84 ideas
| 19073 | True philosophy aims at absolute unity, while our understanding sees only separation [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Everything deserving the name of philosophy has constantly been based on the consciousness of an absolute unity, where the understanding sees and accepts only separation. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
| A reaction: Puzzled by the role of 'understanding' here. I tend to cite that as the highest aspiration of philosophy. Hegel seems to offer a higher understanding of unity, and a weaker analytic understanding, which is part of our limited psychology. |
| 15624 | Free thinking has no presuppositions [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Thinking that is free is without presuppositions. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add1) | |
| A reaction: Fat chance, I would have thought. Hegel's project was indeed to try to get right to the bottom of the presuppositions. My picture is always of holding one thing presupposed while you examine another, and then switching to other presuppositions. |
| 15631 | The ideal of reason is the unification of abstract identity (or 'concept') and being [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Abstract identity (which is what here is also called 'concept') and being are the two moments that reason seeks to unify; this unification is the Ideal of reason. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §49) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but I connect it to Aristotle's approach to the problem of being, which was to abandon the head-on approach, and aim to understand the identities of particulars and kinds. |
| 15612 | Older metaphysics naively assumed that thought grasped things in themselves [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The older metaphysics has the naïve presupposition that thinking grasps what things are in-themselves, that things only are what they genuinely are when they are captured in thought. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
| A reaction: His 'older' metaphysics is prior to Kant's critique. The less naïve version is more aware of antinomies and dialectical conflicts within thought. |
| 21768 | Logic is metaphysics, the science of things grasped in thoughts [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Logic coincides with metaphysics, with the science of things grasped in thoughts. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'Logic' | |
| A reaction: Not a very clear definition, given that thinking about a table appears to be a 'thing grasped in thought'. Presumably it refers to things which can only be grasped in thought, which seems to make it entirely a priori. |
| 21984 | We must break up the rigidity that our understanding has imposed [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The battle of reason is the struggle to break up the rigidity to which the understanding has reduced everything. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §80Z p.115), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a combination of Nietzsche and later Wittgenstein, and may be one of the ideas that launches 'continental' philosophy. Recent French thinkers talk continually of 'liberation'. |
| 22081 | Let thought follow its own course, and don't interfere [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Let thought follow its own course; and I think badly whenever I add something of my own. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §24 Add 2), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.100 | |
| A reaction: The idea that reason has a course of its own is a mega-assumption, which I would only accept after a lot of persuasion, which I doubt that Hegel can provide. The modern analytic idea of metaphysics as logic has a similar basis. |
| 15626 | Categories create objective experience, but are too conditioned by things to actually grasp them [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is the categories that elevate mere perception into objectivity, into experience; but these concepts ...are conditioned by the given material. ...Hence the understanding, or cognition through categories, cannot become cognizant of things-in-themselves. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §43-4) | |
| A reaction: As one often fears with Hegel, this sounds like a deep insight, but is less persuasive when translated into simpler English (if I've got it right!). Being 'conditioned by the material' strikes me as just what is needed for good categories. |
| 15616 | If truth is just non-contradiction, we must take care that our basic concepts aren't contradictory [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: If truth were nothing more than lack of contradiction, one would have to examine first of all, with regard to each concept, whether it does not on its own account, contain an inner contradiction. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §33 Rem) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice thought, which modern analytic philosophers, steeped in logic, should think about. It is always presumed that a contradiction is between a proposition and its negation, not some inner feature. |
| 15615 | Older metaphysics became dogmatic, by assuming opposed assertions must be true and false [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The older metaphysics became dogmatism because, given the nature of finite determinations, it had to assume that of two opposed assertions (of the kind that those propositions were) one must be true and the other false. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §32) | |
| A reaction: While dialethism in logic looks very dubious to me, I have every sympathy with Hegel when it comes to the reasonings of ordinary language. There it is much harder to know whether you are addressing truly opposed assertions. |
| 21767 | Dialectic is seen in popular proverbs like 'pride comes before a fall' [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In the domain of individual ethics, we find the consciousness of dialectic in those universally familiar proverbs 'pride goes before a fall' and 'too much wit outwits itself'. ...Joy relieves itself in tears, and melancholy can be revealed in a smile. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: 'Too clever by half' is the English version. Hegel's dialectic suggests that each concept somehow implies its opposite, rather than a mere mercurial drift from one extreme to the other. Most pride doesn't lead to a fall. |
