50 ideas
| 22358 | Scientific objectivity lies in inter-subjective testing [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The objectivity of scientific statements lies in the fact that they can be inter-subjectively tested. | |
| From: Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934], p.22), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that objectivity is the same as consensus? A bunch of subjective prejudiced fools can reach a consensus. And in the middle of that bunch there can be one person who is objecfive. Sounds wrong. |
| 458 | Nothing could come out of nothing, and existence could never completely cease [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: From what in no wise exists, it is impossible for anything to come into being; for Being to perish completely is incapable of fulfilment and unthinkable. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B012), quoted by Anon (Lyc) - On Melissus 975b1-4 | |
| A reaction: The first statement of a conservation law. Modern physics is wonderful, but hasn't offered a flicker of an answer to this puzzle. Quantum fluctuations are a mode of Being. |
| 5112 | Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles claims that things are alternately changing and at rest - that they are changing whenever love is creating a unity out of plurality, or hatred is creating plurality out of unity, and they are at rest in the times in between. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 250b26 | |
| A reaction: I suppose one must say that this an example of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacy' - reading human emotions into the cosmos. Being constructive little creatures, we think goodness leads to construction. I'm afraid Empedocles is just wrong. |
| 11946 | Propensities are part of a situation, not part of the objects [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Propensities should not be regarded as inherent in an object, such as a die or a penny, but should be regarded as inherent in a situation (of which, of course, the object was part). | |
| From: Karl Popper (A World of Propensities [1993], p.14), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 6.2 | |
| A reaction: Molnar argues against this claim, and I agree with him. We can see why Popper might prefer this relational view, given that powers often only become apparent in unusual relational situations. |
| 13209 | There is no coming-to-be of anything, but only mixing and separating [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles says there is no coming-to-be of anything, but only a mingling and a divorce of what has been mingled. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314b08 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle comments that this prevents Empedocleans from distinguishing between superficial alteration and fundamental change of identity. Presumably, though, that wouldn't bother them. |
| 12177 | Human artefacts may have essences, in their purposes [Popper] |
| Full Idea: One might adopt the view that certain things of our own making, such as clocks, may well be said to have 'essences', viz. their 'purposes', and what makes them serve these purposes. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3 n17) | |
| A reaction: This is from one of the arch-opponents of essentialism. Could we take him on a slippery slope into essences for evolved creatures, or their organs? His argument says admitting an essence for a clock prevents using it for another purpose. |
| 5451 | Popper felt that ancient essentialism was a bar to progress [Popper, by Mautner] |
| Full Idea: Karl Popper vehemently rejected the essentialism which underpins Plato and Aristotle, taking it to be a major obstacle to political, moral and scientific progress. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (Open Society and Its Enemies:Hegel and Marx [1945]) by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.179 | |
| A reaction: This makes Popper sound like an existentialist, which seems unlikely. Modern essentialism would say the opposite about science - that hunting for external imposed laws is a red herring, and we should try to understand essences. |
| 457 | Substance is not created or destroyed in mortals, but there is only mixing and exchange [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: There is no creation of substance in any one of mortal existence, nor any end in execrable death, but only mixing and exchange of what has been mixed. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B008), quoted by Plutarch - 74: Reply to Colotes 1111f | |
| A reaction: also Aristotle 314b08 |
| 462 | One vision is produced by both eyes [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: One vision is produced by both eyes | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B088), quoted by Strabo - works 8.364.3 |
| 18284 | Particulars can be verified or falsified, but general statements can only be falsified (conclusively) [Popper] |
| Full Idea: Whereas particular reality statements are in principle completely verifiable or falsifiable, things are different for general reality statements: they can indeed be conclusively falsified, they can acquire a negative truth value, but not a positive one. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Two Problems of Epistemology [1932], p.256), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 18 'Laws' | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a logician's approach to science, but I prefer to look at coherence, where very little is actually conclusive, and one tinkers with the theory instead. |
| 22188 | Give Nobel Prizes for really good refutations? [Gorham on Popper] |
| Full Idea: Popper implies that we should be giving Nobel Prizes to scientists who use severe tests to show us what the world is not like! | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Geoffrey Gorham - Philosophy of Science 2 | |
| A reaction: A lovely simple point. The refuters are important members of the scientific team, but not the leaders. |
| 7780 | Falsification is the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science [Popper, by Magee] |
