display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
36 ideas
| 15997 | We are so far from understanding the workings of natural bodies that it is pointless to even try [Locke] |
| Full Idea: As to a perfect science of natural bodies (not to mention spiritual beings) we are, I think, so far from being capable of any such thing, that I conclude it lost labour to seek after it. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.28) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that Locke has an excellent grasp of the nature of science, except for his extraordinary and misjudged pessimism about what it might achieve. |
| 15978 | I take 'matter' to be a body, excluding its extension in space and its shape [Locke] |
| Full Idea: 'Matter' is a partial and more confused conception, it seeming to me to be used for the substance and solidity of body, without taking in its extension and figure. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.10.15) | |
| A reaction: The 'without taking in' I take to mean that matter is an abstraction (of the psychological kind) from the character of physical bodies. Matter does not exist without having an extension and figure. |
| 15170 | We distinguish species by their nominal essence, not by their real essence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Our ranking, and distinguishing natural substances into species consists in the nominal essences the mind makes, and not in the real essences to be found in things themselves. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 3.06.11) | |
| A reaction: Note that, as far as I can see, Locke never denies the existence of real essences, or even that we might occasionally know them. He is here merely describing, fairly accurately, I think, his empiricist view of how these categories have come about. |
| 15993 | If we observe total regularity, there must be some unknown law and relationships controlling it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The things that, as far as observation reaches, we constantly find to proceed regularly, do act by a law set them; but yet by a law that we know not; ..their connections and dependencies being not discoverable in our ideas, we need experimental knowledge. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.29) | |
| A reaction: In Idea 15992 he expressed scepticism about the amount of regularity that is actually found, with many so-called 'kinds' being quite irregular in their members. I agree. The only true natural kinds are the totally regular ones. Why a 'law'? |
| 14344 | Natural kinds, such as electrons, all behave the same way because we divide them by dispositions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Regularities exist because we classify kinds on the basis of their dispositions, not on pre-established divisions of kinds. The dispositions are the basis for the division into kinds, which is why all electrons behave in the same way. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being so obvious that it is hardly worth saying, and yet an enormous number of philosophers seem to have been led up the garden path by the notion of a 'kind', probably under the influence of Kripke, Putnam and Wiggins. |
| 19068 | Causation interests us because we want to explain change [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Like Aristotle, the reason we are really interested in causation is because we want to be able to explain change. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Contemporary Efficient Causation: Aristotelian themes [2014], 8) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints a very important and simple idea. It raises the question (among others) of whether we have just invented this thing called 'causation', because no explanation of change was visible. Hume certainly couldn't see any explanation. |
| 12497 | Causes are the substances which have the powers to produce action [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Power being the source from whence all action proceeds, the substances wherein these powers are, when they exert this power into act, are called 'causes'. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.22.11) | |
| A reaction: This is causes as actual entities, rather than as conjunctions of events. Personally I find this view of Locke's very congenial, no matter how unfashionable it may be. |
| 9430 | Singular causes, and identities, might be necessary without falling under a law [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: One might have a singularist view of causation in which a cause necessitates its effect, but they need not be subsumed under a law, ..and there are identities which are metaphysically necessary without being laws of nature. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 04.5) |
| 9445 | We can give up the counterfactual account if we take causal language at face value [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If we take causal language at face value and give up reducing causal concepts to non-causal, non-modal concepts, we can give up the counterfactual dependence account. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.5) |
| 9443 | It is only properties which are the source of necessity in the world [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If laws do not give the world necessity, what does? I argue the positive case for it being properties, and properties alone, that do the job (so we might call them 'modal properties'). | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.1) |
| 14338 | In the 'laws' view events are basic, and properties are categorical, only existing when manifested [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: In the 'laws' world view, events are the basic ontological unit and properties are parasitic upon them. Properties exist only in virtue of their instantiation in events. Properties are categorical, because they are only manifested in the present. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: Mumford rejects this view, and I am with him all the way. The first requirement is that properties be active, and not inert. See Leibniz on this. |
| 9444 | There are four candidates for the logical form of law statements [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The contenders for the logical form of a law statement are 1) a universally quantified conditional, 2) a second-order relation between first-order universals, 3) a functional equivalence, and 4) a dispositional characteristic of a natural kind. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.3) |
