269 ideas
| 21875 | The wisdom of a free man is a meditation on life, not on death [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation on life, not on death. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 67) | |
| A reaction: Life and death are not so easy to separate. You could hardly be wise about life if you didn't incorporate its finite duration into your wisdom. |
| 17230 | If we are not wholly wise, we should live by good rules and maxims [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The best thing we can do, so long as we lack a perfect knowledge of our feelings, is to conceive a right rule of life, or sure maxims of life - to commit these to memory, and constantly apply these to particular cases. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the role of folk wisdom - to try to plant guidance in the heads of the not-so-wise. |
| 16395 | Kripke separated semantics from metaphysics, rather than linking them, making the latter independent [Kripke, by Stalnaker] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's contribution was not to connect metaphysical and semantic issues, but to separate them: to provide a context in which questions about essences of things could be posed independently of assumptions about semantic rules of reference. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: In other words, Kripke set metaphysics free from the tyranny of Quine, and facilitated its modern rebirth. Bravo. |
| 17034 | Analyses of concepts using entirely different terms are very inclined to fail [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical analyses of some concept like reference, in completely different terms which make no mention of reference, are very apt to fail. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke consistently criticises analysic, and philosophical 'theories'. It is why he wanted a 'direct' theory of reference, with just you and the object. |
| 17200 | We must be careful to keep words distinct from ideas and images [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that we should distinguish between ideas and the words by which things are signified. ...Images, words, and ideas are by many people altogether confounded. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17194 | Reason only explains what is universal, so it is timeless, under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundations of reason are notions which explain those things which are common to all, and these things explain the essence of no individual thing, and must therefore be conceived without any relation to time, but under a certain form of eternity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: You have to be totally inspired by this even if you totally disagree with it. |
| 4840 | Reason perceives things under a certain form of eternity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is in the nature of reason to perceive things under a certain form of eternity ('sub quadam aeternitatis specie'). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful, and justly famous, remark. If you don't feel the force (and poetry!) of this, you aren't a philosopher. It is not only appealing, but I don't see how it can fail to be true. Try producing good reasons which only have temporary force. |
| 17213 | In so far as men live according to reason, they will agree with one another [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men necessarily always agree with one another in so far as they live according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I think this was my earliest motivation for getting interested in philosophy. Oddly, the Socratic tradition of philosophy is to challenge and criticise, but the aim is agreement. I sort of believe this idea, despite its wild idealism. |
| 4819 | There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is necessarily for each existent thing a cause why it should exist. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: The obvious response is 'how do you know that?' It has to the sort of a priori commitment we expect from a rationalist philosopher. It seems to me quite an appealing candidate for an axiom of human understanding. |
| 4955 | Some definitions aim to fix a reference rather than give a meaning [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some things called definitions really intend to fix a reference rather than to give the meaning of a phrase, to give a synonym. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His example is pi. Some definitions relate to reality (e.g. ostensive definition), and others are part of a language game. But then some concepts are dictated to us by reality, and others are arbitrarily invented by us for convenience. |
| 21864 | Truth is its own standard [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Truth is its own standard. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: A gloriously bold solution to all the problems of epistemology. Read the whole of P43S to see the context. |
| 8018 | Spinoza's life shows that love of truth which he proclaims as the highest value [MacIntyre on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's life unites philosophy and practice; he manifests that very impersonal love of truth which he proclaims in his writings as the highest human value. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza has become a secular saint in our times. If the big three values are Beauty, Goodness and Truth, why should the third be given top status? I once heard a philosopher say that truth was the only value. |
| 5641 | For Spinoza, 'adequacy' is the intrinsic mark of truth [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza, the intrinsic mark of truth is the property which he calls 'adequacy'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the sort of theory to which early rationalists were confined, and it seems to be no advance on Descartes' 'clear and distinct conceptions'. I take it that the coherence theory is a better account of what they were after. |
| 4816 | A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A true idea must correspond with its ideate or object. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 6) | |
| A reaction: Allowing for his usage of 'idea' and 'object', this seems to be a straightforward commitment to the modern correspondence theory, perhaps the earliest clear statement of it. I agree with him. |
| 10559 | Kripke's modal semantics presupposes certain facts about possible worlds [Kripke, by Zalta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's modal semantics presupposes that worlds are maximal and consistent, that there is a unique actual world, and that worlds are coherent (e.g. lack contradiction, obey conjunction). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Edward N. Zalta - Deriving Kripkean Claims with Abstract Objects |
| 20309 | If our ideas are adequate, what follows from them is also adequate [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever ideas follow in the mind from ideas which are adequate in the mind are also adequate. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be Modus Ponens, and he calls it (in Sch 1) 'the foundations of our reasoning'. If 'adequate' ideas are knowledge, then this also seems to say that knowledge is closed under known implication. |
| 10437 | Names are rigid, making them unlike definite descriptions [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: It was important to Kripke to contrast the rigidity of names with the non-rigidity of many or most definite descriptions. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: Philosophers always want sharp distinctions, but there are tricky names like 'Homer' and 'Jack the Ripper' where the name is stable, but its referent wobbles. |
| 4949 | Names are rigid designators, which designate the same object in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I will call something a 'rigid designator' if in every possible world it designates the same object, ..and I will maintain the intuitive thesis that names are rigid designators. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: The immediate problem seems to be objects that change across possible worlds. Did nature rigidly designate Aristotle (e.g. by his DNA)? Could Aristotle have been shorter, female, cleverer, his own twin? Is the River Thames rigid? |
| 4951 | A bundle of qualities is a collection of abstractions, so it can't be a particular [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I deny that a particular is nothing but a 'bundle of qualities', whatever that may mean. If a quality is an abstract object, a bundle of qualities is an object of an even higher degree of abstraction, not a particular. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Supports the 'baptism' view of reference, rather than Searle's bundle of descriptions. It shows that theories of reference must tie in with theories of universals, and that Searle is a nominalist. Is Kripke trying to duck metaphysical responsibility? |
| 17031 | A name can still refer even if it satisfies none of its well-known descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose the vote yields no object, that nothing satisfies most, or even any, substantial number, of the φ's. Does that mean the name doesn't refer? No. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: As example he gives the case of 'Gödel' referring to the famous man, even if none of the descriptions of him are true. In Note 42 he blames the descriptivists for relying too much on famous people. |
| 8957 | Some references, such as 'Neptune', have to be fixed by description rather than baptism [Kripke, by Szabó] |
| Full Idea: Kripke explicitly allows for the introduction of names through initial reference-fixing via descriptions. Versions of the causal theory of reference that disallow this would have a difficult time explaining how the name 'Neptune' came to refer. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Zoltán Gendler Szabó - Nominalism 4.2 n35 | |
| A reaction: The initial reference to Neptune has to be by description, but you could still give a baptismal account once it is discovered. The direct contact now takes precedence. Suppose another similar planet was found nearby... |
| 10428 | Proper names must have referents, because they are not descriptive [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: A common source of the view that proper names must have referents is that they are not descriptive (as expressed by Kripke). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Sainsbury observes that there might be some other way for a name to be intelligible, with describing or referring. |
| 4959 | A name's reference is not fixed by any marks or properties of the referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is in general not the case that the reference of a name is determined by some uniquely identifying marks, some unique properties satisfied by the referent and known or believed to be true of that referent by the speaker. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing, instead, his historical/causal theory. There does seem to be a problem with objects which have a historical 'baptism', and then entirely change their properties. Kripke us desperate for a simple account of reference. |
| 17185 | Mathematics deals with the essences and properties of forms [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics does not deal with ends, but with the essences and properties of forms (figures), …and has placed before us another rule of truth. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: Just what I need - a nice clear assertion of essentialism in mathematics. Many say maths is all necessary, so essence is irrelevant, but I say explanations occur in mathematics, and that points to essentialism. |
| 17222 | The sum of its angles follows from a triangle's nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It follows from the nature of a triangle that its three angles are equal to two right angles. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 57) | |
| A reaction: This is the essentialist view of mathematics, which I take to be connected to explanation, which I take to be connected to the direction of explanation. |
| 17197 | The idea of a triangle involves truths about it, so those are part of its essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the triangle must involve the affirmation that its three angles are equal to two right angles. Therefore this affirmation pertains to the essence of the idea of a triangle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This seems to say that the essence is what is inescapable when you think of something. Does that mean that brandy is part of the essence of Napoleon? (Presumably not) Spinoza is ignoring the direction of explanation here. |
| 17174 | Outside the mind, there are just things and their properties [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Outside the intellect, there is nothing but substances and their affections. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 04) | |
| A reaction: This is pretty close to the very sparse ontology espoused by modern philosophers who take their lead from the logic. |
| 17176 | The more reality a thing has, the more attributes it has [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more reality or being a thing possesses, the more attributes belong to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This commitment to degrees of existence (which I find baffling) is presumably to enable God to be the thing with infinite attributes, and an infinite degree of Being. What percentage of Being would you say you've got (on a good day)? |
| 17179 | There must always be a reason or cause why some triangle does or does not exist [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a triangle exists, there must be a reason or cause why it exists; and if it does not exist, there must be a reason or cause which hinders its existence or which negates it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Spinoza is setting up a defence of the ontological argument, which seems to require that he lower his normal high standards of argument. |
| 17186 | Men say they prefer order, not realising that we imagine the order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in nature apart from our own imagination. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) |
| 14896 | Kripke's metaphysics (essences, kinds, rigidity) blocks the slide into sociology [Kripke, by Ladyman/Ross] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's metaphysics of essences, natural kinds, and rigid designation gave philosophers a means of avoiding the relativist path that was bound to end in the tears of sociology. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 1.2 | |
| A reaction: They are contemptuous of Kripke's project, but this is the core of it. He was making a stand against Kuhn, and trying to build a metaphysics for realism. Good for Kripke. |
| 20127 | Laws of nature are universal, so everything must be understood through those laws [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature's laws ....are everywhere and always the same; so that there should be one and the same method of understanding the nature of all things whatsoever, namely through nature's universal laws and rules. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pref) | |
| A reaction: Leiter calls this Methodological Naturalism, which says that the procedures and findings of philosophy should conform to those of science. I think I'm also a Substantive Naturalist, who says 'that's all there is'. |
| 17170 | An 'attribute' is what the intellect takes as constituting an essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'attribute' I understand that which the intellect perceives of substance, as if constituting its essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 4) | |
| A reaction: Note that we would call these 'properties', but Spinoza has a word reserved for the properties of essences. He also has 'modes' of a thing, which are different. |
| 17171 | A 'mode' is an aspect of a substance, and conceived through that substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'mode' I understand the affections [affectiones] of substance, or that which is in another thing through which also it is conceived. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 5) | |
| A reaction: The attributes actually make up the essential consitution of the thing, and then the modes are entirely dependent on that essence. This is thoroughly Aristotelian, even though 'substantial forms' had been given up by this date. |
| 17195 | Things persevere through a force which derives from God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which each thing perseveres in its existence follows from the eternal necessity of the nature of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 45) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be an ontology of fundamental powers, but with divine backing, similar to that found in Leibniz. Modern powers theorists leave out God, since it doesn't seem to add anything. [Is this the idea of 'conatus'?] Darwin can't explain the force. |
| 17206 | The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The effort by which each thing endeavours to persevere in its own being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing itself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the sort of thing that Leibniz frequently said. They were much more conscious of the active power of essences than in the scholastic tradition. This is Nietzsche's will to power. Spinoza talks of 'power' in his demonstration of this. |
| 17192 | The 'universal' term 'man' is just imagining whatever is the same in a multitude of men [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Confused notions called 'universal', such as 'man', have arisen because so many images of individual men are formed that they exceed the power of imagination, ...so it imagines that only in which all of them agree, ...expressed by the name 'man'. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 40) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] This strikes me as correct. I don't see how you can discuss universals without bringing in the way in which human psychology operates. |
