35 ideas
| 2557 | Analytical philosophy seems to have little interest in how to tell a good analysis from a bad one [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: There is nowadays little attempt to bring "analytic philosophy" to self-consciousness by explaining how to tell a successful from an unsuccessful analysis. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.1) |
| 2556 | Rational certainty may be victory in argument rather than knowledge of facts [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: We can think of "rational certainty" as a matter of victory in argument rather than relation to an object known. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 3.4) |
| 4726 | Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers [Rorty, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: Rorty seems to view truth as simply being able to hold one's view against all comers. | |
| From: report of Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This may be a caricature of Rorty, but he certainly seems to be in the business of denying truth as much as possible. This strikes me as the essence of pragmatism, and as a kind of philosophical nihilism. |
| 2549 | For James truth is "what it is better for us to believe" rather than a correct picture of reality [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Truth is, in James' phrase, "what it is better for us to believe", rather than "the accurate representation of reality". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Intro) |
| 13733 | Frege considered definite descriptions to be genuine singular terms [Frege, by Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
| Full Idea: Frege (1893) considered a definite description to be a genuine singular term (as we do), so that a sentence like 'The present King of France is bald' would have the same logical form as 'Harry Truman is bald'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by M Fitting/R Mendelsohn - First-Order Modal Logic | |
| A reaction: The difficulty is what the term refers to, and they embrace a degree of Meinongianism - that is that non-existent objects can still have properties attributed to them, and so can be allowed some sort of 'existence'. |
| 9874 | Contradiction arises from Frege's substitutional account of second-order quantification [Dummett on Frege] |
| Full Idea: The contradiction in Frege's system is due to the presence of second-order quantification, ..and Frege's explanation of the second-order quantifier, unlike that which he provides for the first-order one, appears to be substitutional rather than objectual. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893], §25) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.17 | |
| A reaction: In Idea 9871 Dummett adds the further point that Frege lacks a clear notion of the domain of quantification. At this stage I don't fully understand this idea, but it is clearly of significance, so I will return to it. |
| 18252 | Real numbers are ratios of quantities, such as lengths or masses [Frege] |
| Full Idea: If 'number' is the referent of a numerical symbol, a real number is the same as a ratio of quantities. ...A length can have to another length the same ratio as a mass to another mass. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893], III.1.73), quoted by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics 21 'Frege's' | |
| A reaction: This is part of a critique of Cantor and the Cauchy series approach. Interesting that Frege, who is in the platonist camp, is keen to connect the real numbers with natural phenomena. He is always keen to keep touch with the application of mathematics. |
| 18271 | We can't prove everything, but we can spell out the unproved, so that foundations are clear [Frege] |
| Full Idea: It cannot be demanded that everything be proved, because that is impossible; but we can require that all propositions used without proof be expressly declared as such, so that we can see distinctly what the whole structure rests upon. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893], p.2), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 7 'What' |
| 10623 | Frege defined number in terms of extensions of concepts, but needed Basic Law V to explain extensions [Frege, by Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Frege opts for his famous definition of numbers in terms of extensions of the concept 'equal to the concept F', but he then (in 'Grundgesetze') needs a theory of extensions or classes, which he provided by means of Basic Law V. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by B Hale / C Wright - Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' §1 |
| 9975 | Frege ignored Cantor's warning that a cardinal set is not just a concept-extension [Tait on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Cantor pointed out explicitly to Frege that it is a mistake to take the notion of a set (i.e. of that which has a cardinal number) to simply mean the extension of a concept. ...Frege's later assumption of this was an act of recklessness. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by William W. Tait - Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind III | |
| A reaction: ['recklessness' is on p.61] Tait has no sympathy with the image of Frege as an intellectual martyr. Frege had insufficient respect for a great genius. Cantor, crucially, understood infinity much better than Frege. |
| 18165 | My Basic Law V is a law of pure logic [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I hold that my Basic Law V is a law of pure logic. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893], p.4), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, the notorious law which fell foul of Russell's Paradox. It is said to be pure logic, even though it refers to things that are F and things that are G. |
| 2548 | If knowledge is merely justified belief, justification is social [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: If we have a Deweyan conception of knowledge, as what we are justified in believing, we will see "justification" as a social phenomenon. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find this observation highly illuminating (though I probably need to study Dewey to understand it). There just is no absolute about whether someone is justified. How justified do you want to be? |
