345 ideas
| 9218 | Maybe what distinguishes philosophy from science is its pursuit of necessary truths [Sider] |
| Full Idea: According to one tradition, necessary truth demarcates philosophical from empirical inquiry. Science identifies contingent aspects of the world, whereas philosophical inquiry reveals the essential nature of its objects. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Reductive Theories of Modality [2003], 1) | |
| A reaction: I don't think there is a clear demarcation, and I would think that lots of generalizations about contingent truths are in philosophical territory, but I quite like this idea - even if it does make scientists laugh at philosophers. |
| 2196 | The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) | |
| A reaction: No wonder some people dislike philosophy. There is no question that the human race is often ludicrously over-confident about its attempts to understand, and a careful examination of the situation tends to undermine such confidence. |
| 14721 | Metaphysical enquiry can survive if its conclusions are tentative [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical enquiry can survive if we are willing to live with highly tentative conclusions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Nothing alienates the rather literal scientific sort of mind quicker that bold, dogmatic and even arrogant assertions about metaphysics. But to entirely close down metaphysical speculation for that reason is absurd. |
| 15010 | Your metaphysics is 'cheating' if your ontology won't support the beliefs you accept [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Ontological 'cheaters' are those ne'er-do-well metaphysicians (such as presentists, phenomenalists, or solipsists) who refuse to countenance a sufficiently robust conception of the fundamental to underwrite the truths they accept. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: Presentists are placed in rather insalubrious company here, The notion of 'cheaters' is nice, and I associate it with Australian philosophy, and the reason that was admired by David Lewis. |
| 14977 | Metaphysics is not about what exists or is true or essential; it is about the structure of reality [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics, at bottom, is about the fundamental structure of reality. Not about what's necessarily true. Not about what properties are essential. Not about conceptual analysis. Not about what there is. Structure. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01) | |
| A reaction: The opening words of his book. I take them to be absolutely correct, and to articulate the new orthodoxy about metaphysics which has emerged since about 1995. He expands this as being about patterns, categories and joints. |
| 14994 | Extreme doubts about metaphysics also threaten to undermine the science of unobservables [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The most extreme critics of metaphysics base their critique on sweeping views about language (logical positivism), or knowledge (empiricism), ...but this notoriously threatens the science of unobservables as much as it threatens metaphysics. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: These criticisms also threaten speculative physics (even about what is possibly observable). |
| 15003 | It seems unlikely that the way we speak will give insights into the universe [Sider] |
| Full Idea: It has always seemed odd that insight into the fundamental workings of the universe should be gained by reflection on how we think and speak. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.8) | |
| A reaction: A nice expression of what should by now be obvious to all philosophers - that analysis of language is not going to reveal very much. It is merely clearing the undergrowth so that we can go somewhere. |
| 2187 | If we suspect that a philosophical term is meaningless, we should ask what impression it derives from [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we entertain any suspicion that a philosophical term is without any meaning or idea, we need but enquire "from what impression is that supposed idea derived?" | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.17) |
| 14986 | Conceptual analysts trust particular intuitions much more than general ones [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual analysts generally regard intuitive judgements about particular cases as being far more diagnostic than intuitive judgements about general principles. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.4 n7) | |
| A reaction: Since I take the aim to be the building up an accurate picture about general truths, it would be daft to just leap to our intuitions about those general truths. Equally you can't cut intuition out of the picture (pace Ladyman). |
| 2200 | All experimental conclusions assume that the future will be like the past [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 3807 | Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], II.III.3) |
| 15015 | It seems possible for a correct definition to be factually incorrect, as in defining 'contact' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Arguably, 'there is absolutely no space between two objects in contact' is false, but definitional of 'contact'. ...We need a word for true definitional sentences. I propose: 'analytic'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.8) |
| 14981 | Philosophical concepts are rarely defined, and are not understood by means of definitions [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical concepts of interest are rarely reductively defined; still more rarely does our understanding of such concepts rest on definitions. ...(We generally understand concepts to the extent that we know what role they play in thinking). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I agree with this. I suspect that Sider has the notion of definition in mind that is influenced by lexicography. Aristotle's concept of definition I take to be lengthy and expansive, and that is very relevant to philosophy. |
| 6961 | An analogy begins to break down as soon as the two cases differ [Hume] |
| Full Idea: But wherever you depart, in the least, from the similarity of the cases, you diminish proportionably the evidence; and may at last bring it to a very weak analogy. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 2) |
| 4636 | All reasoning concerning matters of fact is based on analogy (with similar results of similar causes) [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our reasonings concerning matters of fact are founded on a species of analogy, which leads us to expect from any cause the same events, which we have observed to result from similar causes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], §82) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Analogy notoriously becomes problematical when you have only one case (or a few) to go on, as when inferring other minds, or God's existence from natural design. |
| 14992 | We don't care about plain truth, but truth in joint-carving terms [Sider] |
| Full Idea: What we care about is truth in joint-carving terms, not just truth. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: The thought is that it matters what conceptual scheme is used to express the truth (the 'ideology'). Truths can be true but uninformative or unexplanatory. |
| 15012 | Orthodox truthmaker theories make entities fundamental, but that is poor for explanation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: According to the entrenched truthmaker theorist, the fundamental facts consist just of facts citing the existence of entities. It's hard to see how all the complexity we experience could possibly be explained from that sparse basis. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: This may be the 'entrenched' truthmaker view, but it is not clear why there could not be more complicated fundamental truthmakers, with structure as well as entities. And powers. |
| 13689 | 'Theorems' are formulas provable from no premises at all [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Formulas provable from no premises at all are often called 'theorems'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.6) |
| 13705 | Truth tables assume truth functionality, and are just pictures of truth functions [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The method of truth tables assumes truth functionality. Truth tables are just pictures of truth functions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.3) |
| 13706 | Intuitively, deontic accessibility seems not to be reflexive, but to be serial [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Deontic accessibility seems not to be reflexive (that it ought to be true doesn't make it true). One could argue that it is serial (that there is always a world where something is acceptable). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.3.1) |
| 13710 | In D we add that 'what is necessary is possible'; then tautologies are possible, and contradictions not necessary [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In D we add to K a new axiom saying that 'what's necessary is possible' (□φ→◊φ), ..and it can then be proved that tautologies are possible and contradictions are not necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.4.2) |
| 13711 | System B introduces iterated modalities [Sider] |
| Full Idea: With system B we begin to be able to say something about iterated modalities. ..S4 then takes a different stand on the iterated modalities, and neither is an extension of the other. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.4.4) |
| 13708 | S5 is the strongest system, since it has the most valid formulas, because it is easy to be S5-valid [Sider] |
| Full Idea: S5 is the strongest system, since it has the most valid formulas. That's because it has the fewest models; it's easy to be S5-valid since there are so few potentially falsifying models. K is the weakest system, for opposite reasons. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.3.2) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, the orthodox view is that S5 is the correct logic for metaphysics, but it sounds a bit lax. Compare Idea 13707. |
| 13712 | Epistemic accessibility is reflexive, and allows positive and negative introspection (KK and K¬K) [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Epistemic accessibility should be required to be reflexive (allowing Kφ→φ). S4 allows the 'KK principle', or 'positive introspection' (Kφ→KKφ), and S5 allows 'negative introspection' (¬Kφ→K¬Kφ). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 7.2) |
| 13714 | We can treat modal worlds as different times [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We can think of the worlds of modal logic as being times, rather than 'possible' worlds. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 7.3.3) |
| 13720 | Converse Barcan Formula: □∀αφ→∀α□φ [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Converse Barcan Formula reads □∀αφ→∀α□φ (or an equivalent using ◊). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.5.2) | |
| A reaction: I would read that as 'if all the αs happen to be φ, then αs have to be φ'. Put like that, I would have thought that it was obviously false. Sider points out that some new object could turn up which isn't φ. |
| 13718 | The Barcan Formula ∀x□Fx→□∀xFx may be a defect in modal logic [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Barcan Formula ∀x□Fx→□∀xFx is often regarded as a defect of Simple Quantified Modal Logic, though this most clearly seen in its equivalent form ◊∃xFx→∃x◊Fx. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.5.2) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 13719 for an explanation why it might be a defect] I translate the first one as 'if xs must be F, then they are always F', and the second one as 'for x to be possibly F, there must exist an x which is possibly F'. Modality needs existence. |
| 13723 | System B is needed to prove the Barcan Formula [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The proof of the Barcan Formula require System B. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.7) |
| 15023 | The Barcan schema implies if X might have fathered something, there is something X might have fathered [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If we accept the Barcan and converse Barcan schemas, this leads to surprising ontological consequences. Wittgenstein might have fathered something, so, by the Barcan schema, there is something that Wittgenstein might have fathered. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Tim Williamson for this line of thought] I was liking the Barcan picture, by now I am backing away fast. They cannot be serious! |
| 13715 | You can employ intuitionist logic without intuitionism about mathematics [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Not everyone who employs intuitionistic logic is an intuitionist about mathematics. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems worthy of note, since it may be tempting to reject the logic because of the implausibility of the philosophy of mathematics. I must take intuitionist logic more seriously. |
| 15004 | 'Gunk' is an object in which proper parts all endlessly have further proper parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: An object is 'gunky' if each of its parts has further proper parts; thus gunk involves infinite descent in the part-whole relation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.11.2) |
| 14984 | Which should be primitive in mereology - part, or overlap? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Should our fundamental theory of part and whole take 'part' or 'overlap' as primitive? | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.3) |
| 14980 | There is a real issue over what is the 'correct' logic [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Certain debates over the 'correct' logic are genuine, and not linguistic or conceptual. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01.3) | |
| A reaction: It is rather hard to give arguments in favour of this view, but I am pleased to have the authority of Sider with me. |
| 15000 | 'It is raining' and 'it is not raining' can't be legislated, so we can't legislate 'p or ¬p' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: I cannot legislate-true 'It is raining' and I cannot legislate true 'It is not raining', so if I cannot legislate either true then I cannot legislate-true the disjunction 'it is raining or it is not raining'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a very simple and very persuasive argument against the idea that logic is a mere convention. I take disjunction to be an abstract summary of how the world works. Sider seems sympathetic. |
| 15020 | Classical logic is good for mathematics and science, but less good for natural language [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Despite its brilliant success in mathematics and fundamental science, classical logic applies uneasily to natural language. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: He gives examples of the conditional, and debates over the meaning of 'and', 'or' and 'not', and also names and quantifiers. Many modern philosophical problems result from this conflict. |
| 13678 | The most popular account of logical consequence is the semantic or model-theoretic one [Sider] |
| Full Idea: On the question of the nature of genuine logical consequence, ...the most popular answer is the semantic, or model-theoretic one. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Reading the literature, one might be tempted to think that this is the only account that anyone takes seriously. Substitutional semantics seems an interesting alternative. |
| 13679 | Maybe logical consequence is more a matter of provability than of truth-preservation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Another answer to the question about the nature of logical consequence is a proof-theoretic one, according to which it is more a matter of provability than of truth-preservation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this, and prefer the model-theoretic or substitutional accounts. Whether you can prove that something is a logical consequence seems to me entirely separate from whether you can see that it is so. Gödel seems to agree. |
| 13682 | Maybe logical consequence is impossibility of the premises being true and the consequent false [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The 'modal' account of logical consequence is that it is not possible for the premises to be true and the consequent false (under some suitable notion of possibility). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Sider gives a nice summary of five views of logical consequence, to which Shapiro adds substitutional semantics. |
| 13680 | Maybe logical consequence is a primitive notion [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There is a 'primitivist' account, according to which logical consequence is a primitive notion. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: While sympathetic to substitutional views (Idea 13674), the suggestion here pushes me towards thinking that truth must be at the root of it. The trouble, though, is that a falsehood can be a good logical consequence of other falsehoods. |
| 15029 | Modal accounts of logical consequence are simple necessity, or essential use of logical words [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The simplest modal account is that logical consequence is just necessary consequence; another modal account says that logical consequences are modal consequences that involve only logical words essentially. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Quine's 'Carnap and Logical Truth' for the second idea] Sider is asserting that Humeans like him dislike modality, and hence need a nonmodal account of logical consequence. |
| 13722 | A 'theorem' is an axiom, or the last line of a legitimate proof [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A 'theorem' is defined as the last line of a proof in which each line is either an axiom or follows from earlier lines by a rule. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.7) | |
| A reaction: In other words, theorems are the axioms and their implications. |
| 15019 | Define logical constants by role in proofs, or as fixed in meaning, or as topic-neutral [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Some say that logical constants are those expressions that are defined by their proof-theoretic roles, others that they are the expressions whose semantic values are permutation-invariant, and still others that they are the topic-neutral expressions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites MacFarlane 2005 as giving a survey of this] |
| 13696 | When a variable is 'free' of the quantifier, the result seems incapable of truth or falsity [Sider] |
| Full Idea: When a variable is not combined with a quantifier (and so is 'free'), the result is, intuitively, semantically incomplete, and incapable of truth or falsity. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 4.2) |
| 13700 | A 'total' function must always produce an output for a given domain [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Calling a function a 'total' function 'over D' means that the function must have a well-defined output (which is a member of D) whenever it is given as inputs any n members of D. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 5.2) |
| 13703 | λ can treat 'is cold and hungry' as a single predicate [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We might prefer λx(Fx∧Gx)(a) as the symbolization of 'John is cold and hungry', since it treats 'is cold and hungry' as a single predicate. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 5.5) |
| 13688 | Good axioms should be indisputable logical truths [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Since they are the foundations on which a proof rests, the axioms in a good axiomatic system ought to represent indisputable logical truths. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.6) |
| 13687 | No assumptions in axiomatic proofs, so no conditional proof or reductio [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Axiomatic systems do not allow reasoning with assumptions, and therefore do not allow conditional proof or reductio ad absurdum. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: Since these are two of the most basic techniques of proof which I have learned (in Lemmon), I shall avoid axiomatic proof systems at all costs, despites their foundational and Ockhamist appeal. |
| 13690 | Proof by induction 'on the length of the formula' deconstructs a formula into its accepted atoms [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The style of proof called 'induction on formula construction' (or 'on the number of connectives', or 'on the length of the formula') rest on the fact that all formulas are built up from atomic formulas according to strict rules. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: Hence the proof deconstructs the formula, and takes it back to a set of atomic formulas have already been established. |