| Full Idea: According to Popper, falsification is the criterion of demarcation between science and non-science. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Bryan Magee - Popper Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: If I propose something which might be falsified in a hundred years, is it science NOW? Suppose my theory appeared to be falsifiable, but (after much effort) it turned out not to be? Suppose I just see a pattern (like quark theory) in a set of facts? |
| 16830 | We don't only reject hypotheses because we have falsified them [Lipton on Popper] |
| Full Idea: Popper's mistake is to hold that disconfirmation and elimination work exclusively through refutation. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 05 'Explanation' | |
| A reaction: The point is that we reject hypotheses even if they have not actually been refuted, on the grounds that they don't give a good explanation. I agree entirely with Lipton. |
| 6794 | If falsification requires logical inconsistency, then probabilistic statements can't be falsified [Bird on Popper] |
| Full Idea: In Popper's sense of the word 'falsify', whereby an observation statement falsifies a hypothesis only by being logically inconsistent with it, nothing can ever falsify a probabilistic or statistical hypothesis, which is therefore unscientific. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: In general, no prediction can be falsified until the events occur. This seems to be Aristotle's 'sea fight' problem (Idea 1703). |
| 6795 | When Popper gets in difficulties, he quietly uses induction to help out [Bird on Popper] |
| Full Idea: It is a feature of Popper's philosophy that when the going gets tough, induction is quietly called upon to help out. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This appears to be the central reason for the decline in Popper's reputation as the saviour of science. It would certainly seem absurd to say that you know nothing when you have lots of verification but not a glimmer of falsification. |
| 3856 | Good theories have empirical content, explain a lot, and are not falsified [Popper, by Newton-Smith] |
| Full Idea: Popper's principles are roughly that one theory is superior to another if it has greater empirical content, if it can account for the successes of the first theory, and if it has not been falsified (unlike the first theory). | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by W.H. Newton-Smith - The Rationality of Science I.6 |
| 7779 | There is no such thing as induction [Popper, by Magee] |
| Full Idea: According to Popper, induction is a dispensable concept, a myth. It does not exist. There is no such thing. | |
| From: report of Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by Bryan Magee - Popper Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is a nice bold summary of the Popper view - that falsification is the underlying rational activity which we mistakenly think is verification by repeated observations. Put like this, Popper seems to be wrong. We obviously learn from experiences. |
| 3860 | Science cannot be shown to be rational if induction is rejected [Newton-Smith on Popper] |
| Full Idea: If Popper follows Hume in abandoning induction, there is no way in which he can justify the claims that there is growth of scientific knowledge and that science is a rational activity. | |
| From: comment on Karl Popper (The Logic of Scientific Discovery [1934]) by W.H. Newton-Smith - The Rationality of Science III.3 |
| 12176 | Science does not aim at ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| Full Idea: I contest the essentialist doctrine that science aims at ultimate explanations, one which cannot be further explained, and which is in no need of any further explanation. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: If explanations are causal, this seems to a plea for an infinite regress of causes, which is an odd thing to espouse. Are the explanations verbal descriptions or things in the world. There can be no perfect descriptions, but there may be ultimate things. |
| 22765 | Wisdom and thought are shared by all things [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom and power of thought, know thou, are shared in by all things. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) II.286 | |
| A reaction: Sextus quotes this, saying that it is 'still more paradoxical', and that it explicitly includes plants. This may mean that Empedocles was not including inanimate matter. |
| 1524 | For Empedocles thinking is almost identical to perception [Empedocles, by Theophrastus] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles assumes that thinking is either identical to or very similar to sense-perception. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], A86) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 9 | |
| A reaction: Not to be sniffed at. We can, of course, control our thinking (though we can't control the controller) and we contemplate abstractions, but that might be seen as a sort of perception. Vision is not as visual as we think. |
| 552 | Empedocles said good and evil were the basic principles [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles was the first to give evil and good as principles. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 985a | |
| A reaction: Once you start to think that good and evil will only matter if they have causal powers, it is an easy step to the idea of a benevolent god, and a satanic anti-god. Otherwise the 'principles' could be ignored. |
| 5901 | Is 'productive of happiness' the definition of 'right', or the cause of it? [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Bentham has not made up his mind whether he thinks that 'right' means 'productive of the general happiness', or that being productive of the general happiness is what makes acts right (and he would have thought the difference unimportant). | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §I | |
| A reaction: The issue is whether rightness exists as a concept separate from happiness. I take it Bentham would vote for the first reading, as he has no interest in what is right, apart from increasing happiness. |
| 5271 | Prejudice apart, push-pin has equal value with music and poetry [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and science of music and poetry. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Constitutional Code I [1827], p.139), quoted by J.R. Dinwiddy - Bentham p.114 | |
