12 ideas
| 10993 | Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey's Test for conditionals is that a conditional should be believed if a belief in its antecedent would commit one to believing its consequent. | |
| From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: A rather pragmatic approach to conditionals |
| 14279 | Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: If two people are arguing 'If p, will q?' and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge, and arguing on that basis about q; ...they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], B 155 n) | |
| A reaction: This has become famous as the 'Ramsey Test'. Bennett emphasises that he is not saying that you should actually believe p - you are just trying it for size. The presupposition approach to conditionals seems attractive. Edgington likes 'degrees'. |
| 335 | Do the gods also hold different opinions about what is right and honourable? [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Do the gods too hold different opinions about what is right, and similarly about what is honourable and dishonourable, good and bad? | |
| From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 07e) |
| 6894 | Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Ramsey Sentences are his technique for eliminating theoretical terms in science (and can be applied to mental terms, or to social rights); a term in a sentence is replaced by a variable and an existential quantifier. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]), quoted by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.469 | |
| A reaction: The technique is used by functionalists and results in a sort of eliminativism. The intrinsic nature of mental states is eliminated, because everything worth saying can be expressed in terms of functional/causal role. Sounds wrong to me. |
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 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. |
| 9418 | All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Even if we knew everything, we should still want to systematize our knowledge as a deductive system, and the general axioms in that system would be the fundamental laws of nature. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §A) | |
| A reaction: This is the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. Cf. Idea 9420. |
| 9420 | Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey] |
| Full Idea: Causal laws are consequences of those propositions which we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system. | |
| From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §B) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 9418. |
| 336 | Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? (the 'Euthyphro Question') [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because they love it? | |
| From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10a) | |
| A reaction: The famous Euthyphro Question, the key question about the supposed religious basis of morality. The answer of Socrates is Idea 337. |
| 337 | It seems that the gods love things because they are pious, rather than making them pious by loving them [Plato] |
| Full Idea: So things are loved by the gods because they are pious, and not pious because they are loved? It seems so. | |
| From: Plato (Euthyphro [c.398 BCE], 10e) | |
| A reaction: Socrates' answer to the Euthyphro Question (see Idea 336). The form of piety precedes the gods. |