203 ideas
| 22396 | We take courage, temperance, wisdom and justice as moral, but Aristotle takes wisdom as intellectual [Foot] |
| Full Idea: For us there are four cardinal moral virtues: courage, temperance, wisdom and justice. But Aristotle and Aquinas call only three of these virtues moral virtues; practical wisdom (phronesis, prudentia) they class with the intellectual virtues. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'for us'. How many of us rank temperance as a supreme virtue? Aristotle ranks phronesis (which I think of as 'common sense') as the key enabler of the moral virtues, making it unlike the other intellectual virtues. |
| 22496 | Wisdom only implies the knowledge achievable in any normal lifetime [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom implies no more knowledge and understanding than anyone of normal capacity can and should acquire in the course of an ordinary life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: Have philosophers stopped talking about wisdom precisely because you now need three university degrees to be considered even remotely good at phillosophy? Hence wisdom is an inferior attainment, because Foot is right. |
| 22397 | Wisdom is open to all, and not just to the clever or well trained [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge that can be acquired only by someone who is clever or who has access to special training is not counted as part of wisdom. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.6) | |
| A reaction: Consider Pierre's peasant friend Platon Karatayev in 'War and Peace'. I assume 'special training' rules out anyone with a philosophy degree. |
| 12667 | Metaphysics aims at the simplest explanation, without regard to testability [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The methodology of metaphysics... is that of arguing to the simplest explanation, without regard to testability. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: I love that! I'd be a bit cautious about 'simplest', since 'everything is the output of an ineffable God' is beautifully simple, and brings the whole discussion to a halt. I certainly think metaphysics goes deeper than testing. String Theory? |
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A good ontology should provide insight into, or offer some kind of explanation of, the salient general features of the world that has been revealed to us by science. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this. The difficulty is that the most fundamental level revealed by science is a quantum one, so if you take a reductionist view then your ontology is both crazy, and resting on things which are not understood. |
| 5486 | Essentialism says metaphysics can't be done by analysing unreliable language [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The new essentialism leads to a turning away from semantic analysis as a fundamental tool for the pursuit of metaphysical aims, ..since there is no reason to think that the language we speak accurately reflects the kind of world we live in. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The last part of that strikes me as false. We have every reason to think that a lot of our language very accurately reflects reality. It had better, because we have no plan B. We should analyse our best concepts, but not outdated, culture-laden ones. |
| 22462 | We should speak the truth, but also preserve and pursue it [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There belongs to truthfulness not only the avoidance of lying but also that other kind of attachment to truth which has to do with its preservation and pursuit. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.74) | |
| A reaction: This is truth as a value, rather than as a mere phenomenon of accurate thought and speech. The importance of 'preserving' the truth is the less common part of this idea. |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The logic of real possibilities and necessities is just S5. This is because the accessibility relation for real possibilities links possible worlds of the same natural kind, which is an equivalence class. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: Most people, except Nathan Salmon, agree with this. With full accessibility, you seem to take epistemological problems out of the system, and just focus on reality. |
| 12666 | We can base logic on acceptability, and abandon the Fregean account by truth-preservation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In logic, acceptability conditions can replace truth conditions, ..and the only price one has to pay for this is that one has to abandon the implausible Fregean idea that logic is the theory of truth preservation. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This has always struck me as correct, given that if you assign T and F in a semantics, they don't have to mean 'true' and 'false', and that you can do very good logic with propositions which you think are entirely false. |
| 13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean conception of reality lies behind, and motivates, the development of extensional logics with extensional semantics. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.04) | |
| A reaction: His proposal seems to be that it rests on the vision of a domain of separated objects. The alternative view seems to be that it is mathematics, with its absolute equality between 'objects', which drives extensionalism. |
| 18085 | Values that approach zero, becoming less than any quantity, are 'infinitesimals' [Cauchy] |
| Full Idea: When the successive absolute values of a variable decrease indefinitely in such a way as to become less than any given quantity, that variable becomes what is called an 'infinitesimal'. Such a variable has zero as its limit. | |
| From: Augustin-Louis Cauchy (Cours d'Analyse [1821], p.19), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.4 | |
| A reaction: The creator of the important idea of the limit still talked in terms of infinitesimals. In the next generation the limit took over completely. |
| 18084 | When successive variable values approach a fixed value, that is its 'limit' [Cauchy] |
| Full Idea: When the values successively attributed to the same variable approach indefinitely a fixed value, eventually differing from it by as little as one could wish, that fixed value is called the 'limit' of all the others. | |
| From: Augustin-Louis Cauchy (Cours d'Analyse [1821], p.19), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a highly significan proposal, because you can now treat that limit as a number, and adds things to it. It opens the door to Cantor's infinities. Is the 'limit' just a fiction? |
| 12688 | Mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I wish to explore the idea that mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Categorical dimensions are spatiotemporal relations and other non-causal properties. Ellis defends categorical properties as an aspect of science. The obvious connection seems to be with structuralism in mathematics. Shapiro is sympathetic. |
| 12683 | Objects and substances are a subcategory of the natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The category of natural kinds of objects or substances should be regarded simply as a subcategory of the category of the natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a new, and interesting, proposal from Ellis (which will be ignored by the philosophical community, as all new theories coming from elderly philosophers are ignored! Cf Idea 12652). A good knowledge of physics is behind Ellis's claim. |
| 12670 | A physical event is any change of distribution of energy [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical event as any change of distribution of energy in any of its forms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to result in an awful lot of events. My own (new this morning) definition is: 'An event is a process which can be individuated in time'. Now you just have to work out what a 'process' is, but that's easier than understanding an 'event'. |
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extension of a property in any given world is just a contingent fact about that world; its extension is not the essence of the property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.07) | |
| A reaction: The Quinean idea, common among logicians, that a predicate is just a set defined for some model, may be useful in the logic, but is preposterous as an account of what a property actually is in nature, even if the set covers possible worlds. |
| 5468 | Properties are 'dispositional', or 'categorical' (the latter as 'block' or 'intrinsic' structures) [Ellis, by PG] |
| Full Idea: 'Dispositional' properties involve behaviour, and 'categorical properties' are structures in two or more dimensions. 'Block' structures (e.g. molecules) depend on other things, and 'instrinsic' structures (e.g. fields) involve no separate parts. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This is an essentialist approach to properties, and sounds correct to me. The crucial preliminary step to understanding properties is to eliminate secondary qualities (e.g. colour), which are not properties at all, and cause confusion. |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no natural property of 'fragility'; glasses, parchments, ecosystems and spiders' webs are fragile in their own ways, but they have nothing intrinsic or structural in common. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: This is important (and, I think, correct) because we are inclined to say that something is 'intrinsically' fragile, but that still isn't enough to identify a true property. Ellis wants universals to be involved, and even a nominalist must sort-of agree. |
| 12673 | Physical properties are those relevant to how a physical system might act [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical property as one whose value is relevant, in some circumstances, to how a physical system is likely to act. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: Fair enough, but can we use the same 'word' property when we are discussing abstractions? Does 'The Enlightenment' have properties? Do very simple things have properties? Can 'red' act, if it isn't part of any physical system? |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatically 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, depending on how things are distributed in space and time. Shape is the obvious example. ...Other examples are number, size and configuration. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm finding it very frustrating that this concept is much discussed in current philosophy of science (e.g. by Bird), but it is exceedingly hard to pin down any exact account of these 'categorical' properties, or even why they are so-called. |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no property of being an electron. It could only be instantiated by electrons, so it does not seem genuine. And what is the thing that supposedly instantiates the property of being an electron? | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 75,92), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 7.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. Bird launches an excellent attack on categorial properties. |
| 5469 | The passive view of nature says categorical properties are basic, but others say dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: 'Categorical realism' is the most widely accepted theory of dispositional properties, because passivists can accept it, ..that is, that dispositions supervene on categorical properties; ..the opposite would imply nature is active and reactive. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Essentialists believe 'the opposite' - i.e. that dispositions are fundamental, and hence that the essence of nature is active. See 5468 for explanations of the distinctions. I am with the essentialists on this one. |
| 12665 | I support categorical properties, although most people only want causal powers [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I want to insist on the existence of a class of categorical properties distinct from causal powers. This is contentious, for there is a growing body of opinion that all properties are causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Alexander Bird makes a case against categorical properties. If what is meant is that 'being an electron' is the key property of an electron, then I disagree (quite strongly) with Ellis. Ellis says they are needed to explain causal powers. |
| 12682 | Essentialism needs categorical properties (spatiotemporal and numerical relations) and dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist metaphysics seem to require that there be at least two kinds of properties in nature: dispositional properties (causal powers, capacities and propensities), and categorical ones (spatiotemporal and numerical relations). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: At last someone tells us what a 'categorical' property is! Couldn't find it in Stanford! Bird and Molnar reject the categorical ones as true properties. If there are six cats, which cat has the property of being six? Which cat is 'three metres apart'? |
| 12684 | Spatial, temporal and numerical relations have causal roles, without being causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal and numerical relations can have various causal roles without themselves being instances of causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: He cites gaps, aggregates, orientations, approaching and receding, as examples of categorical properties which make a causal difference. I would have thought these could be incorporated in accounts of more basic causal powers. |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In my view 'being a methane molecule' is not a property name, but a predicate that is constructed out of a natural kind name, and so pretends to name a property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.03) | |
