13 ideas
5300 | Philosophers have interpreted the world, but the point is to change it [Marx] |
Full Idea: The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. | |
From: Karl Marx (Theses on Feuerbach [1846], §XI) | |
A reaction: The 'point' of what? Personally I am more with Aristotle - that the aim is to create a society in which we can all aspire to contemplate like gods. As an interim statement of aim, though, one must respect Marx. But was he a philosopher? |
8378 | Philosophers usually learn science from each other, not from science [Russell] |
Full Idea: Philosophers are too apt to take their views on science from each other, not from science. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.178) | |
A reaction: This wasn't true of Russell, but it is certainly true of me. I rely on philosophical researchers to find the interesting bits of science for me (like blindsight). Memo to myself: read more science. |
5297 | Whether human thinking can be 'true' must be decided in practice, not theory [Marx] |
Full Idea: The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question; man must prove the truth of his thinking in practice. | |
From: Karl Marx (Theses on Feuerbach [1846], §II) | |
A reaction: This would appear to be an assertion of the pragmatic view of truth well before Peirce. The obvious objections arise, such as whether falsehood (Plato's 'noble lie') might not have equal practical success, and whether truth might be disastrous. |
8375 | 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, saying it is true for all values of its argument [Russell] |
Full Idea: 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, meaning that it is true for all possible values of its argument or arguments. Thus 'If x is a man, x is mortal' is necessary, because it is true for any possible value of x. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.175) | |
A reaction: This is presumably the intermediate definition of necessity, prior to modern talk of possible worlds. Since it is a predicate about functions, it is presumably a metalinguistic concept, like the semantic concept of truth. |
22598 | The authentic self exists at the level of class, rather than the individual [Marx, by Dunt] |
Full Idea: Instead of focusing on the individual, Marxism suggested that the authentic self was at the social level in the form of class. | |
From: report of Karl Marx (Theses on Feuerbach [1846]) by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 6 | |
A reaction: [not sure of the best source in Marx] This idea is expressed here by a defender of liberal individualism. Dunt persuasively attacks any concept of the self as part of some group, rather than as being an individual. |
16383 | Puzzled Pierre has two mental files about the same object [Recanati on Kripke] |
Full Idea: In Kripke's puzzle about belief, the subject has two distinct mental files about one and the same object. | |
From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (A Puzzle about Belief [1979]) by François Recanati - Mental Files 17.1 | |
A reaction: [Pierre distinguishes 'London' from 'Londres'] The Kripkean puzzle is presented as very deep, but I have always felt there was a simple explanation, and I suspect that this is it (though I will leave the reader to think it through, as I'm very busy…). |
5298 | The human essence is not found in individuals but in social relations [Marx] |
Full Idea: The human essence is no abstraction inherent in each single individual; in its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations. | |
From: Karl Marx (Theses on Feuerbach [1846], §VI) | |
A reaction: This is a key Marxist doctrine, and the central difference from Aristotle. Personally I am more with Aristotle, but the truth obviously lies somewhere in between. Man must be a 'social being', or there wouldn't be any social relations. |
4396 | The law of causality is a source of confusion, and should be dropped from philosophy [Russell] |
Full Idea: The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.173) | |
A reaction: A bold proposal which should be taken seriously. However, if we drop it from scientific explanation, we may well find ourselves permanently stuck with it in 'folk' explanation. What is the alternative? |
8376 | If causes are contiguous with events, only the last bit is relevant, or the event's timing is baffling [Russell] |
Full Idea: A cause is an event lasting for a finite time, but if cause and effect are contiguous then the earlier part of a changing cause can be altered without altering the effect, and a static cause will exist placidly for some time and then explode into effect. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.177) | |
A reaction: [very compressed] He concludes that they can't be contiguous (and eventually rejects cause entirely). This kind of problem is the sort of thing that only bothers philosophers - the question of how anything can happen at all. Why change? |
8380 | Striking a match causes its igniting, even if it sometimes doesn't work [Russell] |
Full Idea: A may be the cause of B even if there actually are cases of B not following A. Striking a match will be the cause of its igniting, in spite of the fact that some matches are damp and fail to ignite. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.185) | |
A reaction: An important point, although defenders of the constant conjunction view can cope with it. There is a further regularity between dampness of matches and their failure to strike. |
8379 | In causal laws, 'events' must recur, so they have to be universals, not particulars [Russell] |
Full Idea: An 'event' (in a statement of the 'law of causation') is intended to be something that is likely to recur, since otherwise the law becomes trivial. It follows that an 'event' is not some particular, but a universal of which there may be many instances. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.179) | |
A reaction: I am very struck by this. It may be a key insight into understanding what a law of nature actually is. It doesn't follow that we must be realists about universals, but the process of abstraction from particulars is at the heart of generalisation. |
8381 | The constancy of scientific laws rests on differential equations, not on cause and effect [Russell] |
Full Idea: It is not in the sameness of causes and effects that the constancy of scientific law consists, but in sameness of relations. And even 'sameness of relations' is too simple a phrase; 'sameness of differential equations' is the only correct phrase. | |
From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.186) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to the regularity view, since there is nothing more to natural law than that the variables keeping obeying the equations. It also seems to be a very instrumentalist view. |
5299 | Religious feeling is social in origin [Marx] |
Full Idea: The "religious sentiment" (discussed by Feuerbach) is itself a social product. | |
From: Karl Marx (Theses on Feuerbach [1846], §VII) | |
A reaction: Recent brain research has identified a part of the brain which is only active during religious thought and experience. It is easy to produce cynical political accounts of religion, but in its time it was also quite a good scientific account of nature. |