| 17647 | Kripke individuates objects by essential modal properties (and presupposes essentialism) [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The difficulty is that Kripke individuates objects by their modal properties, by what they (essentially) could and could not be. Kripke's ontology presupposes essentialism; it can not be used to ground it. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Essences' |
| 17188 | A thing is unified if its parts produce a single effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of individuals so unite in one action that they are all simultaneously the cause of one effect, I consider them all, so far, as one individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. If a mob burn down a town, is that one effect, making the mob one thing? If a ball breaks a window, is that one effect, or a multitude of knock-on effects? Spinoza's view is very coarse-grained. |
| 5639 | Spinoza implies that thought is impossible without the notion of substance [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Without the notion of substance, according to Spinoza, thought itself becomes impossible. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.2 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza's strategy here looks like the right way to approach metaphysics. To what extent is it possible to change our conceptual scheme? Quine seems to imply that there is no limit; Davidson seems to imply that it is impossible. |
| 21857 | Substance is the power of self-actualisation [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza a substance is not a 'thing', but the power of actualising its own existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Does this say anything? |
| 4813 | Substance is that of which an independent conception can be formed [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By substance I mean that which is in itself, and is conceived through itself; in other words, that of which a conception can be formed independently of any other conception. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking blurring of epistemology and ontology. He eventually settles for it being a concept rather than a fact of nature. It still begs a thousand questions, but it probably leads to monads and logical atoms. |
| 16995 | Given that a table is made of molecules, could it not be molecular and still be this table? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: This table is composed of molecules. …Could anything be this very object and not be composed of molecules? …It's hard to imagine under what circumstances you would have this very object and find that it is not composed of molecules. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the thesis of essentiality of constitution. Given that it is square, might it have been round? Yes. Given that it is wood, might it have been metal? No? Given that it is molecular, might it have been plasma? No. ….Maybe. |
| 17047 | If we imagine this table made of ice or different wood, we are imagining a different table [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Though we can imagine a table identical to this one in this room, but made of ice (or different wood), it seems to me that this is not to imagine this table as made of ice, but to imagine another table, resembling this one, made of ice. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the Necessity of Constitution thesis, which I doubt. Might this table have had one leg different? Why not? Then you have a Ship of Theseus question. How much could be different? How much of the constitution is necessary? |
| 4828 | The essence of a thing is what is required for it to exist or be conceived [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many assert that that without which a thing cannot be nor be conceived, belongs to the essence of that thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This is one Aristotelian idea that won't go away, despite the seventeenth century onslaught. It seems obvious that natural kinds, natural objects and human artefacts have properties that can be divided into essential and non-essential. |
| 5450 | For Kripke, essence is origin; for Putnam, essence is properties; for Wiggins, essence is membership of a kind [Kripke, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Kripke makes the origin of an organism essential to it, according to Putnam the fundamental physical properties of a thing are essential, Wiggins sees an organism's essence in belonging to a particular kind, etc. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179 | |
| A reaction: This is helpful for seeing where the problems remain, if you embrace essentialism (as I feel inclined to do). It is vital to remember Putnam's point, that we could suddenly discover that cats are alien robots. This seems to undermine Kripke and Wiggins. |
| 17055 | Atomic number 79 is part of the nature of the gold we know [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is part of the nature of gold as we have it to be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'nature' directly invokes Aristotle's concept of an essence. Scientific essentialism arises from the idea that by discovering the atomic number, we have somehow 'arrived' at the essence, and enquiry is reaching its terminus. |
| 17187 | Essence gives existence and conception to things, and is inseparable from them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To the essence of anything pertains ...that without which the thing can neither be nor be conceived, and which in its turn cannot be nor be conceived without the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 2) | |
| A reaction: Note that essence concerns not only what things are, but also our ability to conceive them. |
| 16997 | An essential property is true of an object in any case where it would have existed [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: When we think of a property as essential to an object we usually mean that it is true of that object in any case where it would have existed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to equate essence with necessary properties, which is the view attacked nicely be Fine in 1994. I take essence (in Aristotle's sense) to be quite different from necessary properties (in being non-trivial, for example). |
| 17045 | De re modality is an object having essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: De re modality is an object having essential properties. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked out of context] It is because Kripke says there are necessities about things, and not just about statements about things, that he has caused a revival of essentialism. Fine has famously said modality depends on essence. |
| 17191 | Nothing is essential if it is in every part, and is common to everything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That which is common to everything, and which is equally in the part and in the whole, forms the essence of no individual thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because treating essences as mere necessary properties threatens to include utter trivia and universal generalities, just because they are necessary. Rejecting things as 'trivial' by stipulation won't do. |
| 17184 | All natures of things produce some effect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nothing exists from whose nature an effect does not follow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this is because it is analytic that essences produce effects, since that is the point of the concept of an essence - as the source of the explanations of the effects. |
| 17030 | Important properties of an object need not be essential to it [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Important properties of an object need not be essential, unless 'importance' is used as a synonym for essence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Kripke's examples are the writings of Aristotle and the actions of Hitler, but these don't strike me as being 'properties' of those people. They are not intrinsic. Kripke, of course, is concerned with how we identify them, not who they actually are. |
| 16955 | Kripke says internal structure fixes species; I say it is genetic affinity and a common descent [Kripke, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Kripke stresses that membership of a single animal species requires identity or similarity of internal structure. In my view, what matters is genetic affinity - a common descent. Internal structure is merely a clue. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Michael Dummett - Could There Be Unicorns? 2 | |
| A reaction: The crucial test question would be whether we can make a tiger artificially (even constructing the DNA). I would say that if you make a tiger, that's a tiger, so Kripke is right and Dummett is wrong. The species is what it is, not where it came from. |
| 16996 | Given that Nixon is indeed a human being, that he might not have been does not concern knowledge [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Suppose Nixon actually turned out to be an automaton. That might happen. But that is a question about our knowledge. The question of whether he might not have been a human being, given that he is one, is not a question about knowledge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Given that you are sitting, might you be standing? Yes. Given that you are human, might you be non-human? No. Maybe! |
| 13971 | Kripke claims that some properties, only knowable posteriori, are known a priori to be essential [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (good) route to the necessary a posteriori is based on the idea that certain properties of objects that they can be known to have only a posteriori, may be known a priori to be essential properties of anything that has them. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.180 | |
| A reaction: Interesting, and a key issue. I think this is precisely where I disagree with the Kripkean view of necessities. Logicians want to know a priori what is essential for identity, but scientists want to know what makes things tick. See Kripke on pain. |
| 12100 | An essence is the necessary properties, derived from an intuitive identity, in origin, type and material [Kripke, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Kripke an object's essence simply consists of its necessary properties. ...His essential properties of individual objects follow from our intuitions about their identity. ...They are of three sorts: of origin, of sortals, and of material. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6 n3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Kripke is only interested in identity, whereas Aristotle is interested in explanation. The sorts are efficient, formal, material. Big Q: could Aristotle's account of essence do all the work that is required of essences by Kripke? |
| 16991 | No one seems to know the identity conditions for a material object (or for people) over time [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Adequate necessary and sufficient conditions for identity which do not beg the question are very rare. …I don't know of such conditions for identity of material objects over time, or for people. Everyone knows what a problem this is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: Typical of Kripke, who only seems to commit to conclusions suggested to him by his modal logic, and is baffled by almost everything else. I think one can at least attempt an essentialist approach to this problem. |
| 17205 | Only an external cause can destroy something [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing cannot be destroyed except by an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 04) |
| 11867 | If we lose track of origin, how do we show we are maintaining a reference? [Kripke, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps Kripke's argument for the necessity to a thing of its actual origin is that the speculator has to be able to rebut the charge that he has lost his grasp of his subject of discourse if he conceives of this subject with changed parents or origin. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 4.10 | |
| A reaction: On the whole Wiggins opposes necessity of origin (cf. Forbes, who defends it). If this idea is right, then any means of ensuring reference will do the job, and it clearly wouldn't be an argument that guaranteed necessity of origin. |
| 12018 | Kripke argues, of the Queen, that parents of an organism are essentially so [Kripke, by Forbes,G] |
| Full Idea: If we generalise what Kripke says about the Queen, then he is arguing that the parents of any organism are essentially the parents of that organism. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Graeme Forbes - The Metaphysics of Modality 6.1 | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that we have to be extremely careful in specifying what it is that Kripke is saying. I take it that either Kripke is saying something rather uninteresting, or he is saying what Forbes suggests. Parenthood is essential, not just necessary. |
| 17046 | Could the actual Queen have been born of different parents? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Could the Queen - could this woman herself - have been born of different parents from the parents from whom she actually came? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Tricky! No, because the past is fixed? Could the Queen have visited Russia when she was 20? I suppose so. Might she not have had parents, given who she is? I don't see why not. Could this desk have been made by someone else? Why not? |
| 8274 | Socrates can't have a necessary origin, because he might have had no 'origin' [Lowe on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Against Kripke's thesis of 'necessity of origin' I will just point out the intuitive force of the claim that Socrates - that very person - could, logically, have had no beginning to his existence at all, or have come into existence ex nihilo. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.110-) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 6.5 | |
| A reaction: It also strikes me that one base-pair difference in his DNA (by a mutation, or a fractionally different parent) would still leave him as Socrates. People are not good candidates for 'rigid' designation. Counterparts seems a better account here. |
| 17038 | If Hesperus and Phosophorus are the same, they can't possibly be different [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If Hesperus and Phosphorus are one and the same, then in no other possible world can they be different. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: If we ask whether one object could possibly be two objects, and deny that possibility, then Kripke's novel thought seems just right and obvious. |
| 17036 | Identity statements can be contingent if they rely on descriptions [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: If the man who invented bifocals was the first Postmaster General of the United States - that they were one and the same - it's contingently true. …So when you make identity statements using descriptions, that can be a contingent fact. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) |
| 17175 | There cannot be two substances with the same attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 05) | |
| A reaction: This is the Identity of Indiscernibles. |
| 17173 | Two substances can't be the same if they have different attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: This is the contrapositive of Leibniz's Law (i.e of the Indiscernibility of Identicals). Same things must have same attributes, so if the attributes differ they can't be the same things. |
| 11880 | Kripke says his necessary a posteriori examples are known a priori to be necessary [Kripke, by Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Kripke claims that all of his examples of the necessary a posteriori have the characteristic that we can know a priori that if they are true, they are necessarily true. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], 159) by Penelope Mackie - How Things Might Have Been 1.4 | |
| A reaction: That is, it seems, that they are not really necessary a posteriori! The necessity seems to only arrive with the addition of a priori judgements, thus endorsing the traditional view that necessity is only derivable a priori. Hm. |
| 4797 | Instead of being regularities, maybe natural laws are the weak a posteriori necessities of Kripke [Kripke, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: By defending a posteriori necessary statements, Kripke introduced the concept of a necessity in nature that was weaker than logical necessity; ..as a result, the dominant view of laws as mere regularities started to be seriously challenged. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §6.1 | |
| A reaction: Most of Kripke's examples of discovered necessities seem to be identities, which seem to be as strong as any logical necessity. I'm not sure I can make sense of a 'less strong necessity'. Necessity sounds all-or-nothing to me. |
| 17037 | Physical necessity may be necessity in the highest degree [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Physical necessity might turn out to be necessity in the highest degree. But that's a question which I don't wish to prejudge. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably necessity 'in the highest degree' is 'metaphysical' necessity, but Kripke is a bit coy about that. This is the germ of modern scientific essentialism. |
