130 ideas
| 6123 | Empirical investigation can't discover if holes exist, or if two things share a colour [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Ontology is not empirical, but ontologists do make discoveries; empirical investigation won't discover that holes exist; we see that two things are the same colour, but a philosopher must resolve whether one universal is present in both. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the best, simplest and clearest statements I have encountered of the autonomy of philosophy. One may, of course, respond by saying 'who cares?', but then who cares about quarks, or the economy of the Spanish Empire? |
| 16841 | Good inference has mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility and background fit [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Among the inferential virtues commonly cited are mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility or fruitfulness, and fit with background beliefs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel, Kuhn, Quine, and Newton-Smith] I take the over-arching term 'coherence' to cover much of this, though a bolder hypothesis offers more than mere coherence. |
| 16854 | Contrary pairs entail contradictions; one member entails negation of the other [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: All pairs of contraries entail a pair of contradictories, since one member of such a pair always entails the negation of the other. P&Q and not-P are contraries, but the first entails P, which is contradictory of not-P. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') |
| 19215 | Arguers often turn the opponent's modus ponens into their own modus tollens [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: There is a seasoned method of turning your opponent's modus ponens into your own modus tollens. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 5.VII) | |
| A reaction: That is, they say 'if he's coming he'll be hear by now, and he's definitely coming', to which you say 'I'm afraid he's not here, so he obviously isn't coming after all'. They say if-A-then-B, and A, so B. You say not-B, so you're wrong about A. |
| 14415 | A ground must be about its truth, and not just necessitate it [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A ground does not merely necessitate its truth. A ground is also what its truth is appropriately about. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.II) |
| 14408 | Truthmaker needs truths to be 'about' something, and that is often unclear [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: It is not always obvious what (if anything) a truth is about, in the sense of 'about' relevant to Truthmaker and truth-supervenient-on-being. Prior says 'Queen Anne is dead' is not about Queen Anne, and may be about the Earth. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.III) | |
| A reaction: A very nice and rather subtle objection to the Truthmaker thesis. Specifying the truthmaker for a given truth looks like a doddle in simple cases, but clearly it can become extremely elusive in other cases. |
| 14395 | If a ball changes from red to white, Truthmaker says some thing must make the change true [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If a single ball goes from being red to being white, Truthmaker implies that something exists which makes it true that the second thing follows the first. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.V) |
| 14398 | Truthmaker says if an entity is removed, some nonexistence truthmaker must replace it [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaker makes it impossible simply to remove an entity. One must always replace it with something else; namely, a truthmaker for the claim that that entity does not exist. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.I-3) | |
| A reaction: This is a particularly strong and persuasive argument from Merricks against the truthmaker view. Clearly the truthmaker for non-existence can't be there when it exists, and the destruction bringing the negative truthmaker into existence sounds odd. |
| 14403 | If Truthmaker says each truth is made by the existence of something, the theory had de re modality at is core [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Truthmaker says that, for each truth, there is something that, by its mere existence, makes that truth true, …so Truthmaker has de re modality at its core. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 5.III) | |
| A reaction: I have no problem with de re modality, so this doesn't bother me. Merricks brings out nicely the baggage which you must carry if you are a Truthmaker. |
| 14397 | Truthmaker demands not just a predication, but an existing state of affairs with essential ingredients [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The claim 'that Fido is brown' seems to demand only a brown Fido, but Truthmaker demands more. It demands both that a state of affairs along the lines of 'Fido's being brown' exists, and also that this state has its constituents essentially. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.I) | |
| A reaction: One would need to reread Merricks to get this clear, but my instinct is that the two scenarios are not very different. 'A brown Fido' would require Fido to be necessarily brown to do the job. |
| 14396 | If 'truth supervenes on being', worlds with the same entities, properties and relations have the same truths [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: 'Truth supervenes on being' says that any two possible worlds alike with respect to what entities exist and which properties (and relations) each of those entities exemplifies are thereby alike with respect to what is true. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4) | |
| A reaction: Merricks says this view is found in early Wittgenstein, as well as in David Lewis. He suggests that this is a weaker and more plausible thesis than the full commitment to truthmakers. It still allows some truths to lack truthmakers. Sounds plausible. |
| 14400 | If truth supervenes on being, that won't explain why truth depends on being [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If 'truth supervenes on being' aims to articulate the idea that truth depends on being, it must say more than that truth supervenes on being. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 4.VI) | |
| A reaction: This is a perennial problem with supervenience accounts, such as the supervenience of beauty on the object, or of mind on brain. |
