3 ideas
| 22014 | Consciousness is not entirely representational, because there are pains, and the self [Schulze, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Schulze said Reinhold and Kant violated their own theory with the thing-in-itself, and that Reinhold was wrong that all consciousnes is representational (since pain isn't), and the self can't represent itself without a regress. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Schulze (Aenesidemus [1792]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 05 | |
| A reaction: [my compressed version] This article demolished Reinhold, which is a shame, because if he had responded constructively to these criticisms he might have reached be best theory of his age. These are analytic style objections, by counterexample. |
| 10710 | We accept substance, to avoid infinite backwards chains of meaning [Wittgenstein, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Wittgenstein is the most renowned modern proponent of substance, and argued that sense must be determinate ...and that any conceptual scheme which genuinely represents a world cannot contain infinite backward chains of meaning. | |
| From: report of Ludwig Wittgenstein (works [1935]) by Michael Potter - Set Theory and Its Philosophy 03.3 | |
| A reaction: This is a key idea for explaining the somewhat surprising revival of the notion of substance in modern times, when it appeared to have been buried by atomism in the seventeenth century. The new argument is a semantic one. |
| 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? |