| A reaction: I can't tell you how strongly I agree with this. How long have you got? This is so incredibly right that... You get the idea. He observes that such properties cannot be instantiated 'in' anything. |
| 12672 | Properties and relations are discovered, so they can't be mere sets of individuals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: To regard properties as sets of individuals, and relations as sets of ordered individuals, is to make a nonsense of the whole idea of discovering a new property or relationship. Sets are defined or constructed, not discovered. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This bizarre view of properties (as sets) drives me crazy, until it dawns on you that they are just using the word 'property' in a different way, probably coextensively with 'predicate', in order to make the logic work. |
| 5456 | Redness is not a property as it is not mind-independent [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Redness is not a property, because it has no mind-independent existence. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Well said. Secondary qualities are routinely cited in discussions of properties, and they shouldn't be. Redness causes nothing to happen in the physical world, unless a consciousness experiences it. |
| 18398 | Space, time, and some other basics, are not causal powers [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal, and other primary properties and relationships are not causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Response to David Armstrong [1999], p.42), quoted by David M. Armstrong - Truth and Truthmakers 10.4 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see how time and space could actually be powers, but future results in physics (or even current results about 'fields') might change that. |
| 13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no question of a causal power's acting one way in one world and another way in a different world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps the very core idea of scientific essentialism. It doesn't feel quite right that when you ask for the source of this necessity, you are only told that it is necessary for the very identity of a power. The truth is that it is a primitive of nature. |
| 13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal powers are often directional. For example, they may be centripetal, centrifugal, or circulatory. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: The examples all seem to raise a few questions, about whether the directionality arises from the context, rather than from the intrinsic power. |
| 12676 | Causal powers can't rest on things which lack causal power [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power can never be dependent on anything that does not have any causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right, though you worry when philosophers make such bold assertions about such extreme generalities. But see Idea 12667. This is, of course, the key argument for saying that causal powers are the bedrock of reality, and of explanation. |
| 13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the most fundamental things have no structure, and therefore no structure in virtue of which they have the powers they have. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Maybe the world has inexplicable powers, so there is a God? It seems obvious that there will be no explanation of the 'lowest level' of reality, and also obvious (to me and Leibniz, anyway) that this lowest level has to be active. |
| 13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One view is that there must be an intrinsic property or structure in virtue of which a given thing has the behavioural disposition in question. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Prior, Pargetter,Jackson 1982] A key question in the metaphysics of nature - whether dispositions should be taken as primitive, or whether we should try to explain them in other terms. I take powers and dispositions to be prior to properties. |
| 5481 | Properties have powers; they aren't just ways for logicians to classify objects [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One cannot think of a property as just a set of objects in a domain (as Fregean logicians do), as though the property has no powers, but is just a way of classifying objects. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I agree. It is sometimes suggested that properties are what 'individuate' objects, but how could they do that if they didn't have some power? If properties are known by their causal role, why do they have that causal role? |
| 23781 | Categoricals exist to influence powers. Such as structures, orientations and magnitudes [Ellis, by Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Ellis allows categoricals alongside powers, …to influence the sort of manifestations produced by powers. He lists structures, arrangements, distances, orientations, and magnitudes. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009]) by Neil E. Williams - The Powers Metaphysics 05.2 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that all of these could be understood as manifestations of powers. The odd one out is distances, but then space and time are commonly overlooked in every attempt to produce a complete ontology. [also Molnar 2003:164]. |
| 13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The properties of the most fundamental things in nature, including mass, charge, spin, and the like, would all appear to be dispositional. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.05) | |
| A reaction: This goes with the Leibnizian claim that the most fundamental features of nature must be active in character. |
| 5458 | Nearly all fundamental properties of physics are dispositional [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: With few, if any, exceptions, the fundamental properties of physical theory are dispositional properties of the things that have them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He is denying that they are passive (as Locke saw primary qualities), and says they are actively causal, or else capacities or propensities. Sounds right to me. |
| 13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power is a disposition of something to produce forces of a certain kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Leibniz was putting all his emphasis on the origin of the forces in nature, he was referring to exactly what we mean by 'powers'. From Ellis's formulation, I take powers to be more basic than dispositions. Does he realise this? |
| 13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers of an object are the dispositional properties of that object that are the real essences of the natural kinds of processes that involve that object in the role of cause. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is Ellis's formal definition at the end of his discussion of causal powers. He only seems to allow powers to the kind rather than to the individual. How do we account for the causal powers of unique genius? I say the powers are the essences. |
| 12686 | Causal powers are a proper subset of the dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers are just a proper subset of the dispositional properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 5) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Causal powers have a physical reality, while a disposition sounds as if it can wholly described by a counterfactual claim. It seems better to say that things have dispositions because they have powers. |
| 13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The various kinds of universals are all natural kinds of one sort or another. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound right. What about the universals of mathematics, or universals which are a matter of social or linguistic convention? I think Ellis is trying to hijack the word 'universal' in response to Armstrong's more idealistic account. |
| 13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Three categories of universals: 'substantive' universals have instances that are members of natural kinds of objects or substances; 'dynamic' universals are kinds of events or processes; 'property' universals are tropes of real properties or relations. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I would want to distinguish real properties from relations. It is important to remember that an object can traditionally instantiate a universal, and that they aren't just properties. |
| 12685 | Categorical properties depend only on the structures they represent [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I would define categorical properties as those whose identities depend only on the kinds of structures they represent. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: Aha. So categorical properties would be much more perspicaciously labelled as 'structural' properties. Why does philosophical terminology make it all more difficult than it needs to be? |
| 5443 | Kripke and others have made essentialism once again respectable [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The revival of essentialism owes much to the work of Saul Kripke and Hilary Putnam, who made belief in essences once again respectable, with Harré and Madden arguing that there were real causal powers in nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me important to separate two stages of this: 1) causation results from essences, and 2) essences can never change. The first seems persuasive to me. For the second, see METAPHYSICS/IDENTITY/COUNTERPARTS. |
| 5444 | 'Individual essences' fix a particular individual, and 'kind essences' fix the kind it belongs to [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The new essentialism retains Aristotelian ideas about essential properties, but it distinguishes more clearly between 'individual essences' and 'kind essences'; the former define a particular individual, the latter what kind it belongs to. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This might actually come into conflict with Aristotle, who seems to think that my personal essence is largely a human nature I share with everyone else. The new distinction is trying to keep the Kantian individual on the stage. |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: My current view is that individual essences (about which Kripke's essentialism has a lot to say) do not matter much from the point of view of a scientific essentialist. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Kripke parenthesis on p.54] Presumably this is because science is only committed to dealing in generalities, and so natural kinds are needed for such things. I'm inclined to regard individual essences as prior in the pure ontology of the thing. |
| 12679 | A real essence is a kind's distinctive properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A distinctive set of intrinsic properties for a given kind is called a 'real essence'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Note that he thinks essence is a set of properties (rather than what gives rise to the properties), and that it is kinds (and not individuals) which have real essences, and that one role of the properties is to be 'distinctive' of the kind. Cf. Oderberg. |
| 5462 | Essential properties are usually quantitatively determinate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most of the essential properties of things are quantitatively determinate properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This makes the essential nature of the world very much the province of science, which deals in quantities and equations. Essentialists must deal with mental events, as well as basic physics. |
| 5448 | 'Real essence' makes it what it is; 'nominal essence' makes us categorise it a certain way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The 'real essence' of a thing is that set of its properties or structures in virtue of which it is a thing of that kind; its 'nominal essence' is the properties or structures in virtue of which it is described as a thing of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I like this distinction, because it is the kind made by realists like me who are fighting to make philosophers keep their epistemology and their ontology separate. |
| 13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The old Aristotelian idea that the identity of a thing might depend on its essential nature, which would dispose it to behave in certain ways, is firmly rejected by empiricists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: Ellis is accusing empiricists of having a falsely passive concept of objects. This dispute is best captured in the disagreement between Locke and Leibniz on the subject. |
| 5477 | One thing can look like something else, without being the something else [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In considering questions of real possibility, it is important to keep the distinction between what a thing is and what it looks like clearly in mind. There is a possible world containing a horse that could then look like a cow, but it wouldn't BE a horse. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting test assertion of the notion that there are essences (although Ellis does not allow that animals actually have essences - how could you, given evolution?). His point is a good one. |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking, the distinction between two brands of necessity is one of grounds, rather than modality. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This idea I associate with Kit Fine. I like it, because it allows 'necessity' to be a univocal concept, which seems right to me. The types of necessity arise from types of things which already occur in our ontology. |