| 6599 | Knowing has no definable essence, but is a social right, found in the context of conversations [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: If we see knowing not as having an essence, described by scientists or philosophers, but rather as a right, by current standards, to believe, then we see conversation as the ultimate context within which knowledge is to be understood. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], Ch.5), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This teeters towards ridiculous relativism (e.g. what if the conversation is among a group of fools? - Ah, there are no fools! Politically incorrect!). However, knowledge can be social, provided we are healthily elitist. Scientists know more than us. |
| 2566 | You can't debate about whether to have higher standards for the application of words [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: The decision about whether to have higher than usual standards for the application of words like "true" or "good" or "red" is, as far as I can see, not a debatable issue. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.6) |
| 2553 | The mind is a property, or it is baffling [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: All that is needed for the mind-body problem to be unintelligible is for us to be nominalist, to refuse firmly to hypostasize individual properties. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Edelman says the mind is a process rather than a property. It might vanish if the clockspeed was turned right down? Nominalism here sounds like behaviourism or instrumentalism. Would Dennett plead guilty? |
| 2550 | Pain lacks intentionality; beliefs lack qualia [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: We can't define the mental as intentional because pains aren't about anything, and we can't define it as phenomenal because beliefs don't feel like anything. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Nice, but simplistic? There is usually an intentional object for a pain, and the concepts which we use to build beliefs contain the residue of remembered qualia. It seems unlikely that any mind could have one without the other (even a computer). |
| 2554 | Is intentionality a special sort of function? [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Following Wittgenstein, we shall treat the intentional as merely a subspecies of the functional. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing but obscure. Sounds wrong to me. The intentional refers to the content of thoughts, but function concerns their role. They have roles because they have content, so they can't be the same. |
| 9190 | A concept is a function mapping objects onto truth-values, if they fall under the concept [Frege, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: In later Frege, a concept could be taken as a particular case of a function, mapping every object on to one of the truth-values (T or F), according as to whether, as we should ordinarily say, that object fell under the concept or not. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by Michael Dummett - The Philosophy of Mathematics 3.5 | |
| A reaction: As so often in these attempts at explanation, this sounds circular. You can't decide whether an object truly falls under a concept, if you haven't already got the concept. His troubles all arise (I say) because he scorns abstractionist accounts. |
| 13665 | Frege took the study of concepts to be part of logic [Frege, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Frege took the study of concepts and their extensions to be within logic. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Grundgesetze der Arithmetik 1 (Basic Laws) [1893]) by Stewart Shapiro - Foundations without Foundationalism 7.1 | |
| A reaction: This is part of the plan to make logic a universal language (see Idea 13664). I disagree with this, and with the general logicist view of the position of logic. The logical approach thins concepts out. See Deleuze/Guattari's horror at this. |
| 2565 | Nature has no preferred way of being represented [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no preferred way of being represented. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Tree rings accidentally represent the passing of the years. If God went back and started again would she or he opt for a 'preferred way'? |
| 2560 | Can meanings remain the same when beliefs change? [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: For cooler heads there must be some middle view between "meanings remain and beliefs change" and "meanings change whenever beliefs do". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: The second one seems blatanty false. How could we otherwise explain a change in belief? But obviously some changes in belief (e.g. about electrons) produce a change in meaning. |
| 2562 | A theory of reference seems needed to pick out objects without ghostly inner states [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: The need to pick out objects without the help of definitions, essences, and meanings of terms produced, philosophers thought, a need for a "theory of reference". | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Frege's was very perceptive in noting that meaning and reference are not the same. Whether we need a 'theory' of reference is unclear. It is worth describing how it occurs. |
| 2559 | Davidson's theory of meaning focuses not on terms, but on relations between sentences [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: A theory of meaning, for Davidson, is not an assemblage of "analyses" of the meanings of individual terms, but rather an understanding of the inferential relations between sentences. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the influence of Frege on Davidson is obvious. Purely algebraic expressions can have inferential relations, using variables and formal 'sentences'. |
| 23814 | Every human yearns for an unattainable transcendent good [Weil] |
| Full Idea: There is a reality outside the world …outside any sphere that is accessible to human faculties. Corresponding to this reality, at the centre of the human heart, is the longing for an absolute good, which is always there and never appeased by this world. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.221) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in any sort of transcendent reality, but I can identify with this. Even if you have a highly naturalistic view of what is valuable (see late Philippa Foot), there is this indeterminate yearning for that value. |
