81 ideas
| 6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Not only is traditional philosophy incapable of discovering the foundations it seeks, but the philosophical enterprise may itself dislodge the contingent, de facto supports that our daily life depends upon. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: In the end Fogelin is not so pessimistic, but he is worried by the concern of philosophers with paradox and contradiction. I don't remotely consider this a reason to reject philosophy, but it might be a reason to keep it sealed off from daily life. |
| 6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three main threats to our rational lives are fear of inconsistency, illusions (of absolutism and relativism) and doubt. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice analysis of the forces that can destroy the philosopher's aspiration to the rational life. Personally I still suffer from a few illusions about the possibility of absolutes, but I may grow out of it. The other three don't bother me. |
| 6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: It might be wholly unreasonable to suppose that human beings will ever be able to attain a view of the world that is both suitably rich and completely consistent. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin's lectures develop this view very persuasively. I think all philosophers must believe that the gods could attain a 'rich and consistent' view. Our problem is that we are a badly organised team, whose members keep dying. |
| 6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The presence of an inconsistency in the rules that govern a game need not destroy the game. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: He only defends this thesis if the inconsistency is away from the main centre of the action. You can't have an inconsistent definition of scoring a goal or a touchdown. |
| 6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Traditionally many philosophers (Aristotle among them) have considered the law of noncontradiction to be the deepest, most fundamental principle of rationality. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For Aristotle, see Idea 1601 (and 'Metaphysics' 1005b28). The only denier of the basic character of the law that I know of is Nietzsche (Idea 4531). Fogelin, despite many qualifications, endorses the law, and so do I. |
| 6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: People who reject the law of noncontradiction obliterate any significant difference between asserting something and denying it; …this will not move anyone who genuinely opts either for silence or for madness. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a sufficiently firm and clear assertion of the basic nature of this law. The only rival view seems to be that of Nietzsche (Idea 4531), but then you wonder how Nietzsche is in a position to assert the relativity of the law. |
| 6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: There is almost universal agreement that legal reasoning is fundamentally analogical, not deductive, in character. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This raises the question of whether analogy can be considered as 'reasoning' in itself. How do you compare the examples? Could you compare two examples if you lacked language, or rules, or a scale of values? |
| 12223 | It is a fallacy to explain the obscure with the even more obscure [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'ad obscurum per obscurius' is to explain the obscure by appeal to what is more obscure. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §3) | |
| A reaction: Not strictly a fallacy, so much as an example of inadequate explanation, along with circularity and infinite regresses. |
| 23000 | Vicious regresses force you to another level; non-vicious imply another level [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: A regress is vicious if the problem at level n can only be solved at level n+1; it is non-vicious if it can be solved at n, but the solution forces another level n+1, where the problem can be reformulated. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 2.3.2) | |
| A reaction: So in a vicious regress you chase the apparent solution, but never attain it. In the non-vicious you solve it, but then find you have a new problem. I think. |
| 12230 | Singular terms refer if they make certain atomic statements true [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Anyone should agree that a justification for regarding a singular term as having objectual reference is provided just as soon as one has justification for regarding as true certain atomic statements in which it functions as a singular term. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: The meat of this idea is hidden in the word 'certain'. See Idea 10314 for Hale's explanation. Without that, the proposal strikes me as absurd. |
| 10631 | If 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, then 'heterological' is heterological if it isn't heterological [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: If we stipulate that 'x is heterological' iff it does not apply to itself, we speedily arrive at the contradiction that 'heterological' is itself heterological just in case it is not. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) |
| 23024 | A traveller takes a copy of a picture into the past, gives it the artist, who then creates the original! [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Suppose an art critic travels back in time with a copy of an artist's masterpiece, gives the artist the copy, and the artist copies it. The copy of the copy turns out to be the original mastepiece. The artwork seems to come from nowhere. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 8.6) | |
| A reaction: Lovely thought. Is the example possible (even with time travel)? How would the critic possess the copy before making the time journey? What if the critic decided not to travel back in time? Can a picture exist if no one has imagined it first? |
| 10624 | The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals that logic also cannot be completely characterized [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The incompletability of formal arithmetic reveals, not arithmetical truths which are not truths of logic, but that logical truth likewise defies complete deductive characterization. ...Gödel's result has no specific bearing on the logicist project. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §2 n5) | |