| 12668 | Metaphysical necessity holds between things in the world and things they make true [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessitation is the relation that holds between things in the world and the things they make true. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. It implies that it is sentences that have necessity, and he confirms it by calling it 'a semantic relation'. So there are no necessities if there are no sentences? Not the Brian Ellis we know and love. |
| 5479 | Scientific essentialists say science should define the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure working scientists will go along with that, but I like the claim that philosophy is very much part of the same enterprise as practical science (and NOT subservient to it!). I think of metaphysics as very high level physics. |
| 12687 | Metaphysical necessities are those depending on the essential nature of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysically necessary proposition is one that is true in virtue of the essential nature of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: It take this to be what Kit Fine argues for, though it tracks back to Aristotle. I also take it to be correct, though one might ask whether there are any other metaphysical necessities, ones not depending on essences. |
| 5483 | Essentialists deny possible worlds, and say possibilities are what is compatible with the actual world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists are modal realists; ..what is really possible, they say, is what is compatible with the natures of things in this world (and this does not commit them to the existence of any world other than the actual world). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This introduces something like 'compatibilities' into our ontology. That must rest on some kind of idea of a 'natural contradiction'. We can discuss the possibilities resulting from essences, but what are the possible variations in the essences? |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are necessities grounded in the individual real essences of things, and necessities grounded in the natural kind essences of things. In the first case, without the property it isn't that individual, and in the second it isn't a member of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the distinction we must hang onto to avoid a huge amount of confusion in this territory. I just say that ceasing to be that individual will presumably entail ceasing to be that kind, but not necessarily vice versa, so individual essences rule. |
| 5447 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the essences of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessities are propositions that are true in virtue of the essences of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I am cautious about this. It sounds like huge Leibnizian metaphysical claims riding in on the back of a rather sensible new view of the laws of science. How can we justify equating natural necessity with metaphysical necessity? |
| 5476 | Essentialists say natural laws are in a new category: necessary a posteriori [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists do not accept the standard position, which says necessity is a priori, and contingency is a posteriori. They have a radically new category: the necessary a posteriori. The laws of nature are, for example, both necessary and a posteriori. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Based on Kripke. I'm cautious about this. Presumably God, who would know the essences, could therefore infer the laws a priori. The laws may follow of necessity from the essences, but the essences can't be known a posteriori to be necessary. |
| 5478 | Imagination tests what is possible for all we know, not true possibility [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The imaginability test of possibility confuses what is really or metaphysically possible with what is only epistemically possible. ..The latter is just what is possible for all we know. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) |
| 5482 | Possible worlds realism is only needed to give truth conditions for modals and conditionals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The main trouble with possible worlds realism is that the only reason anyone has, or ever could have, to believe in other possible worlds (other than this one) is that they are needed, apparently, to provide truth conditions for modals and conditionals. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This attacks Lewis. Ellis makes this sound like a trivial technicality, but if our metaphysics is going to make sense it must cover modals and conditionals. What do they actually mean? Lewis has a theory, at least. |
| 5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists mostly accept the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, ..where the primary qualities of things are those that are intrinsic to the objects that have them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: One reason I favour essentialism is because I have always thought that the primary/secondary distinction was a key to understanding the world. 'Primary' gets at the ontology, 'secondary' shows us the epistemology. |
| 5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: For Boyle, Locke and Newton, the qualities inherent in bodies were just the primary qualities, namely number, figure, size, texture, motion and configuration of parts, impenetrability and, perhaps, body (or mass). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to have a list. Ellis goes on to say these are too passive, and urges dispositions as primary. Even so, the original seventeenth century insight seems to me a brilliant step forward in our understanding of the world. |
| 22449 | When we say 'is red' we don't mean 'seems red to most people' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: One might think that 'is red' means the same as 'seems red to most people', forgetting that when asked if an object is red we look at it to see if it is red, and not in order to estimate the reaction that others will have to it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.23) | |
| A reaction: True, but we are conscious of our own reliability as observers (e.g. if colourblind, or with poor hearing or eyesight). I don't take my glasses off, have a look, and pronounce that the object is blurred. Ordinary language philosophy in action. |
| 12669 | Science aims to explain things, not just describe them [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The primary aim of science is to explain what happens, not just to describe it. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a good motto for scientific essentialism. Any scientist who is happy with anything less than explanation is a mere journeyman, a servant in the kitchens of the great house of science. |
| 13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If one believes, as Hume did, that all events are loose and separate, then the problem of induction is probably insoluble. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.09) | |
| A reaction: This points to the essentialist solution of induction - that we can genuinely derive inductive truths if we can inductively identify the essences which give rise to the necessities of further cases. I take that to be a correct account. |
| 5485 | Emeralds are naturally green, and only an external force could turn them blue [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Emeralds cannot all turn blue in 2050 (as Nelson Goodman envisaged), because to do so they would have to have an extrinsically variable nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I was never very impressed by the 'grue' problem, probably for this reason, but also because Goodman probably thought predicates and properties are the same thing, which they aren't (Idea 5457). |
| 13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: An acceptable explanation must have some unifying power. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: There is a tension here, between the particular and the general. If I say 'why did the building collapse' and you say 'gravity', you have certainly got a unifying explanation, but we want something narrower. |
| 5484 | Essentialists don't infer from some to all, but from essences to necessary behaviour [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: For essentialists the problem of induction reduces to discovering what natural kinds there are, and identifying their essential problems and structures. We then know how they must behave in any world, and there is no inference from some to all. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The obvious question is how you would determine the essences if you are not allowed to infer 'from some to all'. Personally I don't see induction as a problem, because it is self-evidently rational in a stable world. Hume was right to recommend caution. |
| 13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Explanations of particular events in history, geology, or evolution, are causal explanations, requiring belief in some causal mechanisms. But they are not essentialist explanations because they do not seek to lay bare the essential structure of anything. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.05) | |
| A reaction: The explanation might be two-stage, as when we explain an earthquake by a plate boundary rupture, which is in turn explained by a theory of plate techtonics. The relationship between mechanistic and essentialist explanation needs study. |
| 13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no essentialist explanations constructed in any field where the subject matter is not naturally divided into kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crux. I like individual essences, such as the character of a particular person. However, Ellis may be right, since while we may identify an individual essence as the source of a behaviour, we may not then be able to give any 'explanation'. |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most model theories abstract from reality in order to focus on the essential nature of some kind of process or system of relations. ... The point of idealizing in this case is not to simplify, but to eliminate what is not essential. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea a lot. It is where scientific essentialism cashes out in actual scientific practice. Ellis's example is the idealised Carnot heat engine, which never can exist, but which captures what is essential about the process. |
| 22371 | Determinism threatens free will if actions can be causally traced to external factors [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The determinism which worries the defender of free will is that if human action is subject to a universal law of causation, there will be for any action a set of sufficient conditions which can be traced back to factors outside the control of the agent. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Free Will as Involving Determinism [1957], p.63) | |
| A reaction: She draws on Russell for this, but neither of them mention whether the causation is physical. Free will seems to imply non-physical causation. |
| 23438 | Full rationality must include morality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: You haven't got a full idea of rationality until you've got morality within it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that mathematical proofs are not rational, or that they are moral? |
| 5457 | Predicates assert properties, values, denials, relations, conventions, existence and fabrications [Ellis, by PG] |
| Full Idea: As well as properties, predicates can assert evaluation, denial, relations, conventions, existence or fabrication. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: This seems important, in order to disentangle our ontological commitments from our language, which was a confusion that ran throughout twentieth-century philosophy. A property is a real thing in the world, not a linguistic convention. |
| 5488 | Regularity theories of causation cannot give an account of human agency [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean theory of causation (as observed regularities) makes it very difficult for anyone even to suggest a plausible theory of human agency. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure what a 'theory' of human agency would look like. Hume himself said we only get to understand our mental powers from repeated experience (Idea 2220). How do we learn about the essence of our own will? |
| 5489 | Humans have variable dispositions, and also power to change their dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It seems that human beings not only have variable dispositional properties, as most complex systems have, but also meta-powers: powers to change their own dispositional properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a key to how we act, and also to morality. 'What dispositions do you want to have?' is the central question of virtue theory. Humans are essentially multi-level thinkers. Irony is the window into the soul. |
| 22480 | Possessing the virtue of justice disposes a person to good practical rationality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If justice is a virtue it must make action good by disposing its possessor to goodness in practical rationality; the latter consisting of the right recognition of reasons, and corresponding action. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.174) | |
| A reaction: This somewhat inverts Aristotle, who says the possessing of good practical reason is the key to acquiring the virtues. Foot suggests that possessing the virtue promotes the practical rationality. Someone can be sensible without being virtuous. |