| 17183 | Things are impossible if they imply contradiction, or their production lacks an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is said to be impossible either because the essence of the thing itself or its definition involves a contradiction, or because no external cause exists determinate to the production of such a thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Is the contradiction in nature or in logic? How can he be sure that there doesn't exist some causeless thing? |
| 4299 | Contingency is an illusion, resulting from our inadequate understanding [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: The common notion of 'contingency' is for Spinoza an illusion, which derives from the fact that our view of reality is often inadequate and incomplete. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.8 | |
| A reaction: The crux is if there could another universe with different natural laws. Spinoza is in no position to deny the possibility. Cosmologists assume it is possible, and run computer simulations to test it. There is 'metaphysical' and 'natural' necessity. |
| 4824 | We only call things 'contingent' in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing can in no respect be called contingent, save in relation to the imperfection of our knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: A very good remark. Growing up is largely a realisation of the necessity of human affairs that you thought could be otherwise. (Forgive the pessimism!) As metaphysics, I find this appealing, too. |
| 4839 | Reason naturally regards things as necessary, and only imagination considers them contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the nature of reason to regard things as contingent, but as necessary; ..hence, it is only through our imagination that we consider things, whether in respect to the future or to the past, as contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting claim, which seems to be central to rationalism. The empiricist response must be that imagination (which is founded on experience) is a better guide to metaphysical status than pure reason can ever be. |
| 4822 | Divine nature makes all existence and operations necessary, and nothing is contingent [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All things are conditioned by the necessity of the divine nature, not only to exist, but also to exist and operate in a particular manner, and there is nothing that is contingent. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This obviously invites the response of the empiricist: how does he know that? Hume says he can't know it, and Leibniz says he knows it a priori. Traditionally, 'necessary' is the dubious term, but maybe it is 'contingent' which is meaningless. |
| 17182 | Necessity is in reference to essence or to cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing is called necessary either in reference to its essence or its cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: I like any proposal that necessity should be 'in reference to' something, rather than being free-standing. I like to add necessary 'for' something, which is often conceptual necessity. Roots are necessary for trees. |
| 4728 | Kripke separates necessary and a priori, proposing necessary a posteriori and contingent a priori examples [Kripke, by O'Grady] |
| Full Idea: It is now recognised that the apriori and the necessary don't always have to go together, ..and Kripke has suggested examples of necessary-aposteriori and contingent-apriori beliefs. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The simple point is that whether something is necessary or contingent is a quite separate question from how we come to know that they are. There isn't a new mode of reality called 'necessary a posteriori'. |
| 16990 | A priori = Necessary because we imagine all worlds, and we know without looking at actuality? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: People think 'necessary' and 'a priori' mean the same for two reasons: we can assess what is feasible in all possible world by running them through our heads, and something known a priori avoids looking at the world, so it must be necessary. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Kripke denies this doctrine, and pulls the concepts apart. Kant seems to be the chief representative of the view he is attacking. Hossack defends the older view. |
| 9386 | The meter is defined necessarily, but the stick being one meter long is contingent a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In 'one meter is the length of stick S at t', one designator (one meter) is rigid and the other (length of S at t) is not. 'S is one meter long at t' is contingent, as it could have a different length. In this sense, there are contingent a priori truths. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] Not convincing. He is proposing that a truth is knowable a priori, though knowledge of it is utterly dependent on a ceremony having taken place. It would not be true if that event hadn't taken place, so how can be it be known a priori? |
| 4960 | "'Hesperus' is 'Phosphorus'" is necessarily true, if it is true, but not known a priori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: An identity statement between names (such as 'Hesperus' and 'Phosphorus'), when true at all, is necessarily true, even though one may not know it a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, but one should not read too much into it. What should we say if Venus fissions into two, one for the morning, one for the evening? That identity implies x=x doesn't prove the existence of unchanging essences. |
| 4966 | Theoretical identities are between rigid designators, and so are necessary a posteriori [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Theoretical identities, according to the conception I advocate, are generally identities involving rigid designators and therefore are examples of the necessary a posteriori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't open up a huge new realm of a posteriori necessity. We just cured some of our ignorance. I remain unconvinced that the Morning Star is necessarily the Evening Star, except in the boring way that if it is, it is. Venus could fission. |
| 2408 | Kripke has demonstrated that some necessary truths are only knowable a posteriori [Kripke, by Chalmers] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has demonstrated the existence of necessary truths such as "water is H2O" whose necessity is only knowable a posteriori. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David J.Chalmers - The Conscious Mind 2.4.2 |
| 4818 | People who are ignorant of true causes imagine anything can change into anything else [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who are ignorant of true causes make complete confusion - thinking that trees might talk just as well as men, that men might be formed from stones as well as seed, and imagine that any form might be changed into any other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 08 n2) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself can be guilty of this, but it strikes me as a key idea. Humean scepticism about causation seems to me the product of eighteenth century ignorance about the mechanisms of cause and effect which have since been uncovered by science. |
| 20310 | Error does not result from imagining, but from lacking the evidence of impossibility [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not err from the fact that it imagines, but only insofar as it is considered to lack an idea which excludes the existence of those things which it imagines to be present to it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17 s) | |
| A reaction: These may be the wisest words I have yet found on conceivability and possibility. My example is imagining a bonfire on the moon, which seems possible until you fully grasp what fire is. |
| 13967 | Kripke's essentialist necessary a posteriori opened the gap between conceivable and really possible [Soames on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: With Kripke's essentialist route to the necessary a posteriori came a sharp distinction between conceivability and genuine possibility - ways things could conceivably be versus ways things could really be (or have been). | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.167 | |
| A reaction: A key idea, for me. I love 'could there be a bonfire on the moon?' Imagining it is easy-peasy. 'Could wood combine with oxygen when there is no oxygen present?' We imagined it all right, but did we 'conceive' it? |
| 13970 | Kripke gets to the necessary a posteriori by only allowing conceivability when combined with actuality [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's first (superior) route to necessary a posteriori has a sharp distinction between how the universe could conceivably and really be. ..On this picture conceivability is a fallible but useful guide, when combined with knowledge of actuality. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.168 | |
| A reaction: [compressed from p.168 and 170] To dismiss conceivability is ridiculous (see Williamson on that), and this formula of Soames sound right. To understand possibility, you have to study actuality (across time and space). Study history! |
| 16992 | Possible worlds aren't puzzling places to learn about, but places we ourselves describe [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A possible world isn't a distant country that we are coming across, or viewing through a telescope. …A possible world is given by the descriptive conditions we associate with it. …Possible worlds are stipulated, not discovered by powerful telescopes. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point is that it is absurd to be puzzling over the identity of what exists in some possible world, because the world is specified by us. If I say 'Nixon might have been a frog', I must be referring to Nixon. The problem is whether it is true. |
| 17208 | A horse would be destroyed if it were changed into a man or an insect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A horse would as much be destroyed if it were changed into a man as if it were changed into an insect. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: He has been referring to essences of things. What if a shire horse is changed into a Shetland pony? If you watched the horse transmute, it would be continuous in a way that two separate creatures are not. Some sort of sameness there. |
| 16993 | If we discuss what might have happened to Nixon, we stipulate that it is about Nixon [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why we cannot stipulate that, in talking about what would have happened to Nixon in a certain counterfactual situation, we are talking about what would have happened to HIM. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: For many people (including me now, I think) this lays to rest the supposed problem of 'transworld identity' wrestled with by Kaplan and Lewis. |
| 16998 | Transworld identification is unproblematic, because we stipulate that we rigidly refer to something [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is because we refer (rigidly) to Nixon, and stipulate that we are speaking of what might have happened to him (under certain circumstances), that 'transworld identifications' are unproblematic in such cases. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This responds to those who say you need transworld identification before you can rigidly designate something, which has 'reversed the cart and horse' says Kripke. Nice. |
| 17001 | A table in some possible world should not even be identified by its essential properties [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A table should not be identified with the set or 'bundle' of its properties, nor with the subset of its essential properties. Don't ask: how can I identify this table in another possible world, except by its properties? I have the table in my hands. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You identify the table by what's in front of you, but the essence might be relevant to deciding how far this table could change and remain this table. |
| 4952 | Identification across possible worlds does not need properties, even essential ones [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Some properties of an object may be essential to it, in that it could not have failed to have them. But these properties are not used to identify the object in another possible world, for such an identification is not needed. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: So how DO you identify objects in other possible worlds, or in this one? You may say he was baptised 'Aristotle' so that's rigid, but if Athens is full of pseudo-Aristotles I want to pick out the real one. I say Kripke muddles epistemology and ontology. |
| 7761 | Test for rigidity by inserting into the sentence 'N might not have been N' [Kripke, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Kripke offers an intuitive test for telling whether a term is rigid: try the term in the sentence-frame "N might not have been N". (For example, try the terms 'Nixon' and 'President of the USA'). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Helpful, but if you try it, the results do not seem to be conclusive. You are left saying 'Well, it depends what you mean by...' Think of possible worlds with a crippled Nixon, twin Nixons, an honest Nixon, a robot Nixon, a dark skinned Nixon... |
| 7693 | Kripke avoids difficulties of transworld identity by saying it is a decision, not a discovery [Kripke, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: Objects we find in the actual world might have been so different than they actually are that it appears impossible to identify the same objects from world to world. Kripke sidesteps the problem by saying transworld identity is a decision, not a discovery. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is the strategy that opposes Lewis's proposal of 'counterpart' objects that have properties in common. It is also the source of Kripke's causal theory of reference, and hence a key to massive modern debates. |
| 5821 | Saying that natural kinds are 'rigid designators' is the same as saying they are 'indexical' [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's doctrine that natural kind words are rigid designators and our doctrine that they are indexical are two ways of making the same point. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Meaning and Reference p.161 | |
| A reaction: I think I prefer Putnam's terminology, because it is more modest in its claims Kripke gets into trouble when a natural kind in some other possible world is only subtly different from the original. How 'rigid'? Putnam sticks to how the word gets started. |
| 14068 | If Kripke names must still denote a thing in a non-actual situation, the statue isn't its clay [Gibbard on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke gives an account of proper names from which it follows that Goliath (the statue) cannot be identical the lumpl (the clay), ..because if a proper name denotes a thing in the actual world, then it denotes that same thing in non-actual situations. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Allan Gibbard - Contingent Identity III | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a powerful criticism of Kripke's claim - and has led to extensive discussion which I will now have to pursue. Watch this space. |
| 10436 | A rigid expression may refer at a world to an object not existing in that world [Kripke, by Sainsbury] |
| Full Idea: In the Kripkean perspective, rigidity is understood in such a way that an expression may have as referent at a world an object which does not exist at that world. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.6 | |
| A reaction: This means that 'the present King of France' is a rigid designator. |
| 4953 | We do not begin with possible worlds and place objects in them; we begin with objects in the real world [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We do not begin with worlds (which are supposed somehow to be real), and then ask about criteria of transworld identification; on the contrary, we begin with objects, which we have, and can identify, in the real world. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This gives us clearly Kripke's underlying empiricist metaphysics, I take it. I find the realism of it appealing, but am uneasy about the idea of an object as basic, when Heraclitus said that they tend to fluctuate. Platonism waits in the wings. |
| 4961 | It is a necessary truth that Elizabeth II was the child of two particular parents [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: How could a person originating from different parents, from a totally different sperm and egg, be this very woman (Elizabeth II)? ..It seems to me that anything coming from a different origin would not be this very object. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Since baby Elizabeth could have been smuggled into the palace in a bedpan, it seems to me that her properties now are rather more obvious than her origin. I fear the only necessity here is that you can't change the past. An intriguing puzzle. |
| 17209 | A thing is contingent if nothing in its essence determines whether or not it exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I call individual things contingent in so far as we discover nothing, whilst we attend to their essence alone, which necessarily posits their existence or which necessarily excludes it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Def 3) | |
| A reaction: So something could have an essence which determined that it could not exist, which is presumably a contradiction. That's a very strange sort of essence. Presumably all intrinsically contradictory essences are in some way the same. |
| 16986 | That there might have been unicorns is false; we don't know the circumstances for unicorns [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think it is not the case that there might have been unicorns. I wouldn't say it is necessary that there are no unicorns, but that we just can't say under what circumstances there would have been unicorns. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: His point seems to be that unicorns are insufficiently individuated by the legends, whereas a typical sample of an actual creature contains everything that will individuate the species. |