| 13691 | Induction has a 'base case', then an 'inductive hypothesis', and then the 'inductive step' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A proof by induction starts with a 'base case', usually that an atomic formula has some property. It then assumes an 'inductive hypothesis', that the property is true up to a certain case. The 'inductive step' then says it will be true for the next case. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 15001 | 'Tonk' is supposed to follow the elimination and introduction rules, but it can't be so interpreted [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Tonk' is stipulated by Prior to stand for a meaning that obeys the elimination and introduction rules; but there simply is no such meaning; 'tonk' cannot be interpreted so as to obey the rules. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: 'Tonk' thus seems to present a problem for so-called 'natural' deduction, if the natural deduction consists of nothing more than obey elimination and introduction rules. |
| 13685 | Natural deduction helpfully allows reasoning with assumptions [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The method of natural deduction is popular in introductory textbooks since it allows reasoning with assumptions. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Reasoning with assumptions is generally easier, rather than being narrowly confined to a few tricky axioms, You gradually show that an inference holds whatever the assumption was, and so end up with the same result. |
| 13686 | We can build proofs just from conclusions, rather than from plain formulae [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We can construct proofs not out of well-formed formulae ('wffs'), but out of sequents, which are some premises followed by their logical consequence. We explicitly keep track of the assumptions upon which the conclusion depends. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.5.1) | |
| A reaction: He says the method of sequents was invented by Gerhard Gentzen (the great nazi logician) in 1935. The typical starting sequents are the introduction and elimination rules. E.J. Lemmon's book, used in this database, is an example. |
| 13697 | Valuations in PC assign truth values to formulas relative to variable assignments [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A valuation function in predicate logic will assign truth values to formulas relative to variable assignments. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: Sider observes that this is a 'double' relativisation (due to Tarski), since propositional logic truth was already relative to an interpretation. Now we are relative to variable assignments as well. |
| 13684 | The semantical notion of a logical truth is validity, being true in all interpretations [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The semantical notion of a logical truth is that of a valid formula, which is true in all interpretations. In propositional logic they are 'tautologies'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This implies that there is a proof-theoretic account of logical truth as well. Intuitively a logical truth is a sequent which holds no matter which subject matter it refers to, so the semantic view sounds OK. |
| 13704 | It is hard to say which are the logical truths in modal logic, especially for iterated modal operators [Sider] |
| Full Idea: It isn't clear which formulas of modal propositional logic are logical truths, ...especially for sentences that contain iterations of modal operators. Is □P→□□P a logical truth? It's hard to say. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: The result, of course, is that there are numerous 'systems' for modal logic, so that you can choose the one that gives you the logical truths you want. His example is valid in S4 and S5, but not in the others. |
| 13724 | In model theory, first define truth, then validity as truth in all models, and consequence as truth-preservation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In model theory one normally defines some notion of truth in a model, and then uses it to define validity as truth in all models, and semantic consequence as the preservation of truth in models. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 10.1) |
| 13698 | In a complete logic you can avoid axiomatic proofs, by using models to show consequences [Sider] |
| Full Idea: You can establish facts of the form Γ|-φ while avoiding the agonies of axiomatic proofs by reasoning directly about models to conclusions about semantic consequence, and then citing completeness. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: You cite completeness by saying that anything which you have shown to be a semantic consequence must therefore be provable (in some way). |
| 13699 | Compactness surprisingly says that no contradictions can emerge when the set goes infinite [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Compactness is intuitively surprising, ..because one might have thought there could be some contradiction latent within some infinite set, preventing it from being satisfiable, only discovered when you consider the whole set. But this can't happen. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 4.5) |
| 13701 | A single second-order sentence validates all of arithmetic - but this can't be proved axiomatically [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A single second-order sentence has second-order semantic consequences which are all and only the truths of arithmetic, but this is cold comfort because of incompleteness; no axiomatic system draws out the consequences of this axiom. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 5.4.3) |
| 8649 | Two numbers are equal if all of their units correspond to one another [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When two numbers are so combin'd, as that the one has always a unit answering to every unit of the other, we pronounce them equal. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.III.1) | |
| A reaction: This became known as Hume's Principle after Frege made use of it for logicism (Foundations §63). It reduces equality to something fairly simple and visual (one-to-one correspondence). But we also say that two logicians or musicians are 'equal' in ability. |
| 2197 | Reason assists experience in discovering laws, and in measuring their application [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Abstract reasonings are employed, either to assist experience in the discovery of natural laws, or to determine their influence in particular instances, where it depends upon any precise degree of distance or quantity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.27) |
| 21291 | There is no medium state between existence and non-existence [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Betwixt unity and number there can be no medium; no more than betwixt existence and non-existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) | |
| A reaction: Just to confirm that, as you would expect, the great empiricist has no time for 'subsistence', or shadows and holes having lower grade existece. |
| 7700 | We can't think about the abstract idea of triangles, but only of particular triangles [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Let any man try to conceive a triangle in general, which is neither Isoceles nor Scalenum, nor has any particular length or proportion of sides; and he will perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.122) | |
| A reaction: I think there is a basic error in this. I admit that I can only imagine a particular triangle, but it doesn't follow that I am thinking about one triangle. Ontology/epistemology confusion. I picture a shape while believing the shape to be irrelevant. |
| 14760 | Four-dimensionalism sees things and processes as belonging in the same category [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism does not respect a deep difference between thing-talk and process-talk, because it tends to place events and things in the same ontological category. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: He then quotes Broad, Idea 14759. This idea is the best reason yet for being sympathetic to the four-dimensionalist view, because I think processes really must have a central place in any decent ontology. |
| 15017 | Supervenience is a modal connection [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is just a kind of modal connection. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.10) | |
| A reaction: It says what would happen, as well as what does. This is big for Sider because he rejects modality as a feature of actuality. I think the world is crammed full of modal facts, so supervenience should be a handy tool for me. |
| 15008 | Is fundamentality in whole propositions (and holistic), or in concepts (and atomic)? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The locus of fundamentality for a Finean is the whole proposition, whereas for me it is the proposition-part. Fundamentality is holistic for the Finean, atomistic for me. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.3) | |
| A reaction: This is because Kit Fine has pushed fundamentality into a relation (grounding), rather than into the particular entities involved (if I understand Sider's reading of him aright). My first intuition is to side with Sider. I'm on Sider's side... |
| 15013 | Tables and chairs have fundamental existence, but not fundamental natures [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The existence of tables and chairs is just as fundamental as the existence of electrons (in contrast, perhaps, with smirks and shadows, which do not exist fundamentally). However, tables and chairs have nonfundamental natures. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a good clarification, and to me the 'nature' of something points towards its essence. However, I suppose he refers here to the place of something in a dependence hierarchy. But then, why does it have that place? What power? |
| 15014 | Unlike things, stuff obeys unrestricted composition and mereological essentialism [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Stuff obeys unrestricted composition and mereological essentialism, whereas things do not. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Markosian 2004] |
| 15009 | We must distinguish 'concrete' from 'abstract' and necessary states of affairs. [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker theorist's 'concrete' states of affairs must be distinguished from necessarily existing 'abstract' states of affairs. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Plantinga's 'Nature of Necessity' for the second one; I presume the first one is Armstrong] |
| 13692 | A 'precisification' of a trivalent interpretation reduces it to a bivalent interpretation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: For a 'precisification' we take a trivalent interpretation and preserve the T and F values, and then assign all the third values in some way to either T or F. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 3.4.5) | |
| A reaction: [my informal summary of Sider's formal definition] |
| 13695 | Supervaluational logic is classical, except when it adds the 'Definitely' operator [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Supervaluation preserves classical logic (even though supervaluations are three-valued), except when we add the Δ operator (meaning 'definitely' or 'determinately'). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 3.4.5) |
| 13693 | A 'supervaluation' assigns further Ts and Fs, if they have been assigned in every precisification [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In a 'supervaluation' we take a trivalent interpretation, and assign to each wff T (or F) if it is T (or F) in every precisification, leaving the third truth-value in any other cases. The wffs are then 'supertrue' or 'superfalse' in the interpretation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 3.4.5) | |
| A reaction: [my non-symbolic summary] Sider says the Ts and Fs in the precisifications are assigned 'in any way you like', so supervaluation is a purely formal idea, not a technique for eliminating vagueness. |
| 13694 | We can 'sharpen' vague terms, and then define truth as true-on-all-sharpenings [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We can introduce 'sharpenings', to make vague terms precise without disturbing their semantics. Then truth (or falsity) becomes true(false)-in-all-sharpenings. You are only 'rich' if you are rich-on-all-sharpenings of the word. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 3.4.5) | |
| A reaction: Not very helpful. Lots of people might be considered rich in many contexts, but very few people would be considered rich in all contexts. You are still left with some vague middle ground. |
| 14983 | Accept the ontology of your best theory - and also that it carves nature at the joints [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We can add to the Quinean advice to believe the ontology of your best theory that you should also regard the ideology of your best theory as carving at the joints. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: I've never liked the original Quinean formulation, but this is much better. I just take my ontological commitments to reside in me, not in whatever theory I am currently employing. I may be dubious about my own theory. |
| 13683 | A relation is a feature of multiple objects taken together [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A relation is just a feature of multiple objects taken together. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Appealingly simple, especially for a logician, who can then just list the relevant objects as members of a set, and the job is done. But if everyone to the left of me is also taller than me, this won't quite do. |
| 14978 | A property is intrinsic if an object alone in the world can instantiate it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm and Kim proposed a modal notion of an 'intrinsic' property - that a property is intrinsic if and only if it is possibly instantiated by an object that is alone in the world. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Chisholm 1976:127 and Kim 1982:59-60] Sider then gives a counterexample from David Lewis (Idea 14979). |
| 14194 | Proper ontology should only use categorical (actual) properties, not hypothetical ones [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A proper ontology should invoke only categorical, or occurrent, properties and relations. Categorical properties involve what objects are actually like, whereas hypothetical properties 'point beyond' their instances. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This spectacularly leaves out powers and dispositions, which are actual properties which 'point beyond' their instances! This is the nub of the powers debate, and the most interesting topic in modern metaphysics. |
| 14995 | Predicates can be 'sparse' if there is a universal, or if there is a natural property or relation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: For Armstrong a predicate is sparse when there exists a corresponding universal; for Lewis, a predicate is sparse when there exists a corresponding natural property or relation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06) | |
| A reaction: I like 'sparse' properties, but have no sympathy with Armstrong, and am cautious about Lewis. I like Shoemaker's account, which makes properties even sparser. 'Abundant' so-called properties are my pet hate. They are 'predicates'! |
| 10467 | Individuals consist of 'compresent' tropes [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: 'Qualitons' or 'relatons' (quality and relation tropes) are held to belong to the same individual if they are all 'compresent' with one another. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §4) | |
| A reaction: There is a perennial problem with bundles - how to distinguish accidental compresence (like people in a lift) from united compresence (like people who make a family). |
| 10464 | A trope is a bit of a property or relation (not an exemplification or a quality) [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation. Bill Clinton's eloquence is not his participating in the universal eloquence, or the peculiar quality of his eloquence, but his bit, and his alone, of eloquence. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If we have identified something as a 'bit' of something, we can ask whether that bit is atomic, or divisible into something else, and we can ask what are the qualities and properties and powers of this bit, we seems to defeat the object. |
| 10465 | Trope theory is ontologically parsimonious, with possibly only one-category [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: A major attraction of tropism has been its promise of parsimony; some adherents (such as Campbell) go so far as to proclaim a one-category ontology. | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to go against the folk idiom which suggests that it is things which have properties, rather than properties ruling to roost. Maybe if one identified tropes with processes, the theory could be brought more into line with modern physics? |
| 11942 | Power is the possibility of action, as discovered by experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Power consists in the possibility or probability of any action, as discovered by experience and the practice of the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.313), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 5 | |
| A reaction: [page in OUP edn] This strikes me as blatantly false, and typical of those who confuse epistemology with ontology. It implies that a power that takes everyone by surprise is impossible, by definition. |
| 11949 | There may well be powers in things, with which we are quite unacquainted [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I am, indeed, ready to allow, that there may be several qualities both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted; and if we please to call these powers and efficiency, 'twill be be of little consequence to the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.168), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 7.2.1 | |
| A reaction: A delightful air of casual indifference. What the classic empiricists needed was a notion of 'best explanation', which would allow them to leap beyond immediate experience. They made plenty of other leaps beyond experience, though Hume hated them. |
| 11950 | We have no idea of powers, because we have no impressions of them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We never have any impression that contains any power or efficacy. We never therefore have any idea of power. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.161), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 7.2.1 | |
| A reaction: [page in Selby-Bigges edn] It seems to me plausible that Hume is utterly wrong, because our own mental lives are a direct and constant experience of the physical powers and efficacies of material objects. |
| 11941 | The distinction between a power and its exercise is entirely frivolous [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The distinction which we sometimes make betwixt a power and the exercise of it is entirely frivolous, and ... neither man nor any other being ought ever to be thought possesst of any ability, unless it be exerted and put into action. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.311), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 5 | |
| A reaction: [page in OUP] Molnar says this strong intuition is shared by most of us, but I take the world to be full of people who can play the piano or speak Spanish, but never actually do it. [but see Idea 11942] Most wasps never sting anything. |
| 13602 | We cannot form an idea of a 'power', and the word is without meaning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We can have no idea of connexion or power at all, and these words are absolutely without any meaning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.58) | |
| A reaction: I would say that this ignores a phenomenon of which Hume is well aware, which is the power of our own minds to generate thoughts and actions. Hume seems to be employing a verificationist theory of meaning |
| 11098 | Momentary impressions are wrongly identified with one another on the basis of resemblance [Hume, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: Momentary impressions, according to Hume, are wrongly identified with one another on the basis of resemblance. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Willard Quine - Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis 3 | |
| A reaction: I don't have a Hume quotation for this yet, but Quine is plausibly claiming Hume as a resemblance nominalist, equipped with an error theory about universals. |
| 7954 | If we see a resemblance among objects, we apply the same name to them, despite their differences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have found a resemblance among several objects, that often occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the degrees of their quantity and quality, and whatever other differences may appear among them. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.I.7) | |
| A reaction: This must to some extent by right, whatever objections can be found. Russell's objection (Idea 4441) wouldn't alter the truth of Hume's observation, thought Hume is attacking universals and Russell defending them. |
| 21293 | Individuation is only seeing that a thing is stable and continuous over time [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The principle of individuation is nothing but the invariableness and uninterruptedness of any object through a supposed variation of time, by which the mind can trace it in the different periods of its existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) | |
| A reaction: Not convinced by this. I can individuate something by an almost instantaneous glimpse. I don't increasingly individuate it as time passes. Instant viewing of type and structure may be enough. |
| 14745 | If sortal terms fix the kind and the persistence conditions, we need to know what kinds there are [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Followers of the view that every entity is associated with some sortal term that answers the question 'what kind of thing is this?', and determines its persistence conditions, must answer the question what kinds of entity there are. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [He explicitly refers to David Wiggins here] In other words Wiggins has got it the wrong way round, which is my own view of his theory. Sortal terms don't grow on the trees in the Garden of Eden, available for applications. |
| 12048 | The only meaning we have for substance is a collection of qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We have no idea of substance, distinct from that of a collection of particular qualities, nor have we any other meaning when we either talk or reason concerning it. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.I.6) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard empiricist view of such things, firmly stated. It is tempting to say that Hume has simply misunderstood the word, since it is precisely intended to mean not the qualities, but what underlies them, and persists. |
| 13424 | Aristotelians propose accidents supported by substance, but they don't understand either of them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The peripatetic philosophers carry their fictions still further, and both suppose a substance supporting, which they do not understand, and an accident supported, of which they have as imperfect an idea. The whole system is entirely incomprehensible. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.3) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that if you put it to Aristotle that he didn't understand 'substantial form', he would concede the point, but nevertheless say that it was ideal at which knowledge aimed. Locke is much more astute than Hume on this. |
| 14740 | If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider] |
| Full Idea: This powerful puzzle (known to the Stoics, introduced by Geach, popularised by Wiggins) has a cat Tibbles and a proper part Tib, which is all of Tibbles except the tail. If Tibbles loses her tail, the two were distinct, but they now coincide. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Compare a few people leave a football ground, and what was a large part of the crowd becomes the whole of the crowd. Which suggests that there is no problem if cats are like crowds. But we don't like that view of cats. |
| 14752 | Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Presumably it is claimed that the artist 'created' the statue because the object created is essentially a statue, and thus cannot be identified with the unformed lump of clay with which the artist began. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001]) | |
| A reaction: This is based on Burke's views. This is sortal essentialism, rather than my own view of essence as an inner explanatory mechanism or form. If an old abstract sculpture was no longer recognised as a statue, would it necessarily still be a statue? |
| 14743 | The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There are numerous cases in which there is pressure to admit coincident entities. The best way of coming to grips with this, I think, invokes the stage view. ...In the worm theory, coincident objects are no more mysterious than overlapping roads. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: At this point I get nervous if in order to 'get to grips' with a phenomenon which is hard to articulate but obvious to common sense, we have to invoke a rather startling metaphysics that completely upends the common sense we started with. |
| 14747 | 'Composition as identity' says that an object just is the objects which compose it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Composition as identity' says that when a thing, x, is composed of some other objects, the ys, then this is a kind of identity between the x and the ys. The industrial-strength version says object x just is the ys. Lewis says it is just an analogy. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: I am averse to such a doctrine, as is Leibniz, with his insistence that an aggregate is not a unity. There has to be some sort of principle that bestows oneness on a many. I take this to be structural, and is an elucidation of hylomorphism. |
| 14757 | Mereological essentialism says an object's parts are necessary for its existence [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Mereological essentialism says that an object's parts are necessary for its existence. ....It is literally never correct to say that an thing survives a change in its parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm is well known for proposing this view. Sider adds a possible toughening clause, that the parts are also sufficient for the object's existence. This is a philosophers' notion of identity, not the normal English language concept. |
| 15026 | Essence (even if nonmodal) is not fundamental in metaphysics [Sider] |
| Full Idea: We should not regard nonmodal essence as being metaphysically basic: fundamental theories need essence no more than they need modality. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: He is discussing Kit Fine, and notes that Fine offers a nonmodal view of essence, but still doesn't make it fundamental. I am a fan of essences, but making them fundamental in metaphysics seems unlikely. |
| 21300 | A change more obviously destroys an identity if it is quick and observed [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A change in any considerable part of a body destroys its identity; but 'tis remarkable that where the change is produced gradually and insensibly we are less apt to ascribe to it the same effect. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Broad spotted that landscapes change too, but so slowly that we barely admit any change at all. The type of change also matters. If my car slowly changes to chocolate the speed of change is a minor factor. |
| 21299 | Changing a part can change the whole, not absolutely, but by its proportion of the whole [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Though the change of any considerable part of a mass of matter destroys the identity of the whole, yet we must measure the greatness of the part, not absolutely, but by its proportion to the whole. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to nicely demonstrate that the wholeness is in the mind of the perceiver, and does not simply depend on objective facts. Compare the proportion needed to change my pile of mud and my pile of gold. |
| 1330 | If a republic can retain identity through many changes, so can an individual [Hume] |
| Full Idea: As the same individual republic may not only change its members, but also its laws and constitutions; in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) |
| 1321 | If identity survives change or interruption, then resemblance, contiguity or causation must unite the parts of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The objects which are variable or interrupted, and yet are supposed to continue the same, are such only as consist of a succession of parts, connected together by resemblance, contiguity, or causation. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) |
| 14727 | Three-dimensionalists assert 'enduring', being wholly present at each moment, and deny 'temporal parts' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Three-dimensionalists say that things have no 'temporal parts', that they 'endure', and that they are wholly present at every moment of their careers. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: An obvious problem case for being wholly present would be the building and fitting of a large ship, where it might seem to be present before it was wholly present. |
| 14738 | Some might say that its inconsistency with time travel is a reason to favour three-dimensionalism [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Some might even regard inconsistency with time travel as an advantage of three-dimensionalism, as a vindication of a prior belief that time travel is impossible! I see no merit in these claims. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: I do! Sider cheerfully says that there are good reasons to believe that time travel is possible, and then use this possibility to support his four-dimensional view, but I personally doubt his assumption. The evidence for time travel is flimsy and obscure. |
| 14726 | Four-dimensionalists assert 'temporal parts', 'perduring', and being spread out over time [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalists say that things have 'temporal parts', that they 'perdure', and that they are spread out over time. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3) |
| 14728 | 4D says intrinsic change is difference between successive parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: For four-dimensionalists intrinsic change is difference between successive temporal parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This attempts a reply to the commonest criticism of four-dimensionalism - that you can't explain change if you don't have one enduring thing which undergoes the change. I get stuck of the question 'how big (temporally) is a part?'. |
| 14729 | 4D says each spatiotemporal object must have a temporal part at every moment at which it exists [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Four-dimensionalism may be formulated as the claim that, necessarily, each spatiotemporal object has a temporal part at every moment at which it exists. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: If there were tiny quantum gaps between temporal parts, that would presumably ruin the story. On this view an object has to be a 'worm', to be the thing which has the parts. |
| 14730 | Temporal parts exist, but are not prior building blocks for objects [Sider] |
| Full Idea: My four-dimensionalism implies the existence of temporal parts, but not that those parts are more fundamental, nor that the object is 'constructed' from its parts, nor that identity over time is reducible to parts. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: That's a rather negative account of temporal parts, which makes you ask what their positive role could be. Do they contribute anything to our understanding of a temporally extended object? |
| 14731 | Temporal parts are instantaneous [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Unless otherwise noted, I will think of temporal parts as being instantaneous. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This comes up against all the Augustinian worries about the intrinsic nature of time. How many temporal parts does a typical object possess? Is a third temporal part always to be found between any two of them? How do they 'connect'? |
| 14758 | How can an instantaneous stage believe anything, if beliefs take time? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: How can an instantaneous stage believe anything? Beliefs take time. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Sider's four-dimensionalist answer is that the belief is embodied in the earlier counterparts, making belief a 'highly relational property'. I am not impressed by this answer to the very nice problem which he has raised. It's a problem for 3D, too. |
| 14762 | Four-dimensionalism says temporal parts are caused (through laws of motion) by previous temporal parts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The sensible four-dimensionalist will claim that current temporal parts are caused to exist by previous temporal parts. The laws that govern this process are none other than the familiar laws of motion. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I keep struggling with the instantaneous natural of temporal parts, and now I find that they have to do the job of being causal relata. When do they do their job? They've gone home before they've finished clocking in. Continuance requires motion? |
| 21302 | If a ruined church is rebuilt, its relation to its parish makes it the same church [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If a church which was formerly of brick fell to ruin, the parish can build the same church of free-stone, with modern architecture. Neither the form nor materials are the same, but their relation to the parishioners is sufficient to say they are the same. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: The clearly invites the question of whether this is type-identity or token-identity. If the parish decided they wanted two churches they obviously wouldn't be the same (even if they then demolished the first one). |
| 21303 | We accept the identity of a river through change, because it is the river's nature [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where the objects are in their nature changeable and inconstant, we admit of a more sudden transition. The nature of a river consists in the motion and change of parts. What is expected appears of less moment than what is unusual and extraordinary. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Aha! Little does Hume realise how Aristotelian he is! Aristotle may have a more objective view of the 'nature' of a thing, but making inferences about identity over time from a thing's essential nature is pure Aristotle. |
| 21301 | The purpose of the ship makes it the same one through all variations [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The common end [of a ship], in which the parts conspire, is the same under all variations, and affords an easy transition of the imagination from one situation of the body to another. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: It is not true that a ship remains the same under ALL variations. Consider gradually changing a yacht into a racing powerboat. You might say the purpose is then changed, but the slight variations in a yacht can slightly change its purpose. |
| 14741 | The ship undergoes 'asymmetric' fission, where one candidate is seen as stronger [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Ship of Theseus seems to be a case of 'asymmetric' fission (where one resultant entity has a stronger claim). Many see the continuously rebuilt ship as the stronger candidate, but each candidate, without the other, would be the original ship. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1) |
| 21290 | Multiple objects cannot convey identity, because we see them as different [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A mutiplicity of objects can never convey the idea of identity. The mind always pronounces the one not to be the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) | |
| A reaction: However, if we are talking on the phone about two objects we are viewing, such as two buildings, our descriptions might lead us to conclude that our objects are identical. Thus experience might imply identity. |
| 1207 | Both number and unity are incompatible with the relation of identity [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Both number and unity are incompatible with the relation of identity. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) |
| 21289 | 'An object is the same with itself' is meaningless; it expresses unity, not identity [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In that proposition 'an object is the same with itself', if the idea expressed by the word 'object' were no way distinguished from that meant by 'itself', we should really mean nothing. ...One single object conveys the idea of unity, not that of identity. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) | |
| A reaction: As far as I can see it is mathematicians who like self-identity, to justify x=x, which they need. To say 'this vase is identical with itself' is an empty locution. It expresses either unity or stability over time. See Idea 21292. |
| 21292 | Saying an object is the same with itself is only meaningful over a period of time [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We cannot, in any propriety of speech, say that an object is the same with itself, unless we mean that the object existent at one time is the same with itself at another time. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems correct, but the strict language of identity is superfluous when identifying stolen goods. 'This is my watch', not 'this watch is identical with my watch'. |
| 13702 | The identity of indiscernibles is necessarily true, if being a member of some set counts as a property [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The identity of indiscernibles (∀x∀y(∀X(Xx↔Xy)→x=y) is necessarily true, provided that we construe 'property' very broadly, so that 'being a member of such-and-such set' counts as a property. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 5.4.3) | |
| A reaction: Sider's example is that if the two objects are the same they must both have the property of being a member of the same singleton set, which they couldn't have if they were different. |
| 14754 | If you say Leibniz's Law doesn't apply to 'timebound' properties, you are no longer discussing identity [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If someone is in pain at t1 and not at t2, we might restrict Leibniz's Law so as not to apply to 'timebound' properties, ..but this is deeply unsatisfying, ...and forfeits one's claim to be discussing identity. The demands of identity are high. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: [on Myro 1986] Sider's response is unsatisfying. It means a thing loses its identity (with itself?) if it has even a tiny fluctuating in its properties. Quantum changes then destroy all notions of identity. English-speakers don't use 'identity' like that. |
| 13721 | 'Strong' necessity in all possible worlds; 'weak' necessity in the worlds where the relevant objects exist [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Strong necessity' requires the truth of 'necessarily φ' is all possible worlds. 'Weak necessity' merely requires that 'necessarily φ' be true in all worlds in which objects referred to within φ exist. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.6.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a highly desirably distinction, given the problem of Idea 13719. It is weakly necessary that humans can't fly unaided, assuming we are referring the current feeble wingless species. That hardly seems to be strongly necessary. |
| 13707 | Maybe metaphysical accessibility is intransitive, if a world in which I am a frog is impossible [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Some argue that metaphysical accessibility is intransitive. The individuals involved mustn't be too different from the actual world. A world in which I am a frog isn't metaphysically possible. Perhaps the logic is modal system B or T. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.3.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds rather plausible and attractive to me. We don't want to say that I am necessarily the way I actually am, though, so we need criteria. Essence! |
| 13709 | Logical truths must be necessary if anything is [Sider] |
| Full Idea: On any sense of necessity, surely logical truths must be necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 6.4) |
| 9428 | Nothing we clearly imagine is absolutely impossible [Hume] |
| Full Idea: 'Tis an established maxim in metaphysics, that whatever the mind clearly conceives includes the idea of possible existence, or in other words, that nothing we imagine is absolutely impossible. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.II.2) | |
| A reaction: It is important to note that this empiricist approach to what is impossible requires that we 'clearly' conceive the possibility - but how do we evaluate whether we are being clear or not? |
| 4766 | Necessity only exists in the mind, and not in objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Necessity …is nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a determination to carry our thoughts from one object to another. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.III.16) | |
| A reaction: The classic statement of the empiricist position. Personally I don't believe it. Non-mental necessities are likely to be natural, or to be features of 'Platonic' objects. A big issue… |
| 2216 | We transfer the frequency of past observations to our future predictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where different effects have been found to follow from causes, which are to appearance exactly similar, all these various effects must occur to the mind in the same proportion in transferring the past to the future. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.47) |
| 2215 | There is no such thing as chance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as chance in the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VI.46) |
| 13716 | 'If B hadn't shot L someone else would have' if false; 'If B didn't shoot L, someone else did' is true [Sider] |
| Full Idea: To show the semantic difference between counterfactuals and indicative conditionals, 'If Booth hadn't shot Lincoln someone else would have' is false, but 'If Booth didn't shoot Lincoln then someone else did' is true. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 8) | |
| A reaction: He notes that indicative conditionals also differ in semantics from material and strict conditionals. The first example allows a world where Lincoln was not shot, but the second assumes our own world, where he was. Contextual domains? |
| 15030 | Humeans say that we decide what is necessary [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The spirit of Humeanism is that necessity is not a realm to be discovered. We draw the lines around what is necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: I disagree, but it is hard to argue the point. My intuitions are that the obvious necessities of logic and mathematics reflect the way nature has to be. The deepest necessities are patterns (about which God has no choice). |
| 15031 | Modal terms in English are entirely contextual, with no modality outside the language [Sider] |
| Full Idea: English modals are context-dependent through and through; there is no stable 'outer modality'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.7) | |
| A reaction: Sider has been doing so well up to here. To me this is swallowing the bait of linguistic approaches to philosophy which he has fought so hard to avoid. |
| 15027 | If truths are necessary 'by convention', that seems to make them contingent [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If □φ says that φ is true by convention, then □φ would apparently turn out to be contingent, since statements about what conventions we adopt are not themselves true by convention. The main axioms of S4 and S5 would be false. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) |
| 15028 | Conventionalism doesn't seem to apply to examples of the necessary a posteriori [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Conventionalism is apparently inapplicable to Kripke's and Putnam's examples of the necessary a posteriori (and, relatedly, to de re modality). | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: [Sidelle 1989 discusses this] |
| 15033 | Humeans says mathematics and logic are necessary because that is how our concept of necessity works [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Why are logical (or mathematical, or analytic...) truths necessary? The Humean's answer is that this is just how our concept of necessity works. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12.11) | |
| A reaction: This is why I (unlike Sider) am not a Humean. If we agreed that 'necessary' meant 'whatever is decreed by the Pope', that would so obviously not be necessary that we would have to start searching nature for true necessities. |
| 15025 | The world does not contain necessity and possibility - merely how things are [Sider] |
| Full Idea: At bottom, the world is an amodal place. Necessity and possibility do not carve at the joints; ultimate reality is not 'full of threats and promises' (Goodman). The book of the world says how things are, not how they must or might be. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 12) | |
| A reaction: Nice to see this expressed so clearly. I find it much easier to disagree with as a result. At first blush I would say that if you haven't noticed that the world is full of threats and promises, you should wake up and smell the coffee. Actuality is active. |
| 10466 | Maybe possible worlds are just sets of possible tropes [Bacon,John] |
| Full Idea: Meinongian tropism has the advantage that possible worlds might be thought of as sets of 'qualitons' and 'relatons' (quality and relational tropes). | |
| From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §3) | |
| A reaction: You are still left with 'possible' to explain, and I'm not sure that anything is explain here. If the actual world is sets of tropes, then possible worlds would also have to be, I suppose. |
| 13717 | Transworld identity is not a problem in de dicto sentences, which needn't identify an individual [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There is no problem of transworld identification with de dicto modal sentence, for their evaluation does not require taking an individual from one possible world and reidentifying it in another. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.2) | |
| A reaction: If 'de dicto' is about the sentence and 'de re' is about the object (Idea 5732), how do you evaluate the sentence without at least some notion of the object to which it refers. Nec the Prime Minister chairs the cabinet. Could a poached egg do the job? |
| 14763 | Counterparts rest on similarity, so there are many such relations in different contexts [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A counterpart relation is a similarity relation. Since there are different dimensions of similarity, there are different counterpart relations. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 6.4) |
| 13719 | Barcan Formula problem: there might have been a ghost, despite nothing existing which could be a ghost [Sider] |
| Full Idea: A problem with the Barcan Formula is it might be possible for there to exist a ghost, even though there in fact exists nothing that could be a ghost. There could have existed some 'extra' thing which could be a ghost. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Logic for Philosophy [2010], 9.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus when we make modal claims, do they only refer to what actually exists, or is specified in our initial domain? Can a claim enlarge the domain? Are domains 'variable'? Simple claims about what might have existed seem to be a problem. |
| 2209 | Belief is stronger, clearer and steadier than imagination [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief is nothing but a more vivid, lively, forcible, firm, steady conception of an object, than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.40) |
| 2207 | Belief can't be a concept plus an idea, or we could add the idea to fictions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What is the difference between fiction and belief? It can't be a peculiar idea annexed to a conception which commands our assent, and is wanting to fiction, for then the mind could voluntarily annex this idea to any fiction, and believe what it pleases. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2208 | Belief is just a particular feeling attached to ideas of objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When an object is present to memory or senses, custom carries the imagination to that object which is usually conjoined with it. This carries a feeling different from the loose reveries of fantasy, and in this consists the whole nature of belief. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.39) |
| 2213 | Beliefs are built up by resemblance, contiguity and causation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief, where it reaches beyond the memory or senses, arises from resemblance, contiguity or causation, with the same transition of thought and vivacity of conception. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.44) |
| 20189 | Belief is a feeling, independent of the will, which arises from uncontrolled and unknown causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Belief consists merely in a certain feeling or sentiment; in something, that depends not on the will, but must arise from certain determinate causes and principles, of which we are not master. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appen p.2) | |
| A reaction: This is the opposite of Descartes' 'doxastic voluntarism' (i.e. we choose what to believe). If you want to become a Christian, steep yourself in religious literature, and the company of religious people. It will probably work. |
| 3661 | 'Natural beliefs' are unavoidable, whatever our judgements [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume has a doctrine of "natural belief", about the sorts of things we can't help believing, in 'common' or everyday life, irrespective of our philosophical conclusions. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 6526 | Hume says objects are not a construction, but an imaginative leap [Hume, by Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Hume's idea is that we move from private impressions to the physical world, not by an unconscious analytical construction but by a spontaneous imaginative leap. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Howard Robinson - Perception IX.6 | |
| A reaction: The idea that objects are 'constructions' seems to have originated with Russell. Hume seems closer to the actual process, which is virtually instantaneous. They both forget that you can follow up the construction or leap with a cool evaluation. |
| 2191 | Relations of ideas are known by thought, independently from the world [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Relations of Ideas are discoverable by the mere operation of thought, without dependence on what is anywhere existent in the universe. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2239 | If secondary qualities (e.g. hardness) are in the mind, so are primary qualities like extension [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is agreed that all sensible qualities of objects, such as hard or hot, are secondary, and exist in the mind and not in objects; but then this also follows for the primary qualities of extension and solidity. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.122) | |
| A reaction: he mentions Berkeley |
| 2237 | It never occurs to people that they only experience representations, not the real objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Men instinctively suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects, and never entertain any suspicion that the one is nothing but representations of the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2192 | All reasoning about facts is causal; nothing else goes beyond memory and senses [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All reasonings concerning matters of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond of our memory and senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.22) |
| 21309 | A proposition cannot be intelligible or consistent, if the perceptions are not so [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No proposition can be intelligible or consistent with regard to objects, which is not so with regard to perceptions. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: An interesting variant on expressions of the empiricist principle. Presumably one can say intelligible things about Escher drawings. |
| 2184 | All ideas are copies of impressions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All our ideas or more feeble perceptions are copies of our impressions or more lively ones. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) |
| 23631 | Hume is loose when he says perceptions of different strength are different species [Reid on Hume] |
| Full Idea: When Hume divides all perceptions into two classes or species, distinguished by their degrees of force and vivacity, this is loose and unphilosophical. To differ in species is one thing, to differ in degree is another. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) by Thomas Reid - Essays on Intellectual Powers 1: Preliminary 1 | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's 'impressions' and 'ideas'. As usual with Reid, this is a very astute criticism. Reid is a direct realist, so his solution is to view ideas as weakened impressions. If impressions are strong ideas, you get idealism (which is bad!). |
| 2246 | If books don't relate ideas or explain facts, commit them to the flames [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we take in hand any volume of divinity or metaphysics, ask 'Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number?' No. 'Or experimental reason on matters of fact and existence?' No. Commit it then to the flames. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 2182 | Impressions are our livelier perceptions, Ideas the less lively ones [Hume] |
| Full Idea: 'Impressions' are our more lively perceptions, when we hear, see, feel, love, hate, desire or will. 'Ideas' are less lively perceptions, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.12) |
| 2190 | All objects of enquiry are Relations of Ideas, or Matters of Fact [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.20) |
| 2189 | All ideas are connected by Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause and Effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection between ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], III.19) |
| 6489 | Associationism results from having to explain intentionality just with sense-data [Robinson,H on Hume] |
| Full Idea: The limited theories of Berkeley and Hume have to be reductive, because they have to explain intentionality in terms of some kind of relation between sense-data; this predicament gives rise to the associationist accounts of psychology and meaning. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.4 | |
| A reaction: An illuminating explanation. Robinson seems to be implying that we should accept something like Searle's 'intrinsic' intentionality as basic, rather than intentionality built up from smaller components as Hume and Dennett suggest. |
| 2194 | How could Adam predict he would drown in water or burn in fire? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water, that it would suffocate him, or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 2183 | We can only invent a golden mountain by combining experiences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting or diminishing the materials afforded us by the sense or experience. For example, a golden mountain or a virtuous horse come from joining ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.13) | |
| A reaction: The example of the Golden Mountain comes from Aguinas Quodlibeta 8.2.1. The original idea is in Sextus Empiricus. |
| 21285 | Events are baffling before experience, and obvious after experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Every event, before experience, is equally difficult and incomprehensible; and every event, after experience, is equally easy and intelligible. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 8) | |
| A reaction: If you don't believe this, spend some time watching documentaries about life in the deep oceans. Things beyond imagination swim around in front of you. But we can extrapolate, once the possibilities are revealed by experience. |
| 2205 | You couldn't reason at all if you lacked experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: An unexperienced reasoner could be no reasoner at all, were he absolutely unexperienced. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36 n.1) |
| 2186 | We cannot form the idea of something we haven't experienced [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A blind man can form no notion of colours; a deaf man of sounds. ….A Laplander or Negro has no notion of the relish of wine. ….A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.15) |
| 2702 | Only madmen dispute the authority of experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: None but a fool or a madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.31) |
| 2217 | When definitions are pushed to the limit, only experience can make them precise [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas and still find some ambiguity and obscurity, how can we render them altogether precise and determinate? Produce the impressions or original sentiments from which the ideas were copied. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.49) |
| 3902 | Hume mistakenly lumps sensations and perceptions together as 'impressions' [Scruton on Hume] |
| Full Idea: The greatest weakness in Hume's philosophy is his use of the term 'impression' to refer to both sensations and perceptions. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Roger Scruton - Modern Philosophy:introduction and survey 24 |
| 6182 | Even Hume didn't include mathematics in his empiricism [Hume, by Kant] |
| Full Idea: Even Hume did not make empiricism so universal as to include mathematics in it. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Practical Reason Pref | |
| A reaction: Hume didn't actually exclude mathematics, and the notion of 'relations of ideas' is a pointer. Subsequent empiricist have offered promising accounts. Personally I like the idea that patterns are the key idea. |
| 23421 | If a person had a gap in their experience of blue shades, they could imaginatively fill it in [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose a person to be perfectly acquainted with all colours, except one particular shade of blue. It must be possible for him to raise up from his own imagination the idea of that particular shade, though never conveyed to him by the senses. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.16) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He dismisses this as 'so singular it is scarcely worth observing', but it is crucial. It isn't 'singular'. We do it all the time, by extrapolating from experiences and interpolating between them. Thus we extend knowledge beyond experience. |
| 2206 | Reasons for belief must eventually terminate in experience, or they are without foundation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If I ask why you believe some fact, you must tell me a reason, which will be some other fact, connected with it. But this process must terminate in a fact which is present to your memory or senses; or you must allow that the belief is without foundation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.37) | |
| A reaction: A classic quotation of empirical foundationalism. The rival view would be that the process does not terminate at all, but nevertheless builds up a persuasive picture which is foundational. |
| 2235 | There is no certain supreme principle, or infallible rule of inference [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no original supreme principle that is self-evident and convincing; nor, if there were, could we advance a step beyond it, but by those very faculties of which sceptics are supposed to be already diffident. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.116) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be the chief exponent of empirical foundationalism attacking rational foundationalism. The problem of 'advancing beyond' basic beliefs is also a problem for Hume's position. |
| 10328 | We think testimony matches reality because of experience, not some a priori connection [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.i.89) | |
| A reaction: Well he would say that, wouldn't he? If there is no connection in testimony, presumably there can be no a priori connection with private experience, but there is a danger of never getting started, and ending in anti-realism. |
| 2230 | Good testimony needs education, integrity, motive and agreement [Hume, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Reliable testimony needs a good number of educated people, all of undoubted integrity, who have a lot to lose if they are caught lying, reporting very public events. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.II.92) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A nice checklist for flying saucer sightings etc: education, integrity, lying risky, very public. If any of those fail, it comes down to likelihood (apply Bayes?) and character assessment. |
| 12417 | Mathematicians only accept their own proofs when everyone confims them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There is no Mathematician so expert as to place entire confidence in any truth upon his discovery of it. ..Every time he runs over his proofs his confidence encreases, ..and is rais'd to perfection by the applause of the learned world. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], IV.1.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Quoted by Kitcher, and a nice example of the social nature of 'warrants', even in mathematics. It was illustrated well in the 1990s by the story of the proof of Fermat's Last Theorem by Andrew Wiles. |
| 2238 | Reason can never show that experiences are connected to external objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that perceptions are connected with any external objects. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.121) |
| 2242 | Mitigated scepticism draws attention to the limitations of human reason, and encourages modesty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A mitigated scepticism … can make dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, and inspire them with more modesty and reserve. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.129) |
| 2243 | Mitigated scepticism sensibly confines our enquiries to the narrow capacity of human understanding [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Mitigated scepticism is an advantage to mankind, as it limits our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.130) |
| 5548 | Hume became a total sceptic, because he believed that reason was a deception [Hume, by Kant] |
| Full Idea: David Hume gave way entirely to scepticism, since he believed himself to have discovered in what is generally held to be reason a deception of our faculty of cognition. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Immanuel Kant - Critique of Pure Reason B128 | |
