me too. Just an FYI Quine is not strictly considered a "modern philosophy". In philosophy, "modern" designates the 17-19th centuries (roughly I could be slighlty off) and contemporary starts with Frege at the beginning of the 20th. So quine is a contemporary philosopher.
I did my doctoral dissertation on Quine's naturalistic epistemology, and I must say that you, Dr. Bonevac, really know your Quine and are a great, engaging teacher! Keep it up.
Analysis is one great way of resolving long standing issue of language and how we formulate our arguments or formalized conceptual logic just like the categorical theories. But I do also see its limit on certain philosophical questions. Esp. when dealing with metaphysics. And I'm still waiting for another great philosopher who will resolve this issue just like Immanuel Kant tried to make Empiricism and Rationalism works together.
Thank you for posting this lecture. I am currently taking an undergraduate metaphysics class but I feel I am a little bit more behind in philosophy than my peers. Although my professor is good it helps to hear other professors lectures on the same topic.
The Essence-Existence distinction drawn by Aquinas keeps creeping into my head as I hear this very interesting Bonevac lecture on things and the ideas of them
One problem is that to decide for any X whether X exists, or whether there is anything that is X, we must begin by hypothetically positing the existence of X. And as between you and me, we must both have a reasonable sense of what X is if we are to proceed further. So we have to partially develop the thing by using understandable, meaningful words, even to deny its existence. But we cannot escape the feeling that if I say, "The round square does not exist," your appropriate response should be, "I'm sorry, I don't understand." And then my appropriate remark should be, "I'm afraid I don't know what I just said," because there is something that seems wrong even about my being able to hold in memory something logically impossible represented by a contradictory description. However, the words do seem to latch onto something which I can then hold onto, and that is a problem. Nonetheless, in the realm of impossible things, it does seem reasonable to ask if there is some difference between those of which I - at least apparently - can speak, and those of which no notion whatever arises in me or anyone. In other words, if we are speaking of impossible objects, there are those for which I can put together some sort of mental and linguistic representation, and those of which I cannot. For these last, it is impossible to consider the status - existing or not. So another problem would be that objects in this last group are such that none can be said to be impossible - they just are.
This was a really good and interesting lecture. The presentation was wonderful and Mr. Bonevac made what is normally a painfully boring topic,, quite fascinating. Full marks..............But...................Wow, this Quine was full of himself. What a bowl of word salad and to say what? It’s all piffle. The reality is simple and straight forward. Words are merely proxies for the existents which are announced by them. So too are they proxies for the concepts which might be proposed. Terms such as justice can stand for a long and involved linear definition of what it is which we hold all at once in our minds, as the latter is uniquely capable of doing. Does it matter that one might include in that understanding of the definition that justice is founded on the principle of merit, i.e., that one is rewarded or punished in proportion to the severity of a good or bad act, respectively and another not, he instead believing justice to be representative of a fixed set of moral imperatives to be applied in a consistent measure in any context? That one might imagine a plant which bears fruit and another that of a plant that does not, each employing the name, “tree” and not violate the general understanding of the term, realizing that in all categories of existents, differences will be present. Classifications of existents or concepts will by definition be general in nature, encompassing only their most significant characteristics in a measure sufficient to isolate or set them apart from those of others. To claim that there is no Pegasus but yet that there is a name, is merely to offer it as proxy for a concept which all who are in witness understand is only representative of an idea. This is quite proper or there could be no discussion of possibility or no process of abstraction by which to move man’s philosophy or his physical sciences forward. To be sure, there are inevitably existents or concepts which can be proposed, named and thought initially to represent material realities only to be discovered in the end to be frauds, their names standing in for nothing. This is however, the nature of the epistemological process and these terms in their total are its language. The perceptual process and our language are one to one reflections of the architecture of material reality which permits no contradictions, materially or conceptually. Perception is not wholly subjective but rather “quantitatively objective” and only “qualitatively subjective”, all existents assertions or impositions of their form and function in materiality. This is made clear in the understanding in quantum mechanics that space/time is literally distorted or warped by the presence of a mass/existent (or by its form). That a square is that which it is in part for its characteristics as such but is also that in part for that which it is not, e.g., a circle. This is quantitative. That a tree is what it is for its characteristics but also that it is not a mouse is also quantitative. However, one might spy the tree and understand but think it pretty while another finds it ugly. This is qualitative. It is all very simple. Language is a one to one reflection of the architecture of materiality (reality) and neither permits contradictions to exist. Quine’s “crisis of thought” which I found a sophomoric pronouncement is easily resolved. “This statement is false”, the example he employed to promote this absurd notion, is easily resolved. That this might be paradoxical, it by definition cannot refer to a previous utterance. What is left is that it is self-referencing. If hearing this one would immediately ask, “what is false”? The term statement used within “this statement is false” has no meaning or content (it acts as proxy to nothing) by which it might be or be judged as true or false. It is pure sophistry to employ such a means of proof of an actual defect in the structure of language which could threaten the intellectual process. Russell was guilty of the same sort of deception, deliberate or not. Note the barber’s paradox which was not a paradox at all. This man is purported to be so brilliant and I can only request that anyone who thinks him so, explain away the above and show me why. Any thoughts?
