27 ideas
| 23326 | In the third century Stoicism died out, replaced by Platonism, with Aristotelian ethics [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: By the second century CE Aristotelianism and Platonism had begun to eclipse Stoicism, and by the end of the third century Stoicism had no followers. All philosophers now opted for some form of Platonism, but including Aristotle's ethical principles. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 04) | |
| A reaction: The idea that Aristotelian ethics dominated that period is new to me. Stoic influence remained strong in Augustine, and hence in Christianity. |
| 23335 | In late antiquity nearly all philosophers were monotheists [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: I am inclined to think that almost all philosophers in late antiquity were monotheists. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 08) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure when late antiquity begins, in this remark. Maybe as early as 100 CE. Epictetus talks of Zeus as if he is supreme. |
| 4739 | In "if and only if" (iff), "if" expresses the sufficient condition, and "only if" the necessary condition [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Necessary and sufficient conditions are usually expressed by "if and only if" (abbr. "iff"), where "if" is the sufficient condition, and "only if" is the necessary condition. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.1) | |
| A reaction: 'I take my umbrella if and only if it is raining' (oh, and if I'm still alive). There may be other necessary conditions than the one specified. Oh, and I take it if my wife slips it into my car… |
| 4737 | Are truth-bearers propositions, or ideas/beliefs, or sentences/utterances? [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The tradition of the Stoics and Frege says that truth-bearers are propositions, Descartes and the classical empiricist say they are ideas or beliefs, and Ockham and Quine say they are sentences or utterances. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm with propositions, which are unambiguous, can be expressed in a variety of ways, embody the 'logical form' of sentences, and could be physically embodied in brains (the language of thought?). |
| 4750 | The redundancy theory gets rid of facts, for 'it is a fact that p' just means 'p' [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The redundancy theory gets rid of facts, for 'it is a fact that p' just means 'p'. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.2) | |
| A reaction: But then when you ask what p means, you have to give the truth-conditions for its assertion, and you find you have to mention the facts after all. |
| 4744 | We can't explain the corresponding structure of the world except by referring to our thoughts [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory implies displaying an identity or similarity of structure between the contents of thoughts and the way the world is structured, but we seem only to be able to say that the world's structure corresponds to our thoughts. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept this. The structure of the world gives rise to our thoughts. There is an epistemological problem here (big time!), but that doesn't alter the metaphysical situation of what truth is supposed to be, which is correspondence. |
| 4738 | The coherence theory says truth is an internal relationship between groups of truth-bearers [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The coherence theory of truth says that it is a relationship between truth-bearers themselves, that is between propositions or beliefs or sentences. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.1) | |
| A reaction: We immediately begin to wonder how many truth-bearers are required. Two lies can be coherent. It is hard to make thousands of lies coherent, but not impossible. What fixes the critical number. 'All possible propositions' is not much help. |
| 4745 | Any coherent set of beliefs can be made more coherent by adding some false beliefs [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Any coherent set of beliefs can be made more coherent by adding to it one or more false beliefs. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: A simple but rather devastating point. It is the policeman manufacturing a bogus piece of evidence to clinch the conviction, the scientist faking a single observation to fill in the last corner of a promising theory. |
| 4755 | Deflationism cannot explain why we hold beliefs for reasons [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The deflationist view is silent about the fact that our assertions and beliefs are generally made or held for certain reasons. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.5) | |
| A reaction: The point here must be that I attribute strength to my beliefs, depending on how much support I have for them - how much support for their real truth. I scream "That's really TRUE!" when I have very good reasons. |