| 14394 | It is implausible that claims about non-existence are about existing things [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: It is implausible that a claim asserting that a thing fails to exist is made true by - and so is appropriately about - some other, existing thing. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.V) |
| 14390 | Truthmaker isn't the correspondence theory, because it offers no analysis of truth [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Because Truthmaker offers no analysis of being true, Truthmaker is not the correspondence theory of truth. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that the correspondence theory offers an 'analysis' of truth. It doesn't seem to do much more than offer a word which suggests an analogy with some relation in the world. |
| 14412 | Speculations about non-existent things are not about existent things, so Truthmaker is false [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: That 'there might have been a dozen more fundamental particles' is true, but not appropriately about any existing entities or their properties. Since Truthmaker says that all truths are about existing entities, it must be false. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.VI) | |
| A reaction: Since I don't necessarily agree that 'there might have been a dozen more fundamental particles' (see Scientific Essentialism), and I take the disagreement to have some basis, I doubt this idea. What stops 'there could be circular squares' from being true? |
| 14414 | I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but is it about me? [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I am a truthmaker for 'that a human exists', but it is not obvious that that proposition is thus about me. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: This is part of the general rather good objection that it is often unclear what a truth is 'about' (Idea 14408). The original Gettier examples about justification illustrate this problem. They make things true, in a surprising way. |
| 14391 | If the correspondence theory is right, then necessary truths must correspond to something [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Suppose for the sake of argument that the correspondence theory is correct. Then it is analytic that each necessary truth, in virtue of being true, corresponds to something. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: The sort of nice simple observation for which I admire Merricks. You don't have to give up on the correspondence theory at this point, but you will have to go through with some substantial metaphysics to keep it afloat. |
| 14418 | Being true is not a relation, it is a primitive monadic property [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Being true is not a relation. …Being true is a monadic property. …Being true is a primitive property. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 8.IV) | |
| A reaction: Even after reading Merricks on this, I am not sure I understand it. If a single sentence floats in the void, it is hard to see how the 'monadic' property of truth could accrue to it. |
| 19205 | 'Snow is white' only contingently expresses the proposition that snow is white [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: It is contingently true that 'snow is white' expresses the proposition that snow is white. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 1.V n14) | |
| A reaction: Tarski stuck to sentences, but Merricks rightly argues that truth concerns propositions, not sentences. Sentences are subservient entities - mere tools used to express what matters, which is our thoughts (say I). |
| 14419 | Deflationism just says there is no property of being truth [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I take 'deflationism' to be nothing other than the claim that there is no property of being true. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 8.V) |
| 19209 | Simple Quantified Modal Logc doesn't work, because the Converse Barcan is a theorem [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Logical consequence guarantees preservation of truth. The Converse Barcan, a theorem of Simple Quantified Modal Logic, says that an obvious truth implies an obvious falsehood. So SQML gets logical consequence wrong. So SQML is mistaken. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 2.V) | |
| A reaction: I admire this. The Converse Barcan certainly strikes me as wrong (Idea 19208). Merricks grasps this nettle. Williamson grasps the other nettle. Most people duck the issue, I suspect. Merricks says later that domains are the problem. |
| 19208 | The Converse Barcan implies 'everything exists necessarily' is a consequence of 'necessarily, everything exists' [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The Converse Barcan Formula has a startling result. Simple Quantified Modal Logic (SQML) has the following as a theorem: □∀xFx → ∀x□Fx. So 'everything exists necessarily' is a consequence of 'necessarily, everything exists'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 2.V) | |
| A reaction: He says this is blatantly wrong. Williamson is famous for defending it. I think I'm with Merricks on this one. |
| 19207 | Sentence logic maps truth values; predicate logic maps objects and sets [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The models for sentential logic map sentences to truth-values. The models for predicate logic map parts of sentences to objects and sets. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: Logic books rarely tell you important things like this. That is why this database is so incredibly important! You will never understand the subject if you don't collect together the illuminating asides of discussion. They say it all so much more simply. |
| 14393 | The totality state is the most plausible truthmaker for negative existential truths [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The claim that the totality state is the sole truthmaker for negative existential truths emerges as the best position for a truthmaker theorist. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.III) |
| 6143 | Prolonged events don't seem to endure or exist at any particular time [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: That events endure is difficult to reconcile with the claim that, say, the American Civil War existed; for such an event seems never to have been 'wholly present' at any single time. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §3 n14) | |