| 5640 | Spinoza's three levels of knowledge are perception/imagination, then principles, then intuitions [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza there are three levels of knowledge: first, sense perception or imagination, second, reasoned reflection leading to principles, and third (the highest), intuition, in which the adequacy of an idea is immediately known. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy §5.6 | |
| A reaction: This notion of rising levels of knowledge has an obvious background in Plato. The third level is clearly rationalist, where empiricists would probably never aspire to rise above level two. I share the empiricist suspicion of level three. |
| 17211 | Understanding is the sole aim of reason, and the only profit for the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All efforts which we make through reason are nothing but efforts to understand, and the mind, in so far as it uses reason, adjudges nothing as profitable to itself excepting that which conduces to understanding. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 26) | |
| A reaction: I wish philosophers would agree that the aim of their subject is to achieve broad and general understanding of reality - and nothing else. If you want to change the world, that isn't philosophy. If you think understanding is impossible, drop philosophy. |
| 21801 | Unlike Descartes' atomism, Spinoza held a holistic view of belief [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Unlike Descartes, who held an atomist theory of belief (that we can assent to a belief quite independently of our other beliefs), Spinoza endorsed a holistic theory of belief - that our degree of affirmation is essentially determined by our other ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49S) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Since I am a fan of the coherence theory of justification, I seem obligated to accept a fairly holistic account of the acceptance of beliefs. Descartes is a foundationalist. |
| 21863 | You only know you are certain of something when you actually are certain of it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Who can know that he understands some thing unless he first understands it? That is, who can know that he is certain about some thing unless he is first certain about it? | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43S) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg the question, which concerns how you get to the state of full understanding or certainty in the first place. Spinoza thinks only certainty counts as knowledge, which seems to derive from Descartes. I prefer Peirce. |
| 17199 | A man who assents without doubt to a falsehood is not certain, but lacks a cause to make him waver [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When we say that a man assents to what is false and does not doubt it, we do not say that he is certain, but merely that he does not doubt, that is, that he assents to what is false, because there are no causes sufficient to make his imagination waver. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: This is a seventeenth century rationalist desperate to say that the reason can deliver certainty, in the face of idiots who are totally certain about astrology, fairies and what not. Vain hope, I'm afraid. Fallibilist rationalism is required. |
| 17193 | True ideas intrinsically involve the highest degree of certainty [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: No one who has a true idea is ignorant that a true idea involves the highest certitude; to have a true idea signifying just this, to know a thing perfectly or as well as possible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 43) | |
| A reaction: This wildly optimistic view is found in rationalists of the period. Rationalism only becomes tolerable if fallibilism is added to it. See Bonjour. |
| 5638 | 'I think' is useless, because it is contingent, and limited to the first person [Spinoza, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'I think' was useless to Spinoza, because it expresses a merely contingent proposition, where certainty must be founded in necessity, and because it refers to the first person, when truth comes from rising above our own mentality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I find both of these criticisms very appealing. One might simply say that the starting point of philosophy is not the process of thinking, but the contents of thinking. Descartes' move is like astronomers becoming obsessed with telescopes. |
| 8259 | Kripke has breathed new life into the a priori/a posteriori distinction [Kripke, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: The a priori/a posteriori is still taken seriously, and has had new life breathed into it by the work of Saul Kripke. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 1.1 | |
| A reaction: The distinction may be a good one, despite a blurred borderline. Did Egyptian quantity surveyors begin to suspect that Pythagoras's Theorem was a necessary truth, though they couldn't prove it? A priori understanding creeps into experience. |
| 16989 | Rather than 'a priori truth', it is best to stick to whether some person knows it on a priori evidence [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: A priori is supposed to mean something which can be known independently of experience, …but possible for whom? God, or the Martians? …Instead of 'a priori truth' it is best to stick to whether some person knows it based on a priori evidence. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is Kripke's famous attempt to establish that 'a priori' is strictly an epistemological term, and should not be taken as a term of metaphysics (or modal semantics?). I definitely prefer the Kripke view, though it downgrades the a priori. |
| 4947 | A priori truths can be known independently of experience - but they don't have to be [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The traditional characterisation (since Kant) goes: a priori truths are those which can be known independently of any experience - ..but that doesn't mean they MUST be known a priori. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: You may discover through experience that nine matches can't be divided into two equal piles, but Leibniz (and others) say you will only see the necessity of this a priori. No necessity is visible in the matches. |
| 13975 | Kripke was more successful in illuminating necessity than a priority (and their relations to analyticity) [Kripke, by Soames] |
| Full Idea: Kripke was far more successful in illuminating the nature of necessity, and distinguishing it from both apriority and analyticity, than he was in illuminating the nature of apriority, and distinguishing that from analyticity. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Scott Soames - Significance of the Kripkean Nec A Posteriori p.187 |
| 17048 | Analytic judgements are a priori, even when their content is empirical [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: All analytic judgements are a priori even when the concepts are empirical, as, for example, 'Gold is a yellow metal'; for to know this I require no experience beyond my concept of gold as a yellow metal. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: So I relate a priori to 'turquoise is a shade of red', even though my concepts are confused? It is my concept, perhaps, but it is false. I thought a priori had something to do with knowing, not with reporting the confused nonsense in my mind? |
| 4831 | If the body is affected by an external object, the mind can't help believing that the object exists [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body is affected in a manner which involves the nature of any external body, the human mind will regard the said external body as actually existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: This is like one of Hume's 'natural beliefs', and seems to me a powerful idea. One of the basic questions of epistemology is, apart from the question 'which beliefs can I justify?', also 'which beliefs can I never abandon?' Skip the scepticism? |
| 4865 | The eyes of the mind are proofs [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The eyes of the mind … are none other than proofs. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful slogan for rationalists! Technically it sounds a bit dodgy, as steps seem to be required for a proof, whereas the eyes of the mind presumably offer a priori intuitions, or clear and distinct conceptions. In essence, he is right. |
| 20306 | Once we have experienced two feelings together, one will always give rise to the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the mind has once been affected by two affects at once, then afterwards, when it is affected by one of them, it will also be affected by the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr14) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as better expressed than Hume's version, which relies on examples. It is more generalised than Hume, since it will cover contiguity and resemblance and causation, all under the heading of the arising affects. |
| 4948 | Intuition is the strongest possible evidence one can have about anything [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I think something's having intuitive content is very heavy evidence in favour of it. I really don't know what more conclusive evidence one can have about anything, ultimately speaking. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very appealing remark, especially coming from a great logician. It seems to me, though, that some intuitions are more rational than others, and we must occasionally give up intuitions that are proved wrong. |
| 4835 | Anyone who knows, must know that they know, and even know that they know that they know.. [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a man knows anything, he, by that very fact, knows that he knows it, and at the same time knows that he knows that he knows it, and so on to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: A delightfully bold claim! This is 'super internalism', but it seems to require that we must be certain in order to know, whereas I think my own view is internalist but 'fallibilist' - I know, while admitting I could be wrong. |
| 20308 | Encounters with things confuse the mind, and internal comparisons bring clarity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind has only a confused knowledge of itself, its own body, and external bodies, as long as it is perceived from fortuitous encounters with things, ...and not internally, from the agreements, differences and oppositions of a number of things at once. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29s) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is a very nice expression of the commitment to coherence as justification, typical of the rationalist view of things. Empiricists are trapped in an excessively atomistic concept of knowledge (one impression or sense datum at a time). |
| 4958 | Identities like 'heat is molecule motion' are necessary (in the highest degree), not contingent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: I hold that characteristic theoretical identifications like 'heat is the motion of molecules', are not contingent truths but necessary truths, and I don't just mean physically necessary, but necessary in the highest degree. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This helps to keep epistemology and ontology separate. The contingency was in the epistemology. That the identity is 'physically necessary' seems obvious; that it is necessary 'in the highest degrees' implies an essentialist view of nature. |
| 4312 | To understand a phenomenon, we must understand why it is necessary, not merely contingent [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Adequate understanding of a phenomenon, for Spinoza, involves a complete understanding of its causes, and this in turn involves a dissolving of the illusion of contingency and a recognition of the necessity of its being thus and not otherwise. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.168 | |
| A reaction: This is the appeal of the rationalist dream. We want a god-like grasp of things, not a superficial perception of what seems to be going on. |
| 4833 | The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is the very idea or knowledge of the human body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 19) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Aristotle's claim that the 'psuché' is the 'form' of the body. Spinoza is appealingly modern in his view. The mapping of the body (our prioprioceptic sense) strikes me as central to the nature of the mind. |
| 16198 | Knowledge is the essence of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of our mind consists solely in knowledge. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 36 n) | |
| A reaction: This is in a context of discussing the human relation to God. See Keith Hossack's 'The Metaphysics of Knowledge' for an exploration of this idea. (@BenedictSpinoza came up with this one) |
| 17198 | Will and intellect are the same thing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will and the intellect are one and the same. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17201 | The will is finite, but the intellect is infinite [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The will is distinguished from the intellect, the latter being finite, the former infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) |
| 17196 | The will is not a desire, but the faculty of affirming what is true or false [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By the will I understand a faculty of affirming or denying, but not a desire; a faculty, I say, by which the mind affirms or denies that which is true or false. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This is to be compared with the empiricist tendency to say that there are nothing but desires. On the whole I'm with Spinoza here. Hobbes thinKs of actions in the world, but Spinoza sees the will as operating in the process of reasoning. |
| 21805 | Spinoza held that the mind is just a bundle of ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held a bundle theory of the mind, according to which our mind is but a bundle 'composed of a great many ideas'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 15) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that the mind lacks unity, and also lacks a Self. Spinoza doesn't say much about this view. |
| 17204 | Animals are often observed to be wiser than people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Many things are observed in brutes which far surpass human sagacity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: Lovely - especially in an age when animals were being actively downgraded (e.g. by Descartes) in order to upgrade man. |
| 17212 | To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To understand is the absolute virtue of the mind. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) | |
| A reaction: A possible epigraph for this website. Perhaps it should be required by law that this be printed on the frontispiece of every philosophy book ever published. |
| 21804 | Faculties are either fictions, or the abstract universals of ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Faculties are either complete fictions, or nothing but metaphysical beings or universals, which are used to forming from particulars (as 'stoneness' is to a stone). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: So they are, at best, the sources of our concepts. Does that mean one faculty for each concept, or one huge concept-generating faculty? |
| 4832 | If the body is affected by two things together, the imagining of one will conjure up the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human body has once been affected by two or more bodies at the same time, when the mind afterwards imagines any of them, it will straightway remember the other also. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Very interesting to see a great rationalist philosopher making an observation right at the heart of Hume's theory of knowledge (associationism). Clearly an associationist theory of psychology need not imply a materialist (connectionist) theory of mind. |
| 21869 | Our own force of persevering is nothing in comparison with external forces [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The force by which a man perserveres in existing is limited, and infinitely surpassed by the power of external causes. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This states the obvious, but is important as a way of viewing things. I think Nietzsche's notion of Will to Power comes in here, as a unified account of both forces. |
| 20307 | As far as possible, everything tries to persevere [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each thing, as far as it can by its own power, strives to persevere in its own being. ...[7] The striving by which each thing strives to persevere in its being is nothing but the actual essence of the thing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: This is covered by his word 'conatus'. Obviously this covers plants as well as sentient beings. Mountains have no power to persevere. Since Spinoza sees this as basic, he is not far from Nietzsche. |
| 21803 | The conatus (striving) of mind and body together is appetite, which is the essence of man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When striving [conatus] is related to the Mind it is called Will, but when related to the Mind and Body it is called Appetite. This Appetite is the essence of man, from whose nature there necessarily follow those things that promote this preservation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09S), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza seems to see 'conatus' as a fairly unified thing, where Nietzsche sees the will to power as a combination of many competing 'drives'. I think Nietzsche is closer to the truth. |