| 23694 | All criterions of practical rationality derive from goodness of will [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I want to say, baldly, that there is no criterion for practical rationality that is not derived from that of goodness of will. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Where does that put the successful and clever criminal? Presumably they are broadly irrational, but narrowly rational - but that is not very clear distinction. She says Kant's concept of the good will is too pure, and unrelated to human good. |
| 23437 | Practical reason is goodness in choosing actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Practical rationality is goodness in respect of reason for actions, just as rationality of thinking is goodness in respect of beliefs. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.35) | |
| A reaction: It is very Greek to think that rationality involves goodness. There seems to be a purely instrumental form of practical reason that just gets from A to B, as when giving accurate street directions to someone. |
| 22372 | Not all actions need motives, but it is irrational to perform troublesome actions with no motive [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We do not expect that everything a rational man does should be done with a motive, ...but we do expect a man to have a motive for many things that he does, and would count anyone who constantly performed troublesome actions without a motive as irrational. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Free Will as Involving Determinism [1957], p.66) | |
| A reaction: Interestng, because the assessment of whether someone is 'rational' therefore needs a criterion for when a motive seems required and when not. 'Significant' actions need a motive? |
| 22393 | I don't understand the idea of a reason for acting, but it is probably the agent's interests or desires [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I am sure I do not understand the idea of a reason for acting, and I wonder whether anyone else does either. I incline to the view that all such reasons depend either on the agent's interests (meaning here what is in his interest) or else on his desires. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Reasons for Actions and Desires [1972], p.156 Post) | |
| A reaction: It seems common to assume that a reason for an action must be something rational, but it makes sense to say that the reason for someone's action was an irrational whim. Is the reason for an action just the cause of the action? |
| 23436 | It is an odd Humean view to think a reason to act must always involve caring [Foot] |
| Full Idea: One would need a very special, very Humean, view about reasons for actions to think a man doesn't have a reason unless he cares. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.34-5) | |
| A reaction: She says she used to believe this, but was wrong. It is hard to imagine acting for reasons if they don't care about anything at all (even that it's their job). But then people just do care about things. |
| 22481 | There is no restitution after a dilemma, if it only involved the agent, or just needed an explanation [Foot, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The 'remainder' after a dilemma can't be a matter of apology and restitution, because the dilemma may only involve the agent's own life, and in the case of broken promises we only owe an explanation, if the breaking is justifiable. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Moral Dilemmas Revisited [1995], p.183) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: But what if someone has been financially ruined by it? If the agent feels guilty about that, is getting over it the rational thing to do? (Foot says that is an new obligation, and not part of the original dilemma). |
| 22482 | I can't understand how someone can be necessarily wrong whatever he does [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I do not see how …we can know how to interpret the idea of a situation in which someone will necessarily be wrong whatever he does. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Dilemmas Revisited [1995], p.188) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. If you think of hideous dilemmas (frequent in wartime), there must always be a right thing to do (or two equally right things to do), even if the outcome is fairly hideous. Just distinguish the right from the good. |
| 22384 | A 'double effect' is a foreseen but not desired side-effect, which may be forgivable [Foot] |
| Full Idea: 'Double effect' refers to action having an effect aimed at, and also one foreseen but in now way desired. The 'doctrine' is that it is sometimes permissible to bring about by oblique intention what one may not directly intend. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.20) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this can only be justified by a trade-off. The unfortunate side effect must be rated as a price worth paying. If the side effect is not foreseen, that is presumably either understandable, or wickedly negligent. No clear rule is possible. |
| 22465 | We see a moral distinction between doing and allowing to happen [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We have an intuition that there is a morally relevant distinction between what we do and what we allow to happen. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.88) | |
| A reaction: She says many deny this distinction, but she defends it. Presumably consequentialists deny the distinction. What is bad if I do it, but OK if I allow it to happen? Neglecting a victim to save others, she suggests. |
| 22385 | The doctrine of double effect can excuse an outcome because it wasn't directly intended [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Supporters of double effect say that sometimes it makes a difference to the permissibility of an action involving harm to others that this harm, although foreseen, is not part of the agent's intention. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.22) | |
| A reaction: The obvious major case is the direction of wartime bombing raids. Controversial, because how can someone foresee a side effect and yet claim to have no intention to cause it? Isn't it wickedly self-deluding? |
| 22386 | Double effect says foreseeing you will kill someone is not the same as intending it [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of double effect offers us a way out [of the trolley problem], insisting that it is one thing to steer towards someone foreseeing that you will kill him, and another to aim at his death as part of your plan. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.23) | |
| A reaction: [She has just created her famous Trolley Problem]. Utilitarians must constantly rely on the doctrine of double effect, as they calculate their trade-offs. |
| 22387 | Without double effect, bad men can make us do evil by threatening something worse [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Rejection of the doctrine of double effect puts us hopelessly in the power of bad men. Anyone who wants us to do something we think is wrong has only to threaten that otherwise he himself will do something we think worse. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.25) | |
| A reaction: Her example is they will torture five if you don't torture one. Bernard Williams's famous Jim and the Indians is they will shoot twenty if you don't shoot one. Williams aims it at utilitarian calculations. Double effect is highly relevant. |
| 22388 | Double effect seems to rely on a distinction between what we do and what we allow [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The strength of the doctrine of double effect seems to lie in the distinction it makes between what we do (equated with direct intention) and what we allow (thought of as obliquely intended). | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.25) | |
| A reaction: She objects (nicely), saying her trolley driver 'does' the side-effect killing, and someone might 'allow' an obvious criminal death. There is also an intermediate class of 'brought about', where you set up a killing, but don't do it. |
| 22466 | We see a moral distinction between our aims and their foreseen consequences [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We have an intuition that there is a moral distinction between what we aim at and what we foresee as a result of what we do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.88) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 22465. This seems to be the classic doctrine of double effect. It is hard to defend the claim that we are only responsible for what we aim at. A wide assessment of consequences is a moral duty. Well-meaning fools are bad. |
| 22467 | Acts and omissions only matter if they concern doing something versus allowing it [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The difference between acts and omissions is irrelevant to any moral issue except in so far as it corresponds to the distinction between allowing something to happen and being the agent to whom the happening can be ascribed. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.89) | |
| A reaction: The list of anyone's omissions is presumably infinite, but what they 'allow' must be in some way within their power. But what of something I can't now prevent, only because I failed to do some relevant task yesterday? |
| 4692 | It is not true that killing and allowing to die (or acts and omissions) are morally indistinguishable [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers (e.g. Rachels) have argued that there is no morally relevant distinction between killing and allowing to die (or the related 'acts and omissions'),..as in not sending food, or sending poisoned food. I disagree. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.78) | |
| A reaction: It appears that some omissions are worse than acts. It is more honest to just shoot an injured person, than to walk away and leave them to die. A range of cases. |
| 4694 | Making a runaway tram kill one person instead of five is diverting a fatal sequence, not initiating one [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If a runaway tram is heading towards a track on which five people are standing, and there is someone who can switch the points, diverting it onto a track where there is one person,...this is diverting a fatal sequence, not starting a new one. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.85) | |
| A reaction: Suppose the one person was of immense community value, or someone you personally hated? Clearly she is interested in the agent's virtue, rather than the actual consequences. |
| 22445 | Morality shows murder is wrong, but not what counts as a murder [Foot] |
| Full Idea: While one can determine from the concept of morality that there is an objection to murder one cannot determine completely what will count as murder. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.7) | |
| A reaction: She then refers to abortion, but there are military and criminal problem cases, and killings by neglect or side effect. |
| 22444 | A moral system must deal with the dangers and benefits of life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A moral system seems necessarily to be one aimed at removing particular dangers and securing certain benefits. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.6) | |
| A reaction: I thoroughly approve of this approach to morality, which anchors it in real life, rather than in ideals or principles of reason. |
| 23683 | Moral norms are objective, connected to facts about human goods [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her early work she defends the objectivity of moral norms, demonstrating their essential connection to facts about what is good for human beings. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Moral Beliefs [1959]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: I don't think she ever gave up this idea, which strikes me as thoroughly Aristotelian. The issue is how to understand what is good for us. |
| 22392 | Morality is inescapable, in descriptive words such as 'dishonest', 'unjust' and 'uncharitable' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is a sense in which morality is inescapable - in moral epithets such as 'dishonest', 'unjust', 'uncharitable'; these do not cease to apply to a man because he is indifferent to the ends of morality: they may indeed apply because of his indifference. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.172 n15) | |
| A reaction: Odysseus was admired for lying, and charity wasn't a virtue in the ancient world. They won't go away as factual descriptions, but the values attached to them vary quite a lot. |
| 22451 | All people need affection, cooperation, community and help in trouble [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is a great deal that all men have in common; all need affection, the cooperation of others, a place in a community, and help in trouble. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.33) | |
| A reaction: There seem to be some people who don't need affection or a place in a community, though it is hard to imagine them being happy. These kind of facts are the basis for any sensible cognitivist view of ethics. They are basic to Foot's view. |
| 22485 | Non-cognitivists give the conditions of use of moral sentences as facts about the speaker [Foot] |
| Full Idea: What all these [non-cognitivist] theories try to do is to give the conditions of use of sentences such as 'It is morally objectionable to break promises', in terms of something which must be true about the speaker. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? [1995], p.192) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully simple and accurate analysis of this view. Compare analysing 'there is a bus coming towards you' in the same way. Sounds silly, but lots of modern philosophers see things that way. |