| A reaction: Unfair to Hume, who was very opposed to global scepticism (see Ideas 2240 and 2241), and voted only for 'mitigated scepticism' (see Idea 2242). On the other hand, there is no greater opposition in philosophy than Kant and Hume on 'pure reason'. |
| 2236 | Examples of illusion only show that sense experience needs correction by reason [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Trite sceptical examples, such as the oar bent in water, or double images when the eye is pressed, are only sufficient to prove that senses alone are not dependable, but we must correct their evidence with reason. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.I.117) |
| 2240 | It is a very extravagant aim of the sceptics to destroy reason and argument by means of reason and argument [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may seem a very extravagant attempt of the sceptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination; yet is this the grand scope of all their enquiries and disputes. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.124) |
| 2241 | The main objection to scepticism is that no good can come of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The chief and most confounding objection to excessive scepticism is that no durable good can ever result from it. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.II.128) |
| 14988 | A theory which doesn't fit nature is unexplanatory, even if it is true [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Theories' based on bizarre, non-joint-carving classifications are unexplanatory even when true. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints why I take explanation to be central to whole metaphysical enterprise. |
| 14982 | If I used Ramsey sentences to eliminate fundamentality from my theory, that would be a real loss [Sider] |
| Full Idea: If the entire theory of this book were replaced by its Ramsey sentence, omitting all mention of fundamentality, something would seem to be lost. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.2 n2) | |
| A reaction: It is a moot point whether Ramsey sentences actually eliminate anything from the ontology, but trying to wriggle out of ontological commitment looks a rather sad route to follow. |
| 7446 | The idea of inductive evidence, around 1660, made Hume's problem possible [Hume, by Hacking] |
| Full Idea: Hume's sceptical problem of induction could not have arisen much before 1660, for there was no concept of inductive evidence in terms of which to raise it. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Cont 19 | |
| A reaction: Hacking is the expert, but Ideas 1683 and 1886 suggest there was some thinking on the problem in the ancient world. The worry about whether the future would be like the past must occasionally have bothered someone. |
| 2198 | We assume similar secret powers behind similar experiences, such as the nourishment of bread [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We always presume, when we see like sensible qualities, that they have like secret powers, and expect that effects, similar to those which we have experienced, will follow from them. …Thus, we expect bread to nourish us, from previous experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) |
| 2204 | All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not reasoning. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) |
| 2201 | Induction can't prove that the future will be like the past, since induction assumes this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that any arguments from experience can prove the resemblance of the past to the future, since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of this resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.32) |
| 2203 | If we infer causes from repetition, this explains why we infer from a thousand objects what we couldn't infer from one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If after the constant conjunction of two objects (e.g. heat and flame) we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other,this explains why we can draw an inference from a thousand objects which we couldn't draw from one. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.I.36) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's best statement of the problem of the difficulty of demonstration the logic of induction. |
| 2199 | Reason cannot show why reliable past experience should extend to future times and remote places [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The main question on which I would insist is why reliable past experience should be extended to future times, and to other objects, which for ought we know, may be only in appearance similar. …No reasoning can show this. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.30) |
| 2202 | Fools, children and animals all learn from experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants - nay infants, nay even brute beasts - improve by experience. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.33) |
| 6350 | Premises can support an argument without entailing it [Pollock/Cruz on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Contrary to what Hume supposed, it must be possible for the premises of an argument to support a conclusion without logically entailing it. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to me an extremely important point, made with nice clarity. It is why people who are good at logic are not necessarily good at philosophy. The latter is about thinking rationally, not following the laws of deduction. |
| 3598 | Hume just shows induction isn't deduction [Williams,M on Hume] |
| Full Idea: All that Hume has really shown with his argument is that induction is not deduction. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.II.29) by Michael Williams - Problems of Knowledge Ch.18 |
| 14989 | Problem predicates in induction don't reflect the structure of nature [Sider] |
| Full Idea: 'Is nonblack', 'is a nonraven', and 'grue' fail to carve at the joints. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: A lot more than this needs to said, but this remark encapsulates why I find most of these paradoxes of induction uninteresting. They are all the creations of logicians, rather than of scientists. |
| 14997 | Two applications of 'grue' do not guarantee a similarity between two things [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The applicability of 'grue' to each of a pair of particulars does not guarantee the similarity of those particulars. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: Grue is not a colour but a behaviour. If two things are 'mercurial' or 'erratic', will that ensure a similarity at any given moment? |
| 14990 | Bayes produces weird results if the prior probabilities are bizarre [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In the Bayesian approach, bizarre prior probability distributions will result in bizarre responses to evidence. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly what you find when people with weird beliefs encounter ridiculous evidence for things. It doesn't invalidate the formula, but just says rubbish in rubbish out. |
| 15005 | Explanations must cite generalisations [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Explanations must cite generalisations. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 07.13) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about this. Presumably some events have a unique explanation - a unique mechanism, perhaps. Language is inescapably general in its nature - which I take to be Aristotle's reason for agreeing the Sider. [Sider adds mechanisms on p.159] |
| 15011 | If the ultimate explanation is a list of entities, no laws, patterns or mechanisms can be cited [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Ultimate explanations always terminate in the citation of entities; but since a mere list of entities is so unstructured, these 'explanations' cannot be systematized with detailed general laws, patterns, or mechanisms. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: We just need to distinguish between ultimate ontology and ultimate explanations. I think explanations peter out at the point where we descend below the mechanisms. Patterns or laws don't explain on their own. Causal mechanisms are the thing. |
| 15018 | Intentionality is too superficial to appear in the catalogue of ultimate physics [Sider] |
| Full Idea: One day the physicists will complete the catalogue of ultimate and irreducible properties of things. When they do, the like of spin, charm and charge will perhaps appear on the list. But aboutness sure won't; intentionality simply doesn't go that deep. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 4 Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fodor's project is to give a reductive, and perhaps eliminative, account of intentionality of mind, while leaving open what one might do with the phenomenological aspects. Personally I don't think they will appear on the list either. |
| 21806 | Memory, senses and understanding are all founded on the imagination [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The memory, senses, and understanding are all of them founded on the imagination, or the vivacity of our ideas. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.7.3), quoted by Stephan Schmid - Faculties in Early Modern Philosophy 5 | |
| A reaction: He seems to have in mind his theory of associations, which are not rational. |
| 2210 | A picture of a friend strengthens our idea of him, by resemblance [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend, our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the resemblance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) |
| 15755 | Hume needs a notion which includes degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume needs a notion of resemblance where some things resemble a given thing more than other things do, and some may resemble exactly, and some hardly at all. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §02 | |
| A reaction: An astute and simple point. Once you admit degrees of resemblance, of course, then resemblance probably ceases to be a primitive concept in your system, and Hume would be well stuck. |
| 17712 | General ideas are the connection by resemblance to some particular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: All general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], I.VII.17), quoted by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 08.2 | |
| A reaction: This is close to Berkeley's idea that we can only grasp particulars. Personally I think the idea of (psychological) abstraction is unavoidable. Irrelevant features of particulars need to ignored. |
| 8544 | Hume does not distinguish real resemblances among degrees of resemblance [Shoemaker on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume regarded the notion of resemblance as unproblematic, ..but any two objects share infinitely many Cambridge (whimsical relational) properties, and resemble in infinite ways. He needs real resemblance, which needs degrees of resemblance. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.41) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causality and Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See Idea 191. We forgive Hume, because he is a pioneer, but this is obviously right. Draw a line between 'real' resemblances and rest will be tricky, and bad news for regularity accounts of laws and causation. |
| 2211 | When I am close to (contiguous with) home, I feel its presence more nearly [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When I am a few miles from home, whatever relates to it touches me more nearly than when I am two hundred leagues distance. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.42) |
| 2212 | An object made by a saint is the best way to produce thoughts of him [Hume] |
| Full Idea: One of the best reliques which a devotee could procure would be the handiwork of a saint, because they were once at his disposal, and were moved and affected by him. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.43) |
| 2214 | Our awareness of patterns of causation is too important to be left to slow and uncertain reasoning [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our inference of like effects from like causes is so essential to the subsistence of human creatures that it is unlikely to be trusted to the fallacious deductions of reasoning, which are slow, develop late, and are liable to error. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], V.II.45) |
| 5323 | Experiences are logically separate, but factually linked by simultaneity or a feeling of continuousness [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Our experiences are logically independent, but they may be factually connected. What unites them is that either they are experienced together, or (if at separate times) they are separated by a stream of experience which is felt to be continuous. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Bk 3 App.) by A.J. Ayer - The Central Questions of Philosophy §VI.A | |
| A reaction: A strict empiricist cannot deny that the feeling of continuity could be false, though that invites the Cartesian question of what exactly is experiencing the delusion. Hume denies that we experience any link between simultaneous experiences. |
| 3819 | Hume's 'bundle' won't distinguish one mind with ten experiences from ten minds [Searle on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's thought that each perception is separate and distinct cannot be right, because then we can't distinguish between one consciousness with ten experiences and ten different consciousnesses. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by John Searle - Rationality in Action Ch.3.VI | |
| A reaction: Why can't the only connection between them be that they all occur to the speaker who reports to them? How would I know if one of 'my' mental events actually belonged to a neighbour and had strayed. If it was coherent, I would accept it. |
| 1317 | A person is just a fast-moving bundle of perceptions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I affirm of the rest of mankind, that they are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Note that Hume is not just saying what we can know of ourselves, but is asserting a view of what we actually are. The minimal objection to this is to ask how we know that a perception is a member of one big bundle rather than several small ones. |
| 1331 | The parts of a person are always linked together by causation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Whatever changes a person endures, his several parts are still connected by the relation of causation. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: However, the opposite ends of the universe are linked together by causation, so that will not suffice for a theory of personal identity. One might try to specify a complex and tight network of causation (like a brain!) instead of just 'connection'. |
| 1388 | Hume gives us an interesting sketchy causal theory of personal identity [Perry on Hume] |
| Full Idea: I believe Hume offers an interesting if sketchy theory of personal identity, a causal theory, disguised as the revolutionary discovery that there is no such thing as personal identity | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) by John Perry - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' Intro | |
| A reaction: There is certainly a theory there, even though Hume ceased to believe in it, which is nowadays covered by the idea that personal identity is a 'fiction', an arbitrary idea that reifies the focus and direction of a bundle of mental events. |
| 21297 | A person is simply a bundle of continually fluctuating perceptions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: [People] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a continual flux and movement. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we must say that this misses the huge non-conscious aspect of what a person is. He seems to see all mental events as equal. Isn't the experience of deciding to focus on this sentence more 'central' than awareness of your feet? |
| 1316 | Introspection always discovers perceptions, and never a Self without perceptions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: The first half can hardly be denied, but I think the second half is just false. What you observe is not just a raw neutral sense-datum, floating in nothing, but a sense-datum that is deeply coloured by MY interests, interpretations and values. |
| 1333 | Memory only reveals personal identity, by showing cause and effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Memory does not so much produce as discover personal identity, by showing us the relation of cause and effect among our different perceptions. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather strained proposal, as the revelation of a network of cause and effect seems to have no implications for personal identity (unless only 'I' could be the cause). |
| 1332 | We use memory to infer personal actions we have since forgotten [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We can extend the chain of causes acquired from memory, and consequently the identity of our persons beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: If the principle is just that 'I am my consciousness' (including of my past), then why should not my consciousness of other people's pasts by included in my identity. How do I know that images in my consciousness are MY memories? |
| 21305 | Memory not only reveals identity, but creates it, by producing resemblances [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The memory not only discovers the identity [of the mind], but also contributes to its production, by producing the relation of resemblance among the perceptions | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume battling to explain personal identity by his principles of association. He discount 'contiguity'. He doesn't explain how memory creates resemblances. Is not resemblance of idea to fact required in order to remember? |
| 21307 | Who thinks that because you have forgotten an incident you are no longer that person? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Who will affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of past days, that the present self is not the same person with the self of that time? And by that means overturn all the most established notions of personal identity? | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a swipe at one of Locke's most controversial claims (especially when applied to incidents of criminal behaviour). Hume says memory constitutes this identity, but Locke's view says it merely reveals identity. |
| 21306 | Causation unites our perceptions, by producing, destroying and modifying each other [Hume] |
| Full Idea: As to causation, the true idea of the human mind is to consider it as a system of different perceptions, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence and modify each other. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: He suggests that the associations of memory and causation might be sufficient to produce identity of the mind, and he gives the priority to memory. Eventually the good empiricist despairs because you cannot experience the links. |
| 21311 | Are self and substance the same? Then how can self remain if substance changes? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Is the self the same with substance? If it be, how can that question have place concerning the subsistence of self, under a change of substance? If they be distinct, what is the difference between them? | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: Locke seems to think there is a characterless substance which supports momories, and the latter constitute the self. So if my substance acquires Nestor's memories, I become Nestor. Hume, the stricter empiricist, cares nothing for characterless things. |
| 21312 | Perceptions are distinct, so no connection between them can ever be discovered [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If perceptions are distinct existences, they form a whole only by being connected together. But no connexions among distinct existences are ever discoverable. We only feel a connexion ...to pass from one object to another. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: This first part of this is a problem for any 'bundle' theory of objects or self. This is why Hume abandons all hope for his theory of personal identity based on association. You infer the associations, but don't perceive them. |
| 21294 | A continuous lifelong self must be justified by a single sustained impression, which we don't have [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course of our lives; since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather dogmatic application of the requirement that all knowledge must be founded in experience. It fails to recognise that knowledge of the thing having the experiences is a rather special case. We must ask for the best explanation. |