| A reaction: A nice problem example for those who, like Kim, want their ontology to include events. Personally I am happy to allow some vagueness here. The Civil War only became an 'event' on the day it finished. An event's time need not be an instant. |
| 6135 | A crumbling statue can't become vague, because vagueness is incoherent [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Some would say that annihilating grains of stone from the statue of David (playing the 'Sorites Game') could never make its identity vague, because metaphysical vagueness is simply unintelligible. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: He cites Russell, Dummett and Lewis in support. But Russell is a logical atomist, and Lewis says identity is composition. It strikes me as obvious that identity can be vague; the alternative is the absurdities of the Sorites paradox. |
| 14413 | Some properties seem to be primitive, but others can be analysed [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Some properties (perhaps negative charge, or the relation of identity) admit of no analysis, and so are primitive. But others are analysable, and so not primitive | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.I) |
| 6145 | Intrinsic properties are those an object still has even if only that object exists [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Intrinsic properties are, by and large, those properties that an object can exemplify even if that object and its parts (if any) are the only objects that exist. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.I) | |
| A reaction: This leads to all sorts of properties that seemed intrinsic turning out to be relational. In what sense would a single object have mass, or impenetrability? |
| 14416 | An object can have a disposition when the revelant conditional is false [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: It is possible for an object to have a disposition even though the relevant conditional is false. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: This is the now standard observation that finks (killing the disposition) and antidotes (blocking the effect of the disposition) can intervene, as in safety mechanisms in electrical gadgets. There may be replies available here. |
| 6124 | I say that most of the objects of folk ontology do not exist [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I argue against the existence of most of the objects alleged to exist by what we might call 'folk ontology'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is the programme for Merricks's heroic book, denying (quite plausibly) the need for large objects in our ontology. It seems that ontology must multiply its entities prodigiously, or else be austere in the extreme. Is there no middle way? |
| 6134 | Is swimming pool water an object, composed of its mass or parts? [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Some - such as those who endorse unrestricted composition or those who believe in a kind of entity called 'a mass' - say that 'the water in the swimming pool' refers to a big material object. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: A well-chosen example to support his thesis that large objects don't (strictly) exist. We certainly must not say (in Quine fashion) that we must accept the ontology of our phrases. I cut nature at the joints, and I say a pool is an obvious joint. |
| 14392 | Fregeans say 'hobbits do not exist' is just 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A Fregean about existence claims would say that 'that hobbits do not exist' is nothing other than the claim that 'being a hobbit' is not exemplified. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: 'My passport has ceased to exist' seems to be a bit more dramatic than a relationship with a concept. |
| 6125 | We can eliminate objects without a commitment to simples [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Eliminativism about physical objects does not require a commitment to (or against) simples. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.I) | |
| A reaction: His strategy is to eliminate objects in favour of whatever it is (an unknown) to which objects actually reduce. His point seems to be clearly correct, just as I might eliminate 'life' from my ontology, without quite knowing what it is. |
| 14229 | Merricks agrees that there are no composite objects, but offers a different semantics [Merricks, by Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Merricks agrees with van Inwagen that there are no composite objects, but disagrees with him about the semantics of talk about material objects. | |
| From: report of Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003]) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 4 | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen has one semantics for folk talk, and another semantics 'for the philosophy room'. Merricks seems to have an error theory of folk semantics (i.e. the folk don't understand what they are saying). |
| 6142 | The 'folk' way of carving up the world is not intrinsically better than quite arbitrary ways [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see why the folk way of carving up the material world should - barring further argument - be elevated to a loftier status than the unrestricted compositionist way. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §3.III) | |
| A reaction: There are some right ways to carve up the world, though there is also the capacity to be quite arbitrary, if it is useful, or even amusing. Thus Cyprus is an island (fact), Britons are a nation (useful), and Arsenal fans are sad (amusing). |
| 14472 | If atoms 'arranged baseballwise' break a window, that analytically entails that a baseball did it [Merricks, by Thomasson] |
| Full Idea: Given the proper understanding of 'arranged baseballwise', the fact that atoms arranged baseballwise are causally relevant to a shattering analytically entails that a baseball is. | |
| From: report of Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], 3) by Amie L. Thomasson - Ordinary Objects 01.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the key argument of Thomasson's book. Presumably, following Idea 14471, 'I bought some atoms arranged baseballwise' is held to entail 'I bought a baseball'. That seems to beg the question against Van Inwagen and Merricks. |
| 14469 | Overdetermination: the atoms do all the causing, so the baseball causes no breakage [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The Overdetermination Argument: a baseball is irrelevant to whether its atoms shatter a window, the shattering is caused by the atoms in concert, the shattering is not overdetermined, so if the baseball exists it doesn't cause the shattering. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], 3) | |