| 22474 | Unlike aesthetic evaluation, moral evaluation needs a concept of responsibility [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral, as opposed to aesthetic, evaluation does require some distinction between actions for which we are responsible and those for which we are not responsible. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Nietzsche's Immoralism [1991], p.154) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree with this, but difficult to give a precise account of responsibility, probably because it is not an all-or-nothing matter. If we accept responsibility for our controlled actions, why not for our considered aesthetic judgements? |
| 23684 | Morality gives everyone reasons to act, irrespective of their desires [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her early work she also defends moral rationalism, which is the idea that morality gives reasons for action to everyone, even those who lack the desire to do what is right. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Moral Beliefs [1959]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: Evidently a rejection of the Humean view that only a desire can motivate action, including moral action. There is an ongoing debate about whether reasons can cause anything, or motivate anything. I think the contents of reasons pull us towards action. |
| 23690 | We all have reason to cultivate the virtues, even when we lack the desire [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: Foot advocates the view that anyone has reason to cultivate the virtues, even if they lack the desire to do so at a given moment. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Moral Beliefs [1959], Pt II) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought 2 'Concepts' | |
| A reaction: The view which she soon abandoned, but then returned to later. It specifically repudiates the view of Hume, that only desires can motivate. I'm unsure, because the concept of 'reason' strikes me as too imprecise. She sees self-interest as a reason. |
| 23685 | Reason is not a motivator of morality [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her middle period she changed her mind, and attacks moral rationalism. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: That is, she doubted whether moral reasons are sufficient to motivate moral actions, which presumably therefore need desires, as the Humeans claimed. Reasons rely on merely hypothetical rules. |
| 23691 | Rejecting moral rules may be villainous, but it isn't inconsistent [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The man who rejects morality because he sees no reason to obey its rules can be convicted of villainy but not of inconsistency. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.161) | |
| A reaction: This is 'middle period' Foot, when she decided that Hume was right about the need for a desire as moral motivator. Before and after this time, she thought there were reasons to be moral, as well as desires. |
| 23686 | Moral reason is not just neutral, because morality is part of the standard of rationality [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her late period she again reverses her thoughts on moral rationalism; …rather than a neutral rationality which fulfils desires, she argues that morality ought to be thought of as part of the standard of rationality itself. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: This comes much closer to the Greek and Aristotelian concept of logos. They saw morality as inseparable from our judgements about how the world is. All 'sensible' thinking will involve what is good for humanity. |
| 23693 | Practical rationality must weigh both what is morally and what is non-morally required [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Different considerations are on a par, in that judgement about what is required by practical rationality must take account of their interaction: of the weight of the ones we call non-moral as well as those we call moral. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Her final settled view of rationalism in morality, it seems. The point is that moral considerations are not paramount, because she sees possible justifications for ignoring moral rules (like 'don't lie') in certain practical situations. |
| 23431 | Human defects are just like plant or animal defects [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We describe defects in human beings in the same way as we do defects in plants and animals. …You cannot talk about a river as being defective. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: This is a much clearer commitment to naturalistic ethics than I have found in her more academic writings. My opinion of Foot (which was already high) went up when I read this interview. …She says vice is a defect of the will. |
| 23687 | Moral virtues arise from human nature, as part of what makes us good human beings [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her later work she offers a view of the relationship of morality to human nature, arguing that the moral virtues are part of what makes us good as human beings. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: In this phase she talks explicitly of the Aristotelian idea that successful function is the grounding of what is good for any living being, including humans. |
| 5490 | Essentialism fits in with Darwinism, but not with extreme politics of left or right [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extremes of left and right in politics have much more reason than Darwinists to be threatened by the 'new essentialism', because it must reinstate the concept of human nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: The point being that political extremes go against the grain of our nature. Personally I am favour of essentialism, and human nature. I notice that Steven Pinker is now defending human nature, from a background of linguistics and psychology. |
| 22477 | Calling a knife or farmer or speech or root good does not involve attitudes or feelings [Foot] |
| Full Idea: No one thinks that calling a knife a good knife, a farmer a good farmer, a speech a good speech, a root a good root, necessarily expresses or even involves an attitude or feeling towards it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.163) | |
| A reaction: This is the Aristotelian idea (which I favour) that good derives from function. In such a case it seems obvious that it has nothing to do with expressing emotions. |
| 22486 | The mistake is to think good grounds aren't enough for moral judgement, which also needs feelings [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The mistake is to think that whatever 'grounds' for a moral judgement may have been given, someone may be unready, indeed unable, to make the moral judgement, because he has not got the attitude or feeling. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? [1995], p.192) | |
| A reaction: This is roughly the Frege-Geach problem for expressivism, of how we still make moral judgements about situations where we ourselves are entirely disinterested (such as ancient historical events). |
| 23432 | Concepts such as function, welfare, flourishing and interests only apply to living things [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There are concepts which apply only to living things, considered in their own right, which would include function, welfare, flourishing, interests and the good of something. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: This is a very Aristotelian view, with which I entirely agree. The central concept is function. |
| 22375 | Moral judgements need more than the relevant facts, if the same facts lead to 'x is good' and 'x is bad' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is suggested that anyone who has considered all the facts which could bear on his moral position has ipso facto produced a 'well founded' moral judgement, ...How 'x is good' can be well founded when 'x is bad' is equally well founded is hard to see. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.96) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a warning to particularists, if they hope that moral judgements just emerge from the facts. It doesn't rule out physicalist naturalism about morality, if the attitudes we bring to the facts have arisen out of further facts. |
| 22493 | Sterility is a human defect, but the choice to be childless is not [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Lack of capacity to reproduce is a defect in a human being. But choice of childlessness and even celibacy is not thereby shown to be defective choice, because human good is not the same as plant or animal good. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Is failure to reproduce a defect in an animal? If goodness and virtue derive from function, it is hard to see how deliberate childlessness could be a human good, even if it is not a defect. Choosing to terminate a hereditary defect seems good. |
| 22492 | Virtues are as necessary to humans as stings are to bees [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Virtues play a necessary part in the life of human beings as do stings in the life of a bee. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: This presumably rests on the Aristotelian idea that humans are essentially social (as opposed to solitary humans who choose to be social, perhaps in a contractual way, as Plato implies). |
| 23433 | Humans need courage like a plant needs roots [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A plant needs strong roots in the same way human beings need courage. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite convince by the analogy, but I strongly agree with her basic approach. |
| 22378 | We can't affirm a duty without saying why it matters if it is not performed [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I do not know what could be meant by saying it was someone's duty to do something unless there was an attempt to show why it mattered if this sort of thing was not done. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.105) | |
| A reaction: The Kantian idea assumes that duty is an absolute, and yet each duty rests on a particular maxim which is going to be universalised. So why should that maxim be universalised, and not some other? |
| 22487 | Moral arguments are grounded in human facts [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The grounding of a moral argument is ultimately in facts about human life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Does Moral Subjectivism Rest on a Mistake? [1995], p.207) | |
| A reaction: The best slogan I can find for summarising Foot's metaethics. The facts she refers to the basic human needs. She is right, and this almost bridges the fact-value divide (as long as you give a damn about human needs). |
| 22377 | Whether someone is rude is judged by agreed criteria, so the facts dictate the value [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Whether a man is speaking of behaviour as rude or not rude, he must use the same criteria as anyone else. ...We have here an example of a non-evaluative premise from which an evaluative conclusion can be deduced. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.104) | |
| A reaction: We would now call 'rude' a 'thick' ethical concept (where 'good' is 'thin'). Her powerful point is, I take it, that evidence is always relevant to judgements of thick concepts, so there is no fact-value gap. 'Rude' has criteria, but 'good' may not. |
| 22376 | Facts and values are connected if we cannot choose what counts as evidence of rightness [Foot] |
| Full Idea: To show that facts and values are connected we must show that some things do and some things don't count in favour of a moral conclusion, and that no one can choose what counts as evidence for rightness or wrongness. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Arguments [1958], p.99) | |
| A reaction: But what sort of facts might do the job? I can only think of right functioning and health as facts which seem to imply value. Pleasure and misery don't quite get there. |
| 22491 | Moral evaluations are not separate from facts, but concern particular facts about functioning [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter, as do evaluations of such things as sight and hearing in animals. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: She avoids the word 'function', and only deals with living creatures, but she uses a 'good knife' as an example, and this Aristotelian view clearly applies to any machine which has a function. |
| 23434 | There is no fact-value gap in 'owls should see in the dark' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If you say 'an owl should be able to see in the dark' …you're not going to think that there's a gap between facts and evaluation. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a major and fundamental idea, which pinpoints the failure of Humeans to understand the world correctly. There is always total nihilism, of course, but that is a sort of blindness to how things are. Demanding 'proof' of values is crazy. |
| 22447 | Saying something 'just is' right or wrong creates an illusion of fact and objectivity [Foot] |
| Full Idea: When we say that something 'just is' right or wrong we want to give the impression of some kind of fact or authority standing behind our words, ...maintaining the trappings of objectivity though the substance is not there. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.9) | |
| A reaction: Foot favours the idea that such a claim must depend on reasons, and that the reasons arise out of actual living. She's right. |
| 22452 | Do we have a concept of value, other than wanting something, or making an effort to get it? [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Do we know what we mean by saying that anything has value, or even that we value it, as opposed to wanting it or being prepared to go to trouble to get it? | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Relativism [1979], p.35) | |