| 23824 | Where human needs are satisfied we find happiness, friendship and beauty [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Any place where the needs of human beings are satisfied can be recognised by the fact that there is a flowering of fraternity, joy, beauty, and happiness. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.230) | |
| A reaction: Weil writes a lengthy analysis of what she sees as the basic human needs, beyond the obvious food, water etc. An excellent place to start a line of political thought. |
| 23815 | We cannot equally respect what is unequal, so equal respect needs a shared ground [Weil] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to feel equal respect for things that are in fact unequal unless the respect is given to something that is identical in all of them. Men are all unequal in all their relations with things of this world. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.223) | |
| A reaction: Weil votes for some link to transcendence in each of us, but I would prefer some more naturalistic proposal for what we all have in common. There are plenty of aspects which unite all human beings, which grounds this unconditional respect. |
| 23823 | Life needs risks to avoid sickly boredom [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The boredom produced by a complete absence of risk is a sickness of the human soul. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: An unusual analysis of boredom. I think it is probably purposeful activity that we need, rather than actual risk, with all the stresses that involves. Risks are justified by their rewards. |
| 2558 | Since Hegel we have tended to see a human as merely animal if it is outside a society [Rorty] |
| Full Idea: Only since Hegel have philosophers begun toying with the idea that the individual apart from his society is just one more animal. | |
| From: Richard Rorty (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature [1980], 4.3) |
| 23822 | We all need to partipate in public tasks, and take some initiative [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of disciplined participation in a common task of public value, and it has need of personal initiative within this participation. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: The intrusion of competitive capitalism into almost every area of modern life has more or less eliminated such activities. Only state employees now have such satisfactions, on the whole. I admire Weil's approach here. |
| 23817 | We need both equality (to attend to human needs) and hierarchy (as a scale of responsibilities) [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of equality and of hierarchy. Equality is the public recognition …of the principal that an equal degree of attention is due to the needs of all human beings. Hierarchy is the scale of responsibilities. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: This is the conservative aspect of Weil's largely radical political thinking. Presumably what we respect in these people is their responsibilies, and not their mere rank. Idle members of the British House of Lords have no rank in this hierarchy. |
| 23819 | Deliberate public lying should be punished [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Every avoidable material falsehood publicly asserted should become a punishable offence. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: Yes please! The early 21st century has become the time when truth lost all value in public life. Lying to the House of Commons in the UK required instant resignation 50 years ago. Now it is just a source of laughter. No freedom to lie! |
| 23818 | We have liberty in the space between nature and accepted authority [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Liberty is the power of choice within the latitude left between the direct constraint of natural forces and the authority accepted as legitimate. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.228) | |
| A reaction: Accepting legitimate authority is a nicely softened version of the social contract. We often find that the office and rank are accepted as legitimate, but then are unable to accept the appalling individual who holds the office. |
| 23820 | People need personal and collective property, and a social class lacking property is shameful [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul has need of both personal property and collective property. …The existence of a social class defined by the lack of personal and collective property is as shameful as slavery. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Particularly the idea that we all need collective property, such as parks and beaches and public buildings. |
| 23821 | Crime should be punished, to bring the perpetrator freely back to morality [Weil] |
| Full Idea: The human soul needs punishment and honour. A committer of crime has become exiled from good, and needs to be reintegrated with it through suffering. This aims to bring the soul to recognise freely some day that is infliction was just. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.229) | |
| A reaction: The Scanlon contractualist approach to punishment - that the victim of it accepts its justice. Given her saintly character, Simone had a very tough view of this issue. |
| 23816 | Attention to a transcendent reality motivates a duty to foster the good of humanity [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Anyone whose attention and love are directed towards the reality outside the world recognises that he is bound by the permanent obligation to remedy …all the privations of soul and body which are liable to destroy or damage any human being whatsoever. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Draft Statement of Human Obligations [1943], p.225) | |
| A reaction: [abridged] An interesting attempt to articulate the religious motivation of morality. The Euthyphro question remains - of why this vision of a wholly good higher morality should motivate anyone, unless they already possess a desire for that good. |