Prof. Bonevac, your lectures are always great. But I think it should be bit more longer (e.g. 75 or 90 minutes). I feel You follow the time limit very strictly. By the way thank you!
Thanks for the lecture! I am a bit annoyed about the sentence "Pegasus does not exist". To be honest, I don't see any problem for saying that. Pegasus refers to a character (here fictional) with a set characteristics, and when we say "it does not exist" we mean "a character with such characteristics cannot be found on earth" And when we say "Professor Daniel Bonevac does exist" we mean "The person that is referred to Professor Daniel Bonevac (or that was referred to it when we first heard of him) can be found on earth" There is no ambiguity in my opinion...
What text is this on? I couldnt help but think of various objections from a continental perspective with the likes of Bergson, Hegel, and mostly Deleuze. Bergson his essay The Possible and the Real. Deleuze for Difference and Repetition, Logic of Sense, and The Rhizome plateau.
I thought that if you study in the USA, than you pay a huge summ of your money for it and that students will therefore be better prepared and do their homework more carefully compared to European students
There are issues. First language is context dependent. Rounded square is well recognized as a square with rounded corners. Red, black and white all over describes applying 3 layers of paint to a canvas which can also exist. 2nd issue is in the absence of any specific context, qualifiers are needed for precise definitions e.g. the mythological creature Pegasus exists in literature. 3rd stop using identity and use equivalence; 2 objects are equivalent if they share a set of properties, e.g. all cars are motor vehicles, they are equivalent but not identical.. These 3 principles can resolve many questions arising from ontology.
Concerning the conversation around the 20 min mark: The Parthenon is experienced through perceptual organs, the idea of the Parthenon or of a man or of a pegasus are perceived through DIFFERENT perceptual organs, unfortunately ones that many people fail to exercise. Imagine a world in which no one has a sense of smell, scent would not 'exist,' and if someone came along who could smell he would be branded crazy. All reality is mind, just lying on a continuum from the chthonic to the Olympian, and modern man has derracinated God from the world, in the sense that we fail to recognize what quantum physics shows, which is reality is participatory, that it relies upon consciousness to manifest, so as a result we drift further and further away from the realms of reality that we may have once been capable of perceiving but now label fictions and abstractions.
I find _variable_ confusing. Perhaps it is an early computer metaphor. As far as I can understand it, the word Kripke needed is _deictic._ _Ontology_ is also confusing. Technically, it means _writing or speech about existence._ This works fine. In common parlance it purports to have something to do with existence itself. Conflating the two is a question-begging habit of modernists, especially objectivists. Lakoff, not famously enough, wrote "To be is not to be the value of a variable." He backs this up with an extensive case study of deictic there-constructs, both locative and existential including ontological.
I can't say, I am troubled by black hole physis every waking second either, so it must be rubbish. Everybody should just be concerned with the important stuff such as indefinitely working shifts on a damned planet... Thank you genius!