| 14339 | Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how, without general laws, can the dispositionalist explain why generalities in behaviour are true of kinds. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: And the answer is to make kinds depend on individuals, and not vice versa, and then point to the necessary patterns that arise from conjunctions of individual dispositions, given their identity in many individuals. |
| 14341 | Dretske and Armstrong base laws on regularities between individual properties, not between events [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The improved Dretske/Armstrong regularity view of laws dispenses with the empiricist articulation of them in terms of events, and construes them as singular statements of fact that describe relations between properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: They then seem to go a bit mystical, by insisting that the properties are 'universals' (even if they have to be instantiated). Universals explain nothing. |
| 9415 | Would it count as a regularity if the only five As were also B? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: While it might be true that for all x, if Ax then Bx, would we really want to count it as a genuine regularity in nature if only five things were A (and all five were also B)? | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.3) |
| 9416 | Regularities are more likely with few instances, and guaranteed with no instances! [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems that the fewer the instances, the more likely it is that there be a regularity, ..and if there are no cases at all, and no S is P, that is a regularity. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: [He attributes the second point to Molnar] |
| 9441 | Regularity laws don't explain, because they have no governing role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A regularity-law does not explain its instances, because such laws play no role in determining or governing their instances. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: Good. It has always seemed to me entirely vacuous to explain an event simply by saying that it falls under some law. |
| 14340 | It is a regularity that whenever a person sneezes, someone (somewhere) promptly coughs [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It is no doubt a true regularity that every time I sneeze, someone, somewhere in the world, immediately coughs. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: Not a huge problem for the regularity theory of laws, but the first challenge that it must meet. |
| 9431 | Pure regularities are rare, usually only found in idealized conditions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Pure regularities are not nearly as common as might have been thought, and are usually only to be found in simplified or idealized conditions. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Nancy Cartwright 1999 for this view] |
| 9422 | If the best system describes a nomological system, the laws are in nature, not in the description [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If the world really does have its own nomological structure, that a systematization merely describes, why are the laws not to be equated with the nomological structure itself, rather than with the system that describes it? | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.4) |
| 9421 | The best systems theory says regularities derive from laws, rather than constituting them [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The best systems theory (of Mill-Ramsey-Lewis) says that laws are not seen as regularities but, rather, as those things from which regularities - or rather, the whole world history including the regularities and everything else - can be derived. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: Put this way, the theory invites questions about ontology. Regularities are just patterns in physical reality, but axioms are propositions. So are they just features of human thought, or do these axioms actuallyr reside in reality. Too weak or too strong. |
| 9432 | Laws of nature are necessary relations between universal properties, rather than about particulars [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The core of the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong view of the late 70s is that we have a law of nature when we have a relation of natural necessitation between universals. ..The innovation was that laws are about properties, and only indirectly about particulars. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if we should then be able to know the laws of nature a priori, since that was Russell's 1912 definition of a priori knowledge. |
| 9433 | If laws can be uninstantiated, this favours the view of them as connecting universals [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If there are laws that are instantiated in no particulars, then this would seem to favour the theory that laws connect universals rather than particulars. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: There is a dispute here between the Platonic view of uninstantiated universals (Tooley) and the Aristotelian instantiated view (Armstrong). Mumford and I prefer the dispositional account. |
| 12550 | If we knew the minute mechanics of hemlock, we could predict that it kills men [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Did we know the mechanical affections of the particles of rhubarb, hemlock, opium and a man, ...we should be able to tell beforehand that rhubarb will purge, hemlock kill, and opium make a man sleep. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.25) | |
| A reaction: Locke was adamant that we could never know such things, but I take it that we now do know them, and that this is precisely what science aims at. I'm beginning to think that the entire aim of science is to predict nature. |
| 15966 | Boyle and Locke believed corpuscular structures necessitate their powers of interaction [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| Full Idea: Both Boyle and Locke believe in necessary connections in nature; full knowledge of a corpuscular structure would enable us to deduce, without trial, particular powers of interaction. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 03.3 | |