| 4836 | The mind only knows itself by means of ideas of the modification of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself, except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the modifications of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 29) | |
| A reaction: This is reminiscent of Hume's 'bundle of perceptions' report of introspection. It is in tune with a modern 'animalist' view of a person, and with a view of the mind as a map of the body and its environs. Is he a sceptic about personal identity? |
| 21861 | Self-knowledge needs perception of the affections of the body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind does not know itself except in so far as it perceives the ideas of the affections of the body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: 'The ideas of the affections of the body' seems to be twice removed from the actual body, so I am not crystal clear what this says. The idea of knowing yourself with no involvement at all of the body seems absurd. |
| 17216 | The poet who forgot his own tragedies was no longer the same man [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a man undergoes such changes that he cannot very well be said to be the same man, as was the case with a certain Spanish poet ...who was so oblivious of his past life that he did not believe the tales and tragedies he had composed were his own. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 39) | |
| A reaction: This seems to need Locke's distinction between 'man' and 'person', since the poor poet was clearly the same human being. Spinoza places huge emphasis on the intellect as the essence of the man. |
| 4814 | A thing is free if it acts by necessity of its own nature, and the act is determined by itself alone [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That thing is called free which exists solely by the necessity of its own nature, and of which the action is determined by itself alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 7) | |
| A reaction: This points to the obvious thought that nothing is independent enough to achieve freedom. Our concept of nature is of almost endless interdependence. God seems the only thing that could possibly qualify, though some might say humans could. |
| 21802 | An act of will can only occur if it has been caused, which implies a regress of causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Each volition can neither exist nor be determined to produce an effect unless it is determined by another cause, and this cause again by another, and so on, to infinity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 3 | |
| A reaction: Acts of will are usually responses to situations, so it seems a bit simplistic to think that they are all spontaneous sui generis causal events. That argument won't work, of course, for a random volition that is out of context. |
| 4837 | 'Free will' is a misunderstanding arising from awareness of our actions, but ignorance of their causes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are conditioned. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: I have recently come to totally agree with this. The whole concept of free will seems to me incoherent, and Spinoza pinpoints the error. We aren't equipped to know the origins of the thoughts that arrive in our consciousnesses. |
| 4843 | Would we die if we lacked free will, and were poised between equal foods? Yes! [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It may be objected, if a man does not act from free will, what will happen if the incentives to action are equally balanced, as in the case of Buridan's ass? Will he perish of hunger and thirst. ..Personally I am ready to admit that he would die. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49) | |
| A reaction: A nicely defiant way of demonstrating his rejection of free will. I have to agree with him. Even if there were such a thing as 'free will', it is hard to see how it could act as a tie-breaker. Which way would it freely decide? |
| 4844 | The mind is not free to remember or forget anything [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: It is not within the free power of the mind to remember or forget a thing at will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 02) | |
| A reaction: An interesting little corrective if you were thinking that your total control over you mind proved that you had free will. Once you face up to your lack of control of the memory process, you begin to realise how little of your mind even feels controlled. |
| 4311 | We think we are free because we don't know the causes of our desires and choices [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men think themselves free because they are conscious of their volitions and their appetites, yet never give a thought to the causes which dispose them to desire or to exercise the will as they do, since they are wholly unaware of them. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulates the determinist idea nicely. In the end we just choose, but we have no idea why we prefer one reason to another, or simply opt for one thing rather than another. |
| 7828 | The actual world is the only one God could have created [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Things could not have been brought into being by God in any manner or in any order different from that which has in fact obtained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: Said to be a "notorious" proposition. This is a key idea in philosophy because it represents (like solipsism) one of the extremes - there is no such thing as contingency, and that all things are necessary. It is daft not to take Spinoza seriously on this. |
| 21860 | Ideas and things have identical connections and order [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 07) | |
| A reaction: I hadn't registered until Beth Lord pointed it out that this is Spinoza's parallelism of the mental and the physicalism, which seems to be roughly the same as the views of Leibniz and Malebranche, but with a different explanation. |
| 4967 | It seems logically possible to have the pain brain state without the actual pain [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Prima facie, it would seem that it is a least logically possible the brain state corresponding to pain should have existed (Jones's brain could have been in exactly that state at the time in question) without Jones feeling any pain at all. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is Kripke's commitment to the possibility of zombies, which are only possible if the mind-body connection is a contingent one, and he shows that there are no contingent 'identities'. The answer is necessary identity, and no zombies. |
| 4308 | Mind and body are one thing, seen sometimes as thought and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the body are one and the same individual which is conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) | |
| A reaction: I suppose we might now call this 'property dualism'. It is odd that when you examine one property, the other is nowhere to be seen. |
| 4846 | We are incapable of formulating an idea which excludes the existence of our body [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea which excludes the existence of our body cannot be postulated in our mind, but is contrary thereto. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: A fascinating claim. At the heart of Descartes is an unspoken thought experiment exploring the possibility of a disembodied mind. This is a beautiful challenge to the very concept of such a thing, and points to a grealty superior theory of mind. |
| 4834 | Mind and body are the same thing, sometimes seen as thought, and sometimes as extension [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The idea of body and body, that is, mind and body, are one and the same individual conceived now under the attribute of thought, now under the attribute of extension. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 21) | |
| A reaction: This is an appealingly modern view, but a bit glib. Phenomenologically, the mind seen as thought and the body seen as extension are about as wildly different as it is possible to be. This needs explanation. |
| 7430 | Kripke assumes that mind-brain identity designates rigidly, which it doesn't [Armstrong on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: In his attempted disproof of materialism about the mind, Kripke assumes that the physical description is a rigid designator, but this seems to be begging the question against the causal theory, which says the description is non-rigid. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David M. Armstrong - Pref to new 'Materialist Theory' p.xiv | |
| A reaction: A crucial part of this is that Armstrong believes that the laws of nature are contingent, and hence mind-brain identity has to be. Personally I incline to say that the identity is rigid, but that Kripke is still wrong. |
| 7867 | If consciousness could separate from brain, then it cannot be identical with brain [Kripke, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument is that the possibility of conscious properties coming apart from material properties shows that they cannot be identical with material properties. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 3.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice clear and simple summary. How can the possibility of coming apart be demonstrated? Only, it seems, by using our imaginations. But that is quite a good guide in areas we know well, but not in recondite areas like the brain. |
| 3228 | Kripke says pain is necessarily pain, but a brain state isn't necessarily painful [Kripke, by Rey] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's argument against mind-brain identity is that a pain is necessarily pain (just as a stone is necessarily matter), but a brain state is not necessarily painful (just as a stone is not necessarily a doorstep). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 11.6.2 | |
| A reaction: As with Descartes' argument from necessity for dualism, this seems to me to beg the question. It seems to me fairly self-evident that certain brain states have to be painful, just as stones always have to be hard or massive. |
| 5832 | Identity must be necessary, but pain isn't necessarily a brain state, so they aren't identical [Kripke, by Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist, it appears, can admit that the identity is necessary if true without substantially altering his position, but Kripke argues that the identity between pain and some brain states is not necessary. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) by Stephen P. Schwartz - Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds §IV | |
| A reaction: This appears to depend on being able to imagine the pain occurring with a different brain state, or no brain state. Bad argument. See Idea 5819. |
| 4968 | Identity theorists seem committed to no-brain-event-no-pain, and vice versa, which seems wrong [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The identity theorist is committed to the view that there could not be a C-fibre stimulation which was not a pain, nor a pain which was not a C-fibre stimulation; these consequences are certainly surprising and counterintuitive. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: If Kripke saw a glow in an area of his brain every time he felt a pain, he would cease to find it 'counterintuitive'. Far from this conclusion being 'surprising', its opposite is absurd. Pain with no brain event? C-fibres blaze away, and I feel nothing? |
| 23951 | Emotion is a modification of bodily energy, controlling our actions [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By emotion [affectus] I understand the modification of energy of the body by which the power of action is aided or restrained. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]), quoted by Robert C. Solomon - The Passions 3.4 | |
| A reaction: [no ref given] Solomon gives this as the earliest version of the 'hydraulic' model of emotions, later found in Freud and Jung. Very unusual to give a wholly physical account of these psychic states. |
| 4849 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain and desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I recognise only three primitive or primary emotions, namely, pleasure, pain and desire. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IIIEm Df 4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but hard to justify. Presumably one can analyse fear as desire for no pain, and grief as desire for the return of pleasure, etc. It is a nice exercise in introspective psychology, but I don't feel much wiser for it. |
| 23990 | The three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire [Spinoza, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza held that the three primary emotions are pleasure, pain, and desire | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III P59) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: If you are aiming for a minimal list, this is quite good. One active, one good passive, one bad passive. Output and input. |
| 17203 | Minds are subject to passions if they have inadequate ideas [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The mind is subject to passions in proportion to the number of inadequate ideas which it has. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 01) | |
| A reaction: An exceptionally intellectualist view of emotions! |
| 4864 | An emotion is only bad if it hinders us from thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion is only bad or hurtful, in so far as it hinders the mind from being able to think. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: This sounds sensible. It fits Spinoza's quasi-stoicism that he should be happy with emotion (as natural), but also that true 'living by nature' requires control by reason. Only a wild romantic would think emotion better than judgement as a guide. |
| 7832 | Stoics want to suppress emotions, but Spinoza overcomes them with higher emotions [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza says the only way to overcome emotions is with higher emotions, thus distinguishing himself from the Stoics, who argued that the only thing to do with the surly crowd of human emotions is to have them all shot. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: The modern view would certainly be that the Stoics were responsible for massive problems in European civilization (thought the Buddhist have similar views). Emotions are now seen as integral even to very pure reasoning. |
| 4863 | An emotion comes more under our control in proportion to how well it is known to us [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An emotion becomes more under our control, and the mind is less passive in respect to it, in proportion as it is more known to us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 03) | |
| A reaction: This may sound a little optimistic, but it is also obviously true, in the sense that the only proper control we have of our own behaviour is through thought and judgement, which presuppose awareness of what needs controlling. |
| 4841 | People make calculation mistakes by misjudging the figures, not calculating them wrongly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: When men make mistakes in calculation, they have one set of figures in their mind, and another on the paper. If we could see into their minds, they do not make a mistake. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 47) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully optimistic assertion of faith in reason! He seems to imply an infallibility in reason, which seems a bit implausible. If I make 7+6=14, MUST I have muddled the 6 with a 7? Presumably Spinoza was good at arithmetic. |
| 21807 | Ideas are powerful entities, which can produce further ideas [Spinoza, by Schmid] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza conceives of ideas as intrinsically powerful entities, which have a capacity to produce further ideas. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 6 | |
| A reaction: Is the idea the source of the entire philosophy of Hegel? I find Hegel's claim to infer huge chains of ideas from very simple origins quite implausible. I also rather doubt whether a wholly isolated idea can produce a further idea. |
| 4830 | An 'idea' is a mental conception which is actively formed by the mind in thinking [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'idea', I mean the mental conception which is formed by the mind as a thinking thing (this is not a passive perception with regard to the object, but expresses an activity of the mind). | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Def 3) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting as a seventeenth century attempt to grapple with the nature of thought. Spinoza sees it as of the essence of mind, since it is what the mind contributes, rather than what happens to the mind when it experiences. |
| 4842 | Ideas are not images formed in the brain, but are the conceptions of thought [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By ideas I do not mean images such as are formed at the back of the eye, or in the midst of the brain, but the conceptions of thought. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 48) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be equating 'ideas' with what we now call 'concepts', which presumably makes Spinoza less open to criticism than other philosophers of his time, for postulating baffling mental copies of the world. |