| A reaction: This is the key defence against the claim that Gödel's First Theorem demolished logicism. |
| 8784 | Neo-logicism founds arithmetic on Hume's Principle along with second-order logic [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The result of joining Hume's Principle to second-order logic is a consistent system which is a foundation for arithmetic, in the sense that all the fundamental laws of arithmetic are derivable within it as theorems. This seems a vindication of logicism. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: The controversial part seems to be second-order logic, which Quine (for example) vigorously challenged. The contention against most attempts to improve Frege's logicism is that they thereby cease to be properly logical. |
| 8787 | The Julius Caesar problem asks for a criterion for the concept of a 'number' [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The Julius Caesar problem is the problem of supplying a criterion of application for 'number', and thereby setting it up as the concept of a genuine sort of object. (Why is Julius Caesar not a number?) | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 3) | |
| A reaction: One response would be to deny that numbers are objects. Another would be to derive numbers from their application in counting objects, rather than the other way round. I suspect that the problem only real bothers platonists. Serves them right. |
| 10629 | If structures are relative, this undermines truth-value and objectivity [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The relativization of ontology to theory in structuralism can't avoid carrying with it a relativization of truth-value, which would compromise the objectivity which structuralists wish to claim for mathematics. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: This is the attraction of structures which grow out of the physical world, where truth-value is presumably not in dispute. |
| 10628 | The structural view of numbers doesn't fit their usage outside arithmetical contexts [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear how the view that natural numbers are purely intra-structural 'objects' can be squared with the widespread use of numerals outside purely arithmetical contexts. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2 n26) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand this objection. If they refer to quantity, they are implicitly cardinal. If they name things in a sequence they are implicitly ordinal. All users of numbers have a grasp of the basic structure. |
| 8788 | Logicism is only noteworthy if logic has a privileged position in our ontology and epistemology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is only if logic is metaphysically and epistemologically privileged that a reduction of mathematical theories to logical ones can be philosophically any more noteworthy than a reduction of any mathematical theory to any other. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 8) | |
| A reaction: It would be hard to demonstrate this privileged position, though intuitively there is nothing more basic in human rationality. That may be a fact about us, but it doesn't make logic basic to nature, which is where proper reduction should be heading. |
| 10622 | The neo-Fregean is more optimistic than Frege about contextual definitions of numbers [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The neo-Fregean takes a more optimistic view than Frege of the prospects for the kind of contextual explanation of the fundamental concepts of arithmetic and analysis (cardinals and reals), which he rejected in 'Grundlagen' 60-68. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], §1) |
| 8783 | Logicism might also be revived with a quantificational approach, or an abstraction-free approach [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Two modern approaches to logicism are the quantificational approach of David Bostock, and the abstraction-free approach of Neil Tennant. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1 n2) | |
| A reaction: Hale and Wright mention these as alternatives to their own view. I merely catalogue them for further examination. My immediate reaction is that Bostock sounds hopeless and Tennant sounds interesting. |
| 12225 | Neo-Fregeanism might be better with truth-makers, rather than quantifier commitment [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: A third way has been offered to 'make sense' of neo-Fregeanism: we should reject Quine's well-known criterion of ontological commitment in favour of one based on 'truth-maker theory'. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4 n19) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Ross Cameron for this] They reject this proposal, on the grounds that truth-maker theory is not sufficient to fix the grounding truth-conditions of statements. |
| 12224 | Are neo-Fregeans 'maximalists' - that everything which can exist does exist? [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It is claimed that neo-Fregeans are committed to 'maximalism' - that whatever can exist does. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Eklund] They observe that maximalism denies contingent non-existence (of the £20 note I haven't got). There seems to be the related problem of 'hyperinflation', that if abstract objects are generated logically, the process is unstoppable. |
| 23008 | Grounding is intended as a relation that fits dependences between things [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Grounding is a posit introduced by metaphysicians in an attempt to devise a relation that can accommodate dependence between things in the world. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Grounding is a recent concept which seems to have lots of enemies, but I assume you can only reject it if you reject the concept of dependence - yet that seems a fairly obvious fact to me. My favoured metaphysical relation is 'determination'. |
| 12226 | The identity of Pegasus with Pegasus may be true, despite the non-existence [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Identity is sometimes read so that 'Pegasus is Pegasus' expresses a truth, the non-existence of any winged horse notwithstanding. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: This would give you ontological commitment to truth, without commitment to existence. It undercuts the use of identity statements as the basis of existence claims, which was Frege's strategy. |
