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All the ideas for '', 'The Individual, the State, and the Common Good' and 'Nietzsche's System'

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10 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

20349	Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson]
	Full Idea: The core of metaphysics is an account of the 'essence' or 'being' of things. ...And metaphysics needs system, to show how these primary truths reach out into all the other truths, to help us see that, and how, they are true.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: I like the phrase 'the essential nature' of things, because it doesn't invoke rather dodgy entities called 'essences', but everyone understands the idea of focusing on what is essential, and on things having a distinct 'nature'.

20351	Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson]
	Full Idea: Metaphysics makes system a virtue, contrary to the tendency of analysis, which breaks a problem into ever finer parts and then absorbs itself in these.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: I disagree, because it seems to rule out analytic metaphysics. I prefer Bertrand Russell's view. Admittedly analysis oftens gets stuck in the bog, especially if it hopes for salvation in logic, only to discover its certainties endlessly receding.

20350	Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson]
	Full Idea: The evidence lies at the periphery of the [metaphysical] system and runs in from there, through decreasingly specific accounts of the data, to the central ontology.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro)
	A reaction: Philosophy is the study of high level generalisations, IMHO. Studying them means studying the reasons for asserting them. Richardson puts it very nicely.

5. Theory of Logic / A. Overview of Logic / 1. Overview of Logic

11211	If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II)
	A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts.

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 2. Logical Connectives / a. Logical connectives

11210	Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000])
	A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge.

11212	The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III)
	A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value.

19. Language / F. Communication / 3. Denial

11214	We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt]
	Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A.
	From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV)
	A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role).

24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 1. A People / a. Human distinctiveness

20356	Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson]
	Full Idea: In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966)
	A reaction: If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves.

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 6. Liberalism / g. Liberalism critique

22251	Liberalism may fail because it neglects the shared nature of what we pursue and protect [Haldane]
	Full Idea: I am interested in the claim that liberalism fails inasmuch as it neglects, and cannot accommodate, the fact that some or all of the goods we pursue, and which a system of rights is concerned to protect, are goods possessed in common.
	From: John Haldane (The Individual, the State, and the Common Good [1996], III)
	A reaction: It depends how individualistic we take liberalism to be. Extreme individualism (Nozick) strikes me as crazy. If 'we' erect a statue to some dubious politicians, it might be presented as a common good, but actually be despised by many.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 7. Eliminating causation

20366	A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson]
	Full Idea: An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux, and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect.
	From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §112)
	A reaction: Maybe we do see it as a continuum? The racket swings and the ball is propelled, but the contact is a unity, not two separate events.