| 20311 | An idea involves affirmation or negation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: An idea, insofar as it is an idea, involves an affirmation or negation. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 49 sII) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza clearly distinguishes ideas from images, and here seems to identify ideas with propositions. Nowadays we say these are 'true or false', but Spinoza is more personal and psychological. I prefer his way of putting it. |
| 17874 | Kripke has a definitional account of kinds, but not of naming [Almog on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an incongruity between Kripke's definitionalist account of the essence of kinds (and the induced necessities), and his definition-free account of naming. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Joseph Almog - Nature Without Essence X | |
| A reaction: Putnam places more emphasis on baptising a prototypical example, just as we baptise named things. |
| 16394 | Kripke derives accounts of reference and proper names from assumptions about worlds and essences [Stalnaker on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: One might think that the direction of Kripke's arguments goes the other way - that conclusions about reference and proper names were derived in part from controversial metaphysical assumptions about possible worlds and essential properties. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Robert C. Stalnaker - Reference and Necessity Intro | |
| A reaction: Nathan Salmon is famous for charging Kripke with trying to get a metaphysics from a semantics, but this remark of Stalnaker's seems much more accurate. Kripke certainly assumes realism, and robust identity. |
| 5822 | The important cause is not between dubbing and current use, but between the item and the speaker's information [Evans on Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has mislocated the important causal relation, which lies between the item's states and doings and the speaker's body of information - not between the item's being dubbed with a name and the speaker's contemporary use of it. | |
| From: comment on Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Gareth Evans - The Causal Theory of Names §I | |
| A reaction: This feels sort of right. I sympathise with the much more social view of matters like reference, which grows out of Wittgenstein's anti-private language claims. I'm not sure where 'causation' come into Evans's picture. |
| 17033 | We may refer through a causal chain, but still change what is referred to [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: There may be a causal chain from our use of the term 'Santa Claus' to a certain historical saint, but still children, when they use this, by this time probably do not refer to that saint. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a significant concession to critics of the causal theory. I take it that community agreement is much more significant for reference than the actual causal chain, which may be riddled with errors from beginning to end, and so isn't causal. |
| 4689 | Kripke makes reference a largely social matter, external to the mind of the speaker [Kripke, by McGinn] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's theory brought a social element into the function of language: a speaker is socially connected to others who may know far more than she does about the reference of her terms, and the mechanism of reference is now not in her mind, but is external. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Colin McGinn - The Making of a Philosopher Ch. 3 | |
| A reaction: Hence this theory of reference leads on to Putnam's 'wide content' and Twin Earth. I remain unconvinced. See ideas under 'Thought'. |
| 17504 | Kripke's theory is important because it gives a collective account of reference [Kripke, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What is important about Kripke's theory is not that the use of proper names is 'causal' - what is not? - but that the use of proper names is collective. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Hilary Putnam - Explanation and Reference II B | |
| A reaction: This is the best response to Kripke. Reference is achieved by thinkers and speakers, but it is also a team activity, as in the case of the elm, or of Amenhotep II. |
| 17035 | We refer through the community, going back to the original referent [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It's in virtue of our connection with other speakers in the community, going back to the referent himself, that we refer to a certain man. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: There may be two theories of reference getting tangled up here. Going back to the origin is one thing, and relying on the community is another. Do I always know who I am referring to? 'The funniest man in London'. |
| 16988 | Descriptive reference shows how to refer, how to identify two things, and how to challenge existence [Kripke, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Summary: in favour of the descriptive theory of names are it gives you a mechanism for doing the referring (and Mill doesn't), we can identify two descriptions if there is one referent, and it allows us to question the existence of a referent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 1) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: If this problem is seen in terms of mental files (with labels and contents) this whole problem becomes a lot clearer. I take reference to be the action of a thinker, not a function of language. |
| 17029 | It can't be necessary that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is just not, in any intuitive sense of necessity, a necessary truth that Aristotle had the properties commonly attributed to him. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 2) | |
| A reaction: This replies to Searle's claim that to be Aristotle he must have a fair number of the properties. Even if Searle is right, you can hardly pick the properties out individually and claim they are necessary. Kripke pulls epistemology away from metaphysics. |
| 14893 | Rigid designation creates a puzzle - why do some necessary truths appear to be contingent? [Kripke, by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's proposal that referential expressions like indexicals, demonstratives, proper names and natural kind terms are de jure rigid designators created a puzzle - it entails 'modal illusions', truths that are in fact necessary appear to be contingent. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], p.143-4) by Maciŕ/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 1 | |
| A reaction: They are identifying this puzzle as the source of the need for two-dimensional semantics. Kripke notes that rigid designators may have their reference fixed by non-rigid descriptions. |
| 4838 | Claiming that actions depend on the will is meaningless; no one knows what the will is [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Saying that human actions depend on the will is a mere phrase without any idea to correspond to. What the will is, and how it moves the body, no one knows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: As so often, the rationalist Spinoza agrees with many empiricists about this one. If there is no such thing as the will, then there isn't much prospect of it being free, thought one might talk about 'freedom of thought' instead. |
| 4309 | Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same' [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that in reality the will and the intellect are 'one and the same'. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.159 | |
| A reaction: The 'will' is certainly a dubious concept, though it seems involved with desire and actual. In a sense, I suppose, all pursuits of reason are acts of will. |
| 20305 | Whenever we act, then desire is our very essence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Desire is man's very essence, insofar as it is agreed to be determined, from any affection of it, to do something. ...Desire is appetite, together with the consciousness of it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def of Aff I) | |
| A reaction: [I think that is the gist of it!] This sounds a bit circular, but seems to say that actions are almost entireoy the expression of desires. |
| 21868 | We love or hate people more strongly because we think they are free [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Because men consider themselves to be free, they have a greater love or hate toward one another than toward other things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 49S) | |
| A reaction: A very penetrating remark. If we abandon the concept of free will, I suspect that we will all become much more easy-going and tolerant, but the thought that feelings of love might also decline is a sobering one. |
| 17202 | We are the source of an action if only our nature can explain the action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I say that we act when anything is done, either within us or without us, of which we are the adequate cause, that is to say, when from our nature anything follows which by that nature alone can be clearly and distinctly understood. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def 2) | |
| A reaction: I like that one a lot. The point is to get a concept of responsibility that doesn't need free will, and to distinguish the thief from the kleptomaniac. Does kleptomania derive from a person's true nature? Essentialism in action. |
| 21865 | We act when it follows from our nature, and is understood in that way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We act when something in us or outside us follows from our nature, which can be clearly and distinctly understood through this alone. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Def2) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because it links actions to our essential natures, and because it focuses on understanding the action, which must involve explaining the action. This is the root of responsibility, not something called 'free will'. BUT SEE 17202. |
| 21873 | Men only agree in nature if they are guided by reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Only insofar as men live according to the guidance of reason, must they always agree in nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of the guiding idea of the Enlightenment - that consensus is the defining characteristic of rationality. Spinoza's politics emerges from this idea. |
| 21872 | We seek our own advantage, and virtue is doing this rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Acting absolutely from virtue is nothing else in us but acting, living, and preserving our being (these three signify the same thing) by the guidance of reason, from the foundation of seeking one's own advantage. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 24) | |
| A reaction: The influence of stoicism is obvious here, that we live according to our nature, but our nature is rational. Spinoza doesn't seem to understand the pure altruism of lovers and parents. |
| 17189 | The essence of man is modifications of the nature of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man consists of certain modifications of the attributes of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: Not an idea you hear much these days! |
| 17207 | By 'good' I mean what brings us ever closer to our model of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By 'good' I understand everything which we are certain is a means by which we may approach nearer and nearer to the model of human nature we set before us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: Unusual, and I'm not sure I understand it. His ideal largely concerns the intellect ruling the emotion |
| 8019 | Along with his pantheism, Spinoza equates ethics with the study of human nature [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The counterpart of understanding God as identical with Nature is understanding ethics as the study not of divine precepts but of our own nature and of what necessarily moves us. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: As stated here, this seems wrong. We should approach ethics through Aristotle, but not through Freud. That is, virtues can be inferred from human nature, but the actual facts of human nature may be grubby and unpalatable. |
| 17229 | If infancy in humans was very rare, we would consider it a pitiful natural defect [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a number of human beings were born adult, and only a few here and there were born infants, everyone would pity the infants, because we should then consider infancy not as a thing natural and necessary, but as a defect or fault of nature. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 06) | |
| A reaction: A lovely example of the new objectivity about human beings that emerged in the Enlightenment. He could have said the same about old age. |
| 4845 | We don't want things because they are good; we judge things to be good because we want them [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In no case do we strive for, wish for, long for, or desire anything, because we deem it to be good, but on the other hand we deem a thing to be good, because we strive for it, wish for it, long for it, or desire it. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 09) | |
| A reaction: Shocking, coming from a leading rationalist philosopher. It sounds more like Hume. Surely rationalism should put our capacity for judgement centre-stage? But Spinoza was a determinist. Is Kantian freedom of judgement required? Deterministic judgement? |
| 17217 | Love is joy with an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 44) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to quite capture the pain that some people find in love. |
| 4848 | Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Love is nothing else but pleasure accompanied by the idea of an external cause. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 13) | |
| A reaction: Not a definition to give us inspirational guidance! Sounds like grumpy old Hobbes. This is the 'love' of a heroin addict for a syringe. Personally I see love as having a rational aspect, which puts it 'under the aspect of eternity' (as Spinoza said!). |
| 7833 | Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza names self-interest as the sole source of value. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: This looks like a very seventeenth century view. There was a steady move from cynicism through to the optimism of the eighteenth century. I just don't agree that self-interest is the "sole" source of value, though we should never underestimate it. |
| 17224 | If our ideas were wholly adequate, we would have no concept of evil [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If the human mind had none but adequate ideas, it would form no notion of evil. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 64) | |
| A reaction: There is some sort of notion of the wholly rational and benign community here, where living well is the single communal thought. It's sort of true. Good people don't even think about wickedness. |
| 21870 | Music is good for a melancholic, bad for a mourner, and indifferent to the deaf [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: One and the same thing can, at the same time, be good and bad, and also indifferent. For example, music is good for one who is melancholy, bad for one who is mourning, and neither good nor bad to one who is deaf. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: This sounds neat and obvious, but both the mourner and the deaf person might well acknowledge that music is a good thing, while failing to appreciate it at the time. I accept that a concert was good, even if I didn't attend it. |
| 4860 | Man's highest happiness consists of perfecting his understanding, or reason [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In life it is before all things useful to perfect the understanding, or reason, as far as we can, and in this alone man's highest happiness or blessedness consists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 04) | |
| A reaction: I fear that only a highly intelligent person like Spinoza would suggest this. The genius of Jesus is to say that if you don't have a powerful intellect you can still be happy by having a pure and loving heart. The Spinoza route is better, if possible. |
| 4847 | Pleasure is a passive state in which the mind increases in perfection [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By pleasure I shall signify a passive state wherein the mind passes to a greater perfection. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], III Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: A rather bizarre definition! He seems to be defining it as a state and as a process in the same sentence. It sounds to me like both a hedonist's charter, and nonsense. I'm with Plato and Aristotle, that pleasure is dangerous as it warps the mind. |
| 4859 | Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pleasure is only bad in so far as it hinders a man's capability for action. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 59) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the incipient epicureanism found in enlightenment figures who are drifting towards atheism (of which his contemporaries accused Spinoza). Sadism? Grief is good pain. I'm too happy to be cruel. |
| 4851 | Reason demands nothing contrary to nature, and so it demands self-love [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: As reason makes no demands contrary to nature, it demands that every man should love himself, should seek that which is useful to him. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Maybe nature seems to demand self-love, but I don't see why reason should demand it, only why reason should not deny it. There is no point in denying something unavoidable. However, if we don't love ourselves, no one else is likely to. |