I came to the video because I am learning about Quine and Russell and the problem of denoting. So this conversation about fictional things is very interesting. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. How can we say Pegasus doesn’t exist? This video contains a picture of Pegasus. Is it only that molecules of chalk appear Pegasus wise on the board? If something called “Pegasus” doesn’t exist then how did it appear in the mind of the person who drew the picture on the board and how did the students all know what the teacher was referring to when he said the word “Pegasus?” I don’t even think the distinction between possible objects and actual objects works here. A possible fictional character would be a character that exist in some world that’s not our world. In a sense Pegasus is an actual fictional object because it is not a fictional object in some other possible world. Furthermore, The teacher said things like Santa Claus cannot make an appearance on campus. But Santa Claus often does make an appearance and people see him and even sit on his lap. There are many pictures of Santa Claus and even films depicting him. And there are pictures of Pegasus and films of Pegasus so we can even watch Pegasus fly. There are also many facts about Santa Claus and Pegasus that everyone will agree on. Just like Harry Potter, you can buy a shirt with Santa Claus or Pegasus printed on it or read a book about them. So if these things don’t exist, then what is printed on the T-shirt, and what are we watching fly we watch a film of Pegasus flying? Surely these are graphic representations of something. But they’re not representations of nothing. What would it even mean to say I have a graphic representation of nothing and then I look at that nothing and there is something there? sure it’s just paint molecules. But what are the paint molecules representing? Does it make sense to say that a representation is representing something that doesn’t exist? What does it mean that I can read a novel about Harry potter, an object that doesn’t exist? Doesn’t reading a book about him presuppose that he is a kind of thing that exists? If he doesn’t exist then what was the book about? And when I tell you about the book in about what Harry Potter did what am I telling you about? If I’m telling you about something and that something doesn’t exist then we run into that problem where we are saying something about something that both exists and doesn’t exist. I think there is no other choice but to say that such things actually exist. But just not literally, as if you can find a real biological Pegasus in the physical world. There has to be some kind of distinction of domain. Nothing else makes sense to me. What do you think?
'They 'just' 'stand' 4 E(X)' They....these....convenient Constants, without variable, without value, stand, standing for something. Or, let me try 'this' way.....Constants....Standing....Something..... Professor.....let me try again...."When we limit a range.....and have a domain....and limit the range....what does happen?"
What's wrong with the Humean approach and just saying real things, or ideas of real things that exist, have their origin in impressions, whereas fictional things have their origin in ideas, or combinations of ideas, (like the ideas of a horse + wings) and never impressions?
Kant an idealist? Don't think so. Kant and Berkeley never talked about fictional entities? Don't think so. An "American philosopher": does such a thing exist? Don't think so...
I agree that Kant's "transcendental idealism" is not technically idealism; a section of the Critique of Pure Reason is entitled "The Refutation of Idealism." He argues there that we cannot do without the noumenal realm, the Ding-an-Sich. On his own theory, however, he can't say anything about things-in-themselves-not even that they exist-because the categories, including existence, don't apply to them. So, everything to which we can apply the categories is mind-dependent. On Kant and Berkeley, I'm not sure what you have in mind: The Ideals of Pure Reason? Principles 51, maybe? I can't think of anything that would constitute even a sketch of an account of names like 'Pegasus.' Finally, if you don't count Quine, Rawls, Sellars, Kripke, Lewis, Nozick, Korsgaard, Nagel, Nussbaum, Hawthorne, Sider, Brandom....
@@PhiloofAlexandria No, I don't count them. Maybe Peirce, maybe. Of course noumena exist for Kant, and about non-existing entities just take a look at "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer". Talking about Idealism, the most frequent definition of the difference between the idea of an object and the object present-at-hand is that one can make disappear the idea of an object while it is impossible with the object itself. The Real is what remains whatever we think (which, of course, for an idealist doesn't mean that it is independent from the subject). But, you know, the point here lies not in confronting our preparation. I'm not even a graduate, still these examples and definitions come to my mind pretty quickly (we study philosophy at high school here, meaning Italy). What I think is outrageous is that you, a professor, hesitate with such elementary notions. And the questions your students ask evidentiate how poor the average competence is over there. Of course it's not something inherent to you people, it's exactly those guys you mentioned qualifying them as "philosophers" and the role they had in the formation of generations of students that created this monster. A self-replicating problem, I fear.
