24 ideas
| 20962 | Habermas seems to make philosophy more democratic [Habermas, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Habermas is concerned to avoid the traumas of modern German history by making democracy an integral part of philosophy. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy Conc 'Habermas' | |
| A reaction: Hence Habermas's emphasis on communication as central to language, which is central to philosophy. Modern philosophy departments are amazingly hierarchical. |
| 15670 | The aim of 'post-metaphysical' philosophy is to interpret the sciences [Habermas, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: For Habermas, the task of what he calls 'post-metaphysical' philosophy is to be a stand-in and interpreter for the specialized sciences. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.5:65 |
| 15665 | We can do social philosophy by studying coordinated action through language use [Habermas, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: Habermas claims to have embarked upon a new way of doing social philosophy, one that begins from an analysis of language use and that locates the rational basis of the coordination of action in speech. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:28 |
| 20573 | Rather than instrumental reason, Habermas emphasises its communicative role [Habermas, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: Instead of Enlightenment instrumental rationality (criticised by Adorno and Horkheimer), Habermas emphasizes 'communicative rationality', which makes critical discussion and mutual understanding possible. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: There was a good reason not to smoke cigarettes, before we found out what it is. In one sense, reasons are in the world. This is interesting, but I feel analytic vertigo, as the lovely concept of 'rationality' becomes blurred and diffused. |
| 12132 | Indiscernibility is a necessary and sufficient condition for identity [Brody] |
| Full Idea: Enduring objects should be taken as fundamental in an ontology, and for all such objects indiscernibility is both a necessary and sufficient condition for identity. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 3) | |
| A reaction: Brody offers a substantial defence, but I don't find it plausible. Apart from Black's well known twin spheres example (Idea 10195), discernibility is relative to the powers of the observer. Two similar people in the mist aren't thereby identical. |
| 15834 | Brody bases sortal essentialism on properties required throughout something's existence [Brody, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Brody bases sortal essentialism on the notion of a property that an individual must possess throughout its existence if it possesses it at any time in its existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: Brody tends to treat categories as properties, which I dislike. How do you assess 'must' here? A person may possess a mole throughout life without it being essential. |
| 12140 | Modern emphasis is on properties had essentially; traditional emphasis is on sort-defining properties [Brody] |
| Full Idea: The modern emphasis has been on the connection between essential properties and the properties that an object must have essentially. But traditionally there is also the connection between essential properties and the sort of thing that it is. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: These are the modal essence and the definitional essence. My view is that he has missed out a crucial third (Aristotelian) view, which is that essences are explanatory. This third view can subsume the other two. |
| 11895 | A sortal essence is a property which once possessed always possessed [Brody, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Brody bases sortal essentialism on the notion of a property that an individual must possess throughout its existence if it possesses it at any time in its existence. ...'Once an F, always an F'. ...Being a parrot is not a temporary occupation. | |
| From: report of Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980]) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 7.1 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Would being less than fifty metres tall qualify as a sortal essence, for a giraffe or a uranium rod? If there is one thing an essential property should be, it is important. How do we assess importance? By explanatory power! Watch this space. |
| 12141 | Maybe essential properties are those which determine a natural kind? [Brody] |
| Full Idea: We can advance the thesis that all essential properties either determine a natural kind or are part of an essential property that does determine a natural kind. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980]) | |
| A reaction: A useful clear statement of the view. I am opposed to it, because I take it to be of the essence of Socrates that he is philosophical, but humans are not essentially philosophical, and philosophers are unlikely to be a natural kind. |
| 12137 | De re essentialism standardly says all possible objects identical with a have a's essential properties [Brody] |
| Full Idea: To say that an object a has a property P essentially is to say that it has P, and in all of certain worlds (all possible, all in which something identical with it exists, ...) the object identical with it has P. This is the standard de re interpretation. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This view always has to be qualified by excluding trivially necessary properties, but that exclusion shows clearly that the notion of essential is more concerned with non-triviality than it is with necessity. |
| 12142 | Essentially, a has P, always had P, must have had P, and has never had a future without P [Brody] |
| Full Idea: 'a has property P essentially' means 'a has P, a always had P, there is no possible past in which P exists without P, and there is no moment of time at which a has had P and at which there is a possible future in which a exists without P' | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 6) | |
| A reaction: This is Brody's own final account of essentialism. This is a carefully qualified form of the view that essential properties are, on the whole, the necessary properties, which view I take to be fundamentally mistaken. |
| 12143 | An object having a property essentially is equivalent to its having it necessarily [Brody] |