| 4753 | Deflationism seems to block philosophers' main occupation, asking metatheoretical questions [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Deflationism about truth seems to deprive us of any hope of asking genuinely metatheoretical questions, which are the questions that occupy philosophers most of the time. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems like the best reason for moving from deflationism to at least minimalism. Clearly one can talk meaningfully about the success of assertions and theories. You can say a sentence is true, but not assert it. |
| 4751 | Maybe there is no more to be said about 'true' than there is about the function of 'and' in logic [Engel] |
| Full Idea: We could compare the status of 'true' with the status of the logical operator 'and' in logic. Once we have explained how it functions to conjoin two propositions, there is not much more to be said about it. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: A good statement of the minimalist view. I don't believe it, because I don't believe that truth is confined to language. An uneasy feeling I can't put into words can turn out to be true. Truth is a relational feature of mental states. |
| 4752 | Deflationism must reduce bivalence ('p is true or false') to excluded middle ('p or not-p') [Engel] |
| Full Idea: It is said that deflationism cannot even formulate the principle of bivalence, for 'either p is true or p is false' will amount to the principle of excluded middle, 'either p or not-p'. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably deflationists don't lost any sleep over this - in fact, it looks like a good concise way to state the deflationist thesis. However, excluded middle refers to a proposition (not-p) that was never mentioned by bivalence. Cf Idea 6163. |
| 4762 | The Humean theory of motivation is that beliefs may be motivators as well as desires [Engel] |
| Full Idea: A problem for the Humean theory of motivation is that it is disputed that beliefs are only representational states, which cannot, unlike desires, move us to act. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a crucial issue for Humeans and empiricists. Rationalists claim that people act for reasons, so that reasons are intrinsically motivational (like the Form of the Good), and reasons may even be considered direct causes of actions. |
| 4754 | Our beliefs are meant to fit the world (i.e. be true), where we want the world to fit our desires [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Belief is said to 'aim at truth', in the sense that beliefs are the kind of mental states that have to be true for the mind to 'fit' the world (where our desires have the opposite 'direction of fit'; the world is supposed to fit our desires). | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §2.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't think it is possible to give a plausible definition of belief without mentioning truth. Hume's account of them as thoughts with a funny feeling attached is ridiculous. Thinking is an activity, not a passive state. |
| 4763 | 'Evidentialists' say, and 'voluntarists' deny, that we only believe on the basis of evidence [Engel] |
| Full Idea: The 'evidentialists' (such as Locke and Hume) deny, and the 'voluntarists' (such as William James) affirm, that we ought to, or at least may, believe for other reasons than evidential epistemic reasons (e.g. for pragmatic reasons). | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: No need to be black-or-white here. Blatant evidence compels belief, but we may also come to believe by spotting a coherence, without additional evidence. We can also be in a state of trying to believe something. But see 4764. |
| 4746 | Pragmatism is better understood as a theory of belief than as a theory of truth [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatism in general is better construed as a certain conception of belief, rather than as a distinctive conception of truth. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §1.5) | |
| A reaction: Which is why aspiring relativists drift towards the pragmatic theory - because they want to dispense with truth (and hence knowledge), and put mere belief in its place. |
| 4764 | We cannot directly control our beliefs, but we can control the causes of our involuntary beliefs [Engel] |
| Full Idea: Direct psychological voluntarism about beliefs seems to be false, but we can have an indirect voluntary control on many of our beliefs, by manipulating the states in us that are involuntary and which lead to certain beliefs. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §5.2) | |
| A reaction: Very nice! This points two ways - to scientific experiments, which can have compelling outcomes (see Fodor), and to brain-washing, and especially auto-brainwashing (only reading articles which support your favourites theories). What magazines do you take? |
| 3488 | Freud treats the unconscious as intentional and hence mental [Freud, by Searle] |
| Full Idea: Freud thinks that our unconscious mental states exist as occurrent intrinsic intentional states even when unconscious. Their ontology is that of the mental, even when they are unconscious. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by John Searle - The Rediscovery of the Mind Ch. 7.V | |
| A reaction: Searle states this view in order to attack it. Whether such states are labelled as 'mental' seems uninteresting. Whether unconscious states can be intentional is crucial, and modern scientific understanding of the brain strongly suggest they can. |