| A reaction: An obvious thought is that no individual atom does any sort of breaking at all - it is only when they act as a team, and an appropriate name for the team is a 'baseball', and the team is real. |
| 6137 | Clay does not 'constitute' a statue, as they have different persistence conditions (flaking, squashing) [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A statue is not identical with its constituent lump of clay because they have different persistence conditions; the statue, but not the lump, could survive the loss of a few smallish bits, and the lump, but not the statue, could survive being squashed. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.III) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why a lump can't survive losing a few bits (if the lump never had a precise identity), but it is hard to argue that squashing is a problem. However, presumably the identity (or constitution) between lump and statue is not a necessity. |
| 6127 | 'Unrestricted composition' says any two things can make up a third thing [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If my dog and the top half of my tree compose an object, this is defended under the title of 'unrestricted (universal) composition', the thesis that any two things compose something. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.II) | |
| A reaction: David Lewis is cited amongst those defending this thesis. My intuition is against this thesis, because I think identity is partly dictated by nature, and is not entirely conventional. You can force an identity, but you feel the 'restriction'. |
| 6131 | Composition as identity is false, as identity is never between a single thing and many things [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: One of the most obvious facts about identity is that it holds one-one (John and Mr Smith) and perhaps many-many (John+Mary and Mr Smith+Miss Jones), but never one-many. It follows that composition as identity (things are their parts) is false. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that 'having identity' and 'being identical to' are the same concept. I agree with his conclusion, but am not convinced by the argument. I'm not even quite clear why John and May can't be identical to the Smiths. |
| 6132 | Composition as identity is false, as it implies that things never change their parts [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Composition as identity implies that no persisting object ever changes its parts, which is clearly false, so composition as identity is false. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Lewis can say that when a thing subtly changes its parts, it really does lose its strict identity, but becomes another 'time-slice' or close 'counterpart' of the original object. This is a coherent view, but I disagree. I'm a believer. |
| 6141 | There is no visible difference between statues, and atoms arranged statuewise [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If we imagine a world like ours except that, while there are atoms arranged statuewise in that world, there are no statues, ...no amount of looking around could distinguish that imagined world from ours. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.V) | |
| A reaction: This is one of his arguments for ontological eliminativism about physical objects. If we accept the argument, it will wreak havoc with our entire ontology, and we will end up anti-realists. I say you have to see statues - you just can't miss them. |
| 6130 | 'Composition' says things are their parts; 'constitution' says a whole substance is an object [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Composition as identity claims that a single object is identical with the many parts it comprises; constitution as identity says that a single object (a statue) is identical with a single object (clay) that 'constitutes' it. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1 n11) | |
| A reaction: The constitution view has been utilised (by Lynn Rudder Baker) to give an account of personal identity as constituted by a human body. Neither sounds quite right to me; the former view misses something about reality; the latter doesn't explain much. |
| 6138 | It seems wrong that constitution entails that two objects are wholly co-located [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers deny that two numerically distinct physical objects could be 'wholly co-located'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.III) | |
| A reaction: A fish can be located in a river; the Appenines can be located in Italy. If you accept the objection you will probably have to accept identity-as-composition, or object-eliminativism. One object can have two causal roles, supporting two identities. |
| 6128 | Objects decompose (it seems) into non-overlapping parts that fill its whole region [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Intuitively, an object's parts at one level of decomposition are parts of that object that do not overlap and that, collectively, fill the whole region the object fills. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.II) | |
| A reaction: A nice case where 'intuition' must be cited as the basis for the claim, and yet it is hard to see how anyone could possibly disagree. Exhibit 73 in favour of rationalism. This ideas shows the structure of nature and the workings of our minds. |
| 14410 | You believe you existed last year, but your segment doesn't, so they have different beliefs [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Your belief that you existed in the year 2000 is true; the belief of a segment of you that it then existed is false; so, by the indiscernibility of identicals, there must be two beliefs here. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.IV n20) | |
| A reaction: Merricks may be begging the question here. But in the segment view there is nothing which can truly believe it existed a year ago, so therefore nothing here has continued existence, so the segments cannot be part of a single thing. |
| 19214 | In twinning, one person has the same origin as another person [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Origin essentialists claim that parental union results in a person, and that person could not have resulted from any other union. However, if the fertilised egg undergoes twinning, at least one of the resultant persons is not the original person. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 5.V) | |