| 15638 | Dialectic is the moving soul of scientific progression, the principle which binds science together [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The dialectical constitutes the moving soul of scientific progression, and it is the principle through which alone immanent coherence and necessity enter into the content of science. ..[Add 1] It is the principle of all motion, of all life. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81) |
| 15639 | Socratic dialectic is subjective, but Plato made it freely scientific and objective [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is in the Platonic philosophy that dialectic first occurs in a form which is freely scientific, and hence also objective. With Socrates, dialectical thinking still has a predominantly subjective shape, consistent with his irony. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §81 Add1) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand how dialectic can be 'objective', given that it is a method rather than a belief. Plato certainly seems to elevate dialectic into something almost mystical, because of what is said to be within its power. |
| 19070 | Superficial truth is knowing how something is, which is consciousness of bare correctness [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Truth is at first taken to mean that I know how something is. This is truth, however, only in reference to consciousness; it is formal truth, bare correctness. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
| A reaction: I would translate this idea as saying that bare correctness is conscious awareness of the truthmaker for some statement. Hegel then offers a 'deeper' account of the nature of truth. I would say awareness is quite separate from the concept of truth. |
| 5644 | In Hegel's logic it is concepts (rather than judgements or propositions) which are true or false [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The terms of Hegel's logic are not judgements or propositions, but rather concepts: and it is concepts, in this view, that are true or false. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.12 | |
| A reaction: Quite alien to normal studies of logic, but I can make sense of a correspondence theory of truth for concepts, which might be more interesting than normal propositional or predicate logic. Does the concept of, say, a 'natural law' correspond to anything? |
| 19072 | In the deeper sense of truth, to be untrue resembles being bad; badness is untrue to a thing's nature [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When truth is viewed in the deeper sense, to be untrue means much the same as to be bad. A bad man is an untrue man, and man who does not behave as his notion or his vocation requires. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 19071 for the 'deeper sense'. This seems to confirm that Hegel's deeper concept of truth resembles authenticity. I guess it will be something fulfilling the essence of the thing. Doctors must be proper doctors. Gold must be true gold? |
| 19071 | The deeper sense of truth is a thing matching the idea of what it ought to be [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Truth in the deeper sense is the identity between objectivity and the notion. It is in this deeper sense of truth that we speak of a true state or work of art. These are true if they are as they ought to be (their reality corresponds to their notion). | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §213) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a correspondence theory, but not as we know it, Jim. He seems to have a value built into truth, which sounds to me like existentialist 'authenticity'. I like what he is saying, but I would analyse it into two or more components. |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Eventually set theory will have to be either naturalised or rejected, if a thoroughgoing physicalism is to be maintained. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I regard Platonism as a form of naturalism (though a rather bold and dramatic one). The central issue seems to be the ability of the human main/brain to form 'abstract' notions about the physical world in which it lives. |
| 21595 | Excluded middle is the maxim of definite understanding, but just produces contradictions [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The law of excluded middle is ...the maxim of the definite understanding, which would fain avoid contradiction, but in doing so falls into it. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.172), quoted by Timothy Williamson - Vagueness 1.5 | |
| A reaction: Not sure how this works, but he would say this, wouldn't he? |
| 15628 | The idea that contradiction is essential to rational understanding is a key modern idea [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The thought that the contradiction which is posited by the determinations of the understanding in what is rational is essential and necessary, has to be considered one of the most important and profound advances of the philosophy of modern times. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48) | |
| A reaction: This is the aspect of Kant's philosophy which launched the whole career of Hegel. Hegel is the philosopher of the antinomies. Graham Priest is his current representative on earth. |
| 15629 | Tenderness for the world solves the antinomies; contradiction is in our reason, not in the essence of the world [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The solution to the antinomies is as trivial as they are profound; it consists merely in a tenderness for the things of this world. The stain of contradiction ought not to be in the essence of what is in the world; it must belong only to thinking reason. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem) | |
