display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
12 ideas
14952 | Things are constructs for tracking patterns (and not linguistic, because animals do it) [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: Individual things are constructs built for second-best tracking of real patterns. They are not necessarily linguistic constructions, since some non-human animals almost certainly cognitively construct them. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 4.5) | |
A reaction: Delighted to see animals making an appearance. Fans of language-based metaphysics please note. If they are fictional constructs, why do they do such a good job of tracking? What generates the 'superficial' appearance that there are objects? |
14950 | Maybe individuation can be explained by thermodynamic depth [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: Scientists have developed principles for understanding individuation in terms of the production of thermodynamic depth. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 4.5) | |
A reaction: [They cite J.Collier for this view] Interesting, even though I don't really understand 'thermodynamic depth'. Ladyman and Ross reject it, but there is a whiff of a theory of individuation from within physics. |
14927 | Physics seems to imply that we must give up self-subsistent individuals [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: There is growing convergence among philosophers of physics that physics motivates abandonment of a metaphysics that posits fundamental self-subsistent individuals. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 3.4) | |
A reaction: They cite fermions as an example, which only seem to be given an identity by the relations into which they enter. It is a bit cheeky to simultaneously offer this idea, and despise van Inwagen and Merricks for the same object nihilism. |
14944 | There is no single view of individuals, because different sciences operate on different scales [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: There is no single account of what individuals there are because, we argue, the special sciences may disagree about the bounds and status of individuals since they describe the world at different scales. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 3.8) | |
A reaction: This seems to deny that nature has actual joints, and so seems to me to be a form of anti-realism (which they would deny). Why shouldn't there be a single view which unites all of these special sciences? |
14946 | There are no cats in quantum theory, and no mountains in astrophysics [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: At the quantum scale there are no cats; at scales appropriate for astrophysics there are no mountains. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 4.2) | |
A reaction: I don't find this convincing. Since cats are made of quantised entities, they do exist in that world, but are of little interest when trying to understand it. Similarly, astrophysicists hardly deny the existence of mountains! |
14928 | Things are abstractions from structures [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: Individual things are locally focused abstractions from modal structure. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 3.4) | |
A reaction: I am a fan of the role of abstraction in our understanding of the world, despite my limited progress in trying to explicate the idea. I can't decide whether or not there are any things. A bit basic, that! |
14892 | The idea of composition, that parts of the world are 'made of' something, is no longer helpful [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: It is no longer helpful to conceive of either the world, or particular systems of the world that we study in partial isolation, as 'made of' anything at all. …Our target here is the metaphysical idea of composition. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 1.1) | |
A reaction: This is argued by them from the point of view of fundamental physics as the provider of our basic metaphysics about the world. Personally I really really want to know what electrons are made of, but I know no one is going to tell me. They may even laugh. |
22744 | Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: If the whole is nothing more than the sum of the parts, the parts will not be parts. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.343) | |
A reaction: Nice. Bricks lying on the ground are not parts of a wall. For them to be parts of a wall there has to be a wall which is not just the bricks. Nihilists like Van Inwagen can deny the wall in ontology, but in thought we need walls. Conceptual dependence. |
14949 | A sum of things is not a whole if the whole does not support some new generalisation [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: A nostril, a city and a trumpet solo is not a real pattern, because identification of it supports no generalisations not supported by identification of the three conjuncts considered separately. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is a nice try at offering a criterion for unity, but I doubt whether it will work, because an ingenious person could come up with wild generalisations. These three combined make possible a charming new line of poetry. |
22762 | Some properties are inseparable from a thing, such as the length, breadth and depth of a body [Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Some properties are inseparable from the things to which they belong - as are length, breadth and depth from bodies, for without their presence it is impossible to perceive Body. | |
From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Logicians (two books) [c.180], I.270) | |
A reaction: For the opposite case he suggests a man running, talking or sleeping. He doesn't mention essential natures, but this is clearly correct. We might say that they are properties which need to be mentioned in a full definition. |
14951 | We treat the core of a pattern as an essence, in order to keep track of it [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: We focus on diagnostic features of real patterns that we can treat as 'core', which reliably predict that our attention is still tracking the same real pattern. These are Locke's 'essence of particulars', or Putnam's 'hidden structures'. | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 4.5) | |
A reaction: They seemed to be ashamed of themselves for proposing this, and call it a 'second-best' epistemological device. They seem to imply that they are useful fictions, but why shouldn't the hidden structures be real? They might both identify and explain. |
14958 | A continuous object might be a type, with instances at each time [Ladyman/Ross] |
Full Idea: Why should not 'Napoleon' be a type, of which 'Napoleon in 1805' and 'Napoleon in 1813' are instances? | |
From: J Ladyman / D Ross (Every Thing Must Go [2007], 5.6) | |
A reaction: That is very nice. That might be a view that suits presentism, where the timed instances never co-exist, and so have the sort of abstract existence that we associate with types. |