| A reaction: Merricks says that therefore that origin could have just produced the second twin, rather than the original person. This is interesting, but doesn't seem to threaten the necessity of origin thesis. Once I'm here, I have that origin, despite my twin. |
| 6136 | Eliminativism about objects gives the best understanding of the Sorites paradox [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I say we should endorse eliminativism about physical objects, because it offers the most plausible understanding of what occurs during the Sorites Game (eliminating grains of a thing one at a time). | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: That is one route to go in explaining the paradox (i.e. by saying there never was a 'heap' in the first place). I suspect a better route is to say that heaps really exist as natural phenomena, but they suffer from vague identity and borderline cases. |
| 14417 | Counterfactuals aren't about actuality, so they lack truthmakers or a supervenience base [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A counterfactual is not appropriately about the way anything is, …but about how something would be, had other things differed from how they actually are. As a result, true counterfactuals have neither truthmakers nor a superveniece base. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 7.IV) | |
| A reaction: Might not the truthmakers for counterfactuals reside in the dispositional facts about actuality? We assess the truth of counterfactuals in degrees, so something must determine our views. |
| 6133 | If my counterpart is happy, that is irrelevant to whether I 'could' have been happy [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The existence of someone in another world who is a lot like me, but happier, is irrelevant to whether I - this very person - could have been happier, even if we call that other-worldly someone 'my counterpart'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §1.IV) | |
| A reaction: He says this is a familiar objection. I retain a lingering deterministic doubt about whether it ever makes to sense to say that I 'could' have been happy, given that I am not. It does seem to make sense to say that I was close to happiness, but missed it. |
| 14402 | If 'Fido is possibly black' depends on Fido's counterparts, then it has no actual truthmaker [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If Fido's being possibly black reduces (in Lewis's account) to the existence of black counterparts of Fido, then 'Fido is possibly black' is actually true, but it has no actually existing truthmaker. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 5.I) | |
| A reaction: This problem is increasingly the target of my views about dispositions and powers. Fido is not possibly a prize-winning novelist, but is possibly dead or in good health, because of the actual nature and dispositions of Fido. |
| 16814 | Understanding is not mysterious - it is just more knowledge, of causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the causal model of explanation, understanding is unmysterious and objective; it is not some sort of super-knowledge, but simply more knowledge; knowledge of causes. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There seems to be some distinction between revealing some causes, and revealing a cause which 'makes the light dawn'. |
| 6150 | The 'warrant' for a belief is what turns a true belief into knowledge [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The 'warrant' for a belief is that, whatever it is, that makes the difference between mere true belief and knowledge. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §7.II) | |
| A reaction: Hence a false belief could be well justified, but it could never be warranted. This makes warrant something like the externalist view of justification, a good supporting situation for a belief, rather than an inner awareness of support for it. |
| 16825 | How do we distinguish negative from irrelevant evidence, if both match the hypothesis? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: How can Best Explanation distinguish negative evidence from irrelevant evidence, when the evidence is logically consistent with the hypothesis? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: There seems no answer to this other than to assess batches of evidence by their coherence, rather than one at a time. Anomalies can be conclusive, or pure chance. |
| 16851 | The inference to observables and unobservables is almost the same, so why distinguish them? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The inferential path to unobservables is often the same as to unobserved observables. In these two sorts of case, the reason for belief can be equally strong, so the suggestion that we infer truth in one case but not the other seems perverse. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: [Van Fraassen 1980 is the target of this] Van F seems to be in the grip of some sort of verificationism, which I always disliked on the grounds that speculation can be highly meaningful. Why embrace something because it 'could' be observed? |
| 16799 | Inductive inference is not proof, but weighing evidence and probability [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inductive inference is a matter of weighing evidence and judging probability, not of proof. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a plausible fallibilist response to the optimistic view of Aristotle. |
| 16798 | We infer from evidence by working out what would explain that evidence [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations are an important guide to inference, …we work out what to infer from our evidence by thinking about what would explain that evidence. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], Pref 2nd ed) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be inferences about the physical world, rather than of pure logic. The thesis sounds a bit thin, since there is no logical sense of 'infer' here, so all it could mean is 'what caused that?'. |
| 16856 | It is more impressive that relativity predicted Mercury's orbit than if it had accommodated it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are more impressed by the fact that the special theory of relativity was used to predict the shift in the perihelion of Mercury than we would have been if we knew that the theory was constructed in order to account for that effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 10 'The fudging') | |
