14 ideas
22864 | Philosophy is the study and criticsm of cultural beliefs, to achieve new possibilities [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Philosophy is criticism of the influential beliefs that underlie culture, tracking them to their generating conditions and results, and considering their mutual compatibility. This terminates in a new perspective, which leads to new possibilities. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 6:19), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey Intro | |
A reaction: [compressed] This would make quite a good manifesto for French thinkers of the 1960s. Foucault could hardly disagree. An excellent idea. |
22873 | Liberalism should improve the system, and not just ameliorate it [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Liberalism must become radical in the sense that, instead of using social power to ameliorate the evil consequences of the existing system, it shall use social power to change the system. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:287), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
A reaction: Conservative liberals ask what people want, and try to give it to them. Radical liberals ask what people actually need, and try to make it possible. The latter is bound to be a bit paternalistic, but will probably create a better world. |
22869 | Knowledge is either the product of competent enquiry, or it is meaningless [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Knowledge, as an abstract term, is a name for the product of competent enquiries. Apart from this relation, its meaning is so empty that any content or filling may be arbitrarily poured into it. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
A reaction: What is the criterion of 'competent'? Danger of tautology, if competent enquiry is what produces knowledge. |
22867 | The quest for certainty aims for peace, and avoidance of the stress of action [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The quest for certainty is a quest for a peace which is assured, an object which is unqualified by risk and the shadow of fear which action costs. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 4:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Intro' | |
A reaction: This is a characteristic pragmatist account. I think Dewey and Peirce offer us the correct attitude to certainty. It is just not available to us, and can only be a delusion. That doesn't mean we don't know anything, however! |
22870 | No belief can be so settled that it is not subject to further inquiry [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The attainment of settled beliefs is a progressive matter; there is no belief so settled as not to be exposed to further inquiry. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 12:16), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 2 'Knowledge' | |
A reaction: A nice pragmatist mantra, but no scientists gets a research grant to prove facts which have been securely established for a very long time. It is neurotic to keep returning to check that you have locked your front door. Dewey introduced 'warranted'. |
22866 | Mind is never isolated, but only exists in its interactions [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Mind is primarily a verb. ...Mind never denotes anything self-contained, isolated from the world of persons and things, but is always used with respect to situations, events, objects, persons and groups. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 10:267), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 1 'emerge' | |
A reaction: I strongly agree with the idea that mind is a process, not a thing. Certain types of solitary introspection don't seem to quite fit his account, but in general he is right. |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
Full Idea: There are two senses of 'semantic' - as theory of meaning or as truth-based theory of logical consequence, and they are very different. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.78) | |
A reaction: This subtle point is significant in considering the role of logic in philosophy. The logicians' semantics (based on logical consequence) is in danger of ousting the broader and more elusive notion of meaning in natural language. |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
Full Idea: The semantic content of a sentence is not the set of circumstances supporting its truth. It is rather the semantic content of a structured proposition the constituents of which are the semantic contents of the constituents of the sentence. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.74) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I get this, but while I like the truth-conditions view, I am suspicious of any proposal that the semantic content of something is some actual physical ingredients of the world. Meanings aren't sticks and stones. |
22872 | Liberals aim to allow individuals to realise their capacities [Dewey] |
Full Idea: Liberalism is committed to …the liberation of individuals so that realisation of their capacities may be the law of their life. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 11:41), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 4 'Dewey' | |
A reaction: Capacity expression as the main aim of politics is precisely the idea developed more fully in modern times by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. It strikes me as an excellent proposal. Does it need liberalism, or socialism? |
22880 | The things in civilisation we prize are the products of other members of our community [Dewey] |
Full Idea: The things in civilisation we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:57), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Reconstruct' | |
A reaction: Dewey defends liberalism, but he has strong communitarian tendencies. What is the significance of an enduring community losing touch with its own achievements? |
5994 | Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG] |
Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning. | |
From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out. |
22879 | 'God' is an imaginative unity of ideal values [Dewey] |
Full Idea: 'God' represents a unification of ideal values that is essentially imaginative in origin. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:29), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
A reaction: This seems to have happened when a flawed God like Zeus is elevated to be the only God, and is given supreme power and wisdom. |
22877 | We should try attaching the intensity of religious devotion to intelligent social action [Dewey] |
Full Idea: One of the few experiments in the attachment of emotion to ends that mankind has not tried is that of devotion (so intense as to be religious) to intelligence as a force in social action. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:53), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Intro' | |
A reaction: An interesting thought that religious emotions such as devotion are so distinctive that they can be treated as valuable, even in the absence of belief. He seems to be advocating Technocracy. |
22878 | Religions are so shockingly diverse that they have no common element [Dewey] |
Full Idea: There is only a multitude of religions …and the differences between them are so great and so shocking that any common element that can be extracted is meaningless. | |
From: John Dewey (The Later Works (17 vols, ed Boydston) [1930], 9:7), quoted by David Hildebrand - Dewey 7 'Construct' | |
A reaction: Religion is for Dewey what a game was for Wittgenstein, as an anti-essentialist example. I would have thought that they all involved some commitment to a realm of transcendent existence. |