| Full Idea: An object having a property essentially is equivalent to its having it necessarily. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as blatantly false. Personally I am toying with the very unorthodox view that essential properties are not at all necessary, and that something can retain its identity while changing its essential character. A philosopher with Alzheimers. |
| 12144 | Essentialism is justified if the essential properties of things explain their other properties [Brody] |
| Full Idea: The reasonableness of the essentialist hypothesis will be proportional to the extent that we can, as a result, use a's possession of P to explain a's other properties, ...and there is an inability to explain otherwise why a has P. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Brody as a rather liberal notion of properties. I would hope that we can do rather more than explain a's non-essential properties. If the non-essential properties were entailed by the essential ones, would they not then also be essential? |
| 12139 | Mereological essentialism says that every part that ensures the existence is essential [Brody] |
| Full Idea: Mereological essentialism (whose leading advocate is Chisholm) says that for every x and y, if x is ever part of y, then y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds implausible, especially given the transitivity of parthood. Not only are the planks that constitute Theseus's Ship now essential to it, but all the parts of the planks, every last chip, are as well. |
| 12135 | Interrupted objects have two first moments of existence, which could be two beginnings [Brody] |
| Full Idea: If 'beginning of existence' meant 'first moment of existence after a period of nonexistence', then objects with interrupted existence have two beginnings of existence. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: One might still maintain that the first beginning was essential to the object, since that is the event that defined it - and that would clarify the reason why we are supposed to think the origins are essential. I say the origin explains it. |
| 12130 | a and b share all properties; so they share being-identical-with-a; so a = b [Brody] |
| Full Idea: Suppose that a and b have all of their properties in common. a certainly has the property of-being-identical-with-a. So, by supposition, does b. Then a = b. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Brody defends this argument, and seems to think that it proves the identity of indiscernibles. As far as I can see it totally begs the question, since we can only assume that both have the property of being-identical-with-a if we have assumed a = b. |
| 12138 | Identity across possible worlds is prior to rigid designation [Brody] |
| Full Idea: Identity across possible worlds is prior to rigid designation. | |
| From: Baruch Brody (Identity and Essence [1980], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: An interesting view. We might stipulate that any possible Aristotle is 'our Aristotle', but you would still need criteria for deciding which possible Aristotle's would qualify. Long-frozen Aristotles, stupid Aristotles, alien Aristotle's, deformed... |
| 20961 | What is considered a priori changes as language changes [Habermas, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Habermas claims that what is regarded as a priori changes with history. This is because the linguistic structures on which judgements depend are themselves part of history, not prior to it. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy Conc 'Habermas' | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting style of argument generally only found in continental philosophers, because they see the problem as historical rather than timeless. Compare Idea 20595, which sees analyticity historically. |
| 15667 | To understand a statement is to know what would make it acceptable [Habermas] |
| Full Idea: We understand the meaning of a speech act when we know what would make it acceptable. | |
| From: Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981], I:297), quoted by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:37 | |
| A reaction: Finlayson glosses this as requiring the reasons which would justify the speech act. |
| 15668 | Meaning is not fixed by a relation to the external world, but a relation to other speakers [Habermas, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: On Habermas's view, meanings are not determined by the speaker's relation to the external world, but by his relation to his interlocutors; meaning is essentially intersubjective. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.3:38 | |
| A reaction: This view is not the same as Grice's, but it is clearly much closer to Grice than to (say) the Frege/Davidson emphasis on truth-conditions. I'm not sure if I would know how to begin arbitrating between the two views! |
| 15669 | People endorse equality, universality and inclusiveness, just by their communicative practices [Habermas, by Finlayson] |
| Full Idea: The ideal of equality, universality, and inclusiveness are inscribed in the communicative practices of the lifeworld, and agents, merely by virtue of communicating, conform to them. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by James Gordon Finlayson - Habermas Ch.4:60 | |
| A reaction: This summary of Habermas's social views strikes me as thoroughly Kantian. It is something like the ideals of the Kingdom of Ends, necessarily implemented in a liberal society. Habermas emphasises the social, where Kant starts from the liberal. |
| 23416 | Political involvement is needed, to challenge existing practices [Habermas, by Kymlicka] |
| Full Idea: Habermas thinks political deliberation is required precisely because in its absence people will tend to accept existing practices as given, and thereby perpetuate false needs. | |
| From: report of Jürgen Habermas (The Theory of Communicative Action [1981]) by Will Kymlicka - Community 'need' | |
| A reaction: If the dream is healthy and intelligent progress, it is not clear where that should come from. The problem with state involvement in the authority and power of the state. Locals are often prejudiced, so the intermediate level may be best. |
| 16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
| Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
| From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |