23 ideas
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| Full Idea: No idea can be properly understood apart from its history. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is somewhat dubious. Comte is preparing the ground for asserting positivism by rejecting out-of-date theology and metaphysics. The history is revealing, but can be misleading, when a meaning shifts. Try 'object' in logic. |
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes in succession through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, and the scientific or positive state. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 5077 for the abstraction step. The idea that there is a 'law' here, as Comte thinks, is daft, but something of what he describes is undeniable. I suspect, though, that science rests on abstractions, so the last part is wrong. |
| 12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The development of positivism was caused by the concept of metaphysical agents gradually becoming so empty through oversubtle qualification that all right-minded persons considered them to be only the abstract names of the phenomena in question. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I have quite a lot of sympathy with this thesis, but not couched in this negative way. I take abstraction to be essential to scientific thought, and wisdom to occur amongst the higher reaches of the abstractions. |
| 12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
| Full Idea: In the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth, gives up the search for hidden and final causes. It endeavours to discover, by well-combined reasoning and observation, the actual laws of phenomena. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Positivism attempted to turn the Humean regularity view of laws into a semi-religion. It is striking how pessimistic Comte was (as was Hume) about the chances of science revealing deep explanations. He would be astoundeds. |
| 7491 | The phases of human thought are theological, then metaphysical, then positivist [Comte, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: The first phase of humanity was theological, attributing phenomena to a deity, the second metaphysical stage attributed them to abstract forms, the third positive stage abandons ultimate causes and just searches for regularities. | |
| From: report of Auguste Comte (Course of Positive Philosophy [1846]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.32 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously a highly empirical programme, which reasserts Hume's view of the laws of nature. Effectively, positivism just is the rejection of metaphysics. |
| 12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The positive philosophy represents the true final state of human intelligence. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark which made Comte notorious, and it looks a bit extravagant now, but the debate about his view is still ongoing. I am certainly sympathetic to his general drift. |
| 12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Getting lost in a mass of detail is the weak side of positivism, where partisans of theology and metaphysics may attack with some hope of success. ...We must train scientists who will consider all the different branches of positive science. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This would be Comte's answer now to those who claim there is still a role for metaphysics within the scientific world view. I would say that metaphysics not only takes an overview, but also deals with higher generalisations than Comte's general scientist. |
| 12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
| Full Idea: We may look upon the positive philosophy as constituting the only solid basis for the social reorganisation that must terminate the crisis in which the most civilized nations have found themselves for so long. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing not only to use positivist methods to solve social problems (he coined the word 'sociology'), but is also proposing that positivism itself should act as the unifying belief-system for future society. Science will be our religion. |
| 9470 | Modal logic is not an extensional language [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: Modal logic is not an extensional language. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.159 n8) | |
| A reaction: [I record this for investigation. Possible worlds seem to contain objects] |
| 13418 | The old problems with the axiom of choice are probably better ascribed to the law of excluded middle [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: The difficulties historically attributed to the axiom of choice are probably better ascribed to the law of excluded middle. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (Review of Tait 'Provenance of Pure Reason' [2009], §2) | |
| A reaction: The law of excluded middle was a target for the intuitionists, so presumably the debate went off in that direction. |
| 9469 | Substitutional existential quantifier may explain the existence of linguistic entities [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: I argue (against Quine) that the existential quantifier substitutionally interpreted has a genuine claim to express a concept of existence, which may give the best account of linguistic abstract entities such as propositions, attributes, and classes. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156) | |
| A reaction: Intuitively I have my doubts about this, since the whole thing sounds like a verbal and conventional game, rather than anything with a proper ontology. Ruth Marcus and Quine disagree over this one. |
| 9468 | On the substitutional interpretation, '(∃x) Fx' is true iff a closed term 't' makes Ft true [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: For the substitutional interpretation of quantifiers, a sentence of the form '(∃x) Fx' is true iff there is some closed term 't' of the language such that 'Ft' is true. For the objectual interpretation some object x must exist such that Fx is true. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156) | |
| A reaction: How could you decide if it was true for 't' if you didn't know what object 't' referred to? |
| 17447 | Parsons says counting is tagging as first, second, third..., and converting the last to a cardinal [Parsons,C, by Heck] |