| A reaction: Mill quoted this with implied outrage, but Bentham was attacking public subsidies to the arts when he said it. It is a basic idea in the debate on pleasure - that pleasures are only distinguished by their intensity, not some other value. |
| 5934 | Of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure, only intensity and duration matter [Ross on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Most of Bentham's 'dimensions' of pleasure refer to further pleasures, or are irrelevant to the pleasure; we are left with intensity and duration as the characteristics on which depend the value of a pleasure qua pleasure, and there is nothing to add. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by W. David Ross - The Right and the Good §VI | |
| A reaction: I agree. When Bentham produces his list he seems to be trying to add a bogus enrichment to what is really a rather crude and basic notion of the aim of life. Your simple hedonist appears to only desire high intensity and long duration. |
| 3777 | Pleasure and pain control all human desires and duties [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.1) | |
| A reaction: Ridiculous. Both halves are false. We pursue things for other reasons, and to deny this makes his idea a tautology. Deep ecology has nothing to do with human pleasure or pain. |
| 3554 | Bentham thinks happiness is feeling good, but why use morality to achieve that? [Annas on Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to fall into Bentham's mindless assumption that happiness must be a specific state of feeling good about something, but it is mysterious why anyone would think morality a good strategy for achieving this. | |
| From: comment on Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.7 |
| 3781 | The value of pleasures and pains is their force [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It behoves the legislator to understand the force of pleasures and pains, which is their value. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], IV.1) |
| 20977 | Natural rights are nonsense, and unspecified natural rights is nonsense on stilts [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Anarchical Fallacies: on the Declaration of Rights [1796]) | |
| A reaction: If you want your opinion to be remembered, express it memorably! I take natural rights to be the basic principles and values which are obvious to almost everyone when they come for formulate legal rights (which are the only true rights). |
| 3778 | The community's interest is a sum of individual interests [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: The interest of the community is the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], I.4) |
| 21003 | Only laws can produce real rights; rights from 'law of nature' are imaginary [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Right, the substantive right, is the child of law; from real laws come real rights; but from imaginary laws, from 'law of nature' can come only imaginary rights. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Anarchical Fallacies: on the Declaration of Rights [1796], II.523), quoted by Amartya Sen - The Idea of Justice 17 'Ethics' | |
| A reaction: I am coming to agree with this. What are called 'natural rights' are just self-evident good reasons why someone should be allowed a right. A right can, of course, come from an informal agreement. The question is: why award that particular legal right? |
| 20280 | Large mature animals are more rational than babies. But all that really matters is - can they suffer? [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational animal than an infant of a day, or even a month, old. But suppose they be otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor Can they talk? but, Can they suffer? | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], XVIII 1 n), quoted by Peter Singer - Practical Ethics 03 | |
| A reaction: This is certainly an inspiring, and even shocking question, which never seems to have been so directly asked before in the entire history of European thought. Awesome. |
| 589 | 'Nature' is just a word invented by people [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: Nature is but a word of human framing. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B008), quoted by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1015a |
| 3779 | Unnatural, when it means anything, means infrequent [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: Unnatural, when it means anything, means unfrequent. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.14 n8.9) |
| 21823 | The principle of 'Friendship' in Empedocles is the One, and is bodiless [Empedocles, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: In Empedocles we have a dividing principle, 'Strife', set against 'Friendship' - which is the One and is to him bodiless, while the elements represent matter. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.09 | |
| A reaction: The first time I've seen the principle of Love in Empedocles identified with the One of Parmenides. Plotinus is a trustworthy reporter, I think, because he was well read, and had access to lost texts. |
| 6002 | Empedocles says bone is water, fire and earth in ratio 2:4:2 [Empedocles, by Inwood] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles used numerical ratios to explain different kinds of matter; for example, bone is two parts water, four parts fire, two parts earth; and blood is an equal blend of all four elements. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Brad Inwood - Empedocles | |
| A reaction: Why isn't the ration 1:2:1? This presumably shows the influence of Pythagoras (who had also been based in Italy, like Empedocles), as well as that of the earlier naturalistic philosophers. It was a very good theory, though wrong. |
| 13207 | Fire, Water, Air and Earth are elements, being simple as well as homoeomerous [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles says that Fire, Water, Air and Earth are four elements, and are thus 'simple' rather than flesh, bone and bodies which, like these, are 'homoeomeries'. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a26 | |
