12 ideas
| 9837 | 0 is not a number, as it answers 'how many?' negatively [Husserl, by Dummett] |
| Full Idea: Husserl contends that 0 is not a number, on the grounds that 'nought' is a negative answer to the question 'how many?'. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.144) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: I seem to be in a tiny minority in thinking that Husserl may have a good point. One apple is different from one orange, but no apples are the same as no oranges. That makes 0 a very peculiar number. See Idea 9838. |
| 9576 | Multiplicity in general is just one and one and one, etc. [Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Multiplicity in general is no more than something and something and something, etc.; ..or more briefly, one and one and one, etc. | |
| From: Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.85), quoted by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' | |
| A reaction: Frege goes on to attack this idea fairly convincingly. It seems obvious that it is hard to say that you have seventeen items, if the only numberical concept in your possession is 'one'. How would you distinguish 17 from 16? What makes the ones 'multiple'? |
| 17444 | Husserl said counting is more basic than Frege's one-one correspondence [Husserl, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: Husserl famously argued that one should not explain number in terms of equinumerosity (or one-one correspondence), but should explain equinumerosity in terms of sameness of number, which should be characterised in terms of counting. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3 | |
| A reaction: [Heck admits he hasn't read the Husserl] I'm very sympathetic to Husserl, though nearly all modern thinking favours Frege. Counting connects numbers to their roots in the world. Mathematicians seem oblivious of such things. |
| 12900 | How could 'S knows he has hands' not have a fixed content? [Bach] |
| Full Idea: How can it be that a sentence like 'George knows that he has hands', even with time and references fixed, does not have a fixed propositional content? | |
| From: Kent Bach (The Emperor's New 'Knows' [2005], I) | |
| A reaction: The appeal is to G.E. Moore's common sense view of immediate knowledge (Idea 6349). The reply is simply that the word 'knows' shifts its meaning, having high standards in sceptical philosophy classes, and low standards on the street. |
| 12901 | If contextualism is right, knowledge sentences are baffling out of their context [Bach] |
| Full Idea: Contextualism seems to predict that if you encounter a knowledge attribution out of context you won't be in a position to grasp which proposition the sentence expresses. | |
| From: Kent Bach (The Emperor's New 'Knows' [2005], I) | |
| A reaction: It is only the word 'knows' which is at issue in the sentence. If someone is said to 'know' about the world of the fairies, we might well be puzzled as to what proposition was being expressed. Is the word 'flat' baffling out of context? |
| 12902 | Sceptics aren't changing the meaning of 'know', but claiming knowing is tougher than we think [Bach] |
| Full Idea: When a sceptic brings up far-fetched possibilities and argues that we can't rule them out, he is not raising the standard for the word 'know'. He is showing it is tougher than we realise for a belief to qualify as normal knowledge at all. | |
| From: Kent Bach (The Emperor's New 'Knows' [2005], III) | |
| A reaction: [Bach cites Richard Feldman for this idea] I think that what happens in the contextual account is that 'true', 'belief' and 'know' retain their standard meaning, and it is 'justified' which shifts. 'I am fully justified' can have VERY different meanings! |
| 9575 | Husserl identifies a positive mental act of unification, and a negative mental act for differences [Husserl, by Frege] |
| Full Idea: Husserl identifies a 'unitary mental act' where several contents are connected or related to one another, and also a difference-relation where two contents are related to one another by a negative judgement. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894], p.73-74) by Gottlob Frege - Review of Husserl's 'Phil of Arithmetic' p.322 | |
| A reaction: Frege is setting this up ready for a fairly vicious attack. Where Hume has a faculty for spotting resemblances, it is not implausible that we should also be hard-wired to spot differences. 'You look different; have you changed your hair style?' |
| 21214 | We clarify concepts (e.g. numbers) by determining their psychological origin [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl said that the clarification of any concept is made by determining its psychological origin. He is concerned with the psychological origins of the operation of calculating cardinal numbers. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 2.2 | |
| A reaction: This may not be the same as the 'psychologism' that Frege so despised, because Husserl is offering a clarification, rather than the intrinsic nature of number concepts. It is not a theory of the origin of numbers. |
| 9819 | Psychologism blunders in focusing on concept-formation instead of delineating the concepts [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl substitutes his account of the process of concept-formation for a delineation of the concept. It is above all in making this substitution that psychologism is objectionable (and Frege opposed it so vehemently). | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: While this is a powerful point which is a modern orthodoxy, it hardly excludes a study of concept-formation from being of great interest for other reasons. It may not appeal to logicians, but it is crucial part of the metaphysics of nature. |
| 9851 | Husserl wanted to keep a shadowy remnant of abstracted objects, to correlate them [Dummett on Husserl] |
| Full Idea: Husserl saw that abstracted units, though featureless, must in some way retain their distinctness, some shadowy remnant of their objects. So he wanted to correlate like-numbered sets, not just register their identity, but then abstractionism fails. | |
| From: comment on Edmund Husserl (Philosophy of Arithmetic [1894]) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: Abstractionism is held to be between the devil and the deep blue sea, of depending on units which are identifiable, when they are defined as devoid of all individuality. We seem forced to say that the only distinction between them is countability. |
| 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. |