8954
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Geometrical circles cannot identify a circular paint patch, presumably because they lack something [Szabó]
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Full Idea:
The vocabulary of geometry is sufficient to identify the circle, but could not be used to identify any circular paint patch. The reason must be that the circle lacks certain properties that can distinguish paint patches from one another.
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From:
Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Nominalism [2003], 2.2)
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A reaction:
I take this to be support for the traditional view, that abstractions are created by omitting some of the properties of physical objects. I take them to be fictional creations, reified by language, and not actual hidden entities that have been observed.
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5689
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Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker]
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Full Idea:
Freud persuaded many that beliefs, wishes and feelings are sometimes unconscious, and even sceptics about Freud acknowledge that there is self-deception about motive and attitudes.
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From:
report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396
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A reaction:
This seems to me obviously correct. The traditional notion is that the consciousness is the mind, but now it seems obvious that consciousness is only one part of the mind, and maybe even a peripheral (epiphenomenal) part of it.
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8955
|
Abstractions are imperceptible, non-causal, and non-spatiotemporal (the third explaining the others) [Szabó]
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Full Idea:
In current discussions, abstract entities are usually distinguished as 1) in principle imperceptible, 2) incapable of causal interaction, 3) not located in space-time. The first is often explained by the second, which is in turn explained by the third.
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From:
Zoltán Gendler Szabó (Nominalism [2003], 2.2)
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A reaction:
Szabó concludes by offering 3 as the sole criterion of abstraction. As Lewis points out, the Way of Negation for defining abstracta doesn't tell us very much. Courage may be non-spatiotemporal, but what about Alexander the Great's courage?
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21798
|
To universalise 'give everything to the poor' leads to absurdity [Hegel]
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Full Idea:
If everyone gave everything to the poor, then soon there would be no more poor to give anything to, or no more persons who would have anything to give.
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From:
Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1827], III: 152), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'Faith'
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A reaction:
Matthew 5:8, 19:21. Beautifully clear. [I always believed that I had thought of this idea - but not so]. If the logic is that it is better to be poor than to be rich, then the implication is that all excess wealth should be thrown into the sea.
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21797
|
Immortality does not come at a later time, but when pure knowing Spirit fully grasps the universal [Hegel]
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Full Idea:
The immortality of the soul must not be imagined as though it first emerges into actuality at some later time; rather it is a present quality. ...As pure knowing or as thinking, Spirit has the universal for its object - this is eternity.
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From:
Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion [1827], III: 208), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 10 'Death'
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A reaction:
An unusual view of immortality, which challenges orthodoxy. The idea seems to be that 'pure knowing' is a grasping of the pure reason which embodies nature, which in turn is the nature of God. You enter eternity, rather than reside in it?
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