| A reaction: Well, I value Rembrandt paintings, but have no aspiration to own one (and would refuse it if offered, because I couldn't look after it properly). And 'we' don't want to move the Taj Mahal to London. She has not expressed this good point very well. |
| 23439 | Principles are not ultimate, but arise from the necessities of human life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I don't believe in ultimate principles that must be simply affirmed or denied, but rather in an appeal to the necessities of human life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], p.37) | |
| A reaction: I agree. Humans have a strong tendency to elevate anything which they consider important into an absolute (such as the value of life, or freedom). |
| 23435 | If you demonstrate the reason to act, there is no further question of 'why should I?' [Foot] |
| Full Idea: You lose the sense of 'should' if you go on saying 'why should I?' when you've finished the argument about what is rational to do, what you've got reason to do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Interview with Philippa Foot [2003], P.34) | |
| A reaction: Some people reify the concept of duty, so that they do what is required without caring about the reason. I suppose that would wither if they were shown that no reason exists. |
| 22381 | Being a good father seems to depend on intentions, rather than actual abilities [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Being a good father, or daughter, or friend seems to depend on one's intentions, rather than on such things as cleverness and strength. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.138) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. In wartime a good father might need to be actually brave, and in times of hardship be actually economically successful. 'He meant well, but he was a hopeless father'? |
| 22379 | The meaning of 'good' and other evaluations must include the object to which they attach [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is no describing the evaluative meaning of 'good', evaluation, commending, or anything of the sort, without fixing the object to which they are supposed to be attached. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Beliefs [1959], p.112) | |
| A reaction: I go further, and say that a specification of the feature(s) of the object that produce the value must also be available (if requested). 'That's a good car, but I've no idea why' makes no sense. 'Apparently that's a good car', if other people know why. |
| 22458 | Consequentialists can hurt the innocent in order to prevent further wickedness [Foot] |
| Full Idea: For consequentialists there will be nothing that it will not be right to do to a perfectly innocent individual, if that is the only way of preventing another agent from doing more things of the same kind. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.61) | |
| A reaction: This is her generalised version that Williams dramatised as Jim and the Indians. Roughly, if you achieve a good outcome, it matters little how it is achieved. Foot sees consequentialism as the main problem with utilitarianism. |
| 22460 | Why might we think that a state of affairs can be morally good or bad? [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We should ask why we think that it makes sense to talk about morally good and bad states of affairs. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.68) | |
| A reaction: This is the key question in her attack on consequentialism. There is nothing 'morally' good about my football team winning a great victory. |
| 22461 | Good outcomes are not external guides to morality, but a part of virtuous actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It is not that maximum welfare or 'the best outcome' stands outside morality as it foundation and arbiter, but rather that it appears within morality as the end of one of the virtues. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.73) | |
| A reaction: She cites justice and benevolence as aiming at different (and even conflicting) outcomes. I'm not sure about her distinction between 'outside' and 'within' morality. I suppose a virtuously created end is a moral end, unlike mere good states of affairs. |
| 22464 | The idea of a good state of affairs has no role in the thought of Aristotle, Rawls or Scanlon [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the goodness of total states of affairs played no part in Aristotle's moral philosophy, and in modern times plays not part either in Rawls's account of justice or in the theories of more thoroughgoing contractualists such as Scanlon. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.76) | |
| A reaction: We can add Kant to that. But if the supremely good state of affairs were permanently achieved, would that make morality irrelevant? A community of the exceptionally virtuous would not need the veil of ignorance, or contracts. |
| 22497 | Deep happiness usually comes from the basic things in life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Possible objects of deep happiness seem to be things that are basic in human life, such as home, and family, and work, and friendship. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: I've not encountered discussion of 'deep' happiness before. I heard of an old man in tears because he had just seen a Purple Emperor butterfly for the first time. She makes it sound very conservative. How about mountaineering achievements? |
| 22498 | Happiness is enjoying the pursuit and attainment of right ends [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In my terminology 'happiness' is understood as the enjoyment of good things, meaning the enjoyment in attaining, and in pursuing, right ends. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: A modified version of Aristotle's view, which she contrasts with McDowell's identification of happiness with the life of virtue. They all seem to have an optimistic hope that the pleasure in being a bit wicked is false happiness. |
| 23695 | Good actions can never be justified by the good they brings to their agent [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is no good case for assessing the goodness of human action by reference only to good that each person brings to himself. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: She observes that even non-human animals often act for non-selfish reasons. The significance of this is its rejection of her much earlier view that virtues are justified by the good they bring their possessor. |
| 22470 | A good moral system benefits its participants, and so demands reciprocity [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that one criterion for a good moral system is that it should be possible to demand reciprocity from every individual because of the good the system renders to him. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.104) | |
| A reaction: Money seems to have this feature, that we mostly conform to the rules for its use, because we value the whole system. Foot accepts this, but says there are also other criteria, such as leaving freedom to live well (ie. not too puritanical). |
| 22499 | We all know that just pretending to be someone's friend is not the good life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We know perfectly well that it is not true that the best life would consist in successfully pretending friendship: having friends to serve one but without being a real friend oneself. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: For some skallywags the achieving of something for nothing seems to be very much the good life, but not many of them want to exploit people who are seen to be their friends. |
| 22402 | Most people think virtues can be displayed in bad actions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Hardly anyone sees any difficulty in the thought that virtues may sometimes be displayed in bad actions. The courage of the villain can be spoken of as quite unproblematic. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], III) | |
| A reaction: She cites Peter Geach as a sole opponent of this view. The courage of the entire German army in WWII seems to fall into this category. The boldness of villains has to impress the virtuous but timid. |
| 23145 | Virtues are intended to correct design flaws in human beings [Foot, by Driver] |
| Full Idea: A popular view (expressed by Philippa Foot) is that the virtues work to 'correct' for the baser human impulses and motives. …Virtues are solutions to design flaws in human beings. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978]) by Julia Driver - The Virtues and Human Nature 1 | |
| A reaction: Quite a plausible thought. Not so much design flaws, though, as natural traits of character that suited hunter gatherers but not modern cosmopolitan capitalists. Driver disagrees. |
| 22401 | Actions can be in accordance with virtue, but without actually being virtuous [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Some actions are in accordance with virtue without requiring virtue for their performance, whereas others are both in accordance with virtue and such as to show possession of a virtue. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], p.13) | |
| A reaction: She cites the case of an honest trader, who is honest because of self-interest. She is disentangling Kant from his daft idea that only dutiful (and reluctant) actions are virtuous. Kant was only thinking of 'in accordance' cases. |
| 22398 | Virtues are corrective, to resist temptation or strengthen motivation [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The virtues are corrective, each one standing at a point at which there is some temptation to be resisted or deficiency of motivation to be made good. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], II) | |
| A reaction: A beautifully simple and accurate observation, which I don't remember meeting in Aristotle (...though she cites him as saying that virtues concern what is difficult for us). Justice and charity are given as examples of inadequate motivation. |
| 22478 | The essential thing is the 'needs' of plants and animals, and their operative parts [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The key notion is the concept of need, …as when we say what a plant or animal of a certain species needs to have, …and what its operative features, such roots, leaves, hearts and lungs, need to do. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.164) | |
| A reaction: Good. That takes it away from the idea of a function, which could be possessed by an inanimate machine (even though that still entails success and failure). Strictly, we need oxygen, but the goodness resides in the lungs. |
| 23692 | Good and bad are a matter of actions, not of internal dispositions [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers insist that dispositions, motives and other 'internal' elements are the primary determinants of moral goodness and badness. I have never been a 'virtue ethicist' is this sense. For me it is what is done that stands in this position. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Goodness [2004], p.2), quoted by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought 4 'Virtue' | |
| A reaction: [She mentions Hursthouse, Slote, Swanton] I'm quite struck by this. Aristotle insists that morality concerns actions. It doesn't seem that a person could be a saint by having wonderful dispositions, but doing nothing. Paraplegics? |
| 22468 | Virtues can have aims, but good states of affairs are not among them [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Some virtues do give us aims, but nothing from within morality suggests the kind of good state of affairs which it would seem always to be our duty to promote. And why indeed should there be any such thing? | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.101) | |
| A reaction: Isn't successful human functioning, such as heath, always to be desired? If honour is a worthy aim, doesn't that make being rightly honoured a desirable state of affairs? She is attacking consequentialism, but I'm not convinced here. |
| 22495 | Someone is a good person because of their rational will, not their body or memory [Foot] |
| Full Idea: To speak of a good person is to speak of an individual not in respect of his body, or of faculties such as sight and memory, but as concerns his rational will (his 'will as controllable by reason'). | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: She more or less agrees with Kant that the only truly good moral thing is a good will, though she has plenty of other criticisms of his views. |
| 22373 | People can act out of vanity without being vain, or even vain about this kind of thing [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It makes sense to say that a man acts out of vanity on a particular occasion although he is not in general vain, or even vain about this kind of thing. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Free Will as Involving Determinism [1957], p.69) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle tells us that virtues and vices are habits, and also have an intellectual component, implying that the person believes in that sort of behaviour. Anyone can have 'a little moment of vanity'. |
| 22456 | Maybe virtues conflict with each other, if some virtue needs a vice for its achievement [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Maybe so far from forming a unity ...., the virtues actually conflict with each other: that is, if someone has one of them he inevitably fails to have some other. ...Maybe he a man can only be good in one way be being bad in another. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Moral Realism and Moral Dilemma [1983], p.57) | |
