying those roots is the main task of parents and teachers. |
| 23838 | The need for order stands above all others, and is understood via the other needs [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Order is the first need of all; it evens stands above all needs properly so-called. To be able to conceive it we must know what the other needs are. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Order') | |
| A reaction: This may be music to conservative ears, but you should examine Weil's other ideas to see what she has in mind. |
| 23836 | Obligations only bind individuals, not collectives [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Obligations are only binding on human beings. There are no obligations for collectivities, as such. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: I take it that 'as such' excludes the institutions created by collectivities, such as parliaments and courts. A nomadic tribe seems to have no duties, as a tribe, apart from mutual obligations among its members. Does this excuse crimes by the tribe? |
| 23843 | Even the poorest should feel collective ownership, and participation in grand display [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Participation in collective possessions is important. Where real civic life exists, each feels he has a personal ownership in the public monuments, gardens, ceremonial pomp and circumstances; sumptuousness is thus place within the reach of the poorest. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Collective') | |
| A reaction: OK with gardens. Dubious about fobbing the poor off with pomp. Monuments are a modern controversy, when they turn out to commemorate slavery and colonial conquest. I agree with her basic thought. |
| 23840 | A citizen should be able to understand the whole of society [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A man needs to be able to encompass in thought the entire range of activity of the social organism to which he belongs. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Responsibility') | |
| A reaction: She is urging the active involvement of citizens in decision making - for which they need appropriate knowledge. |
| 23846 | Culture is an instrument for creating an ongoing succession of teachers [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Culture - as we know it - is an instrument manipulated by teachers for manufacturing more teachers, who, in their turn, will manufacture still more teachers. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: Lot of truth in this. We tend to view our greatest successes in students who become academics and teachers. Culture is very much seen as something which must be 'transmitted' to each new generation. |
| 23839 | A lifelong head of society should only be a symbol, not a ruler [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Wherever a man is placed for life at the head of a social organism, he ought to be a symbol and not a ruler, as is the case with the King of England. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Obedience') | |
| A reaction: Nice to hear a radical French thinker endorsing an ancient British tradition! She may not be endorsing a lifelong head of state. Lifelong rulers are the main agents of totalitarianism. |
| 23842 | Party politics in a democracy can't avoid an anti-democratic party [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A democracy where public life is made up of strife between political parties is incapable of preventing the formation of a party whose avowed aim is the overthrow of that democracy. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Opinion') | |
| A reaction: We have seen this around 2020 in the USA and the UK. Freedom is compulsory? Weil hates political parties (as did Rousseau). |
| 23847 | Socialism tends to make a proletariat of the whole population [Weil] |
| Full Idea: What is called Socialism tends to force everybody without distinction into the proletarian condition. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: For example, Weil favours maximising private house ownership, rather than communally owned housing. She is describing wholesale nationalisation. I would incline towards nationalisation only of all basic central services. |
| 23845 | The capitalists neglect the people and the nation, and even their own interests [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The capitalists have betrayed their calling by criminally neglecting not only the interests of the people, not only those of the nation, but even their own. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Towns') | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that the dedicated capitalist has little loyalty either to the people or to the nation. She doesn't spell out their failure of self-interest. I guess it produces a way of life they don't really want, deep down. |
| 23841 | By making money the sole human measure, inequality has become universal [Weil] |
| Full Idea: By making money the sole, or almost the sole, motive of all actions, the sole, or almost the sole, measure of all things, the poison of inequality has been introduced everywhere. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Equality') | |
| A reaction: Presumably this dates right back to the invention of money, and then increases with the endless rise of capitalism. |
| 23835 | People have duties, and only have rights because of the obligations of others to them [Weil] |
| Full Idea: A right is effectual only in relation to its corresponding obligation, springing not from the individual who possesses it, but from others who consider themselves under an obligation to him. In isolation a man only has duties, and only others have rights. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], I 'Needs') | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, and obviously refutes the idea that people have intrinsic natural rights. However, it may be our sense of what nature requires which gives rise to the obligations we feel towards others. |
| 23852 | To punish people we must ourselves be innocent - but that undermines the desire to punish [Weil] |
| Full Idea: In order to have the right to punish the guilty, we ought first of all to purify ourselves of their crimes. …But once this is accomplished we shall no longer feel the least desire to punish, or as little as possible and with extreme sorrow. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: Elsewhere she endorses punishment, as a social necessity, and a redemption for the wicked. This idea looks like a bit of a change of heart. She may be thinking of Jesus on the mote in someone's eye. |
| 23850 | The soldier-civilian distinction should be abolished; every citizen is committed to a war [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The distinction between soldiers and civilians, which the pressure of circumstances has already almost obliterated, should be entirely abolished. Every individual in the population owes his country the whole of his strength, resources and life itself. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
| A reaction: Written in London in 1943. The year carpet bombing seriously escalated. The facts of warfare can change the ethics. |
| 23851 | Education is essentially motivation [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Education - whether its object be children or adults, individuals or an entire people, or even oneself - consists in creating motives. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: I can't disagree. Intellectual motivation is simply what we find interesting, and there is no formula for that. A teacher can teach a good session, and only 5% of the pupils find it interesting. A bad session could be life-changing for one student. |
| 23849 | Religion should quietly suffuse all human life with its light [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The proper function of religion is to suffuse with its light all secular life, public or private, without in any way dominating it. | |
| From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], II 'Nation') | |
| A reaction: Even for the non-religious there is something attractive about some view of the world which 'suffuses our lives with light'. It probably describes medieval Christendom, but that contained an awful lot of darkness. |