| A reaction: A rather Wittgensteinian remark. I love his 'tenderness for the things of this world'! I'm not clear why our thinking should be considered to be inescapably riddled with basic contradictions, as Hegel seems to imply. Just make more effort. |
| 15630 | Antinomies are not just in four objects, but in all objects, all representations, all objects and all ideas [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The main point that has to be made is that antinomy is found not only in Kant's four particular objects taken from cosmology, but rather in all objects of all kinds, in all representations, concepts and ideas. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §48 Rem) | |
| A reaction: I suppose Heraclitus and Empedocles, with their oppositional accounts of reality, are the ancestors of this worldview. I just don't feel that sudden flood of insight from this idea of Hegel that comes from some of the other great philsophical theories. |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
| 15634 | Thought about particulars is done entirely through categories [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: As an activity of the particular, thinking has the categories as its only product and content. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an interesting implication in this remark (taken in isolation!) that one can somehow transcend the categories when one begins to think about the universal. Are the universal and the categories not connected? |
| 22078 | Even simple propositions about sensations are filled with categories [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Categories, like 'being', or 'individuality', are already mingled into every proposition, even when it has a completely sensible content, such as "this leaf is green". | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §246 Add), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - Hegel p.95 | |
| A reaction: This is the source of the idea that observation is theory-laden (which tracks back to Kant). Not Duhem, who gets the credit among analytic philosophers. Quine obviously never read Hegel. But the idea is overrated. |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |
| 21981 | The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, substance is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive substance of its own. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.215), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be an expression of idealism, since only what is conceptualised can exist. |
| 15637 | Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The entire second part of the 'Logic', the doctrine of Essence, deals with the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §65) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to his book 'Science of Logic'. I don't really understand this, but that essence 'posits' the unity of a thing catches my attention. |
| 15613 | Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In genuine cognition ...an object determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in an external way. If we proceed by way of predication, the spirit gets the feeling that the predicates cannot exhaust what they are attached to. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a glimpse of Hegel's notoriously difficult account of essence. Place this alongside Locke's distinction between Nominal and Real essences. Once we have the predicates, we want to grasp their source. |
| 15636 | The Cogito is at the very centre of the entire concern of modern philosophy [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The proposition 'Cogito Ergo Sum' stands at the very centre, so to speak, of the entire concern of modern philosophy. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §64 Rem) | |
| A reaction: I distinguish two approaches to philosophy: the Parmenidean (which starts from the nature of being), and the Cartesian (which starts from the fact of consciousness). This remark confirms that Hegel is firmly in the latter school. |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air? |
| 22300 | Existence is just a set of relationships [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Everything that exists stands in correlation, and this correlation is the veritable nature of existence. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], p.235 (1892)), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 23 'Abs' |
| 15609 | The sensible is distinguished from thought by being about singular things [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The distinction of the sensible from thought is to be located in that fact that the determination of the sensible is singularity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20 Rem) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 15608, where we find that thought concerns universals. What a very clear thinker Hegel was! |
| 15625 | Sense perception is secondary and dependent, while thought is independent and primitive [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: What can be perceived by the senses is really secondary and not self-standing, while thoughts, on the contrary, are what is genuinely independent and primitive. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §41 Add2) | |
| A reaction: Although this is post-Kant, it strikes me as a perfect slogan for rationalism. Personally I would say that such a dichotomy is becoming a historical relic, in the light of modern understanding of the brain. Experience and thought are inextricable. |
| 15619 | Empiricism made particular knowledge possible, and blocked wild claims [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Empiricism resulted from a need for concrete content, as opposed to abstract theories that cannot advance from universal generalizations to the particular, and for a firm hold against the possibility of proving any claim at all in the field. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §37) | |
| A reaction: That sounds about right, and makes you wonder why Hegel wasn't an empiricist. |
| 15620 | Empiricism contains the important idea that we should see knowledge for ourselves, and be part of it [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: We must recognise the important principle of freedom that lies in Empiricism; namely, that what ought to count in our human knowing, we ought to see for ourselves, and to know ourselves as present in it. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