| 17220 | Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Self-satisfaction is the highest thing for which we can hope, for no one endeavours to preserve his being for the same of any end. [Pr 53: Humility is not a virtue] | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 52) | |
| A reaction: You can sense here that Spinoza was not a family man. |
| 4852 | Both virtue and happiness are based on the preservation of one's own being [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of virtue is the endeavour to preserve one's own being, and happiness consists in man's power of preserving his own being. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza never actually says so, but this seems to me to point to a Hobbesian social contract account of virtue - that is, that virtue is not an ideal, but a strategy. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian view, that it is an ideal revealed to us by nature. |
| 17214 | To act virtuously is to act rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: To act in conformity to virtue is to act according to the guidance of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 36) | |
| A reaction: This Kantian ideal always seems to be missing foundational values or feelings. If something is judged to be rubbish, I throw it away. |
| 21871 | The more we strive for our own advantage, the more virtuous we are [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The more each one strives, and is able, to seek his own advantage, that is, to preserve his being, the more he is endowed with virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: Beth Lord says this is his key ethical idea. Our conatus (striving) is the essence of our nature, and virtue is the perfect expression of our essence. Presumably the destruction of others in competition is also bad for us. |
| 17210 | All virtue is founded on self-preservation [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The endeavour after self-preservation is the primary and only foundation of virtue. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 22) | |
| A reaction: This fits in perfectly with modern evolutionary ethics. |
| 4856 | To live according to reason is to live according to the laws of human nature [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man acts absolutely according to the laws of his nature, when he lives in obedience to reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: This is pure stoicism, and shows that Spinoza is in many ways the culmination of the seventeenth century stoic revival (e.g. in the art of Poussin). I love the idea that right reason and nature are in perfect harmony. I wonder why? |
| 17221 | A man ignorant of himself is ignorant of all of the virtues [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The man who is ignorant of himself is ignorant of the foundation of all the virtues, and consequently is ignorant of all the virtues. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 56) | |
| A reaction: This would appeal to Aristotle, for whom the social virtues are an aspect of one's own character, and not a calculation made about externals. |
| 17225 | In a free man, choosing flight can show as much strength of mind as fighting [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Flight at the proper time, just as well as fighting, is to be reckoned as showing strength of mind in a man who is free; that is to say, a free man chooses flight by the same strength or presence of mind as that by which he chooses battle. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 69) | |
| A reaction: I wonder why showing 'strength of mind' is a virtue? |
| 17219 | A person unmoved by either reason or pity to help others is rightly called 'inhuman' [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who is moved neither by reason nor pity to be of any service to others is properly called inhuman; for he seems to be unlike a man. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Calling someone 'inhuman' doesn't seem like much of a condemnation. Nietzschean aristocrats may take pride in being above the mere 'human'. We gather here that if reason failed to motivate helping others, then pity would be a good thing. |
| 4857 | Pity is a bad and useless thing, as it is a pain, and rational people perform good deeds without it [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity is a pain, and is therefore in itself bad; only at the dictation of reason are we able to perform any action, which we know for certain to be good; thus, in a man who lives under the guidance of reason, pity in itself is useless and bad. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: This is the essence of both Kant's and Bentham's views. It is, however, unclear why a wholly rational and unfeeling person should be motivated to prevent other people's pain. It also don't think it follows that because it is painful it is bad. |
| 17223 | Pity is not a virtue, but at least it shows a desire to live uprightly [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Pity, like shame, although it is not a virtue, is nevertheless good, in so far as it shows that a desire of living uprightly is present in the man who is possessed with shame. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 58) | |
| A reaction: And yet, in so far as I am rational, it seems that I should endeavour to suppress pity and replace it with right reason. Does Spinoza feel loyalty to the human race, I wonder? |
| 17218 | People who live according to reason should avoid pity [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A man who lives according to the dictates of reason endeavours as much as possible to prevent himself from being touched by pity. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 50) | |
| A reaction: Since pity seems to give rise to some thoroughly good actions, I am not quite clear how reason would give rise to those same actions unaided. The alleviation of another's pain seems to have no pure motivation, if there is no empathy. |
| 17228 | Rational people judge money by needs, and live contented with very little [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who know the true use of money, and regulate the measure of wealth according to their needs, live contented with few things. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 29) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza himself lived up to this, being incredibly austere in his personal life. |
| 4853 | Rational people are self-interested, but also desire the same goods for other people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men who are governed by reason - that is, who seek what is useful to them in accordance with reason - desire for themselves nothing, which they do not also desire for the rest of mankind, and so are just, faithful and honourable in their conduct. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18) | |
| A reaction: This is pulling a rather Kantian rabbit out of a very social contract hat. It chimes in with Aristotle's account of self-interest, which leads to good civic virtues. True Kantianism is self-abnegating, but Spinoza lets selfishness take the lead. |
| 4858 | A rational person will want others to have the goods he seeks for himself [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: He who lives under the guidance of reason, desires for others the good which he seeks for himself. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 51) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a very Kantian idea. It implies that all rational people desire similar goods, but it is rational to collect stamps but not want other people to do so as well. I don't think you should want what I want for Christmas. |
| 4855 | If people are obedient to reason, they will live in harmony [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Men insofar as they live in obedience to reason, necessarily live always in harmony with one another. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 35) | |
| A reaction: A beautiful slogan for a belief which has gripped me since I was a child. It embodies the frustration of philosophers from Plato onwards, and it may well be childishly idealistic. Politics is the art of the possible, said R.A.B. Butler. |
| 21874 | The ideal for human preservation is unanimity among people [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Man can wish for nothing more helpful to the preservation of his being than that all should so agree in all things that the minds and bodies of all would compose, as it were, one mind and one body. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 18S) | |
| A reaction: There has never been a more glorious vision of a unified people than this, which epitomises Enlightenment optimism. It may be a little on the optimistic side. We might at least hope that rational education encourages the convergence. |
| 8020 | Only self-knowledge can liberate us [Spinoza, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza, self-knowledge, and only self-knowledge, liberates. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Spinoza was a determinist, as far as ultimate inner freedom is concerned. The massive continental philosophers' effort of phenomenology and deconstruction seems to be premissed on this idea. Freedom seems to be their highest value. |
| 7412 | Spinoza extended Hobbes's natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions [Spinoza, by Tuck] |
| Full Idea: It was Spinoza who extended the idea of natural rights to cover all possible desires and actions, and he did so knowing that he was transforming Hobbes's theory. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Richard Tuck - Hobbes Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Hobbes had stuck to self-preservation. His problem was how to draw a line, saying that was a natural right, but there wasn't a natural right to a good bottle of claret. Spinoza's drastic solutions suggests that the whole approach is wrong. |
| 17227 | Slavery is a disgraceful crime [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Slavery is a disgraceful crime. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 21) | |
| A reaction: Note the date of this - when the slave trade is just getting going, and long before it is threatened or criticised. |
| 17226 | The best use of talent is to teach other people to live rationally [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing by which a person can better show how much skill and talent he possesses than by so educating men that at last they will live under the direct authority of reason. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IVApp 09) | |
| A reaction: Speaking as a retired philosophy teacher, I think this is an excellent idea, but then I would, wouldn't I? What if you turn a nice warm-hearted friendly young person into a chillingly detached heartless reasoner? |
| 4854 | It is impossible that the necessity of a person's nature should produce a desire for non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That a man, from the necessity of his own nature, should endeavour to become non-existent, is as impossible as that something should be made out of nothing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 20) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this is very paradoxical, but it fits with evolutionary theory, which seems to make it almost inconceivable to naturally desire suicide. The desire to live is universal, and only circumstances can create an artifiical contradictory desire. |
| 17215 | Animals feel, but that doesn't mean we can't use them for our pleasure and profit [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: I by no means deny that brutes feel, but I do deny that on this account it is unlawful for us to consult our own profit by using them for our own pleasure and treating them as is most convenient for us, inasmuch as they do not agree in nature with us. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 37) | |
| A reaction: Something a bit chilling about this. What if I decided that some people did 'not agree with my nature'? Presumably pleasure includes hunting? What was his attitude to bear-baiting? |
| 17190 | We can easily think of nature as one individual [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: We may easily conceive the whole of nature to be one individual. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Lem 7) |
| 4826 | Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Nature has no particular goal in view, and final causes are mere human figments. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: This is Spinoza's famous rejection of Aristotelian teleology, which was the last seventeenth century nail in the coffin of the great man. Spinoza substitutes God, but loss of faith in that concept then left us with no purpose at all, as in Hume. |
| 1587 | Spinoza strongly attacked teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Ethics' Spinoza shows his enormous hostility to teleology, which is the lifeblood of classical logos. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.77 |
| 1588 | For Spinoza eyes don't act for purposes, but follow mechanical necessity [Roochnik on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle would be perfectly happy with the idea that the eyes are for the purpose of seeing. Spinoza would disagree. The objects of the world, including parts of living organisms, have purposes, but obey the laws of mechanical necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.79 | |
| A reaction: My view is that eyes wouldn't exist if they didn't see, which places them in a different category from inorganic matter. |
| 12731 | Final causes are figments of human imagination [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: All final causes are nothing but human fictions. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: You can see why Spinoza was rather controversial in the late seventeenth century, when he says things as bold as this, even though he is echoing Descartes. The latter's proposal (Idea 12730) is methodological, whereas this idea is metaphysical. |
| 4821 | An infinite line can be marked in feet or inches, so one infinity is twelve times the other [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If an infinite line be measured out in feet, it will consist of an infinite number of such parts; it would equally consist of an infinite number of parts, if each part was only an inch; therefore, one infinity would be twelve times as great as the other. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: This seems to anticipate Cantor. Spinoza's point seemed bewildering then, but is now accepted as a standard feature of the concept of infinity. |
| 17177 | In nature there is just one infinite substance [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: In nature only one substance exists, and it is absolutely infinite. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to render the concept of 'substance' redundant, since all the interest is now in the attributes (or whatever) of this one substance, and we must work to discount the appearance of there being numerous substances (e.g. you and me). |
| 17056 | Terms for natural kinds are very close to proper names [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: According to the view I advocate, terms for natural kinds are much closer to proper names than is ordinarily supposed. …'Common name' is appropriate for species …and also for certain mass terms such as 'gold' and 'water'. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) |
| 4963 | The properties that fix reference are contingent, the properties involving meaning are necessary [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Bear in mind the contrast between the a priori but perhaps contingent properties carried with a natural kind term, given by the way its reference was fixed, and the analytic (and hence necessary) properties a term may carry, given by its meaning. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The second half of this is the 'new essentialism'. Complex. We need to distinguish 'reference' from 'definition'. The 'analytic properties' seem to be the definition, but we sometimes change our definitions (e.g. of units of time). |
| 17053 | Gold's atomic number might not be 79, but if it is, could non-79 stuff be gold? [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Gold could turn out not to have atomic number 79. …But given that gold does have the atomic number 79, could something be gold without having the atomic number 79? | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The question seems to be 'is atomic number 79 essential to gold?', and on p.124 Kripke seems to say 'yes'. I agree. But how do we decide which features are essential to gold? Why do we think molten gold does count as gold? |
| 4964 | 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: 'Cats are animals' has turned out to be a necessary truth. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: False! As Putnam has pointed out, we could yet discover that cats are subtly designed alien robots. This is a revealing error by Kripke, showing his desire to move from a useful logical clarification to an excessively amibitious metaphysics. |
| 6765 | Nominal essence may well be neither necessary nor sufficient for a natural kind [Kripke, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's tiger example shows that a nominal essence is not necessary for the existence of a natural kind; examples from Putnam show that a nominal essence is not sufficient either. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: None of the characteristics of a tiger is essential to it. The appearance of water doesn't fix its reference. The move is towards an external view, that what matters for natural kinds is the real essence, not human conventions about it. I agree. |
| 4850 | A final cause is simply a human desire [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A cause which is called final is nothing else but human desire, in so far as it is considered as the origin or cause of anything. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pref) | |