Lucas, no offense, but your comments are yet more evidence that the greatest tragedy of WWII was that it didn’t exterminate European civilization completely and permanently. Also, Dreams is a(n) (equivocal) critique of Swedenborgian mysticism, which is different from the concept of ‘fictitious entities’ alluded to above. You seem to be conflating the more precise philosophical idea here with the broader notion of ‘delusions’. A more detailed primer on the matter. plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictional-entities/ Of course, I appreciate that talking a west European out of his chauvinism is about as futile an enterprise as trying to persuade a leech to stop sucking blood.
Prof. Bonevac, thank you for posting these lectures. I appreciate your lecture style and enjoy learning more about modern philosophy.
me too. Just an FYI Quine is not strictly considered a "modern philosophy". In philosophy, "modern" designates the 17-19th centuries (roughly I could be slighlty off) and contemporary starts with Frege at the beginning of the 20th. So quine is a contemporary philosopher.
@@tourist9862nice analysis. Philosophers should not be afraid of clearing up even small details. Language is everything in analytic philosophy
I did my doctoral dissertation on Quine's naturalistic epistemology, and I must say that you, Dr. Bonevac, really know your Quine and are a great, engaging teacher! Keep it up.
Analysis is one great way of resolving long standing issue of language and how we formulate our arguments or formalized conceptual logic just like the categorical theories. But I do also see its limit on certain philosophical questions. Esp. when dealing with metaphysics. And I'm still waiting for another great philosopher who will resolve this issue just like Immanuel Kant tried to make Empiricism and Rationalism works together.
Many thanks for discussing this important text. I totally agree about Quine's style of writing!
this was incredible, this was a lot to cover and the lecturer makes it so clear in such a short space of time. I'm so grateful for this.
Thank you for posting this lecture. I am currently taking an undergraduate metaphysics class but I feel I am a little bit more behind in philosophy than my peers. Although my professor is good it helps to hear other professors lectures on the same topic.
This is so perfect
Thank you Professor Bonevac for posting your phenomenal lectures.
Thank you.
Shout out to Prof. Bonevac who explains quine better than my metaphysics Prof
The Essence-Existence distinction drawn by Aquinas keeps creeping into my head as I hear this very interesting Bonevac lecture on things and the ideas of them
One problem is that to decide for any X whether X exists, or whether there is anything that is X, we must begin by hypothetically positing the existence of X. And as between you and me, we must both have a reasonable sense of what X is if we are to proceed further. So we have to partially develop the thing by using understandable, meaningful words, even to deny its existence. But we cannot escape the feeling that if I say, "The round square does not exist," your appropriate response should be, "I'm sorry, I don't understand." And then my appropriate remark should be, "I'm afraid I don't know what I just said," because there is something that seems wrong even about my being able to hold in memory something logically impossible represented by a contradictory description. However, the words do seem to latch onto something which I can then hold onto, and that is a problem. Nonetheless, in the realm of impossible things, it does seem reasonable to ask if there is some difference between those of which I - at least apparently - can speak, and those of which no notion whatever arises in me or anyone. In other words, if we are speaking of impossible objects, there are those for which I can put together some sort of mental and linguistic representation, and those of which I cannot. For these last, it is impossible to consider the status - existing or not. So another problem would be that objects in this last group are such that none can be said to be impossible - they just are.
Thankyou!
This was a really good and interesting lecture. The presentation was wonderful and Mr. Bonevac made what is normally a painfully boring topic,, quite fascinating. Full marks..............But...................Wow, this Quine was full of himself. What a bowl of word salad and to say what? It’s all piffle. The reality is simple and straight forward.
Words are merely proxies for the existents which are announced by them. So too are they proxies for the concepts which might be proposed. Terms such as justice can stand for a long and involved linear definition of what it is which we hold all at once in our minds, as the latter is uniquely capable of doing. Does it matter that one might include in that understanding of the definition that justice is founded on the principle of merit, i.e., that one is rewarded or punished in proportion to the severity of a good or bad act, respectively and another not, he instead believing justice to be representative of a fixed set of moral imperatives to be applied in a consistent measure in any context? That one might imagine a plant which bears fruit and another that of a plant that does not, each employing the name, “tree” and not violate the general understanding of the term, realizing that in all categories of existents, differences will be present. Classifications of existents or concepts will by definition be general in nature, encompassing only their most significant characteristics in a measure sufficient to isolate or set them apart from those of others.
To claim that there is no Pegasus but yet that there is a name, is merely to offer it as proxy for a concept which all who are in witness understand is only representative of an idea. This is quite proper or there could be no discussion of possibility or no process of abstraction by which to move man’s philosophy or his physical sciences forward. To be sure, there are inevitably existents or concepts which can be proposed, named and thought initially to represent material realities only to be discovered in the end to be frauds, their names standing in for nothing. This is however, the nature of the epistemological process and these terms in their total are its language.
The perceptual process and our language are one to one reflections of the architecture of material reality which permits no contradictions, materially or conceptually. Perception is not wholly subjective but rather “quantitatively objective” and only “qualitatively subjective”, all existents assertions or impositions of their form and function in materiality. This is made clear in the understanding in quantum mechanics that space/time is literally distorted or warped by the presence of a mass/existent (or by its form). That a square is that which it is in part for its characteristics as such but is also that in part for that which it is not, e.g., a circle. This is quantitative. That a tree is what it is for its characteristics but also that it is not a mouse is also quantitative. However, one might spy the tree and understand but think it pretty while another finds it ugly. This is qualitative. It is all very simple.
Language is a one to one reflection of the architecture of materiality (reality) and neither permits contradictions to exist. Quine’s “crisis of thought” which I found a sophomoric pronouncement is easily resolved. “This statement is false”, the example he employed to promote this absurd notion, is easily resolved. That this might be paradoxical, it by definition cannot refer to a previous utterance. What is left is that it is self-referencing. If hearing this one would immediately ask, “what is false”? The term statement used within “this statement is false” has no meaning or content (it acts as proxy to nothing) by which it might be or be judged as true or false. It is pure sophistry to employ such a means of proof of an actual defect in the structure of language which could threaten the intellectual process. Russell was guilty of the same sort of deception, deliberate or not. Note the barber’s paradox which was not a paradox at all.
This man is purported to be so brilliant and I can only request that anyone who thinks him so, explain away the above and show me why. Any thoughts?
Professor Bonevac, Can you recommend a history of scientific philosophy that is not made for PhD's? Thank you sir :)
I love the sound of the chalk on the blackboard, and I’m interested in the lecture too.
If you're into the sound of chalk against blackboard, you're gonna love the other 34 lectures as well! :D
Prof. Bonevac, your lectures are always great. But I think it should be bit more longer (e.g. 75 or 90 minutes). I feel You follow the time limit very strictly. By the way thank you!
They are limited by the university's timetable, so he did not decide the format :)
Thanks for the lecture!
I am a bit annoyed about the sentence "Pegasus does not exist".
To be honest, I don't see any problem for saying that. Pegasus refers to a character (here fictional) with a set characteristics, and when we say "it does not exist" we mean "a character with such characteristics cannot be found on earth"
And when we say "Professor Daniel Bonevac does exist" we mean "The person that is referred to Professor Daniel Bonevac (or that was referred to it when we first heard of him) can be found on earth"
There is no ambiguity in my opinion...
37:48 the Wittgenstein quote is in the _Tractatus_ around §5.5303
What text is this on? I couldnt help but think of various objections from a continental perspective with the likes of Bergson, Hegel, and mostly Deleuze.
Bergson his essay The Possible and the Real.
Deleuze for Difference and Repetition, Logic of Sense, and The Rhizome plateau.
“On What There Is.”
26:00 but the idea of an idea... is still just an idea. Are ideas invariant in their meta - i.e. they are "flat".
I thought that if you study in the USA, than you pay a huge summ of your money for it and that students will therefore be better prepared and do their homework more carefully compared to European students
There are issues. First language is context dependent. Rounded square is well recognized as a square with rounded corners. Red, black and white all over describes applying 3 layers of paint to a canvas which can also exist. 2nd issue is in the absence of any specific context, qualifiers are needed for precise definitions e.g. the mythological creature Pegasus exists in literature. 3rd stop using identity and use equivalence; 2 objects are equivalent if they share a set of properties, e.g. all cars are motor vehicles, they are equivalent but not identical.. These 3 principles can resolve many questions arising from ontology.
Concerning the conversation around the 20 min mark: The Parthenon is experienced through perceptual organs, the idea of the Parthenon or of a man or of a pegasus are perceived through DIFFERENT perceptual organs, unfortunately ones that many people fail to exercise. Imagine a world in which no one has a sense of smell, scent would not 'exist,' and if someone came along who could smell he would be branded crazy. All reality is mind, just lying on a continuum from the chthonic to the Olympian, and modern man has derracinated God from the world, in the sense that we fail to recognize what quantum physics shows, which is reality is participatory, that it relies upon consciousness to manifest, so as a result we drift further and further away from the realms of reality that we may have once been capable of perceiving but now label fictions and abstractions.
Emperor's new clothes
I find _variable_ confusing. Perhaps it is an early computer metaphor. As far as I can understand it, the word Kripke needed is _deictic._
_Ontology_ is also confusing. Technically, it means _writing or speech about existence._ This works fine. In common parlance it purports to have something to do with existence itself. Conflating the two is a question-begging habit of modernists, especially objectivists.
Lakoff, not famously enough, wrote "To be is not to be the value of a variable." He backs this up with an extensive case study of deictic there-constructs, both locative and existential including ontological.
Regarding idealism, Quine described himself as a “reluctant Platonist” ( see Putnam th-cam.com/video/AhHIVEN839s/w-d-xo.html)
Word games. I can’t say that I’ve ever been troubled by this stuff.
I can't say, I am troubled by black hole physis every waking second either, so it must be rubbish. Everybody should just be concerned with the important stuff such as indefinitely working shifts on a damned planet... Thank you genius!
I came to the video because I am learning about Quine and Russell and the problem of denoting. So this conversation about fictional things is very interesting. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. How can we say Pegasus doesn’t exist? This video contains a picture of Pegasus. Is it only that molecules of chalk appear Pegasus wise on the board?
If something called “Pegasus” doesn’t exist then how did it appear in the mind of the person who drew the picture on the board and how did the students all know what the teacher was referring to when he said the word “Pegasus?”
I don’t even think the distinction between possible objects and actual objects works here. A possible fictional character would be a character that exist in some world that’s not our world. In a sense Pegasus is an actual fictional object because it is not a fictional object in some other possible world.
Furthermore, The teacher said things like Santa Claus cannot make an appearance on campus. But Santa Claus often does make an appearance and people see him and even sit on his lap. There are many pictures of Santa Claus and even films depicting him. And there are pictures of Pegasus and films of Pegasus so we can even watch Pegasus fly. There are also many facts about Santa Claus and Pegasus that everyone will agree on. Just like Harry Potter, you can buy a shirt with Santa Claus or Pegasus printed on it or read a book about them.
So if these things don’t exist, then what is printed on the T-shirt, and what are we watching fly we watch a film of Pegasus flying? Surely these are graphic representations of something. But they’re not representations of nothing. What would it even mean to say I have a graphic representation of nothing and then I look at that nothing and there is something there? sure it’s just paint molecules. But what are the paint molecules representing? Does it make sense to say that a representation is representing something that doesn’t exist?