| A reaction: Like Idea 15619, this is an interesting and perceptive remark, from a philosopher who seems a long way from empiricism. I presume he will be thinking mainly of Hume, via Kant. Personally I prefer Locke. |
| 15622 | Empiricism unknowingly contains and uses a metaphysic, which underlies its categories [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Empiricism operates without knowing that it contains a metaphysics and is engaged in it, and that it is using categories and their connections in a totally uncritical and unconscious manner. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether this is true of modern empiricists, who have been challenged so often from within their own ranks on so many things. I'm not even sure that it is true of Locke and Hume, apart from the way in which all philosophers are unaware of things. |
| 15621 | Empiricism of the finite denies the supersensible, and can only think with formal abstraction [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Inasmuch as Empiricism restricts itself to what is finite, the consistent carrying through of its programme denies the supersensible altogether, ..and it leaves thinking with abstraction only, [i.e.] with formal universality and identity. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §38 Rem) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear how a denial of empiricism allows you (with intellectual integrity) to embrace 'the supersensible'. The set theoretic account of higher levels of infinity looks like a nice test case. |
| 15632 | The Humean view stops us thinking about perception, and finding universals and necessities in it [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: The Humean standpoint proclaims the thinking of our perceptions to be inadmissible; i.e. the eliciting of the universal and necessary out of those perceptions. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §50) | |
| A reaction: Obviously Hume permits 'relations of ideas', but presumably the point is that his approach only legitimates a rather passive abstraction from experience, rather than an active application of a priori concepts to it. A fair criticism. See Bonjour. |
| 15623 | Humean scepticism, unlike ancient Greek scepticism, accepts the truth of experience as basic [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Humean scepticism should be very carefully distinguished from Greek scepticism. In Humean scepticism, the truth of the empirical, the truth of feeling and intuition is taken as basic. ..Greek scepticism turned itself against the sensible. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §39 Rem) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, and Hume himself was quite contemptuous of the sort of scepticism found in the ideas of Sextus Empiricus. |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A footprint is 'about' a foot, in the sense of containing concentrated information about it. Can we, though, envisage a higher degree than human thought? Is there a maximum degree? Everything is 'about' everything, in some respect. |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The teleological view begins to explain intentionality, and in particular allows brain states and events to have false intentional content; causal and nomological theories of intentionality tend to falter on this last task. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if you say thought is 'caused' by the world, false thought become puzzling. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this, but it is an intriguing remark about a significant issue… |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism? |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: It is just arbitrary to choose a level of nature a priori as the locus of qualia, even though we can agree that high levels (such as behaviourism) and low-levels (such as the subatomic) can be ruled out as totally improbable. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Very good. People scream 'qualia!' whenever the behaviour level or the atomic level are proposed as the locations of the mind, but the suggestion that they are complex, and are spread across many functional levels in the middle sounds good. |
| 15617 | In abstraction, beyond finitude, freedom and necessity must exist together [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Considered as abstractly confronting one another, freedom and necessity pertain to finitude only and are valid only on its soil. A freedom with no necessity in it, and a mere necessity without freedom, are determinations that are abstract and thus untrue. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §35 Add) | |
| A reaction: This is, presumably, the Hegelian dialectical nature of things, that contradictories are bound together. We must struggle hard to undestand a freedom bound by necessity, and a necessity which contains freedom. (Good luck). |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Old joke: two Behaviourists meet in the street, and the first says,"You're fine; how am I?" | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], n1.6) | |
| A reaction: This invites the response that introspection is uniquely authoritative about 'how we are', but this has been challenged quite a lot recently, which pushes us to consider whether these stupid behaviourists might actually have a good point. |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytical functionalists', who hold that meanings of mental terms are determined by the causal roles associated with them by 'folk psychology', deny themselves appeals to lower levels of functional organisation. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably folk psychology can fit into the kind of empirical methodology favoured by behaviourists, whereas 'lower levels' are going to become rather speculative and unscientific. |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The functionalist must find a level of characterisation of mental states that is not so abstract or behaviouristic as to rule out the possibility of inverted spectrum etc., nor so specific and structural as to fall into chauvinism. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: If too specific then animals and aliens won't be able to implement the necessary functions; if the theory becomes very behaviouristic, then it loses interest in the possibility of an inverted spectrum. He is certainly right to hunt for a middle ground. |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Even the software/hardware distinction as it is literally applied within computer science is philosophically unclear. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is true, and very important for functionalist theories of the mind. Even very volatile software is realised in 'hard' physics, and rewritable discs etc blur the distinction between 'programmable' and 'hardwired'. |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am taking mental types to form a small subclass of teleological types occurring for the most part at a high level of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to say that he understand teleology in evolutionary terms. There is always a gap between how you characterise or individuate something, and what it actually is. To say spanners are 'a small subclass of tools' is not enough. |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Highly teleological characterisations, unlike naïve and explicated mental characterisations, have the virtue of shading off fairly smoothly into (more) brutely physical ones. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the purpose of a car engine, and a spark plug, and the spark, and the temperature, and the vibration of molecules show a fading away of the overt purpose, disappearing into the pointless activity of electrons and quantum levels. |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Neuron' may be understood as a physiological term or a functional term, so even the Identity Theorist is a Functionalist - one who locates mental entities at a very low level of abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking observation, and somewhat inclines me to switch from identity theory to functionalism. If you ask what is the correct level of abstraction, Lycan's teleological-homuncular version refers you to all the levels. |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am explicating the mental in a reductive way, by reducing mental characterizations to homuncular institutional ones, which are teleological characterizations at various levels of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the germ of a very good physicalist account of the mind. More is needed than a mere assertion about what the mind reduces to at the very lowest level; this offers a decent account of the descending stages of reduction. |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Teleological functionalism helps us to understand the nature of biological and psychological laws, particularly in the face of Davidsonian scepticism about the latter. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I doubt the existence of psycho-physical laws, but only because of the vast complexity. They would be like the laws of weather. 'Psycho-physical' laws seem to presuppose some sort of dualism. |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Quite possibly a Martian's humanoid behaviour is prompted by his having sensations somewhat unlike ours, despite his superficial behavioural similarities to us. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this firmly refutes the multiple realisability objection to type-type physicalism. Mental events are individuated by their phenomenal features (known only to the user), and by their causal role (publicly available). These are separate. |
| 15608 | The act of thinking is the bringing forth of universals [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Thinking as an activity is the active universal, and indeed the self-actuating universal, since the act, or what is brought forth, is precisely the universal. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §20) | |
| A reaction: One should contemplate animal thought in the light of this remark. Thought requires the recognition of types of things, and resemblances, and repetitions, and patterns. Language consists almost entirely of universals. |
| 21986 | Hegel's system has a vast number of basic concepts [Hegel, by Moore,AW] |
| Full Idea: For Hegel the full system of concepts ...contains many more than Kant's twelve. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §60Z) by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.7 | |
| A reaction: This offers some sort of conceptual scheme, but not the structured one that Kant proposes. The sequence of dialectical mediation imposes some sort of shape on the concepts. |
| 15607 | We don't think with concepts - we think the concepts [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: There is a saying that, when we have grasped a concept, we still do not know what to think with it. But there is nothing to be thought with a concept save the concept itself. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §03 Rem) | |
| A reaction: Analytic philosophers should read Hegel on concepts, because he approaches the matter so very differently, and seems to be the root of the continental approach to such things. He seems to me to talk more sense than Frege on the subject. |
| 15610 | Active thought about objects produces the universal, which is what is true and essential of it [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When thinking is taken as active with regard to ob-jects, as the thinking-over of something, then the universal - as the product of the activity - contains the value of the matter, what is essential, inner, true. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §21) | |
| A reaction: I prefer to talk of 'general terms' rather than 'universals'. If 'tiger' is coined for the first one, but must be applicable to subsequent tigers, it has to generalise what they all have in common. Locke's 'nominal' essence, I would say. |
