7 ideas
| 3296 | Sense-data are a false objectification of what is essentially subjective [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The private object or sense datum view is an instance of the false objectification of what is essentially subjective. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.207) |
| 3295 | Inner v outer brings astonishment that we are a particular person [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The problem of reconciling the objective and subjective points of view takes its purest form in a sense of incredulity that one should be anyone in particular. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.206) | |
| A reaction: Nice observation. This idea has always struck me forcibly, and seems to be one of those basic intuitions which motivates philosophy, and yet the subject has almost nothing to say about it. Of course you are you, or you wouldn't be amazed by it… |
| 3293 | If you assert that we have an ego, you can still ask if that future ego will be me [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysical ego, if it is a continuing individual with its identity over time, is just one more thing about which the same problem can be raised - will that ego still be me? | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.200) | |
| A reaction: You can worry too much about some philosophical questions. If it is me now, and it has continuing individual identity over time, I'm not going to lose sleep over the possibility that it might nevertheless somehow cease to be me. I'm overrated. |
| 3292 | The most difficult problem of free will is saying what the problem is [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The most difficult problem of free will is saying what the problem is. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.198) |
| 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. |
| 3294 | As far as possible we should become instruments to realise what is best from an eternal point of view [Nagel] |
| Full Idea: The right thing to do is to turn oneself as far as possible into an instrument for the realisation of what is best 'sub specie aeternitatis'. | |
| From: Thomas Nagel (Subjective and Objective [1979], p.204) |