| 21295 | When I introspect I can only observe my perceptions, and never a self which has them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When I enter most intimately into myself I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never observe any thing but the perception. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: It isn't like looking for your car in the car park. The prior question should be: assuming you do have a persisting self, what would you expect introspection to reveal about it? |
| 21298 | We pretend our perceptions are continuous, and imagine a self to fill the gaps [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We feign the continued existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove their interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Modern neuroscience (according to Dennett) endorses this, because the brain continually fills in gaps in experience (as it fills in the blindspot during normal vision). |
| 21304 | Identity in the mind is a fiction, like that fiction that plants and animals stay the same [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The identity we ascribe to the mind is only a fictitious one, and of a like kind with that we ascribe to vegetable and animal bodies. It cannot therefore have a different origin, but must proceed from a like operation of the imagination upon like objects. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: Sustained purpose is Hume's common factor. Is the identity over time ascribed to the body of a single animal nothing more than a fiction? It is a wise ascription, compared to stupid ascriptions to gerrymandered objects. |
| 21308 | We have no impression of the self, and we therefore have no idea of it [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Every idea is derived from preceding impressions; and we have no impression of self or substance, as something simple and individual. We have, therefore, no idea of them in that sense. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: This spells out with beautiful simplicity how his empiricist assumptions lead him to this sceptical view. No logical positivist could reject this thought. Personally I favour empiricism with added inference to the best explanation. |
| 21310 | Does an oyster with one perception have a self? Would lots of perceptions change that? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose an oyster to have only one perception, as of thirst or hunger. Do you consider any thing but merely that perception? Have you any notion of self or substance? If not, the addition of other perceptions can never give you that notion. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], Appendix) | |
| A reaction: A splendid addition to his earlier sceptical thinking. We could form a different conclusion. Suppose I do have a self. If my multitudinous perceptions were reduced to a single perception of agonising pain, would that remove the self? |
| 2222 | The doctrine of free will arises from a false sensation we have of freedom in many actions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from a false sensation or seeming experience which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference, in many of our actions. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.72) |
| 2223 | Liberty is merely acting according to the will, which anyone can do if they are not in chains [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By liberty we can only mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will, …which is universally allowed to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.73) |
| 3655 | Hume makes determinism less rigid by removing the necessity from causation [Trusted on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's account of the causal relation makes determinism less rigid because there is no longer a logical necessity in the succession of events. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.II.75) by Jennifer Trusted - Free Will and Responsibility Ch.4 |
| 14999 | Prior to conventions, not all green things were green? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: It is absurd to say that 'before we introduced our conventions, not all green things were green'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: Well… Different cultures label the colours of the rainbow differently, and many of them omit orange. I suspect the blue/green borderline has shifted. |
| 14998 | Conventions are contingent and analytic truths are necessary, so that isn't their explanation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: To suggest that analytic truths make statements about linguistic conventions is a nonstarter; statements about linguistic conventions are contingent, whereas the statements made by typical analytic sentences are necessary. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: That 'anything yellow is extended' is not just a convention should be fairly obvious, and it is obviously necessary. But we can say that bachelors are necessarily unmarried men - given the current convention. |
| 15016 | Analyticity has lost its traditional role, which relied on truth by convention [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can fully play the role traditionally associated with analyticity, for much of that traditional role presupposed the doctrine of truth by convention. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 09.8) | |
| A reaction: Sider rejects Quine's attack on analyticity, but accepts his critique of truth by convention. |
| 20030 | If one event causes another, the two events must be wholly distinct [Hume, by Wilson/Schpall] |
| Full Idea: Hume's maxim is that if one event cause another, then the two events must be wholly distinct. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Wilson,G/Schpall,S - Action 3 | |
| A reaction: [Anyone know the original reference?] So we are not allowed to say that one part of an event caused another. The charged caused the victory, so they are two events, but in another context the whole battle is one event. |
| 2220 | Only experience teaches us about our wills [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We learn the influence of our will from experience alone. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.52) | |
| A reaction: I can, of course, produce inductive generalisations about what my will can achieve, based on some limited experiences. "I know I can master that". Hobbes (and others) say we have no experience of a 'will'. Hume should be more sceptical! |
| 6692 | For Hume, practical reason has little force, because we can always modify our desires [Hume, by Graham] |
| Full Idea: In Hume's account of action, practical reason is not a very forceful guide to conduct, since we can escape its demands by abandoning or modifying our desires. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Gordon Graham - Eight Theories of Ethics Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Presumably a desire can be a good reason, and we can passionately desire to be rational, etc., so this is a rather complex issue. 'Pure reason' is not 'all-or-nothing', and neither is pure desire. |
| 8257 | Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], II.III.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's notorious total rejection of Socratic intellectualism, a stilleto in the back of the 'age of reason'. Hume thinks desire is the motivator. He's probably right. Why should truth motivate? See Idea 4421. |
| 22374 | You can only hold people responsible for actions which arise out of their character [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where actions proceed not from some cause in the characters and dispositions of the person who performed them, they infix not themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour if good, nor infamy if evil. The action in itself may be blameable. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], II.III.2), quoted by Philippa Foot - Free Will as Involving Determinism p.70 | |
| A reaction: I agree with Foot that this is wrong. Uncharacteristic actions still reflect on the person. The last sentence is wrong too. If you ignore the agent of an action, it can't be distinguished from a flash of lightning. |
| 2224 | Praise and blame can only be given if an action proceeds from a person's character and disposition [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Where actions proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them, they can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor his infamy, if evil. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) |
| 21103 | Moral questions can only be decided by common opinion [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Though an appeal to general opinion may justly, in the speculative sciences of metaphysics, natural philosophy or astronomy, be deemed unfair, yet in all questions with regard to morals there is really no other standard for deciding controversies. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.291) | |
| A reaction: Surely this is too pessimistic. Common opinion decided to burn people to death for being witches. Common opinion may usually win, but there must sometimes be good grounds for resisting it. |
| 18552 | Forget about beauty; just concentrate on the virtues of delicacy and discernment admired in critics [Hume, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Hume suggest we get away from the fruitless discussion of beauty, and simply concentrate on the qualities we admire, and ought to admire, in a critic - qualities such as delicacy and discernment. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 6 | |
| A reaction: We might wonder how you can admire 'discernment' without some view of the thing being discern, which is in danger of being beauty. How do you judge delicacy and discernment without judging the objects of the critic's taste? Mere authority? |
| 6608 | Strong sense, delicate sentiment, practice, comparisons, and lack of prejudice, are all needed for good taste [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Strong sense, united to delicate sentiment, improved by practice, perfected by comparison, and cleared of all prejudice, can alone entitle critics to the valuable character of having 'taste'. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the standard of taste [1757]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this, but then I am a very politically incorrect elitist when it comes to taste. It just seems screamingly obvious that professional wine-tasters have a better appreciation of wine than me, and so on for the rest of the arts. |
| 2225 | If you deny all necessity and causation, then our character is not responsible for our crime [Hume] |
| Full Idea: According to the principle which denies necessity, and consequently causes, a man is pure and unattainted after having committed the most horrid of crimes, since his actions are not derived from his character. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: The idea that responsibility involves actions which are 'derived from his character' strikes me as good. Once you give up free will, it is almost the only sensible way to go. |
| 2226 | Repentance gets rid of guilt, which shows that responsibility arose from the criminal principles in the mind [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Repentance and reformation can wipe off every crime, but that is because criminal acts prove criminal principles in the mind, so alteration of these principles removes that proof, and the acts cease to be criminal. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VIII.I.76) | |
| A reaction: A bit overstated, because a heinous crime will always taint our impression of someone's character. The person may cease to be criminal, but surely not the original acts? |
| 22382 | We cannot discover vice by studying a wilful murder; that only arises from our own feelings [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Examine wilful murder and see if you can find the matter of fact called vice. You only find certain passions, motives, volitions and thoughts. There is no matter of fact in the case. You can never find it till you turn your reflexion into your own breast. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], III.I.2), quoted by Philippa Foot - Hume on Moral Judgement p.77 | |
| A reaction: [...In you breast you find 'disapprobation'] The question Foot asks is whether the facts of the case are relevant to the disapprobation. If they are not, as Hume implies, then it would be rational to feel the same disapprobation about drinking coffee. |
| 4008 | Modern science has destroyed the Platonic synthesis of scientific explanation and morality [Hume, by Taylor,C] |
| Full Idea: From our modern perspective, the Platonic synthesis of scientific explanation and moral insight lies irrecoverably shattered by the rise of natural science. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Charles Taylor - Sources of the Self §3.2 | |
| A reaction: Modern attempts to challenge Hume's separation of fact from value have failed, but a return to the Greek perspective presents a plausible alternative. |
| 8067 | The problem of getting to 'ought' from 'is' would also apply in getting to 'owes' or 'needs' [Anscombe on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's objection to passing from 'is' to 'ought' would equally apply to passing from 'is' to 'owes' or from 'is' to 'needs'. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by G.E.M. Anscombe - Modern Moral Philosophy p.176 | |
| A reaction: Profound and important. The empirical and emotivist (nay, nihilist) clinging to the total independence of duties from facts crumbles when looking at facts of human nature or of social groups. Creatures ought to feed; societies ought to flourish. |
| 4578 | You can't move from 'is' to 'ought' without giving some explanation or reason for the deduction [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In many writers I find that instead of the usual propositions 'is' and 'is not', I then find no proposition that is not connected with an 'ought' or an 'ought not'. It is necessary that a reason be given for how one can be a deduction from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], III.1.1) | |
| A reaction: A huge claim, the basis of the value-free modern scientific world view. Possible escapes are Greek virtue theory, or Kantian principles, or some sort of a priori values (as in Charles Taylor). |
| 4581 | Virtues and vices are like secondary qualities in perception, found in observers, not objects [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind. | |
| From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1740) | |
| A reaction: Very revealing about the origin of the is/ought idea, but this is an assertion rather than an argument. Most Greeks treat value as a primary quality of things (e.g. life, harmony, beauty, health). |
| 3926 | The human heart has a natural concern for public good [Hume] |
| Full Idea: While the human heart is compounded of the same elements as at present, it will never be wholly indifferent to public good. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], IX.I.222) | |
| A reaction: Even criminals can be patriotic. Why do people dump rubbish in beauty spots? |
| 23115 | We have no natural love of mankind, other than through various relationships [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It may be affirm'd, that there is no such passion in human minds, as the love of mankind, merely as such, independent of personal qualities, of services, or of relation to ourself. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740], p.481), quoted by John Kekes - Against Liberalism 9.4 | |
| A reaction: Hume says this is for the best. I can't imagine spontaneous love of human beings we have never met. It takes the teachings of some sort of doctrine - religious or political - to produce such an attitude. I see it as a distortion of love. A hijacking. |
| 3650 | Total selfishness is not irrational [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], II.III.ii) | |
| A reaction: A famous idea, and the embodiment of moral nihilism. I say nothing could ever refute someone who held such a view. No moral theory can force someone to care, if they just don't. |
| 3929 | No moral theory is of any use if it doesn't serve the interests of the individual concerned [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What theory of morals can ever serve any useful purpose, unless it can show, by a particular detail, that all the duties which it recommends, are also the true interest of each individual? | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], IX.II.228) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to disagree, even if occasional cases of extreme altruism can occur. |
| 3925 | Personal Merit is the possession of useful or agreeable mental qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Personal Merit consists altogether in the possession of mental qualities, useful or agreeable to the person himself or to others. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], IX.I.217) | |
| A reaction: If pleasure and utility can be intrinsically valuable, why can't virtue be as well? |
| 4580 | All virtues benefit either the public, or the individual who possesses them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I desire you to consider if there be any quality that is virtuous, without having a tendency either to the public good or to the good of the person who possesses it. | |
| From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739) | |
| A reaction: Obviously this is generally true. How, though, does it benefit the individual to secretly preserve their integrity? I go round to visit a friend to repay a debt; I am told they have died; I quietly leave some money on the table and leave. Why? |
| 3922 | Justice only exists to support society [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The necessity of justice to the support of society is the sole foundation of that virtue. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], III.II.163) | |
| A reaction: A sense of fairness precedes the building of a society, rather than arising out of it. |
| 23560 | If we all naturally had everything we could ever desire, the virtue of justice would be irrelevant [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Suppose nature has bestowed on humans such abundance of external conveniences that every individual is fully provided with whatever his appetites can want. …Justice, in that case, would be totally useless, and have no place in the catalogue of virtues. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], I.III.145) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to emphasise possessions and satisfaction of appetites, but presumably it would also need total security from other humans, which nature might struggle to provide. No sharing in this imagined world. |
| 21093 | Friendship without community spirit misses out on the main part of virtue [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A man who is only susceptible of friendship, without public spirit or a regard to the community, is deficient in the most material part of virtue. | |
| From: David Hume (That Politics may be reduced to a Science [1750], p.21) | |
| A reaction: I think this is aimed at the epicureans. If the highest virtues are focused on one's friends that can easily lead to injustice, because it can tolerate prejudice against people who are very unlike one's friends. |
| 3918 | Moral philosophy aims to show us our duty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The end of all moral speculations is to teach us our duty. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], I.136) | |
| A reaction: A surprising view from someone who thinks morals are basically sentiment. |
| 3919 | Conclusions of reason do not affect our emotions or decisions to act [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Inference and conclusions of the understanding have no hold of the affections nor set in motion the active powers of man. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], I.136) | |
| A reaction: I disagree. This is a typical empiricist separation of ideas from experience, of inner from outer, of analytic from synthetic. |
| 3928 | Virtue just requires careful calculation and a preference for the greater happiness [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The sole trouble which virtue demands is that of just calculation, and a steady preference for the greater happiness. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], IX.II.228) | |
| A reaction: Hume was the parent of utilitarianism. Can one person exhibit virtue on a desert island? |
| 3923 | No one would cause pain to a complete stranger who happened to be passing [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Would any man, who is walking along, tread as willingly on another's gouty toes, whom he has no quarrel with, as on the hard flint and pavement? | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], V.II.183) | |
| A reaction: He is right that we empathise with the pain of others, and this is presumably one of the bases of morality. Animals lack sympathy for other animals. |
| 3924 | Nature makes private affections come first, because public concerns are spread too thinly [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is wisely ordained by nature, that private connexions should commonly prevail over universal views and considerations; otherwise our affections and actions would be dissipated and lost, for want of a proper limited object. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], V.II.186n) | |
| A reaction: A very good objection to the excessively altruistic demands of utilitarianism. |