| 12229 | Maybe we have abundant properties for semantics, and sparse properties for ontology [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There is a compatibilist view which says that it is for the abundant properties to play the role of 'bedeutungen' in semantic theory, and the sparse ones to address certain metaphysical concerns. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher could live with the word 'property' having utterly different extensions in different areas of discourse. They similarly bifurcate words like 'object' and 'exist'. Call properties 'quasi-properties' and I might join in. |
| 18443 | A successful predicate guarantees the existence of a property - the way of being it expresses [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The good standing of a predicate is already trivially sufficient to ensure the existence of an associated property, a (perhaps complex) way of being which the predicate serves to express. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: 'Way of being' is interesting. Is 'being near Trafalgar Sq' a way of being? I take properties to be 'features', which seems to give a clearer way of demarcating them. They say they are talking about 'abundant' (rather than 'sparse') properties. |
| 10626 | Objects just are what singular terms refer to [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Objects, as distinct from entities of other types (properties, relations or, more generally, functions of different types and levels), just are what (actual or possible) singular terms refer to. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: I find this view very bizarre and hard to cope with. It seems either to preposterously accept the implications of the way we speak into our ontology ('sakes'?), or preposterously bend the word 'object' away from its normal meaning. |
| 23018 | How does a changing object retain identity or have incompatible properties over time? [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The problems of temporary intrinsics are reconciling the indiscernibility of identicals with change in an object over time, and the problem of something have incompatible properties over time (such as tired and not-tired). | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 7.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Loosely speaking, I would offer some sort of essentialism as the answer to these problems. People are not essentially sitting down, or tired. Or we can relativise properties to times t1 and t2. |
| 6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Convention, to exist at all, must have a basis in something that is not conventional; conventions, to work, need something nonconventional to build upon and shape. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Fogelin attributes his point to Hume. I agree entirely. No convention could ever possibly catch on in a society unless there were some point to it. If you can't see a point to a convention (like wearing ties) then start looking, because it's there. |
| 6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: My own view might be called 'circumspect rationalism' - the view that our intellectual faculties provide our only means for comprehending the world in which we find oruselves. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: He needs to say more than that to offer a theory, but I like the label, and it fits the modern revival of rationalism, with which I sympathise, and which rests, I think, on Russell's point that self-evidence comes in degrees, not as all-or-nothing truth. |
| 6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: In general a knowledge claim is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem here is what is 'relevant'. Fogelin's example is 'Are you sure the suspect doesn't have a twin brother?' If virtual reality is relevant, most knowledge is defeated. Certainly, imaginative people feel that they know less than others. |
| 6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Coherentists argue that if the circle of justifications is big enough, rich enough, coherent enough, and so on, then there is nothing wrong circularity. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: There must always be something wrong with circularity, and no god would put up with it, but we might have to. Of course, two pieces of evidence might be unconnected, such as an equation and an observation. |
| 6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: One rule for the justification of knowledge might be: Do not raise the level of scrutiny in the absence of a particular reason that triggers it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: That won't decide the appropriate level of scrutiny from which to start. One of my maxims is 'don't set the bar too high', but it seems tough that one should have to justify moving it. The early scientists tried raising it, and were amazed by the results. |
| 6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction. |
| 6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Sceptical scenarios deal in wildly remote defeating possibilities, so that the level of scrutiny becomes unrestrictedly high, and they also usually deal with defeators that are in principle ineliminable. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The question of how high we 'set the bar' seems to me central to epistemology. There is clearly an element of social negotiation involved, centring on what is appropriate. If, though, scepticism is 'ineliminable', we must face up to that. |
| 6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We reach radical perspectivism by replacing Kant's single, necessary categorial scheme with a plurality of competing categorial schemes. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It certainly looks as if Kant sent us down a slippery slope into the dafter aspects of twentieth century relativism. The best antidote I know of is Davidson's (e.g. Idea 6398). But then it seems unimaginative to say that only one scheme is possible. |
| 6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: We as human beings are also irrational animals, unique among animals in our capacity to place faith in bizarre fictions of our own construction. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is glaringly true, and a very nice corrective to the talk of Greeks and others about man as the 'rational animal'. From a distance we might be described by Martians as the 'mad animal'. Is the irrational current too strong to swim against? |