| A reaction: I take this view to be correct. Is the necessity analytic, because that is how you define the 'structures'? If not, what is the basis for the claim? |
| 15984 | The corpuscular hypothesis is the best explanation of the necessary connection and co-existence of powers [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Human understanding is scarce able to substitute better than the corpuscularian hypothesis in an explication of the qualities of bodies, which will afford us a fuller and clearer discovery of the necessary connection and co-existence of the powers. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |
| A reaction: [considerably reworded] Locke is committed to natural necessities, in a way entirely rejected by Hume. The picture given in this remark perfectly embodies scientific essentialism, though elsewhere Locke is more cautious. |
| 15950 | We will only understand substance when we know the necessary connections between powers and qualities [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Which ever hypothesis be clearest and truest, ...our knowledge concerning corporeal substances, will be very little advanced.. , till we are made see, what qualities and powers of bodies have a necessary connection or repugnancy one with another. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.16) | |
| A reaction: A part from the emphasis on powers, this sounds a bit like Armstrong's account, that laws are the necessary connections between properties. It is scientific essentialism because Locke expects researchers to discover this stuff. |
| 14345 | The necessity of an electron being an electron is conceptual, and won't ground necessary laws [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The logical necessity of physical laws is not required by dispositional essentialism. An electron would not be an electron if its behaviour were different from the behaviour it has in the actual world, but this necessity is purely conceptual. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.8) | |
| A reaction: [He is particularly aiming this at Ellis and Lierse 1994] This may be missing the point. Given those electron dispositions, the electrons necessitate law-like happenings. Whether a variable entity is called an 'electron' is trivial. |
| 9434 | Laws of nature are just the possession of essential properties by natural kinds [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If dispositional essentialism is granted, then there is a law of nature wherever there is an essential property of a natural kind; laws are just the havings of essential properties by natural kinds. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: [He is expounding Ellis's view] |
| 7713 | We identify substances by supposing that groups of sensations arise from an essence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We come to have the ideas of particular sorts of substance, by collecting such combinations of simple ideas as are by observation of men's senses taken notice of to exist together, and are supposed to flow from the unknown essence of that substance. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.23.03) | |
| A reaction: Locke is notoriously somewhat ambiguous and unclear about some of his views, but this remark seems to make him the father of modern scientific essentialism. Note that this is an empiricist happily referring to an unperceived best explanation. |
| 14307 | Some dispositions are so far unknown, until we learn how to manifest them [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems reasonable to assume that there are some dispositions of some things of which we are not aware because we have not yet discovered the way to get these dispositions to manifest. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty good description of what scientists are currently doing when, for example, they build a new particle accelerator. |
| 9437 | To distinguish accidental from essential properties, we must include possible members of kinds [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Where properties are possessed by all kind members, we must distinguish the accidental from essential ones by considering all actual and possible kind members. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.5) | |
| A reaction: This is why we must treat possibilities as features of the actual world. |
| 12545 | Other spirits may exceed us in knowledge, by knowing the inward constitution of things [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Other spirits, who see and know the nature and inward constitution of things, how much must they exceed us in knowledge? | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.03.06) | |
| A reaction: I take it that Locke was describing his own posterity, without realising it. It seems to me that modern physics has reached a place which Locke firmly pronounced impossible for human beings, and it has revealed many 'inward constitutions'. |
| 9439 | The Central Dilemma is how to explain an internal or external view of laws which govern [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The Central Dilemma about laws of nature is that, if they have some governing role, then they must be internal or external to the things governed, and it is hard to give a plausible account of either view. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: This dilemma is the basis of Mumford's total rejection of 'laws of nature'. I think I agree. |
| 9412 | You only need laws if you (erroneously) think the world is otherwise inert [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws are a solution to a problem that was misconceived. Only if you think that the world would be otherwise inactive or inanimate, do you have the need to add laws to your ontology. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a bold and extreme view - and I agree with it. I consider laws to be quite a useful concept when discussing nature, but they are not part of the ontology, and they don't do any work. They are metaphysically hopeless. |
| 9411 | There are no laws of nature in Aristotle; they became standard with Descartes and Newton [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws do not appear in Aristotle's metaphysics, and it wasn't until Descartes and Newton that laws entered the intellectual mainstream. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 5470. |