| 21059 | General rules of action also need a judgement about when to apply them [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A concept of the understanding, which contains the general rule, must be supplemented by an act of judgement whereby the practitioner distinguishes instances where the rule applies from those where it does not. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's phronesis, and Hart's 'rules of recognition' in law courts. So is the link between theory and practice an intellectual one, or a sort of inarticulate intuition? I like 'common sense' for this ability. |
| 21061 | Duty does not aim at an end, but gives rise to universal happiness as aim of the will [Kant] |
| Full Idea: My conception of duty does not need to be based on any particular end, but rather itself occasions a new end for the human will, that of striving with all one's power towards the highest good possible on earth, the universal happiness of the whole world. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 1B) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing in the categorical imperative that demands 'all one's power', and nothing that specifies happiness as what has to be universalised. Nietzsche, for one, thinks happiness is overrated. |
| 21060 | It can't be a duty to strive after the impossible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It would not be a duty to strive after a certain effect of our will if this effect were impossible in experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], Intro) | |
| A reaction: 'Ought implies can' has become a familiar slogan. The quickest way to get shot of a tiresome duty is to persuade yourself that it is impossible. The seemingly impossible is occasionally achieved. |
| 21062 | The will's motive is the absolute law itself, and moral feeling is receptivity to law [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The will must have motives. But these are not objects of physical feeling as predetermined ends in themselves. They are none other than the absolute law itself, and the will's receptivity to it as an absolute compulsion is known as moral feeling. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 1Bb) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like our natural motivation to get the right answer when doing arithmetic, which is the innate motivation towards truth. I once heard it said that truth is the only value. So why does Donald Trump fail to value truth? |
| 21071 | There can be no restraints on freedom if reason does not reveal some basic rights [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing which commands immediate respect through reason, such as the basic rights of man, no influence can prevail upon man's arbitrary will and restrain his freedom. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-Concl) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the nearest Kant gets to natural rights. It is hard to see how basic rights can be identified by pure reason, without some inbuilt human values. Kant's usual move is to say denial of them leads to a contradiction, but I'm going off that. |
| 21063 | Personal contracts are for some end, but a civil state contract involves a duty to share [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In all social contracts, we find a union of many individuals for some common end which they all share. But a union as an end in itself which they all ought to share …is only found in a society insofar as it constitutes a civil state i.e. a commonwealth. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2 Intro) | |
| A reaction: This makes a nice link between the contractarian individual morality of Hobbes and his social contract view of society. Kant seems to reject the first but accept the second. Presumably because the first implies benefit and the second implies duty. |
| 21068 | There must be a unanimous contract that citizens accept majority decisions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The actual principle of being content with majority decisions must be accepted unanimously and embodied in a contract, and this itself must be the ultimate basis on which a civil constitution is established. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-3) | |
| A reaction: This is the contract which combines a social contract with democracy. We unanimously agree not to be unanimous? Cf Idea 21065. What should the minority do when the majority elect criminal Nazi leaders? |
| 21069 | A contract is theoretical, but it can guide rulers to make laws which the whole people will accept [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The original contract …is merely an idea of reason, which nonetheless has undoubted practical reality; for it can oblige every legislator to frame his laws in such a way that they could have been produced by the united will of a whole nation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-Concl) | |
| A reaction: The contractualist theory of morality of Thomas Scanlon approaches this. Note that Kant says it 'can' oblige the legislators. Nothing would compel them to follow such a principle. |
| 21070 | A law is unjust if the whole people could not possibly agree to it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If the law is such that a whole people could not possibly agree to it …it is unjust. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-Concl) | |
| A reaction: Kant is explicitly trying to approximate Rousseau's general will. The categorical imperative was greatly influenced by Rousseau. The key point is not whether they accept it, but that unanimous acceptance is unthinkable. Unfair laws will fail. |
| 21067 | A citizen must control his own life, and possess property or an important skill [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The only qualification required by a citizen (apart, of course, from being an adult male) is that he must be his own master, and must have some property (which can include any skill, trade, fine art or science) to support himself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-3) | |
| A reaction: Of course! Being one's own master evidently allows for being an employee, as long as this is a free contract, and not exploitation. Invites lots of interesting test cases. We need a Marxist commentary on this idea. |