| 10630 | Abstracted objects are not mental creations, but depend on equivalence between given entities [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: The new kind of abstract objects are not creations of the human mind. ...The existence of such objects depends upon whether or not the relevant equivalence relation holds among the entities of the presupposed kind. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems odd that we no longer have any choice about what abstract objects we use, and that we can't evade them if the objects exist, and can't have them if the objects don't exist - and presumably destruction of the objects kills the concept? |
| 8786 | One first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: An example of a first-order abstraction principle is Frege's definition of 'direction' in terms of parallel lines; a higher-order example (which refers to first-order predicates) defines 'equinumeral' in terms of one-to-one correlation (Hume's Principle). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Logicism in the 21st Century [2007], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the way modern logicians now treat abstraction, but abstraction principles include the elusive concept of 'equivalence' of entities, which may be no more than that the same adjective ('parallel') can be applied to them. |
| 12227 | Abstractionism needs existential commitment and uniform truth-conditions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstractionism needs a face-value, existentially committed reading of the terms occurring on the left-hand sides together with sameness of truth-conditions across the biconditional. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §5) | |
| A reaction: They employ 'abstractionism' to mean their logical Fregean strategy for defining abstractions, not to mean the older psychological account. Thus the truth-conditions for being 'parallel' and for having the 'same direction' must be consistent. |
| 12228 | Equivalence abstraction refers to objects otherwise beyond our grasp [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: Abstraction principles purport to introduce fundamental means of reference to a range of objects, to which there is accordingly no presumption that we have any prior or independent means of reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §8) | |
| A reaction: There's the rub! They make it sound like a virtue, that we open up yet another heaven of abstract toys to play with. As fictions, they are indeed exciting new fun. As platonic discoveries they strike me as Cloud-Cuckoo Land. |
| 12231 | Reference needs truth as well as sense [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: It takes, over and above the possession of sense, the truth of relevant contexts to ensure reference. | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (The Metaontology of Abstraction [2009], §9) | |
| A reaction: Reference purely through sense was discredited by Kripke. The present idea challenges Kripke's baptismal realist approach. How do you 'baptise' an abstract object? But isn't reference needed prior to the establishment of truth? |
| 10627 | Many conceptual truths ('yellow is extended') are not analytic, as derived from logic and definitions [Hale/Wright] |
| Full Idea: There are many statements which are plausibly viewed as conceptual truths (such as 'what is yellow is extended') which do not qualify as analytic under Frege's definition (as provable using only logical laws and definitions). | |
| From: B Hale / C Wright (Intro to 'The Reason's Proper Study' [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is because the early assumptions of Frege were mathematical and logical, and he was trying to get away from Kant. That yellow is extended is a truth for non-linguistic beings. |
| 6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
| 6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Like the word 'good', the word 'beautiful', when deprived of contextual support, is nearly contentless. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If I say with, for example, Oscar Wilde that beauty is the highest ideal in life, this doesn't strike me as contentless, but I still sympathise with Fogelin's notion that beauty is rooted in particulars. |
| 6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: "It is all a matter of taste" may be an all-purpose stopper of discussions of aesthetic values, but it also completely severs the connection with the actual properties of the object under consideration. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This remark grows out of his discussion of Hume. I like this remark, which ties in with Particularism in morality, and with the central role of experiments in science. The world forces beliefs on us. |
| 6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Cynics are usually unswerving in their commitment to a moral ideal, but disappointed or disgusted by humanity's failure to meet it. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I felt quite suicidal the other day when I saw someone park diagonally across two parking spaces. They can't seem to grasp the elementary Kantian slogan 'What if everybody did that?' It's all hopeless. I wonder if I am becoming a bit of a Cynic? |
| 6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: The purposes of punishment include deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and retribution, but they don't always sit well together. Deterrence is best served by making prisons miserable places, but this may run counter to rehabilitation. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to most educated people that retribution should be pushed far down the list if we are to be civilised (see Idea 1659), and yet personal revenge for a small act of aggression seems basic, normal and acceptable. We dream of rehabilitation. |
| 6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: A strict retributivist is likely to say that once a crime is paid for, that's that; a deterrence theorist is likely to say that the protection of potential victims overrides the released convict's right to a free and fresh start. | |
| From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting since the retributivist here has the more liberal attitude. Reformists will also have a dilemma when years in prison have failed to reform the convict. Virtue theorists like balance, and sensitively consider our relations with the criminals. |