What does it mean that I can read a novel about Harry potter, an object that doesn’t exist? Doesn’t reading a book about him presuppose that he is a kind of thing that exists? If he doesn’t exist then what was the book about? And when I tell you about the book in about what Harry Potter did what am I telling you about? If I’m telling you about something and that something doesn’t exist then we run into that problem where we are saying something about something that both exists and doesn’t exist.
I think there is no other choice but to say that such things actually exist. But just not literally, as if you can find a real biological Pegasus in the physical world. There has to be some kind of distinction of domain. Nothing else makes sense to me.
What do you think?
'They 'just' 'stand' 4 E(X)' They....these....convenient Constants, without variable, without value, stand, standing for something.
Or, let me try 'this' way.....Constants....Standing....Something.....
Professor.....let me try again...."When we limit a range.....and have a domain....and limit the range....what does happen?"
Nothing
What's wrong with the Humean approach and just saying real things, or ideas of real things that exist, have their origin in impressions, whereas fictional things have their origin in ideas, or combinations of ideas, (like the ideas of a horse + wings) and never impressions?
Realism just told me that I am hairy.
Pegasus 'does!' Pegasus dues!
Word of the Day = Polysemy
Thanks, this is a perfect demonstration as to why I will never be an analytic philosopher.
Hansol's Friend well, somebody who constructs the reality on the semantic meaning of concepts, or inventing new just ro construct more.
We want to sub please! From turkey
Yes, "there are things that don't exists" is absurd. So there must not be things that don't exists. That makes much more sense.
lol
apparently, a tissue doesn't exist
Kant an idealist? Don't think so. Kant and Berkeley never talked about fictional entities? Don't think so. An "American philosopher": does such a thing exist? Don't think so...
I agree that Kant's "transcendental idealism" is not technically idealism; a section of the Critique of Pure Reason is entitled "The Refutation of Idealism." He argues there that we cannot do without the noumenal realm, the Ding-an-Sich. On his own theory, however, he can't say anything about things-in-themselves-not even that they exist-because the categories, including existence, don't apply to them. So, everything to which we can apply the categories is mind-dependent. On Kant and Berkeley, I'm not sure what you have in mind: The Ideals of Pure Reason? Principles 51, maybe? I can't think of anything that would constitute even a sketch of an account of names like 'Pegasus.' Finally, if you don't count Quine, Rawls, Sellars, Kripke, Lewis, Nozick, Korsgaard, Nagel, Nussbaum, Hawthorne, Sider, Brandom....
@@PhiloofAlexandria No, I don't count them. Maybe Peirce, maybe.
Of course noumena exist for Kant, and about non-existing entities just take a look at "Dreams of a Spirit-Seer".
Talking about Idealism, the most frequent definition of the difference between the idea of an object and the object present-at-hand is that one can make disappear the idea of an object while it is impossible with the object itself. The Real is what remains whatever we think (which, of course, for an idealist doesn't mean that it is independent from the subject).
But, you know, the point here lies not in confronting our preparation. I'm not even a graduate, still these examples and definitions come to my mind pretty quickly (we study philosophy at high school here, meaning Italy). What I think is outrageous is that you, a professor, hesitate with such elementary notions. And the questions your students ask evidentiate how poor the average competence is over there.
Of course it's not something inherent to you people, it's exactly those guys you mentioned qualifying them as "philosophers" and the role they had in the formation of generations of students that created this monster. A self-replicating problem, I fear.
PS: let's say we could save Bradley, too. But those were different times...
@@lucassiccardi8764 This guy is just the typical example of what's wrong with internet philosophy.
Lucas, no offense, but your comments are yet more evidence that the greatest tragedy of WWII was that it didn’t exterminate European civilization completely and permanently.
Also, Dreams is a(n) (equivocal) critique of Swedenborgian mysticism, which is different from the concept of ‘fictitious entities’ alluded to above. You seem to be conflating the more precise philosophical idea here with the broader notion of ‘delusions’.
A more detailed primer on the matter.
plato.stanford.edu/entries/fictional-entities/
Of course, I appreciate that talking a west European out of his chauvinism is about as futile an enterprise as trying to persuade a leech to stop sucking blood.