| 21064 | A lawful civil state must embody freedom, equality and independence for its members [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The civil state, regarded purely as a lawful state, is based on the following a priori principles. 1) the freedom of every member as a human being, 2) the equality of each as a subject, 3) the independence of each as a subject. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2 Intro) | |
| A reaction: Written in 1792, three years after the start of the French Revolution. He says that a state with an inbuilt hierarchy or aristocracy is unlawful. Which freedoms, equality in what respects, and independence from what? |
| 21066 | Citizens can rise to any rank that talent, effort and luck can achieve [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Every member of the commonwealth must be entitled to reach any degree of rank which a subject can earn through his talent, his industry and his good fortune. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-2) | |
| A reaction: This is equality of opportunity, which is a mantra for liberals, but has been subjected to good criticisms in modern times. The main question is whether there is formal and legal equality, or actual practical equality. |
| 21065 | You can't make a contract renouncing your right to make contracts! [Kant] |
| Full Idea: No one can voluntarily renounce his rights by a contract ..to the effect that he has no rights but only duties, for such a contract would deprive him of the right to make a contract, and would thus invalidate the one he had already made. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-2) | |
| A reaction: Kant tries to establish all of his principles by showing that their denial is contradictory. But this example is blatantly wrong. King Lear didn't nullify his previous legislation when he abdicated, and his two daughters legally kept their territories. |
| 21072 | The people (who have to fight) and not the head of state should declare a war [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Each state must be organised so that the head of state, for whom the war costs nothing (for he wages it at the expense of the people) must no longer have the deciding vote on whether war is to be declared or not, for the people who pay for it must decide. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 3) | |
| A reaction: I would guess that he has Louis XIV particularly in mind. Imagine if Kant's proposal had been implemented in 1914. A referendum takes ages, and the people would need the facts (from the intelligence agencies). |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
| 15614 | Old metaphysics tried to grasp eternal truths through causal events, which is impossible [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When finite things are grasped according to the determinations of cause and effect they are known in their finitude. But objects of reason cannot be determined through such finite predicates, and the attempt to do this was the defect of older metaphysics. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add) | |
| A reaction: This sounds the launching point for a grand philosophical system which makes scientifically inclined philosophers feel very nervous indeed. I think I prefer the old (pre-Kantian) metaphysics. |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: An object is specifically physical if it figures in explanations and descriptions of features of ordinary non-living matter, as in current physics; it is more generally physical if it is simply located in space-time. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This gives a useful distinction when trying to formulate a 'physicalist' account of the mind, where type-type physicalism says only the 'postulates of physics' can be used, whereas 'naturalism' about the mind uses the more general concept. |
| 15635 | The older conception of God was emptied of human features, to make it worthy of the Infinite [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: In earlier times, every type of so-called anthropomorphic representation was banished from God as finite, and hence unworthy of the Infinite; and as a result he had already grown into something remarkably empty. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §62 Rem) | |
| A reaction: Hegel favoured Christianity, because of its human aspect. His description fits Islam, where indeed the concept of God seems so drain of particularity that there is little in it to doubt, which might explain the durability of that religion. |
| 21980 | God is the absolute thing, and also the absolute person [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: It is true that God ...is the absolute thing: he is however no less the absolute person. That he is the absolute person however is a point which the philosophy of Spinoza never reached. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.214), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6 | |
| A reaction: Moore says Hegel was a Spinozist, in his commitment to a single substance, but his idea of God is very different, presumably because consciousness and concepts are so important to Hegel. Hegel needs a Lockean abstract notion of 'person' here. |
| 15618 | If God is the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God is a mere Beyond, and unknowable [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: When the concept of God is apprehended merely as that of the abstract of Supremely Real Essence, then God becomes for us a mere Beyond, and there can be no further talk of the cognition of God. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §36 Add) |
| 15633 | We establish unification of the Ideal by the ontological proof, deriving being from abstraction of thinking [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: One unification through which the Ideal is to be established starts from the abstraction of thinking and goes on to the determination for which being alone remains; this is the ontological proof that God is there. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §51) | |
| A reaction: It should come as no surprise that a philosopher who so passionately endorses pure thinking, in opposition to empiricism, should end up endorsing the highly implausible ontological argument for God's existence. Jacquette gets existence from reason. |