| A reaction: Lipton has a nice discussion of the relative merits of predicting data and accommodating it. He invites astrologers to predict events, rather than accommodate past ones. |
| 16857 | Predictions are best for finding explanations, because mere accommodations can be fudged [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Accommodations are often worth less than predictions, because only they have to face the possibility that the best explanation of the fit between the theory and data is that the theoretical system was fudged. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Lipton illuminatingly explores the discovery by Semmelweiss of the cause of childbed fever. He predicted various explanations, and tested them out in a hospital. It clicks when the prediction occurs. |
| 16827 | If we make a hypothesis about data, then a deduction, where does the hypothesis come from? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The cost of the hypothetico-deductive method …is that we are left in the dark about the source of the hypotheses themselves. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: How do we distinguish a wild hypothesis from a plausible one? It can only be from patterns in the data, rather than mere accumulations of data. If water causes cholera, or smoking causes cancer, the hypothesis guides the data search. |
| 16804 | Induction is repetition, instances, deduction, probability or causation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Five attempts to describe induction are 'more of the same', the instantial model, the hypothetico-deductive model, the Bayesian approach …and causal inference. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This interesting list totally fails to mention the best answer, which is essentialism! If you observe some instances, you only begin to think that there will be more of the same if you think you have discerned the essence. Ravens are black things! |
| 16823 | Standard induction does not allow for vertical inferences, to some unobservable lower level [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems of the extrapolation and instantial models of confirmation is that they do not cover vertical inferences, where we infer from what we observe to something at a different level that is often unobservable. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This is my preferred essentialist view of induction, that we don't just infer that future swans will be white, but also that whiteness is built into the biology of swans. There seems to be predictive induction and explanatory induction. |
| 16800 | An inductive inference is underdetermined, by definition [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If an inference is inductive, then by definition it is underdetermined by the evidence and the rules of deduction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') |
| 16858 | We can argue to support our beliefs, so induction will support induction, for believers in induction [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing illegitimate about giving arguments for beliefs one already holds. …So inductive justification of induction, while impotent against the skeptic, is legitimate for those who already rely on induction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Not so fast! The first sentence is generally right, but if the 'beliefs one already holds' are beliefs about methods of argument, that is a different case. Compare 'this book is the word of God, because it says so in the book'. Can logic prove logic? |
| 16832 | If something in ravens makes them black, it may be essential (definitive of ravens) [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are considering that there is something in ravens, a gene perhaps, that makes them black, and this cause is part of the essence of ravens. Birds lacking this cause could not interbreed with ravens. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: At last, the essentialist approach to induction! Of course, it is tricky to decide a priori whether there could be albino ravens. It only takes one white (interbreeding) raven to ruin a nice essentialist story. Individuals matter. |
| 16836 | My shoes are not white because they lack some black essence of ravens [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The reason my shoe is white is not that it lacks some feature essential to ravens that makes them black. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'The Method') | |
| A reaction: Good, but not totally true. If my shoes were made to grow from genes, and then had some raven spliced into them, we might manage it. That is an explanation, but a long way from the best one. Enquiry is explanations, not deductions. |
| 16831 | A theory may explain the blackness of a raven, but say nothing about the whiteness of shoes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations help with the raven paradox since, while the raven hypothesis may provide an explanation for the blackness of a particular raven, neither the original hypothesis nor its contrastive explanation explain why the shoe is white. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: For me, the examination of ravens is a search for the essence of ravenhood, which is why non-ravens don't help. Of course, if you eliminate all culprits except one, you have your culprit, but will your evidence stand up in court? |
| 16833 | We can't turn non-black non-ravens into ravens, to test the theory [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We cannot transform a non-black non-raven into a raven to see whether we get a simultaneous transformation from non-black to black, in the way we can transform a flame without sodium into a flame with sodium. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: A white shoe would be an example of a non-black non-raven. People mesmerised by the raven paradox are too concerned with investigation being a 'logical' process. Lipton makes a nice point. We need to know the nature of ravens. |
| 16834 | To pick a suitable contrast to ravens, we need a hypothesis about their genes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Without something like a hypothesis about the genes of ravens, we simply do not know what would count as a relevantly similar bird for comparison. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: Lipton is endorsing the view that explanation should be 'contrastive', as well as aiming to discover the inner nature of ravens. He makes a good case for the contrastive approach. |