| A reaction: She suggests the self-loathing needed to rein in evil desires. She cites Nietzsche having a similar thought. Presumably the ideal virtuous person has no such conflicts, and the self-loathing undermines eudaimonia. Unity in theory but not in practice? |
| 22469 | Some virtues imply rules, and others concern attachment [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Virtues such as justice consist mainly in adherence to rules of conduct, while those such as benevolence we might call virtues of attachment. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality, Action, and Outcome [1985], p.101) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about 'attachment'. We should be benevolent towards people to whom we are not particularly attached. Courage doesn't fall into either group. |
| 22403 | Temperance is not a virtue if it results from timidity or excessive puritanism [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In some people temperance is not a virtue, but is rather connected with timidity or with a grudging attitude to the acceptance of good things. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], III) | |
| A reaction: Timidity seems right. The grudging attitude may result from some larger doubts about pleasure, which could be plausible. |
| 22472 | The practice of justice may well need a recognition of human equality [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I wonder whether the practice of justice may not absolutely require a certain recognition of equality between human beings, not a pretence of the equality of talents, but something deeper. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Nietzsche's Immoralism [1991], p.152) | |
| A reaction: {My 'something deeper' is expressed by Foot in a quotation from Gertrude Stein]. This may well be the most fundamental division which runs across a society - between those who accept and those reject human equality. |
| 22479 | Observing justice is necessary to humans, like hunting to wolves or dancing to bees [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The teaching and observing of the rules of justice is as necessary a part of the life of human beings as hunting together in packs with a leader is a necessary part of the lives of wolves, or dancing part of the life of the dancing bee. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Rationality and Virtue [1994], p.168) | |
| A reaction: So why are some men unjust? All wolves hunt, and all appropriate bees dance. A few men even thrive on injustice. |
| 22400 | Courage overcomes the fears which should be overcome, and doesn't overvalue personal safety [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The fears that count against a man's courage are those that we think he should overcome, and among them, in a special class, those that reflect the fact that he values his safety too much. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Virtues and Vices [1978], II) | |
| A reaction: I think that sentence tells us more accurately what courage is than anything in Aristotle's discussion. Ask yourself which of your fears really ought to be overcome, and particularly beware of over-valuing your own safety. But stay safe if you can! |
| 22391 | Saying we 'ought to be moral' makes no sense, unless it relates to some other system [Foot] |
| Full Idea: 'One ought to be moral' makes no sense at all unless the 'ought' has the moral subscript, giving a tautology, or else relates morality to some other system such as prudence or etiquette. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.169 n18) | |
| A reaction: This aims to undercut the Kantian view that morality is an absolute call to duty (filling us with wonder, like the starry heavens). Foot aims to root morality in the real world. |
| 22389 | Morality no more consists of categorical imperatives than etiquette does [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements have no better claim to be categorical imperatives than do statements about matters of etiquette. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality as system of hypothetical imperatives [1972], p.164) | |
| A reaction: Her claim is that all moral judgements are responses to situations, and so are hypothetical. This judgement of hers is the culmination of a careful discussion. |
| 22395 | Moral judgements are hypothetical, because they depend on interests and desires [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements are hypothetical imperatives in the sense that they give reasons for acting only in conjunction with interests and desires. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Reply to Professor Frankena [1975], p.177) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendid claim, which points to a more sensibly naturalistic ethics. There seem to be occasions for moral behaviour where I have no interests or desires, such as when a stranger asks me for a favour and I'm feeling tired. |
| 22448 | We sometimes just use the word 'should' to impose a rule of conduct on someone [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It would be more honest to recognise that the 'should' of moral judgement is sometimes merely an instrument by which we (for our own very good reasons) try to impose a rule of conduct even on the uncaring man? | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.18) | |
| A reaction: This is a good example, I think, of the ordinary language tradition that Foot grew up in. We load a word like 'should' with a mystical power, but the situations in which it is actually used bring us back down to earth. |
| 22463 | Morality is seen as tacit legislation by the community [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Morality is thought of as a kind of tacit legislation by the community. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.75) | |
| A reaction: Foot presents this as a utilitarian doctrine, because the tacit legislation is felt to produce the best outcomes. This is Nietzsche's good and evil, beyond which he wished to go (presumably following other values). |
| 22459 | For consequentialism, it is irrational to follow a rule which in this instance ends badly [Foot] |
| Full Idea: It would be irrational to obey even the most useful rule if in a particular instance we clearly see that such obedience will not have the best results. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Utilitarianism and the Virtues [1985], p.62) | |
| A reaction: This is the simple reason why attempts at rule utilitarianism always lead back to act utilitarianism. Another way of putting it is that a good rule can only be assessed by the outcomes of individual acts that follow it. |
| 22502 | Refraining from murder is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If a stranger should come on us when we are sleeping he will not think it all right to kill us. …In human life as it is, this kind of action is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment in the one who does it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: A rare swipe from Foot at existentialism, which she hardly ever mentions. I find it hard to see these existential virtues as in any way moral. It means nothing to other citizens whether one of their number is 'authentic'. |
| 4693 | The right of non-interference (with a 'negative duty'), and the right to goods/services ('positive') [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There are rights to non-interference (and their corresponding "negative duties"), and the rights to goods and services (with corresponding "positive duties"). Interference usually needs more justification than withholding goods. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Killing and Letting Die [1985], p.82) | |
| A reaction: This invites the question of which is the stronger, and whether paternalism can overrule non-interference, or an expectation of self-sufficiency overrule the positive rights. |
| 22383 | Abortion is puzzling because we do and don't want the unborn child to have rights [Foot] |
| Full Idea: One reason why most of us feel puzzled about the problem of abortion is that we want, and do not want, to allow to the unborn child the rights that belong to adults and children. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Abortion and the Doctrine of Double Effect [1967], p.19) | |
| A reaction: We also do and don't want children to have the same rights as adults. Rights should accrue with development and maturity, it seems. No one thinks sperm and egg have rights. Why stop at 'adult'? Superior adults deserve more rights! |
| 22446 | In the case of something lacking independence, calling it a human being is a matter of choice [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In the problem of abortion there is a genuine choice as to whether or not to count as a human being, with the rights of a human being, what would become a human being but is not yet capable of independent life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Morality and Art [1972], p.7) | |
| A reaction: There must be some basis for the choice. We can't call a dead person a human being. Choosing to call a tiny zygote a human being seems very implausible. Pre-viability strikes me as implausible. |
| 22380 | Some words, such as 'knife', have a meaning which involves its function [Foot] |
| Full Idea: The word 'knife' names an object in respect of its function. That is not to say (simply) that it names an object which has a function, but also that the function is involved in the meaning of the word. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Goodness and Choice [1961], p.134) | |
| A reaction: It seems faintly possible that someone (a child, perhaps) could know the word and recognise the object, but not know what the object is for. Ditto with other things which have functional names. |
| 5472 | Natural kinds are of objects/substances, or events/processes, or intrinsic natures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds appear to be of objects or substances, or of events or processes, or of the intrinsic nature of things; hence there should be laws of nature specific to each of these categories. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: It is nice to see someone actually discussing what sort of natural kinds there are, instead of getting bogged down in how natural kinds terms get their meaning or reference. Ellis recognises that 'intrinsic nature' needs some discussion. |
| 6613 | The natural kinds are objects, processes and properties/relations [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are three hierarchies of natural kinds: objects or substances (substantive universals), events or processes (dynamic universals), and properties or relations (tropic universals). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Most interesting here is the identifying of natural kinds with universals, making universals into the families of nature. Universals are high-level sets of natural kinds. To grasp universals you must see patterns, and infer the underlying order. |
| 12681 | There are natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I am tempted by the view that processes are the most basic feature of reality, since I think of the mind as a process, and quantum reality seems more like processes than like objects. |
| 13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are reasons to believe that there are natural kinds that might never be instantiated, such as a transuranic element, capable of existing for some fraction of a second, but which has never actually existed anywhere. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.05) | |
| A reaction: He cautiously claims that kinds are ontologically prior to their individual members. I would say that there is no natural kind of the type that he describes. He says you have at least some grounds for predicting what kinds are possible. |
| 13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are distinguished from other sorts of things by their associations with essential properties and real essences. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this. I rest my notion of natural kind on the elementary realising that to know all about this kind you only have to examine one sample of it, as in the Upanishads. The source of such a phenomenon is an open question. |
| 5471 | Essentialism says natural kinds are fundamental to nature, and determine the laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: According to essentialists, the world is wholly structured at the most fundamental level into natural kinds, and the laws of nature are all determined by those kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I am a fan of this view, despite being cautious about claims that natural kinds have necessary identity. Why are the essences active? That is the old Greek puzzle about the origin of movement. And why are natural kinds stable? |
| 12680 | Natural kind structures go right down to the bottom level [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kind structures go all the way down to the most basic levels of existence. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Even the bottom level? Is there anything to explain why the bottom level is a kind, given that all the higher kinds presumably have an explanation? |
| 5446 | For essentialists two members of a natural kind must be identical [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Modern essentialists would insist that any two members of the same natural kind must be identical in all essential respects. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For this reason, animals no longer qualify as natural kinds, but electrons, gold atoms, and water molecules do. My sticking point is when anyone asserts that an electron necessarily has (say) its mass. Why no close counterpart of electrons? |