| Full Idea: In Parsons's demonstrative model of counting, '1' means the first, and counting says 'the first, the second, the third', where one is supposed to 'tag' each object exactly once, and report how many by converting the last ordinal into a cardinal. | |
| From: report of Charles Parsons (Frege's Theory of Numbers [1965]) by Richard G. Heck - Cardinality, Counting and Equinumerosity 3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds good. Counting seems to rely on that fact that numbers can be both ordinals and cardinals. You don't 'convert' at the end, though, because all the way you mean 'this cardinality in this order'. |
| 18201 | General principles can be obvious in mathematics, but bold speculations in empirical science [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: The existence of very general principles in mathematics are universally regarded as obvious, where on an empiricist view one would expect them to be bold hypotheses, about which a prudent scientist would maintain reserve. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (Mathematical Intuition [1980], p.152), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics | |
| A reaction: This is mainly aimed at Quine's and Putnam's indispensability (to science) argument about mathematics. |
| 13419 | If functions are transfinite objects, finitists can have no conception of them [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: The finitist may have no conception of function, because functions are transfinite objects. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (Review of Tait 'Provenance of Pure Reason' [2009], §4) | |
| A reaction: He is offering a view of Tait's. Above my pay scale, but it sounds like a powerful objection to the finitist view. Maybe there is a finitist account of functions that could be given? |
| 13417 | If a mathematical structure is rejected from a physical theory, it retains its mathematical status [Parsons,C] |
| Full Idea: If experience shows that some aspect of the physical world fails to instantiate a certain mathematical structure, one will modify the theory by sustituting a different structure, while the original structure doesn't lose its status as part of mathematics. | |
| From: Charles Parsons (Review of Tait 'Provenance of Pure Reason' [2009], §2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a beautifully simple and powerful objection to the Quinean idea that mathematics somehow only gets its authority from physics. It looked like a daft view to begin with, of course. |
| 12108 | All real knowledge rests on observed facts [Comte] |
| Full Idea: All competent thinkers agree with Bacon that there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Are there any unobservable facts? If so, can we know them? The only plausible route is to add 'best explanation' to the positivist armoury. With positivism, empiricism became - for a while - a quasi-religion. |
| 12109 | We must observe in order to form theories, but connected observations need prior theories [Comte] |
| Full Idea: There is a difficulty: the human mind had to observe in order to form real theories; and yet it had to form theories of some sort before it could apply itself to a connected series of observations. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Comte's view is that we get started by forming a silly theory (religion), and then refine the theory once the observations get going. Note that Comte has sort of anticipated the Quine-Duhem thesis. |
| 12107 | Positivism explains facts by connecting particular phenomena with general facts [Comte] |
| Full Idea: In positivism the explanation of facts consists only in the connection established between different particular phenomena and some general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends more and more to diminish. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the ancestor of Hempel's more precisely formulated 'covering law' account, which became very fashionably, and now seems fairly discredited. It is just a fancy version of Humeanism about laws. |
| 20618 | Persons must be conscious, reasoning, motivated, communicative, self-aware [Warren, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Suggested characteristics of personhood: consciousness (esp. of pain); reasoning and problem solving; self-motivated activity; varied communication on many topics; self-concepts and self-awareness. | |
| From: report of Mary Anne Warren (On the Moral and Legal State of Abortion [1973], p.55) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 8 'Standing' | |
| A reaction: [a 'famous' article] A number of non-human animals come very close to passing these tests. I suspect the complex communication is only in there to disqualify them from getting the full certificate. (But she wrote on animal rights). |
| 12115 | Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The pretended direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion. ...It is clear that, by an inevitable necessity, the human mind can observe all phenomena directly, except its own. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I recently heard of a university psychology department which was seeking skilled introspectors to help with their researches. I take introspection to be very difficult, but partially possible. Read Proust. |
| 12113 | The search for first or final causes is futile [Comte] |
| Full Idea: We regard the search after what are called causes, whether first or final, as absolutely inaccessible and unmeaning. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This remark lies behind Russell's rejection of the notion of cause in scientific thinking. Personally it seems to me indispensable, even if we accept that the pursuit of 'final' causes is fairly hopeless. We don't know where the quest will lead. |
| 12110 | We can never know origins, purposes or inner natures [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The inner nature of objects, or the origin and purpose of all phenomena, are the most insoluble questions. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this Humean pessimism about science ever penetrating below the surface is precisely what is challenged by modern science, and that 'scientific essentialism' is catching up with what has happened. 'Inner' is knowable, bottom level isn't. |