| 23011 | Modern accounts of causation involve either processes or counterfactuals [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The two major contemporary theories of causation are process theories and counterfactual theories. …Process theories treat it as something to be discovered. …Counterfactual theories ignore processes, and treat it in terms of truth and falsity. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: I take the counterfactual theory to be a specialised branch of the project of analytic metaphysics, which seeks the logical form of causation sentences, using possible worlds semantics. In the real word its processes or nothing. |
| 23013 | The main process theory of causation says it is transference of mass, energy, momentum or charge [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: According to contemporary process theories of causation it consists of the transference of a 'mark', which is always some conserved quantity. Candidates (from science) are mass, energy, momentum and electric charge. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 6.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Given my commitment to physicalism, this is my preferred theory of causation. It began with the suggestion of energy-transfer, but has broadened into the present idea. It is an updated version of the Newton view, as the meeting of objects. |
| 23014 | If causes are processes, what is causation by omission? (Distinguish legal from scientific causes?) [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Process theories of causation face a serious problem, such as killing a plant by failing to water it - a cause by omission. …Defenders of the theory propose two concepts of causation: one for legal and one for scientific contexts. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 6.2.3) | |
| A reaction: Not much of a problem, I think. Clearly the scientific concept has priority. The plant died of dehydration, resulting from the consumption and evaporation of the available water. The human causes of that situation are legion. |
| 23015 | The counterfactual theory of causation handles the problem no matter what causes actually are [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The chief advantage of the counterfactual theory of causation is that it is flexible enough to handle causation no matter what in the world underlies the causal facts in question. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: It has this advantage because it makes no attempt to explain causation, but merely gives an accurate map of the truth and falsity of causal statements. It describes how we think about causation. |
| 23016 | Counterfactual theories struggle with pre-emption by a causal back-up system [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Counterfactual theories of causation have difficulty accommodating pre-emption, which involves the existence of causal back-up systems that undermine counterfactual dependence. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: E.g. If your stone hadn't broken the window first, my stone would have broken it instead. So in the nearest world the withholding of your stone doesn't save the window. |
| 23009 | There is no second 'law' of thermodynamics; it just reflects probabilities of certain microstates [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: According to contemporary statistical mechanics the second law of thermodynamics is not really a law at all, but merely reflects to probabilities of certain microstates, conditional on local boundary conditions having certain properties. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.6.1) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of how metaphysicians have been seduced by the 'laws' of nature into falsely inferring all sorts of natural necessities. Entropy is normally assumed to be totally inevitable, because of some natural force. It's just a pattern. |
| 23002 | In relativity space and time depend on one's motion, but spacetime gives an invariant metric [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: While spatial and temporal distances in relativity depend on one's relative state of motion, spatiotemporal distances within Minkowski spacetime do not. It therefore provides an invariant metric for describing the distances between things. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether this solves all the worries which philosophers have, about relativity giving an account of time which contradicts our concept of time in every other area of our understanding. |
| 22988 | The block universe theory says entities of all times exist, and time is the B-series [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The standard block universe theory combines EntityEverywhenism with the B-theory of time. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: This is also known as 'eternalism'. These authors emphasise that there is an ontological commitment to the objects of past and future in eternalism, as well as the B-series view of the moments of time. |
| 22991 | How can we know this is the present moment, if other times are real? [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: According to the spotlight and growing block views, there is a single objectively present moment, and also other objectively existing moments. But then how do persons in those different moments know which one is present? | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [compressed example] This sceptical thought leads either towards Presentism (we know we are present because that's all there is), or Eternalism (there is no present moment, so no problem). A good objection to spotlight and growing block. |
| 22992 | If we are actually in the past then we shouldn't experience time passing [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: If the past really exists, and we are in it, rather than in the present, then we should rationally conclude that we are not experiencing the passage of time. …But then we have no basis for arguing that time is dynamic. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] It is certainly difficult to conceive how past times and entities could be real in every way, except that the experience of time passing has been removed. But if past people experience passing, they must believe they are present… |