| 21099 | People must have agreed to authority, because they are naturally equal, prior to education [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we consider how nearly equal all men are in their bodily force, and even in their mental powers and faculties, till cultivated by education, ...then nothing but their own consent could at first associate them together, and subject them to authority. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.276) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound very convincing. Some people are much better suited than others to training and education. Men vary enormously in size. |
| 3921 | The safety of the people is the supreme law [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The safety of the people is the supreme law. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], III.II.157) | |
| A reaction: No political system ever seems able to disagree with this. |
| 21096 | The only purpose of government is to administer justice, which brings security [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Man is engaged to establish political society in order to administer justice, without which there could be no peace among them, nor safety, nor mutual intercourse. ...Government has no other purpose but the distribution of justice. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the Origin of Government [1750], p.28) | |
| A reaction: The need for a society in order to ensure mutual intercourse sounds like Hobbes, and a pessimism about trust. By 'justice' he means the administration of law. |
| 21100 | The idea that society rests on consent or promises undermines obedience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were you to preach in most parts of the world that political connections are founded altogether on voluntary consent or a mutual promise, the magistrate would soon imprison you as seditious for loosening the ties of obedience. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.278) | |
| A reaction: He cites obedience as the prime civic virtue, because the law can't operate without it. He doesn't seem to consider the limiting cases of obedience, which makes him essentially a conservative. |
| 20495 | We no more give 'tacit assent' to the state than a passenger carried on board a ship while asleep [Hume] |
| Full Idea: [If we give 'tacit' assent to the state] ...we may as well assert that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master, though he was carried aboard while asleep. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: We should probably drop the whole idea that we give assent to the state. We are stuck with a state, and a few of us can escape, if it seems important enough, but most of us have no choice. He hope to assent to the controllers of the state. |
| 21101 | The people would be amazed to learn that government arises from their consent [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we assert that all lawful government arises from the consent of the people, we certainly do them a great deal more honour than they deserve, or even expect or desire from us. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.285) | |
| A reaction: Hume has no interest in the purely abstract idea of a contract, and scorns Locke's idea of tacit consent to government. I assume he would dismiss Rawls as unrealistic theorising. Hume loves peace, and is alarmed by change. |
| 21091 | It would be absurd if even a free constitution did not impose restraints, for the public good [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A republican and free form of government would be an obvious absurdity, if the particular checks and controls, provided by the constitution, had really no influence, and made it not the interest, even of bad men, to act for the public good. | |
| From: David Hume (That Politics may be reduced to a Science [1750], p.14) | |
| A reaction: Presumably if you attain absolute power you can write any old constitution you like (Clause 1: the presidency is for life). But there does seem much point in doing it - unless it is to facilitate the use of the law for persecutions. |
| 21097 | Modern monarchies are (like republics) rule by law, rather than by men [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In modern times monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of laws, not of men. | |
| From: David Hume (Of Civil Liberty [1750], p.54) | |
| A reaction: Dreams of simple 'government by law' disappeared with the rise of modern media, which can be controlled by wealth. |
| 21092 | Nobility either share in the power of the whole, or they compose the power of the whole [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A nobility may possess power in two different ways. Either every nobleman shares the power as part of the whole body, or the whole body enjoys the power as composed of parts, which each have a distinct power and authority. | |
| From: David Hume (That Politics may be reduced to a Science [1750], p.15) | |
| A reaction: He says the first type is found in Venice, and is preferable to the second type, which is found in Poland. Presumably in the shared version there is some restraint on depraved nobles. The danger is each noble being an autocrat. |
| 3927 | Society prefers helpful lies to harmful truth [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Truths which are pernicious to society, if any such there be, will yield to errors which are salutary and advantageous. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], IX.II.228) | |
| A reaction: Hume probably meant religion. Two centuries later we have a greater appetite for uncomfortable truth. |
| 2233 | No government has ever suffered by being too tolerant of philosophy [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A state ought to tolerate every principle of philosophy, nor is there any instance that a government has suffered in its political interests by such indulgence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.114) |
| 6703 | Poor people lack the knowledge or wealth to move to a different state [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artisan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives, from day to day, by the small wages that he acquires? | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.283) | |
| A reaction: Of course, in the nineteenth century the Scottish poor did, going to America, which welcomed the poor, and spoke English. Hume's point is the right reply to anyone who says 'If you don't like it, go elsewhere'. Also 'No! Change it!' |
| 3920 | If you equalise possessions, people's talents will make them unequal again [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Render possessions ever so equal, men's different degrees of art, care, and industry will immediately break that equality. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry concerning Principles of Morals [1751], III.II.155) | |
| A reaction: This might not be so if there is a totalitarian restriction of economic freedom. |
| 21094 | There are two kinds of right - to power, and to property [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Right is of two kinds: right to power and right to property. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the First Principles of Government [1750], p.25) | |
| A reaction: These seem to be positive rights. No mention of the right not be to unjustly abused. It is hard to find any sort of radical political thinking in Hume. His empirical scepticism extends to his politics. He approves of modern consitutional monarchy. |
| 6581 | Hume thought (unlike Locke) that property is a merely conventional relationship [Hume, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Hume thought (in contrast to Locke) that property reflects a conventional (rather than natural) relationship determined by the laws that protect people from having things taken from them. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Nine political essays [1741]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: It seems pretty obvious that the idea of property was invented by the powerful, to protect their gains against the weak. I suspect that you might till a piece of land simply in order to assert ownership of it, just as you might bring in colonists. |
| 21102 | We all know that the history of property is founded on injustices [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Reason tells us that there is no property in durable objects, such as land or houses, when carefully examined in passing from hand to hand, but must, in some period, have been founded on fraud and injustice. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the original contract [1741], p.288) | |
| A reaction: A prime objection to Nozick, who fantasises about an initial position of just ownership, which can then be the subject of just contracts. In 1866 thousands of white people were granted land in the USA, but not a single black freed slave got anything. |
| 21095 | It is an exaggeration to say that property is the foundation of all government [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A noted author has made property the foundation of all government; and most of our political writers seem inclined to follow him in that particular. This is carrying the matter too far. | |
| From: David Hume (Of the First Principles of Government [1750], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This obviously refers to John Locke. Locke's idea strikes me as hideous. It says the foundation of government is the right of property owners to protect what they have against non-owners. It implies social exclusion in the constitution. |
| 4677 | If suicide is wrong because only God disposes of our lives, it must also be wrong to save lives [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were the disposal of human life so much the peculiar province of the Almighty that it were an encroachment on His right, for men to dispose of their own lives; it would be equally criminal to act for the preservation of life as for its destruction. | |
| From: David Hume (On suicide [1775]), quoted by Jonathan Glover - Causing Death and Saving Lives §13 | |
| A reaction: A characteristically wicked and neat point. Maybe we can intervene in the environment (diverting a falling stone), but not directly in a life? Life is sacred, but stones are not? |
| 2195 | We can discover some laws of nature, but never its ultimate principles and causes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human enquiry. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.26) |
| 14301 | We have no good concept of solidity or matter, because accounts of them are all circular [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In order to form an idea of solidity, we must conceive two bodies pressing on each other without penetration. ..The ideas of secondary qualities are excluded, and the idea of motion depends on extension. This leaves us no just idea of solidity or matter. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.4), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 02.3 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] For me these kind of strict empiricist arguments always recede when you accept the notion of an inference to be best explanation. We have some sort of notion of 'matter', but here the physicist seems to take over. |
| 2245 | A priori it looks as if a cause could have absolutely any effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we just reason a priori, anything may appear able to produce anything. The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 4772 | If a singular effect is studied, its cause can only be inferred from the types of events involved [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Only when two species of objects are constantly conjoined can we infer one from the other; were an entirely singular effect presented, which could not be comprehended under a species, I do not see that we could form any conjecture concerning its cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: A key issue in causation. Note that Hume is willing to discuss causation in a freakishly unique happening, but only if he can spot a 'type' in the each of the events. I don't like it, but the man has a good point… |
| 4579 | The idea of a final cause is very uncertain and unphilosophical [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Your sense of 'natural' is founded on final causes, which is a consideration that appears to me pretty uncertain and unphilosophical. | |
| From: David Hume (Letters [1739], to Hutcheson 1739) | |
| A reaction: This is the rejection of Aristotelian teleology by modern science. I agree that the notion of utterly ultimate final cause is worse than 'uncertain' - it is an impossible concept. Nevertheless, I prefer Aristotle to Hume. Nature can teach us lessons. |
| 8341 | Hume never even suggests that there is no such thing as causation [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: At no point (in Sect VII of 'Enquiries') does Hume even hint at the thesis that there is (or even might be) no such thing as causation. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion 21.3 | |
| A reaction: If, as some people think, Hume is a phenomenalist, then we wouldn't expect him to actually deny the existence of such things. The standard position (cf. Ayer on religion) is that such things are not even worth mentioning. |
| 8344 | At first Hume said qualities are the causal entities, but later he said events [Hume, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: In the Enquiries Hume clearly suggests that causes and effects are entities that can be named or described by singular terms; probably events, since one can follow another; but in the Treatise it seems to be the quality or circumstance which is the cause. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: A quality would have to have an associated power if it was going to trigger an effect. But then so would an event (unless inertia carried across?). Qualities are more distinct. Events can last for years. |
| 8382 | For Hume a constant conjunction is both necessary and sufficient for causation [Hume, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: Hume held that constant conjunction between As and Bs is both necessary and sufficient for a causal relation. If As and Bs are conjoined that is sufficient for a causal relation; if A and B are causally related, necessarily they are constantly conjoined. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Tim Crane - Causation 1.2.2 | |
| A reaction: A helpful connection between Hume and the modern debate about conditions for causation (e.g. Mackie). It sounds as if, to spot the necessary condition, you need to independently see that A and B are causally related, which regularity does not allow. |
| 3662 | Hume says we can only know constant conjunctions, not that that's what causation IS [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's regularity theory of causation is only a theory about causation so far as we can know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects, not about causation as it is in the objects. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C |
| 16946 | Causation is just invariance, as long as it is described in general terms [Quine on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume explained cause as invariable succession, and this makes sense as long as the cause and effect are referred to by general terms. … This account leaves singular causal statements unexplained. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Willard Quine - Natural Kinds p.131 | |
| A reaction: A nice 20th century linguistic point made against a good 18th century theory. |
| 15250 | If impressions, memories and ideas only differ in vivacity, nothing says it is memory, or repetition [Whitehead on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume confuses 'repetition of impressions' with 'impression of repetitions of impressions'. ...In order of 'force and vivacity' we have: impressions, memories, ideas. This omits the vital fact that memory is memory; the notion of repetition is lost. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature, + Appendix [1740]) by Alfred North Whitehead - Process and Reality V.II | |
| A reaction: [compressed; Harré and Madden spotted this idea] This seems to pinpoint rather nicely the hopeless thinness of Hume's account. He is so desperate to get it down to minimal empirical experience that his explanations are too thin. One big idea.... |
| 4771 | In both of Hume's definitions, causation is extrinsic to the sequence of events [Psillos on Hume] |
| Full Idea: What needs to be stressed is that in both of Hume's definitions of cause, an individual sequence of events is deemed causal only because something extrinsic to the sequence occurs (be it conjunctions, or a mental link). | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §1.9 | |
| A reaction: Simple but important. Hume's basic claim is that there is no 'causation' in events, apart from the events themselves. Hence no necessity, on top of the apparent contingency. |
| 5194 | Hume's definition of cause as constantly joined thoughts can't cover undiscovered laws [Ayer on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's second definition of cause (one object always 'conveys the thought' of another) implies that it is inconceivable that there should be causal laws which have never yet been thought of, and this is not so. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a good criticism of Hume, but also a bit of a problem for a strong empiricist like Ayer. There may also be causal laws which we cannot discover, but logical positivism will not allow me to speculate about that. |
| 2221 | A cause is either similar events following one another, or an experience always suggesting a second experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an object, followed by another, and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second, or, an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.II.60) |
| 2234 | It is only when two species of thing are constantly conjoined that we can infer one from the other [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is only when two species of object are found to be constantly conjoined, that we can infer the one from the other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.115) | |
| A reaction: what is a species? |
| 2193 | No causes can be known a priori, but only from experience of constant conjunctions [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Without exception, knowledge of cause and effect is not attained by reasonings a priori, but arises entirely from experience, when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], IV.I.23) |
| 8422 | Cause is where if the first object had not been, the second had not existed [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We may define a cause to be where .....if the first object had not been, the second never had existed. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], 7.2.60) | |
| A reaction: This is Hume's second definition, cited by Lewis as the ancestor of his counterfactual theory. It feels all wrong to me. 'If there had been no window, there would have been no window-breakage'? |
| 19274 | Hume seems to presuppose necessary connections between mental events [Kripke on Hume] |
| Full Idea: A well-known objection to Hume's analysis of causation is that he presupposes necessary connections between mental events in the theory. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Saul A. Kripke - Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language n 87 | |
| A reaction: Are these the associations that occur within the mind? I'm not clear about the objection, but record it for interest. |
| 20705 | That events could be uncaused is absurd; I only say intuition and demonstration don't show this [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause: I only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor from demonstration, but from another source. | |
| From: David Hume (Letters [1739], 1754), quoted by Brian Davies - Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion 5 'God' | |
| A reaction: Since the other source is habit, he is being a bit disingenuous. While rational intuition and demonstration give a fairly secure basis for the universality of causation, mere human habits of expectation give very feeble grounds. |
| 2218 | In observing causes we can never observe any necessary connections or binding qualities [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we look towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able to discover any power or necessary connexion, any quality which binds the effect to the cause. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], VII.I.50) |
| 15249 | Hume never shows how a strong habit could generate the concept of necessity [Harré/Madden on Hume] |
| Full Idea: Hume's contemporary critics are correct. He never really shows how it is possible for a habit, however strong it may be, to generate the concept of necessity. | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II | |
| A reaction: This is a powerful objection which hadn't occurred to me. Presumably eighteenth century critics are referred to? I suppose if a necessity is what 'cannot be otherwise', a very deeply ingrained habit might seem that way - but in me, not in the world. |
