11 ideas
| 15970 | People generalise because it is easier to understand, and that is mistaken for deep philosophy [Feynman] |
| Full Idea: The topic of the laws of nature has a tendency to become too philosophical because it becomes too general, and a person talks in such generalities, that everybody can understand him. It is then considered to be some deep philosophy. | |
| From: Richard P. Feynman (The Character of Physical Law [1965], 1) | |
| A reaction: Feynman was famously anti-philosophical, but this is a good challenge. I like philosophy because I want to know broad general truths about my world, but I may just be gravitating towards what is easier. The challenge is to get true generalities. |
| 7301 | The phenomenalist says that to be is to be perceivable [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: Where the idealist says that to be (i.e. to exist) is to be perceived, the phenomenalist says that to be is to be perceivable. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice phenomenalist slogan to add to Mill's well known one (Idea 3583). Expressed in this form, it looks false to me. What about neutrinoes? They weren't at all perceivable until recently. Maybe some physical stuff can never be perceived. |
| 7302 | Linguistic phenomenalism says we can eliminate talk of physical objects [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic phenomenalism argues that it is possible to remove all talk of physical objects from our speech with no loss of meaning. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I find this proposal unappealing. My basic objection is that I cannot understand why anyone would refuse to even contemplate the question of WHY I am having a given group of consistent experiences, of (say) a table kind. |
| 7303 | If we lack enough sense-data, are we to say that parts of reality are 'indeterminate'? [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: The problem with taking sense-data as basic is that some data can appear indeterminate. If we can't discern the colour of someone's eyes, or the number of sides of a complex figure, are we to say that there is no fact about those things? | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I like that. How many electrons are there in the sun? Such things cannot just be reduced to talk of sense-data, as there is obviously a vast gap between the data and the facts. As usual, ontology and epistemology must be kept separate. |
| 7299 | Primary qualities can be described mathematically, unlike secondary qualities [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: All the primary qualities lend themselves readily to mathematical or geometric description. ...but it seems that secondary qualities are less amenable to being represented mathematically. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: As a believer in the primary/secondary distinction, I welcome this point. This is either evidence for the external reality of primary qualities, or an interesting observation about maths. Do we make the primary/secondary distinction because we do maths? |
| 7300 | An object cannot remain an object without its primary qualities [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: An object cannot lack shape, size, position or motion and remain an object. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This points towards the essentialist view (see Idea 5453). This does raise the question of whether an object could lose its colour with impugnity, or the quality of sound that it makes when struck. |
| 7297 | My justifications might be very coherent, but totally unconnected to the world [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: My beliefs could be well justified in coherentist terms, while not accurately representing the world, and my system of beliefs could be completely free-floating. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This nicely encapsulates to correspondence objection to coherence theory. One thing missing from the coherence account is that beliefs aren't chosen for their coherence, but are mostly unthinkingly triggered by experiences. |
| 9410 | Physical Laws are rhythms and patterns in nature, revealed by analysis [Feynman] |
| Full Idea: There is a rhythm and a pattern between the phenomena of nature which is not apparent to the eye, but only to the eye of analysis; and it is these rhythms and patterns which we call Physical Laws. | |
| From: Richard P. Feynman (The Character of Physical Law [1965], Ch.1) |
| 18530 | Nobody understands quantum mechanics [Feynman] |
| Full Idea: I think I can safely say the nobody understands quantum mechanics. | |
| From: Richard P. Feynman (The Character of Physical Law [1965], 6) | |
| A reaction: It is really important that philosophers grasp this point! |
| 17707 | We should regard space as made up of many tiny pieces [Feynman, by Mares] |
| Full Idea: Feynman claims that we should regard space as made up of many tiny pieces, which have positive length, width and depth. | |
| From: report of Richard P. Feynman (The Character of Physical Law [1965], p.166) by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 06.7 | |
| A reaction: The idea seems to be these are the minimum bits of space in which something can happen. |
| 1558 | Clearly the gods ignore human affairs, or they would have given us justice [Thrasymachus] |
| Full Idea: The gods pay no attention to human affairs; if they did, they would not have ignored justice, which is the greatest good for men; for we see that men do not act with justice. | |
| From: Thrasymachus (fragments/reports [c.426 BCE], B8), quoted by Hermias - Notes on Plato's 'Phaedrus' 239.22 |