| 16801 | A hypothesis is confirmed if an unlikely prediction comes true [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In English, Bayes's Theorem says that there is a high confirmation when your hypothesis entails an unlikely prediction that turns out to be correct - a very plausible claim. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the simple point is that a likely prediction could have been caused by many things, but an unlikely prediction will probably only be caused by that thing. |
| 16839 | Explanation may be an important part of implementing Bayes's Theorem [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations may play an important role in the actual mechanisms by which inquirers 'realize' Bayesian reasoning. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's strategy for making peace between IBE and Bayesians. Explanations give likeliness. The background question for Bayesians always seems to be how the initial probabilities are assigned. Pure logic won't do that job. |
| 16803 | Bayes is too liberal, since any logical consequence of a hypothesis confirms it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Since the Bayesian account says a hypothesis is confirmed by any of its logical consequences …it seems to inherit the over-permissiveness of the hypothetico-deductive model. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like Hempel's Raven Paradox, where the probability of some logical consequences seems impossible to assess. |
| 16837 | Bayes involves 'prior' probabilities, 'likelihood', 'posterior' probability, and 'conditionalising' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In p(H|E) = p(E|H)p(H)/p(E), the left side is the 'posterior' probability of H given E, p(E|H) is the 'likelihood' of E given H, and the others are the 'priors' of H and E. Moving from right to left is known as 'conditionalization'. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') |
| 16802 | Bayes seems to rule out prior evidence, since that has a probability of one [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Old evidence seems to provide some confirmation, but Bayesianism does not allow for this, since old evidence will have a prior probability of one, and so have no effect on the posterior probability of the hypothesis. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') |
| 16850 | Explanation may describe induction, but may not show how it justifies, or leads to truth [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanation is a partial answer to the descriptive problem of induction, …but the justificatory problem is recalcitrant, since it may seem particularly implausible that explanatory considerations should be a reliable guide to truth. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: His claim that explanation is a guide to inference is intended to bridge the gap. One might say that a good explanation has to be true, so just make sure your explanation is 'good', according to a few criteria. |
| 16807 | An explanation gives the reason the phenomenon occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the reason model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is to give a reason to believe that the phenomenon occurs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel 1965] Put like that, it doesn't sound very promising. Personally I believe things occur if my wife tells me they do, because I trust her. Lipton says knowing that it occurs is not understanding why it occurs. |
| 16808 | An explanation is what makes the unfamiliar familiar to us [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the 'familiarity' model of explanation, unfamiliar phenomena call for explanation, and good explanations somehow make them familiar. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: Lipton notes that his encourages explanation by analogy, but that may not add to understanding. A better version is that an explanation makes a phenomenon less surprising (but that sounds rather relative and subjective). |
| 16806 | An explanation is what is added to knowledge to yield understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The question about explanation can be put this way: What has to be added to knowledge to yield understanding? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Underst') | |
| A reaction: In the spirit of Aristotle, I take 'understanding' to be the end of all enquiry, even if it's rather open-ended, relative and vague. Presumably there are lots of true explanations which don't deliver understanding, because baffling ingredients are cited. |
| 16822 | Seaching for explanations is a good way to discover the structure of the world [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the points of our obsessive search for explanations is that this is a peculiarly effective way of discovering the structure of the world. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This remark is a nice corrective to the sceptical view that explanations are entirely subjective, pragmatic, and even conventional. Whether this means that there are 'real' and 'objective' explanations is another matter. |
| 16816 | In 'contrastive' explanation there is a fact and a foil - why that fact, rather than this foil? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In a 'contrastive' explanation what gets explained is not 'Why this?', but 'Why this rather than that?'. There is a fact and a foil, and one fact may have several foils. Why do leaves turn yellow in November rather than in January? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: Lipton really likes this, and builds his story around it. Maybe, but it looks to me like an easier step towards a proper explanation. The foils are infinite. Why turn yellow rather than radioactive, insincere, divisible by three, or expensive? |
| 16826 | With too many causes, find a suitable 'foil' for contrast, and the field narrows right down [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The class of possible causes is often too big, …but if we are lucky or clever enough to find or produce a contrast where fact and foil have similar histories, most potential explanations are immediately 'cancelled out', and we have a research programme. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: He has a nice example of a triumph in 19th century German epidemiology. Once you get a good hypothesis, you can set up comparisons, based on a possible fact and a good foil. Genius is spotting hypothesis and foil. Nice. |