| 8339 | Hume's regularity theory of causation is epistemological; he believed in some sort of natural necessity [Hume, by Strawson,G] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Regularity theory of causation is about causation as we know about it or contentfully conceive of it in the objects. As far as causation as it is in the objects is concerned, Hume firmly believed in some sort of natural necessity or causal power. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748]) by Galen Strawson - The Secret Connexion App C | |
| A reaction: Strawson's controversial reinterpretation of Hume. We are confusing his epistemology with his ontology. Hume is simply being sceptical about our ability to bridge the gap to achieve understanding of natural necessity. A very different view of Hume. |
| 14985 | The notion of law doesn't seem to enhance physical theories [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Adding the notion of law to physical theory doesn't seem to enhance its explanatory power. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 02.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree with his scepticism about laws, although Sider offers it as part of his scepticism about modal facts being included in explanations of actuality. Personally I like dispositions, but not laws. See the ideas of Stephen Mumford. |
| 14987 | Many of the key theories of modern physics do not appear to be 'laws' [Sider] |
| Full Idea: That spacetime is 4D Lorentzian manifold, that the universe began with a singularity, and in a state of low entropy, are all central to physics, but it is a stretch to call them 'laws'. ...It has been argued that there are no laws of biology. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.1) |
| 14725 | Maybe motion is a dynamical quantity intrinsic to a thing at a particular time [Sider] |
| Full Idea: There is an alternative to the Russellian 'at-at' theory of motion, according to which dynamical quantities are intrinsic to times. Whether and how an object is moving at a time is a fact about what that object is like then. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I think I find this quite appealing, because there is too much of a tendency to think of objects as passive and inert, with laws, forces, motions etc. imposed from the outside. But nature is active and dynamic. However, motion can't be wholly intrinsic. |
| 14991 | Space has real betweenness and congruence structure (though it is not the Euclidean concepts) [Sider] |
| Full Idea: In metaphysics, space is intrinsically structured; the genuine betweenness and congruence relations are privileged in a way that Euclidean-betweenness and Euclidean-congruence are not. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: I note that Einstein requires space to be 'curved', which implies that it is a substance with properties. |
| 14735 | Space is 3D and lacks a direction; time seems connected to causation [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Unlike time, space has three dimensions and lacks a distinguishing direction; unlike space, time seems to be specially connected with causation. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: These strike me as nice reasons to doubt (what I already prima facie doubt) that there is a single manifold that is 'space-time', for all that twentieth century physics tells us it is so. A century is a mere click of a clock where truth is concerned. |
| 15021 | The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.1) |
| 15024 | The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The spotlight theorist accepts the block universe, but also something in addition: a joint-carving monadic property of presentness, which is possessed by just one moment of time, and which 'moves', to be possessed by later and later times. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9) | |
| A reaction: This seems better than the merely detached eternalist view, which seems to ignore the key phenomenon. I just can't comprehend any theory which makes the future as real as the past. |
| 14722 | Between presentism and eternalism is the 'growing block' view - the past is real, the future is not [Sider] |
| Full Idea: Intermediate between the polar opposites of presentism and eternalism is the view (defended by Broad 1923 and Tooley 1997) that the past is real but the future is not. Reality consists of a growing four-dimensional manifold, the 'growing block universe'. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The obvious and plausible basis for this is that statements about the past seem to have truthmakers, but statements about the future lack them. Does a truth always require ontological commitment? Death is cessation of existence. |
| 14756 | For Presentists there must always be a temporal vantage point for any description [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The Presentist acknowledges that no atemporal description of the case can be given; a vantage point must be chosen for any description. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This is because Presentists are committed to tense, which have to be either explicit or implicit in any sentence. But what of famously 'timeless' truths such as '2 and 2 are 4'? |
| 14724 | Presentists must deny truths about multiple times [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The presentist must deny the truth of everyday claims that concern multiple times taken together. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: This rests on the extent to which every truth has an ontological commitment. You can deny the literal existence of multiple times without denying such truths. |
| 14723 | Talk using tenses can be eliminated, by reducing it to indexical connections for an utterance [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The temporal reductionist claims that tensed locutions are indexical - 'present' being the time of utterance etc. This generalises to say that nothing corresponding to tense need be admitted as a fundamental feature of the world. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He particular cites Mellor for this view] Highly implausible. I very much doubt whether it is possible to explain the indexicality of a word like 'now' without referring to tenses. Does time only exist when sentences and thoughts occur? |
| 14736 | The B-theory is adequate, except that it omits to say which time is present [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The B-theoretic description of the world is completely adequate except that it leaves out information about which time is present. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty basic deficiency. How could there a time which lacked a present moment? The present is when things happen. How would it qualify as time at all if it lacked past, present and future? |
| 14734 | The B-series involves eternalism, and the reduction of tense [Sider] |
| Full Idea: The B-series has two components: eternalism - the thesis that all future entities are real - and the thesis of reducibility of tense. | |
| From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 4.2) |
| 6959 | We can't assume God's perfections are like our ideas or like human attributes [Hume] |
| Full Idea: But let us beware, lest we think, that our ideas anywise correspond to his perfections, or that his attributes have any resemblance to these qualities among men. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 2) |
| 6957 | The objects of theological reasoning are too big for our minds [Hume] |
| Full Idea: But in theological reasonings … we are employed upon objects, which, we must be sensible, are too large for our grasp. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 1) |
| 2244 | It can never be a logical contradiction to assert the non-existence of something thought to exist [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Whatever 'is' may 'not be'. No negation of a fact can involve a contradiction. The non-existence of any being, without exception, is as clear and distinct an idea as its existence. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XII.III.132) |
| 21255 | No being's non-existence can imply a contradiction, so its existence cannot be proved a priori [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Nothing that is distinctly conceivable implies a contradiction. Whatever we conceive of as existent we can also conceive as non-existent. So there is no being whose non-existence implies a contradiction. So no being's existence is demonstrable. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 9) | |
| A reaction: I totally subscribe to this idea, and take claims that nature actually contains contradictions (based on the inevitable quantum mechanics) to be ridiculous. Nature is the embodiment, chief exemplar and prime test of consistency. |
| 21254 | A chain of events requires a cause for the whole as well as the parts, yet the chain is just a sum of parts [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The whole chain or succession [of causes and effects], taken together, is not caused by anything, and yet it is evident that it requires a cause or reason, as much as any particular object which begins to exist in time. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 9) | |
| A reaction: This is such a major and significant idea. With blinkers on we think our questions are answered. Then someone (a philosopher, inevitably) makes you pull back and ask a much wider and more difficult question. |
| 1435 | If something must be necessary so that something exists rather than nothing, why can't the universe be necessary? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: What was it that determined something to exist rather than nothing? ...This implies a necessary being… But why may not the material universe be the necessarily existent being? | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 9) | |
| A reaction: There certainly seems no need for whatever the necessary thing is that it qualify as a 'god'. If could be a necessary subatomic particle that suddenly triggers reactions. |
| 6962 | The thing which contains order must be God, so see God where you see order [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By supposing something to contain the principle of its order within itself, we really assert it to be God; and the sooner we arrive at that divine being, so much the better. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 4) |
| 6958 | How can we pronounce on a whole after a brief look at a very small part? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A very small part of this great system, during a very short time, is very imperfectly discovered to us: and do we thence pronounce decisively concerning the origin of the whole? | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 2) |
| 21282 | Design cannot prove a unified Deity. Many men make a city, so why not many gods for a world? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: How can you prove the unity of a Deity? A great number of men join in building a house or ship, in rearing a city; why may not several deities combine in contriving and framing a world? | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: You might look at the Cistine Chapel ceiling and conclude that only a team could have achieve such a thing. Since there is no way to infer how many gods might be involved, then one god is a possible theory. |
| 21280 | From a ship you would judge its creator a genius, not a mere humble workman [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is uncertain whether all the excellences of the work can justly be ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the carpenter ...and what surprise must we feel when we find him a stupid mechanic. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: You can at least infer that the ship was not made entirely by makers who are ignorant of carpentry. Somewhere in the divine team there must exist the skills that produce whatever we observe? |
| 21281 | This excellent world may be the result of a huge sequence of trial-and-error [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out; many fruitless trials made, and a slow but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: Lee Smolin, a modern cosmographer, suggests that this evolution may have led to the current universe, after a long train of selective creations. The idea of natural selection was waiting to happen in 1760. |
| 21283 | Humans renew their species sexually. If there are many gods, would they not do the same? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Men are mortal and renew their species by generation. Why must this circumstance, so universal, so essential, be excluded from those numerous and limited deities? | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: Hume observes that this would be like the Greek gods. Hume makes mincemeat of attempts to prove the existence of God merely by analogy with human affairs. |
| 6966 | Creation is more like vegetation than human art, so it won't come from reason [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If the universe is more like animal bodies and vegetables than works of human art, it is more probable that its cause resembles the cause of the former than of the latter, and its cause should be ascribed to generation rather than to reason of design. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 7) |
| 21284 | This Creator god might be an infant or incompetent or senile [Hume] |
| Full Idea: [Maybe] this world ...was only the first essay of some infant deity ...or it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity, the object of derision to his superiors ...or it is the product of the dotage of some superannuated deity... | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: His opponent in the dialogue rejoices that, in the face of these sacreligious fantasies, Hume still accepts the likelihood of some sort of design. Hume is right that it is not much of a theory if nothing can be said about the Designer. |
| 21286 | Motion often begins in matter, with no sign of a controlling agent [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Motion in many instances begins in matter, without any known voluntary agent; to suppose always, in these cases, an unknown voluntary agent is mere hypothesis, attended with no advantages. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 8) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern 'powers' view of science, and a direct contradiction of Plato's claims in The Laws. It seems a bit primitive to assume that magnetism must be the work of some god. |
| 21287 | The universe could settle into superficial order, without a designer [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The universe goes on in a succession of chaos and disorder. But is it not possible that it may settle at last, so as not to lose its inherent motion and active force, yet so as to produce a uniformity of appearance, amidst the continual fluctuation. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 8) | |
| A reaction: From what I know of the constant fluctuation of virtual particles (e.g. inside protons) this is exactly what actually is happening. There is an 'appearance' of order, but at the lowest level this is not the case. |
| 21288 | Ideas arise from objects, not vice versa; ideas only influence matter if they are linked [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In all known instances, ideas are copied from real objects. You reverse this order and give thought the precedence. ...Thought has no influence upon matter except where that matter is so conjoined with it as to have an equal reciprocal influence upon it. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 8) | |
| A reaction: He allows something like mental causation, provided mind and brain are closely linked. Hume brings out the close relationship between divine design theories, and the mind-body problem. |
| 21256 | A surprise feature of all products of 9 looks like design, but is actually a necessity [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The products of 9 always compose either 9 or some lesser product of 9, if you add the characters of the product. To a superficial observer this regularity appears as chance or design, but a skilful algebraist sees it as necessity. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 9) | |
| A reaction: An example of this universal generality is that 369 is a product of 9 (9x41), and if you add 3, 6 and 9 you get 18, which is 2x9. Similar examples occur in nature, such as crystals, which are necessary once the atomic structure is known. |
| 6963 | Why would we infer an infinite creator from a finite creation? [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By this method of reasoning, you renounce all claim to infinity in any of the attributes of the deity. For … the cause ought only to be proportioned to the effect, and the effect, so far as it falls under our cognizance, is not infinite. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) |
| 6960 | Analogy suggests that God has a very great human mind [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Since the effects resemble, we must infer by analogy that the causes also resemble; and that the Author of Nature is somewhat similar to the mind of man, though possessed of much larger faculties, proportioned to the grandeur of his work. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 2) |
| 6965 | The universe may be the result of trial-and-error [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) |
| 6967 | Order may come from an irrational source as well as a rational one [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Why an orderly system may not be spun from the belly as well as from the brain, it will be difficult … to give a satisfactory reason. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 7) |
| 6964 | From our limited view, we cannot tell if the universe is faulty [Hume] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for us to tell, from our limited views, whether this system contains any great faults. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) |
| 2232 | You can't infer the cause to be any greater than its effect [Hume] |
| Full Idea: If we infer a cause from an effect, we must proportion the one to the other. …a body of ten ounces raised in a scale proves the counterbalance exceeds ten ounces, but not that it exceeds a hundred. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], XI.105) |
| 21279 | If the divine cause is proportional to its effects, the effects are finite, so the Deity cannot be infinite [Hume] |
| Full Idea: By this method of reasoning you renounce all claim to infinity in any of the attributes of the Deity. The cause ought to be proportional to the effect, and the effect, so far as it falls under our cognizance, is not infinite. | |
| From: David Hume (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion [1751], Part 5) | |
| A reaction: You cannot deny that the Deity MAY be infinite, be only accept that your evidence is not enough to prove it. But if nothing infinite has been observed, it is a reasonable provisional inference that nothing infinite exists. |
| 2227 | A miracle violates laws which have been established by continuous unchanging experience, so should be ignored [Hume] |
| Full Idea: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature, and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle is as entire as any argument from experience can possible be imagined. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 7636 | It can't be more rational to believe in natural laws than miracles if the laws are not rational [Ishaq on Hume] |
| Full Idea: In Hume's argument against miracles, how can it be more rational to believe the laws than the miracles, if the laws themselves are not based on reason? | |
| From: comment on David Hume (Of Miracles [1748]) by Atif Ishaq - talk | |
| A reaction: A very nice question. Hume never presents his argument with such an overt reliance on reason. But if the argument says you are in the 'habit' of expecting no anomalies in the laws, what is to prevent you changing the habit of a lifetime? |
| 2228 | All experience must be against a supposed miracle, or it wouldn't be called 'a miracle' [Hume] |
| Full Idea: There must be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.90) |
| 2229 | To establish a miracle the falseness of the evidence must be a greater miracle than the claimed miraculous event [Hume] |
| Full Idea: No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], X.I.91) |
| 2185 | The idea of an infinite, intelligent, wise and good God arises from augmenting the best qualities of our own minds [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise and good being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. | |
| From: David Hume (Enquiry Conc Human Understanding [1748], II.14) |
| 21296 | If all of my perceptions were removed by death, nothing more is needed for total annihilation [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Were all my perceptions removed by death, and I could I neither think nor feel nor see nor love nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be enitrely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect non-entity. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.IV.6) | |
| A reaction: 'A perfect non-entity'. How about that for an eighteenth century rejection of immortality of the soul? In the context, his point is that the has no enduring self, apart from this range of experiences. |