| 22994 | Erzatz Presentism allows the existence of other times, with only the present 'actualised' [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The 'erzatz presentism' view is that either the past and present exist, or all times exist, but only the present is 'actualised'. Standard Presentism says no times exist other than the present. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.7.2) | |
| A reaction: Ersatz presentism is obviously a close relative of the moving spotlight and growing block views. No account seems possible of the distinction between 'exists' and 'actualised' (other than the former being a mere abstract concept). |
| 22998 | How do presentists explain relations between things existing at different times? [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: A chief challenge facing presentism is how to give an account of cross-temporal relations, which link things that exist with things that do not. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: The problem of whether to keep a dubious death-bed promise is a bit of a puzzle for all of us, whatever our metaphysical view of time. None of us deny the reality of our great-great-grandparents. |
| 23017 | Presentism needs endurantism, because other theories imply most of the object doesn't exist [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Presentism is more naturally paired with endurantism, since if we pair it with perdurantism or transdurantism we have to say that most of any persisting object does not exist, and while that is not incoherent it is not very attractive. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 7.2.2) | |
| A reaction: (I think perdurance is time slices, and transdurance is the complete time worm). My preferred combination is this one: all that exists is the complete objects at the present moment. It also needs strong commitment to the truth of tensed verbs. |
| 23023 | How can presentists move to the next future moment, if that doesn't exist? [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: If Presentism is true, how do we manage to travel from this moment to the next moment, a moment that is, at present, a future and hence non-existent moment? | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 8.3.1) | |
| A reaction: The reply would have to be that the metaphor of 'travel' is inappropriate for the movement through time. Travel needs a succession of existing places. The advancement of time is nothing like that. Nice question, though. |
| 22995 | Most of the sciences depend on the concept of time [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Without time it is hard to make sense of historical research, evolutionary biology, psychology, chemistry, biology, cosmology, social science, archaeology, practical reason, evidence, human agency and causation. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I do find it extraordinary that relativistic physicists cheerfully embrace an eternalist theory of time which seems to render nearly all of the other sciences meaningless. |
| 22993 | For abstractionists past times might still exist, althought their objects don't [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: If past moments are seen as abstract (rather than concrete) it doesn't follow that because past objects no longer exist that therefore past times do not exist. The abstractionist needs to say which times are concretely realised. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.7.2) | |
| A reaction: Abstractionists see times as representations of change, rather than as substances. |
| 23001 | The error theory of time's passage says it is either a misdescription or a false inference [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: According to the cognitive error theory of the passage of time, …it is either our misdescription of our temporal phenomenology, or some mechanism of our brain infers that the phenomenology is caused by time actually passing. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I think I have some sympathy with the misdescription view. If you imaginatively gradually remove all the changing events in your experience, that doesn't end with a raw experience of pure time, because there is no such thing. |
| 22999 | It is meaningless to measure the rate of time using time itself, and without a rate there is no flow [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: It seems we are forced to measure the rate of time's passing against itself. But that's just not a meaningful rate. So time has no rate. So it doesn't flow. So there is no such thing as temporal passage. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: It is suggested that you can exchange dollars one for one, so time might move at one second per second. But you can't exchange your own dollars with yourself at one-for-one. That is meaningless. Time is NOT a substance which flows. |
| 22986 | The C-series rejects A and B, and just sees times as order by betweenness, without direction [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The C-series sees times not as directed, but as unchanging, and ordered in terms of the betweenness relation. The C-theory also asserts that the A-series and B-series do not exist. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is McTaggart's idea. Compare this with A-series ordering by past, present and future, and B-series ordering by earlier-than, later-than and simultaneous. The main point is that A and B have a direction, but C does not. |
| 22996 | The A-series has to treat being past, present or future as properties [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: One of the limitations of the A-series is that temporal passage then presupposes the existence of properties of being present, being past and being future. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Metaphysicians happily talk about 'properties' all the time, and most of them never grasp how ambiguous and obscure that concept is. The idea that my recent scratching of my chin first acquired the 'present' property and then lost it is incoherent. |
| 23007 | The B-series can have a direction, as long as it does not arise from temporal flow [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The view that time has a direction is entirely consistent with the B-theory of time, as long as time's having a direction is not a matter of it having temporal flow. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how you could account for an intrinsic direction to time if it is not because of the 'flow'. The B-series seems to invite a reductive account of time's direction (e.g. to entropy). |