| A reaction: A rather vicious swipe at Aristotle! It chimes in with the modern scientific view of the world (mostly associated with Hume), that nature has no intrinsic values or aims. On the large scale, Spinoza is right, but nature can still show us what has value. |
| 4815 | From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: From a definite cause an effect necessarily follows. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 3) | |
| A reaction: This encapsulate the view against which Hume was rebelling. However, nowadays no one thinks Spinoza is self-evidently wrong. How are we to distinguish between a cause and a coincident event? We must claim natural necessity. |
| 9387 | The scientific discovery (if correct) that gold has atomic number 79 is a necessary truth [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Scientific discoveries about what gold is are not contingent truths, but are necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. ..If scientists are right, then it will be necessary and not contingent that gold be an element with atomic number 79. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: I think this glorious and controversial claim is correct. It is hard to find supporting arguments, but the picture of nature that emerges (where the essences of the stuffs precede the laws of their behaviour) seems to me far more coherent. |
| 17054 | Scientific discoveries about gold are necessary truths [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Statement representing scientific discoveries about what this stuff (gold) is are not contingent truths but necessary truths in the strictest possible sense. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: People take him to mean 'metaphysically necessary' here. How do we distinguish the 'scientific' discoveries, which are necessary, from the more casual discoveries, which may not be? Presumably being yellow is also necessary? |
| 17057 | Once we've found that heat is molecular motion, then that's what it is, in all possible worlds [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We have discovered a phenomenon (heat) which in all possible worlds will be molecular motion - which could not have failed to be molecular motion, because that's what the phenomenon is. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: He refers to the identification as an 'essential property' of the phenomenon (and not merely a necessity). For my taste, Kripke uses the word 'property' too widely. |
| 4965 | Science searches basic structures in search of essences [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: Science attempts, by investigating basic structural traits, to find the nature, and thus the essence (in the philosophical sense) of the kind. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: The 'necessity' of essences should be treated with caution, but this account of science strikes me as right, with the inbuilt assumption that the 'laws' are the consequence of the essences. A regularity becomes a law when it is explained by an essence. |
| 17050 | Tigers may lack all the properties we originally used to identify them [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We might find out that tigers had none of the properties by which we originally identified them. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a can of worms. If I baptise someone 'the tallest man in the room', and it turns out he isn't, I withdraw my baptism. Why would I never withdraw 'tiger'? I suppose Kripke is right. |
| 17051 | The original concept of 'cat' comes from paradigmatic instances [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: The original concept of cat is: that kind of thing, where the kind can be identified by paradigmatic instances. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: Kripke evokes Putnam at this point, since he is famous for this proposal. Note that Kripke uses the plural, invoking more than one instance. Presumably we must abstract the fur colours from the instances? |
| 17049 | 'Tiger' designates a species, and merely looking like the species is not enough [Kripke] |
| Full Idea: We can say in advance that we use the term 'tiger' to designate a species, and that anything not of this species, even though it looks like a tiger, is not in fact a tiger. | |
| From: Saul A. Kripke (Naming and Necessity lectures [1970], Lecture 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'baptismal' direct reference theory applied to species as well as to particular names. It seem to hinge on an internal structure being baptised, despite ignorance of what that structure is. Cf nominal essence? 'Tiger' denotes their essence? |
| 7835 | The key question for Spinoza is: is his God really a God? [Stewart,M on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The single most important question that can be raised about Spinoza's philosophy is: Is his God really a God? | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: Novalis called Spinoza a "God-intoxicated man", but this question shows why many of Spinoza's contemporaries (and later) considered him to be an atheist. The general modern answer by commentators to the question appears to be 'No!'. |
| 17231 | God feels no emotions, of joy or sorrow [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is free from passions, neither is He affected with any affect of joy or sorrow. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 17) | |
| A reaction: The general Christian view is that God has great compassion for human suffering, as Jesus appears to have had. Spinoza was very very intellectual. |
| 4823 | God does not act according to the freedom of the will [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God does not act according to the freedom of the will. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 32) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am struck by the idea that even if God had 'free will', I can't see how He would be sure of the fact (the unperceived puppetmaster!). However, I have actually come to the conclusion that a fotally 'free' will is an incoherent concept. |
| 17172 | God is a substance with infinite attributes [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By God, I understand Being absolutely infinite, that is to say, substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) |
| 12928 | Spinoza's God is just power and necessity, without perfection or wisdom [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The Spinozist view allows God infinite power only, not granting him either perfection or wisdom, and dismisses searches for final causes and explains everything through brute necessity. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 73 | |
| A reaction: It takes a genius like Leibniz to explain so clearly what Spinoza was up to. Some call Spinoza 'God-intoxicated', but others say he is an incipient atheist. The latter is probably closer to the truth. |
| 7571 | Spinoza's God is not a person [Spinoza, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza's God is not a person. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This will be the central reason why Spinoza was so controversial, because such a view instantly makes religion pointless, despite retaining a core of theism. |
| 4314 | God is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone [Spinoza, by Cottingham] |
| Full Idea: God, asserts Spinoza, is wholly without passions, and strictly speaking does not love anyone. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by John Cottingham - The Rationalists p.179 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a much more plausible conception of God than the anthropomorphic one of him as the perfect parent who dotes on his offspring. |
| 7609 | God is the sum and principle of all eternal laws [Spinoza, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: For Spinoza God is simply the principle of law, the sum of all the eternal laws in existence. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.9 | |
| A reaction: This seems at variance with the usual view, that Spinoza identifies God with the single substance which makes up nature, and that he is hence a pantheist. Compare the above idea with Idea 4829, for example. Spinoza's God seems close to Aristotle's. |
| 19435 | God is not loveable for producing without choice and by necessity; God is loveable for his goodness [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing loveable in a God who produces without choice and by necessity, without discrimination of good and evil. The true love of God is founded not in necessity but in goodness. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IV Pr 28) by Gottfried Leibniz - Comments on Spinoza's Philosophy | |
| A reaction: This responds to Spinoza's claims about an 'intellectual' love of God. But why do we love people. It is possible that it is always for their goodness, but might we not love a great mathematician, simply for their wonderful mathematics? |
| 21859 | God has no purpose, because God lacks nothing [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If God works to obtain an end, He necessarily seeks something of which he stands in need. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: The point is that a being with infinite attributes cannot be in need of anything, and hence God merely exists, but does not have a purpose. Hence falling in line with God's purposes cannot be an aim of a human religion. |
| 4825 | To say that God promotes what is good is false, as it sets up a goal beyond God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Those who maintain that God acts in all things with a view of promoting what is good are very far from the truth. For they seem to set up something beyond God, which does not depend on God, but which God looks to as an exemplar or goal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 33) | |
| A reaction: That is, Spinoza agrees with Euthyphro, and disagrees with Socrates (see Idea 337). Personally I agree with Socrates, but then I am not 'intoxicated with God' as Spinoza was. If God isn't good, why worship Him? |
| 21856 | Spinoza says a substance of infinite attributes cannot fail to exist [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza does not argue from the concept of God to his existence; he argues that a substance of infinite attributes cannot not exist. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 6) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 1 P11 | |
| A reaction: Lord is explicit that this is NOT the argument used by Anselm and Descartes. I'm not clear why there has to be a substance of infinite attributes, but presumably that is explained somewhere. |
| 17178 | Denial of God is denial that his essence involves existence, which is absurd [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God, or substance consisting of infinite attributes, each one of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. If this be denied, conceive that God does not exist. But then his essence does not involve existence, which is absurd. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: Not a very powerful version of the ontological argument. Gaunilo offered an island which has existence as part of its essence, which would pass the same test. |
| 21858 | God is being as such, and you cannot conceive of the non-existence of being [Spinoza, by Lord] |
| Full Idea: Spinoza argues that you cannot conceive the non-existence of God because you cannot conceive the non-existence of being. God, or a substance of infinite attributes, is being as such. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics I P11 | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why I cannot conceive of nothing whatever existing. I can conceive of my fridge being empty, so conceiving non-being is not off limits. Not that inconceivability is an infallible guide to impossibility… |
| 4820 | God must necessarily exist, because no reason can be given for his non-existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: A thing necessarily exists if no cause or reason be granted which prevents its existence. No cause can be given which prevents the existence of God, or which destroys his existence, so we must conclude that he necessarily exists. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of any reason why there shouldn't be a giant rat which fills a large proportion of the universe. Indeed, it may be the missing 'dark matter'. So presumably it has necessary existence. Proving non-existence is obviously tricky. |
| 17169 | Some things makes me conceive of it as a thing whose essence requires its existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: By cause of itself, I understand that, whose essence involves existence; or that, whose nature cannot be conceived unless existing. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Def 1) | |
| A reaction: Obviously he has God in mind, but might this apply to abstract existence. Can I conceive of the number seven, while also conceiving that there is no such number? Compare Pegasus. |
| 4817 | If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: If a thing can be conceived as non-existing, its essence does not involve existence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Ax 7) | |
| A reaction: This points straight at the modern question of whether conceivability is a sufficient test for possibility. Personally I am close to Hume on this one. Necessary existence may not be ridiculous, but it is beyond human capacity to assert its occurrence. |
| 4827 | Priests reject as heretics anyone who tries to understand miracles in a natural way [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who seeks the true cause of miracles, and strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being, and not to gaze at them like a fool, is denounced as an impious heretic by those whom the masses adore as interpreters of nature and gods. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], IApp) | |
| A reaction: A rather bitter personal remark, by someone who was driven out of Amsterdam as a heretic. Presumably the heresy is not aggressive a priori naturalism, but mere openness to the possibility of natural explanations of miracles. |
| 12757 | That God is the substance of all things is an ill-reputed doctrine [Leibniz on Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: That God is the very nature or substance of all things is the sort of doctrine of ill repute which a recent writer, subtle indeed, though profane, either introduced to the world or revived. | |
| From: comment on Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I) by Gottfried Leibniz - On Nature Itself (De Ipsa Natura) §08 | |
| A reaction: This is clearly a comment on Spinoza. Leibniz seems to have spent his whole life in shock after his meeting with Spinoza. |
| 17181 | God is the efficient cause of essences, as well as of existences [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: God is not only the efficient cause of the existence of things, but also of their essence. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 25) | |
| A reaction: This is close to Leibniz's view that the so-called 'laws of nature' are not imposed by God from outside, but are rooted with nature, in the essences of what has been created (which is modern scientific essentialism). |
| 4829 | The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind is part of the infinite intellect of God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], II Pr 11) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between being a part of something which totally fails to communicate with the whole, and being separate from the whole? Spinoza's proposal strikes me as daft. |
| 17180 | Everything is in God, and nothing exists or is thinkable without God [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is, is in God, and nothing can either be or be conceived without God. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], I Pr 15) | |
| A reaction: Presumably atheists are not very good at conceiving, because they don't understand properly. This is the pantheism for which Spinoza became famous, or notorious. Critics said he was a closet atheist. |
| 7836 | In Spinoza, one could substitute 'nature' or 'substance' for the word 'God' throughout [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: In Spinoza's 'Ethics' one can substitute the word "Nature" (or "Substance", or even simply an X) for God throughout, and the logic of the argument changes little, if at all. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.13 | |
| A reaction: This claim, if correct, is the clearest statement of why we should really consider Spinoza one of the first atheists, despite his endless use of the word 'God'. |
| 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. |
| 7831 | Spinoza's theory of mind implies that there is no immortality [Spinoza, by Stewart,M] |
| Full Idea: A final (and for his contemporaries, dreadful) consequence of Spinoza's theory of the mind is that there is no personal immortality. | |
| From: report of Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675]) by Matthew Stewart - The Courtier and the Heretic Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: For Spinoza's view of the mind, see Idea 4308. The denial of immortality would also seem to be a consequence of modern emergentist views of the mind, which is espoused by religious people looking for a compromise between dualism and science. |
| 21876 | After death, something eternal remains of the mind [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The human mind cannot be absolutely destroyed with the body, but something of it remains which is eternal. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (The Ethics [1675], V Pr 23) | |
| A reaction: This sounds contrary to Spinoza's monism of mind and body, but he seems to mean little more than that minds are reabsorbed into the whole. See Beth Lord's commentary [p.146]. Compare stoics on the subject. |