| 5480 | The whole of our world is a natural kind, so all worlds like it necessarily have the same laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible to suppose that the world is an instance of a natural kind, ..and what is naturally necessary in our world is what must be true in any world of the same natural kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This is putting an awful lot of metaphysical weight on the concept of a 'natural kind', so it had better be a secure one. If we accept that natural laws necessarily follow from essences, why shouldn't the whole of our world have an essence, as water does? |
| 13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any borderline cases between the real essences of different natural kinds because, if there were, the distinctions between the kinds would be superficial, like the blue/green distinction. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.05) | |
| A reaction: His particular target here is biological natural kinds, in which he doesn't believe, because they blur across time, in the evolutionary process. Personally I am inclined to relax the notion of a natural kind, otherwise they are too basic to explain. |
| 5445 | Essentialists regard inanimate objects as genuine causal agents [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist suppose that the inanimate objects of nature are genuine causal agents: things capable of acting or interacting. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I have no idea how one might demonstrate such a fact, even though it seems to stare us in the face. This is where science bumps into philosophy. I find myself intuitively taking the essentialist side quite strongly. |
| 5463 | Essentialists believe causation is necessary, resulting from dispositions and circumstances [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists believe elementary causal relations involve necessary connections between events, namely between the displays of dispositional properties and the circumstances that give rise to them. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I like essentialism, but I feel a Humean caution about talk of 'natural necessity'. Let's just say that causation seems to be entirely the result of the nature of how things are. How things could be is a large topic for little mites like us. |
| 5491 | A general theory of causation is only possible in an area if natural kinds are involved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A general theory of causation in an area is possible only if the kinds of entities under investigation can reasonably be assumed to belong to natural kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Human beings will be a problem, and also different levels of natural kinds (e.g. a chemical and an organism). 'Natural kind' is a very loose concept. He is referring to scientific, rather than philosophical, theories, I presume. |
| 5442 | For 'passivists' behaviour is imposed on things from outside [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A 'passivist' believes that the tendencies of things to behave as they do can never be inherent in the things themselves; they must always be imposed on them from the outside. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the medieval view, inherited by Newton and Hume, which makes miracles a possibility, and makes the laws of nature contingent. Essentialism disagree. I think I am with the essentialists. |
| 5473 | The laws of nature imitate the hierarchy of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If the natural kinds are divided into hierarchical categories, then essentialists would expect the laws of nature also to divide up into these categories, with the same hierarchy. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a real step forwards in our understanding of nature, and hence a nice example of the contribution which philosophy can make, instead of just physics. |
| 5474 | Laws of nature tend to describe ideal things, or ideal circumstances [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most of the propositions we think of as being (or as expressing) genuine laws of nature seem to describe only the behaviour of ideal kinds of things, or of things in ideal circumstances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Ellis this suggests that this phenomenon is because science aims at broad understanding instead of strict prediction. Do we simplify because we are a bit dim? Or is it because generalisation wouldn't exist without idealisation and abstraction? |
| 5475 | We must explain the necessity, idealisation, ontology and structure of natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are four major problems about the laws of nature: a necessity problem (must they be true?), an idealisation problem (why is this preferable?), an ontological problem (their grounds), and a structural problem (their relationships). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: One might also ask why the laws (or their underlying essences) are the way they are, and not some other way, though the prospects of answering that don't look good. I don't think we should be satisfied with saying all of these questions are hopeless. |
| 13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Laws are not things that exist in the world; they are things that are true of the world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm happy with this formulation. The one to get rid of is the idea of laws which could precede creation of the universe, and survive its demise. That might be possible, but we have absolutely no grounds for the claim. Humeans ought to agree. |
| 6616 | Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005]) | |
| A reaction: As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects. |
| 12675 | Laws of nature are just descriptions of how things are disposed to behave [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature must be supposed to be just descriptions of the ways in which things are intrinsically disposed to behave: of how they would behave if they existed as closed and isolated systems. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and therefore take 'laws of nature' to be eliminable from any plausible ontology (which just contains the things and their behaviour). Ellis tends to defend laws, when he doesn't need to. |
| 5460 | Causal relations cannot be reduced to regularities, as they could occur just once [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal relations cannot be reduced to mere regularities, as Hume supposed, as they could exist as a singular case, even if it never happened on more than one occasions. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key reason for modern views moving away from Hume. The suspicion is that regularity is a test for or symptom of causation, but we are deeply committed to the real nature of causation being whatever creates the regularities. |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I assume it is metaphysically impossible for a proton to have a different causal role, ...which is plausible because a proton would appear to have no identity at all apart from its role in causal processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key idea in scientific essentialism, which links essentialism of identity with essentialism in the laws of nature. Could a proton become not-quite-a-proton? |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: What is most distinctive of the scientific version of essentialism is that scientific essentialists are realists about natural kinds of processes, as well as natural kinds of objects and substances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether other scientific essentialists would agree with this, but I am happy to go along with it. A process like melting or sublimation seems to be a standard widespread phenomenon which is always intrinsically the same, as kinds must be. |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism is less concerned with questions of identity, and more with questions of explanation, than is the essentialism of Aristotle or of Kripke. It is closest to the kind of essentialism described by Locke. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Locke is popularly held to be anti-essentialist, but that is only because of his epistemological problems. I think Ellis is here misreading Aristotle, and I would ally Aristotle, Locke (cautiously), Leibniz, Ellis and Fine against Kripkeans on this one. |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We do not claim, as some do, that fundamental dispositional properties are the ontological basis of all properties. On the contrary, there are equally fundamental categorical properties - for example, spatio-temporal relations and structures. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: The source of disagreement between Bird and Ellis. Bird denies the existence of 'categorical properties'. I think I am with Bird. Space and time are as much part of the given as the elements, and then categorical properties result from dispositions. |
| 5459 | Essentialists say dispositions are basic, rather than supervenient on matter and natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists say that dispositional properties may be fundamental, whereas for a passivist such qualities are not primary, but supervene on the primary qualities of matter, and on the laws of nature. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am strongly in favour of this view of nature. Without essentialism, we have laws of nature arising out of a total void (or God), and arbitrarily imposing themselves on matter. What are the 'primary qualities of matter', if not dispositions? |
| 5461 | The essence of uranium is its atomic number and its electron shell [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The essential properties of uranium are its atomic number, and the common electron shell structure for all uranium atoms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: For those who deny essences (e.g. Quineans) this is a nice challenge. You might have to add accounts of the essences of the various particles that make up the atoms. There is nothing arbitrary or conventional about what makes something uranium. |
| 6615 | A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action. |
| 13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: I like this. It breaks down into the study of modal profiles, and it can work for abstracta as well as for the physical world. It even covers the study of character, and you could say that it is the subject matter of Jane Austen. |
| 5464 | For essentialists, laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, being based on essences of natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist believe the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, because anything that belongs to a natural kind is logically required (or is necessarily disposed) to behave as its essential properties dictate. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: What a thrillingly large claim. Best approached with caution.. If we say 'essences make laws, and essences are necessary', we might wonder whether a natural kind essence could be SLIGHTLY different (a counterpart) in another world. |
| 6614 | A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91) | |
| A reaction: I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out. |
| 5487 | Essentialism requires a clear separation of semantics, epistemology and ontology [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism requires that philosophers distinguish clearly between semantic issues, epistemological issues, and ontological issues. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears - but then I think everyone should require that of philosophers, because it where they get themselves most confused. The trouble is that ontology is only obtainable epistemologically, and only expressible semantically. |
| 6612 | Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90) | |
| A reaction: Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences. |
| 12671 | I deny forces as entities that intervene in causation, but are not themselves causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The classical conception of force is an entity that intervenes between a physical cause and its effect, but is not itself a physical cause. I see no reason to believe in forces of this kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: The difference of view between Leibniz and Newton is very illuminating on this one (coming this way soon!). Can you either have forces and drop causation, or have causation and drop forces? |
| 12674 | Energy is the key multi-valued property, vital to scientific realism [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the most important of all multi-valued properties is energy itself. I think a scientific realist must believe that energy exists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: It's odd that the existence of the most basic thing in physics needs a credo from a certain sort of believer. I have been bothered by notion of 'energy' for fifty years, and am still none the wiser. I'm sure I could be scientific realist without it. |
| 12689 | Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Cosmologists have a concept of objective simultaneity, which they take to mean something like 'temporally equidistant from the Big Bang'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I find this very appealing, when faced with all the relativity theory that tells me there is no such thing as global simultaneity, a claim which I find deeply counterintuitive, but seems to have the science on its side. Bravo. |
| 12690 | The present is the collapse of the light wavefront from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The global wavefront that collapses when a light signal from the Big Bang is observed is what most plausibly defines the frontier between past and future. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but it is clearly worth passing on. Of all the deep mysteries, the 'present' time may be the deepest. |