| 23003 | Static theories cannot account for time's obvious asymmetry, so time must be dynamic [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: One argument for the dynamic theory of time is that time is, obviously, asymmetric, and as static theories can't account for this asymmetry, we ought to posit temporal passage to explain it. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5) | |
| A reaction: The B-series view (unlike the C-series) asserts that there is an order from past to future, but it offers no explanation of that fact. Physicists love to tell you the order could be in either direction, But why an 'order' at all? |
| 23004 | The direction of time is either primitive, or reducible to something else [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Primitivism is the view that time has a direction, and that its having that direction is intrinsic to time itself. Reductionism is the view that time has a direction, but its having that direction is reducible to something else. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.3.1) | |
| A reaction: The general suggestion for the second theory is that time's direction reduces to some aspect of the laws of nature. I strongly incline to the primitive view. Something's got to be primitive. |
| 23005 | The kaon does not seem to be time-reversal invariant, unlike the rest of nature [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature are time-reversal invariant, with the small exception of the kaon (a type of sub-atomic particle) | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.3.2) | |
| A reaction: If that fact about the kaon were very secure indeed, then that would mean the collapse of the claims about the time-invariance of the laws. Since time-invariance is still routinely asserted, I assume it is not secure. |
| 23006 | Maybe the past is just the direction of decreasing entropy [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: We could say that what we call the past is just the direction towards (for instance) decreasing entropy, and the direction we call the future is the direction towards increasing entropy. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: One problem is that locally entropy can sometimes go the other way, which would imply local pockets with a reversed time's arrow,. |
| 23010 | We could explain time's direction by causation: past is the direction of causes, future of effects [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: An option for accounting for the direction of time would be to appeal to the direction of causation …to the future is the direction towards which there are effects, and the past is the direction towards which there are causes. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 5.6.2) | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem is that we can no longer pick out a cause by saying it 'precedes' its effect. It is not obvious what other criterion can be used to distinguish them (esp. given Hume's regularity account). |
| 22989 | Static time theory presents change as one property at t1, and a different property at t2 [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The static theory of time appeals to an 'at-at' notion of change, which analyses change as objects or events having one property at time t1, and a different property at t2. (The worry about this is that it describes variation, but not real change). | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I suppose observing a different property at t2 is observing the result of a change, rather than the process. But then the process might be broken down into micro-gradations of properties. Maybe only results can be observed. |
| 23020 | If a time traveller kills his youthful grandfather, he both exists and fails to exist [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: It is surely true that if a time traveller travels back in time and succeeds in shooting his youthful grandfather then the time traveller both exists and fails to exist. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the best known paradox of time travel. It is a special dramatic case of making any change to the past. If the traveller kills his neighbour's grandfather, his neighbour should vanish. Moving a speck of dust could have enduring results. |
| 23022 | Presentism means there no existing past for a time traveller to visit [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: A time traveller can only travel to a location if the location exists, But if Presentism is true then past locations do not exist, so time travel to the past is impossible. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 8.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Might a time machine actually restore the past time which had ceased to exist? Then the problem is the information needed to achieve that. |
| 22987 | The past (unlike the future) is fixed, along with truths about it, by the existence of past objects [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: It is the existence of past objects that explains why the past is fixed, and why there are truths about the past, and it is the non-existence of future objects that explains why the future is malleable. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: The authors label this view 'EntityNowandThenism', and it comes in a section on the 'Temporal Ontology'. |
| 22990 | The moving spotlight says entities can have properties of being present, past or future [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: The moving spotlight theorist maintains that there are special temporal properties that entities possess, namely the properties of being present, being past and being future. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 1.5.3) | |
| A reaction: Are these thought to be intrinsic properties of the objects, or (more plausibly) relational properties, between objects and times? Either view is weird. Does some godlike part of time scurry along, illuminating things, like a mouse under a carpet? |
| 22997 | The present moment is a matter of existence, not of acquiring a property [Baron/Miller] |
| Full Idea: Rather than treating presentness as an acquired property …. presentism equates the metaphysical specialness of the present with existence. | |
| From: Baron,S/Miller,K (Intro to the Philosophy of Time [2019], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems like common sense to say that the recent scratching of my chin came into existence and then went out of existence (rather than that it acquired and then lost a property). |