| 5689 | Freud and others have shown that we don't know our own beliefs, feelings, motive and attitudes [Freud, by Shoemaker] |
| 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. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection p.396 | |
| 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. |
| 23334 | For Christians man has free will by creation in God's image (as in Genesis) [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The Christian view, following Genesis, is that man is created in the image of God, and this is understood as crucially involving the idea that man has a free will in the image of God's will. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 08) | |
| A reaction: The idea of free will evidently originated with Epictetus, but was taken up by Christians because it fitted doctrinal needs. Even Epictetus saw free will as originating in Zeus. |
| 23337 | The Stoics needed free will, to allow human choices in a divinely providential cosmos [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics said that everything happens according to a divine providential plan, so they had to explain how this was compatible with human choices. They tried to do this with their doctrine of freedom and a free will. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 10) | |
| A reaction: Epictetus made our ability to choose central to moral life, so he particularly needed (and thus created, it seems) this doctrine. |
| 23333 | The idea of free will achieved universal acceptance because of Christianity [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: There is no doubt that the notion of a free will found almost universal acceptance owing to the influence of Christianity. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 07) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably because a free will not only elevates us above the animals, qualifying us for immortality, but also gives us absolute and ultimate responsibility for our lives, which thus justifies either salvation or damnation. |
| 4759 | Mental states as functions are second-order properties, realised by first-order physical properties [Engel] |
| Full Idea: For functionalism mental states as roles are second-order properties that have to be realised in various ways in first-order physical properties. | |
| From: Pascal Engel (Truth [2002], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: I take that to be properties-of-properties, as in 'bright red' or 'poignantly beautiful'. I am inclined to think (with Edelman) that mind is a process, not a property. |
| 23950 | Freud said passions are pressures of some flowing hydraulic quantity [Freud, by Solomon] |
| Full Idea: Freud argued that the passions in general …were the pressures of a yet unknown 'quantity' (which he simply designated 'Q'). He first thought this flowed through neurones, …and always couched the idea in the language of hydraulics. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900]) by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the main target of Solomon's criticism, because its imagery has become so widespread. It leads to talk of suppressing emotions, or sublimating them. However, it is not too different from Nietzsche's 'drives' or 'will to power'. |
| 23336 | There is no will for Plato or Aristotle, because actions come directly from perception of what is good [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Plato and Aristotle do not have a notion of a will, since for them a willing, a desire of reason, is a direct result of one's cognitive state: once one sees something to be good, one will it. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], 09) | |
| A reaction: The point is that their decisions are 'direct', whereas the will introduces the concept of a final arbiter which weighs up the desires, reasons and drives. The historical steps were first the meta-choosing, then the will as entity, then the will as free. |
| 22344 | Freud is pessimistic about human nature; it is ambivalent motive and fantasy, rather than reason [Freud, by Murdoch] |
| Full Idea: Freud takes a thoroughly pessimistic view of human nature. ...Introspection reveals only the deep tissue of ambivalent motive, and fantasy is a stronger force than reason. Objectivity and unselfishness are not natural to human beings. | |
| From: report of Sigmund Freud (works [1900], II) by Iris Murdoch - The Sovereignty of Good II | |
| A reaction: Interesting. His view seems to have coloured the whole of modern culture, reinforced by the hideous irrationality of the Nazis. Adorno and Horkheimer attacking the Enlightenment was the last step in that process. |
| 23313 | The Gnostic demiurge (creator) is deluded, and doesn't care about us [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The Gnostics thought the demiurge or creator pursues its own interests without regard for what this does to us, a being lacking in wisdom and goodness, as seen by its deluding itself into thinking that it is God, and demanding worship. | |
| From: Michael Frede (A Free Will [1997], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Frede mentions Irenaeus as a source of this view. The idea that the Great Being doesn't care about us seems a fairly accurate observation. |