| A reaction: The translation is not quite clear. I take it that flesh and bone may look simple, because they are homoeomerous, but they are not really - but what is his evidence for that? Compare Idea 13208. |
| 13218 | The elements combine in coming-to-be, but how do the elements themselves come-to-be? [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles says it is evident that all the other bodies down to the 'elements' have their coming-to-be and their passing-away: but it is not clear how the 'elements' themselves, severally in their aggregated masses, come-to-be and pass-away. | |
| From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325b20 | |
| A reaction: Presumably the elements are like axioms - and are just given. How do electrons and quarks come-to-be? |
| 13225 | Love and Strife only explain movement if their effects are distinctive [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: It is not an adequate explanation to say that 'Love and Strife set things moving', unless the very nature of Love is a movement of this kind and the very nature of Strife a movement of that kind. | |
| From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 333b23 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be of interest for showing Aristotle's quest for explanations, and his unwillingness to be fobbed off with anything superficial. I take a task of philosophy to be to push explanations further than others wish to go. |
| 460 | If the one Being ever diminishes it would no longer exist, and what could ever increase it? [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: Besides these elements, nothing else comes into being, nor does anything cease. For if they had been perishing continuously, they would Be no more; and what could increase the Whole? And whence could it have come? | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B017), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 158.1- |
| 2680 | Empedocles said that there are four material elements, and two further creative elements [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Empedocles holds that the corporeal elements are four, but that all the elements, including those which create motion, are six in number. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a16 |
| 459 | All change is unity through love or division through hate [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: These elements never cease their continuous exchange, sometimes uniting under the influence of Love, so that all become One, at other times again moving apart through the hostile force of Hate. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B017), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 158.1- |
| 12175 | Galilean science aimed at true essences, as the ultimate explanations [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The third of the Galilean doctrines of science is that the best, the truly scientific theories, describe the 'essences' or the 'essential natures' of things - the realities which lie behind the appearances. They are ultimate explanations. | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the seventeenth century doctrine which was undermined by Humeanism, and hence despised by Popper, but is now making a comeback, with a new account of essence and necessity. |
| 12179 | Essentialist views of science prevent further questions from being raised [Popper] |
| Full Idea: The essentialist view of Newton (due to Roger Cotes) ...prevented fruitful questions from being raised, such as, 'What is the cause of gravity?' or 'Can we deduce Newton's theory from a more general independent theory?' | |
| From: Karl Popper (Conjectures and Refutations [1963], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Popper's main (and only) objection to essentialism - that it is committed to ultimate explanations, and smugly terminates science when it thinks it has found them. This does not strike me as a problem with scientific essentialism. |
| 5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is it just an accident that teeth and other parts of the body seem to have some purpose, and creatures survive because they happen to be put together in a useful way? Everything else has been destroyed, as Empedocles says of his 'cow with human head'. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], 61) by Aristotle - Physics 198b29 | |
| A reaction: Good grief! Has no one ever noticed that Empedocles proposed the theory of evolution? It isn't quite natural selection, because we aren't told what does the 'destroying', but it is a little flash of genius that was quietly forgotten. |
| 466 | God is pure mind permeating the universe [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: God is mind, holy and ineffable, and only mind, which darts through the whole cosmos with its swift thought. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B134), quoted by Ammonius - On 'De Interpretatione' 4.5.249.6 |
| 461 | God is a pure, solitary, and eternal sphere [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: God is equal in all directions to himself and altogether eternal, a rounded Sphere enjoying a circular solitude. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B028), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.15.2 |
| 1719 | In Empedocles' theory God is ignorant because, unlike humans, he doesn't know one of the elements (strife) [Aristotle on Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: It is a consequence of Empedocles' view that God is the most unintelligent thing, for he alone is ignorant of one of the elements, namely strife, whereas mortal creatures are familiar with them all. | |
| From: comment on Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - De Anima 410b08 |
| 3780 | We must judge a thing morally to know if it conforms to God's will [Bentham] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary to know first whether a thing is right in order to know from thence whether it be conformable to the will of God. | |
| From: Jeremy Bentham (Intro to Principles of Morals and Legislation [1789], II.18) |
| 1522 | It is wretched not to want to think clearly about the gods [Empedocles] |
| Full Idea: Wretched is he who cares not for clear thinking about the gods. | |
| From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B132), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.140.5.1 |