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9978
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Analytic philosophy focuses too much on forms of expression, instead of what is actually said [Tait]
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Full Idea:
The tendency to attack forms of expression rather than attempting to appreciate what is actually being said is one of the more unfortunate habits that analytic philosophy inherited from Frege.
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], IV)
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A reaction:
The key to this, I say, is to acknowledge the existence of propositions (in brains). For example, this belief will make teachers more sympathetic to pupils who are struggling to express an idea, and verbal nit-picking becomes totally irrelevant.
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9986
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The null set was doubted, because numbering seemed to require 'units' [Tait]
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Full Idea:
The conception that what can be numbered is some object (including flocks of sheep) relative to a partition - a choice of unit - survived even in the late nineteenth century in the form of the rejection of the null set (and difficulties with unit sets).
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], IX)
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A reaction:
This old view can't be entirely wrong! Frege makes the point that if asked to count a pack of cards, you must decide whether to count cards, or suits, or pips. You may not need a 'unit', but you need a concept. 'Units' name concept-extensions nicely!
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9984
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We can have a series with identical members [Tait]
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Full Idea:
Why can't we have a series (as opposed to a linearly ordered set) all of whose members are identical, such as (a, a, a...,a)?
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], VII)
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A reaction:
The question is whether the items order themselves, which presumably the natural numbers are supposed to do, or whether we impose the order (and length) of the series. What decides how many a's there are? Do we order, or does nature?
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22227
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For Sartre there is only being for-itself, or being in-itself (which is beyond experience) [Sartre, by Daigle]
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Full Idea:
The two most fundamental modes of being in Sartre's ontology are being in-itself, and being for-itself. ...The in-itself lies beyond our experience of it.
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From:
report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.2
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A reaction:
This appears to be Kant's ding-an-sich, paired with Heidegger's Dasein. If those are the only options, then reality is either subjective or unknown, which seems to make Sartre an idealist, but he asserted that phenomena vindicate the in-itself.
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6151
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Sartre says consciousness is just directedness towards external objects [Sartre, by Rowlands]
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Full Idea:
Sartre defends a view of consciousness as nothing but a directedness towards objects, insisting that these objects are transcendent with respect to that consciousness; hence Sartre is one of the first genuine externalists.
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From:
report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.1
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A reaction:
An ancestor here is, I think, Schopenhauer (Idea 4166). The idea is attractive, as we are brought up with idea that we have a thing called 'consciousness', but if you removed its contents there would literally be nothing left.
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6164
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Sartre rejects mental content, and the idea that the mind has hidden inner features [Sartre, by Rowlands]
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Full Idea:
Sartre's attack on the idea that consciousness has contents is an attack on the idea that the mental possesses features that are hidden, inner and constituted or revealed by the individual's inwardly directed awareness.
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From:
report of Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.5
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A reaction:
This is part of the move towards 'externalism' about the mind. The notion of 'content' implies a container. It seems slightly ridiculous, though, to try to say that the mind just 'is the world'. How is reasoning possible, and the relation of ideas?
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9982
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Cantor and Dedekind use abstraction to fix grammar and objects, not to carry out proofs [Tait]
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Full Idea:
Although (in Cantor and Dedekind) abstraction does not (as has often been observed) play any role in their proofs, but it does play a role, in that it fixes the grammar, the domain of meaningful propositions, and so determining the objects in the proofs.
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], V)
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A reaction:
[compressed] This is part of a defence of abstractionism in Cantor and Dedekind (see K.Fine also on the subject). To know the members of a set, or size of a domain, you need to know the process or function which created the set.
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9985
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Abstraction may concern the individuation of the set itself, not its elements [Tait]
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Full Idea:
A different reading of abstraction is that it concerns, not the individuating properties of the elements relative to one another, but rather the individuating properties of the set itself, for example the concept of what is its extension.
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], VIII)
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A reaction:
If the set was 'objects in the room next door', we would not be able to abstract from the objects, but we might get to the idea of things being contain in things, or the concept of an object, or a room. Wrong. That's because they are objects... Hm.
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9980
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If abstraction produces power sets, their identity should imply identity of the originals [Tait]
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Full Idea:
If the power |A| is obtained by abstraction from set A, then if A is equipollent to set B, then |A| = |B|. But this does not imply that A = B. So |A| cannot just be A, taken in abstraction, unless that can identify distinct sets, ..or create new objects.
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From:
William W. Tait (Frege versus Cantor and Dedekind [1996], V)
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A reaction:
An elegant piece of argument, which shows rather crucial facts about abstraction. We are then obliged to ask how abstraction can create an object or a set, if the central activity of abstraction is just ignoring certain features.
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22231
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We flee from the anguish of freedom by seeing ourselves objectively, as determined [Sartre]
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Full Idea:
We are always ready to take refuge in a belief in determinism if this freedom weighs upon us or if we need an excuse. Thus we flee from anguish by attempting to apprehend ourselves from without as an Other or a thing.
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From:
Jean-Paul Sartre (Being and Nothingness [1943], p.82), quoted by Christine Daigle - Jean-Paul Sartre 2.4
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A reaction:
I would have thought we blame social pressures, or biological pressures, rather than metaphysical determinism, but it amounts to the same thing. If we are not free then probably nothing else is.
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