4 ideas
| 21862 | Consciousness is based on 'I can', not on 'I think' [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is in the first place not a matter of 'I think' but of 'I can'. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.159), quoted by Beth Lord - Spinoza's Ethics 2 'Sensation' | |
| A reaction: The point here (quoted during a discussion of Spinoza) is that you can't leave out the role of the body, which seems correct. |
| 20750 | The mind does not unite perceptions, because they flow into one another [Merleau-Ponty] |
| Full Idea: I do not have one perception, then another, and between them a link brought about by the mind. Rather, each perspective merges into the other [against a unified background]. | |
| From: Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Phenomenology of Perception [1945], p.329-30), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Perceptual' | |
| A reaction: I take this to be another piece of evidence pointing to realism as the best explanation of experience. A problem for Descartes is what unites the sequence of thoughts. |
| 19216 | Propositions (such as 'that dog is barking') only exist if their items exist [Williamson] |
| Full Idea: A proposition about an item exists only if that item exists... how could something be the proposition that that dog is barking in circumstances in which that dog does not exist? | |
| From: Timothy Williamson (Necessary Existents [2002], p.240), quoted by Trenton Merricks - Propositions | |
| A reaction: This is a view of propositions I can't make sense of. If I'm under an illusion that there is a dog barking nearby, when there isn't one, can I not say 'that dog is barking'? If I haven't expressed a proposition, what have I done? |
| 3032 | I can form no notion of what the good is [Amphis] |
| Full Idea: What the good is I no more can form a notion of, than of the good of Plato. | |
| From: Amphis (comedies (frags) [c.350 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 03.1.22 | |
| A reaction: It was evidently a running joke in the ancient world that no one could define Plato's Form of the Good. He was said to have written a book on it, now lost. |