| 16811 | An explanation unifies a phenomenon with our account of other phenomena [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'unification' model of explanation, we come to understand a phenomenon when we see how it fit together with other phenomena into unified whole. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Kitcher 1989] This works quite well for a lot of explanation, but a revolutionary explanation might involve a completely new theory. Lipton says it is rather linguistic, and has no room for a regress of causes, or for singular explanations. |
| 16810 | Deduction explanation is too easy; any law at all will imply the facts - together with the facts! [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Deduction models of explanation make it far too easy to explain. You can explain that planets move in an ellipse from the conjunction of the fact that they do, together with any law you please, say a law in economics. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') |
| 16809 | Good explanations may involve no laws and no deductions [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Many ordinary explanations include no laws and allow no deduction, yet are not incomplete or mere sketches. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: The simplest sort of explanation simply shows the underlying cause. |
| 16829 | We reject deductive explanations if they don't explain, not if the deduction is bad [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The hypothetico-deductive model does not account for the negative impact of explanatory failure. We reject hypotheses because they fail to explain contrasts, not because they are logically incompatible with them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: The general move in modern accounts of investigation is away from an excessive emphasis on logic that used to be favoured. The underpinning of this is that science concerns mechanisms more than equations. |
| 16812 | An explanation shows why it was necessary that the effect occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'necessity' model of explanation, an explanation shows that the phenomenon in question had to occur. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Glymour 1980] Lipton objects that the sort of necessity involved is too uncertain, can't account for the 'why-regress', and doesn't fit everyday explanation, like why we abandoned the football match. |
| 16813 | To explain is to give either the causal history, or the causal mechanism [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the causal model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is simply to give information about its causal history, or, where the phenomenon is itself a causal regularity, to give information about the mechanism linking cause and effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Lewis's 1986 paper] Simply citing causal regularity seems to me to explain nothing. It happened because it always happens. Mechanism, on the other hand, is just what we are after. |
| 16815 | Mathematical and philosophical explanations are not causal [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical explanations are never causal, and philosophical explanations seldom are. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There may still be a 'direction' of explanation in mathematics, as when the nature of the triangle explains the Pythagoras Theorem, but the theorem may not give you the basic nature of triangles. Lipton suggests 'determination' for 'causation'. |
| 16846 | A cause may not be an explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: I take it that we may think about causes without thinking especially about explanations, and so we might judge likeliest cause without considering loveliest explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') |
| 16848 | Causal inferences are clearest when we can manipulate things [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Our most secure basis for causal inference is manipulation, as when flicking the switch causes the light to go on. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Correct, but Woodward elevates this into an entire theory of causation, which does not convince me. |
| 16849 | Explanations may be easier to find than causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: It is often easier to say what a factor would explain than it is to say what it would cause. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the presence of some factor might explain something, but the factor itself might have mysterious causal powers. A catalyst, for example. We don't need to understand the factor that explains. |
| 16842 | We want to know not just the cause, but how the cause operated [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We understand a phenomenon better when we know not just what caused it, but how the cause operated. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: This is the key point behind the desire for 'mechanism' in explanation. It strikes me as undeniable. |
| 16840 | To maximise probability, don't go beyond your data [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If all we wanted was to maximise probability, we would never venture beyond our data. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'friends') |
| 16824 | Is Inference to the Best Explanation nothing more than inferring the likeliest cause? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: A suspicion is that Inference to the Best Explanation is nothing more than Inference to the Likeliest Cause in fancy dress, and so fails to account for the symptoms of likeliness. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: In a lot of cases the cause is the explanation. An explanation might be the absence of a cause (as in 'you forgot to switch it on'). Lipton's 'lovely' explanations go further, and reveal a network of causes. |
| 16817 | Best Explanation as a guide to inference is preferable to best standard explanations [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The core idea of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. …Inserting one of the standard models of explanation yields disappointing results, because of their backward state. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Inferences tend to come one at a time, but I see best explanations as the formation of coherent pictures. The tricky bit is when to decide the coherence makes it acceptable. Lipton has that problem too, with his inferences. 'Working explanations'. |
| 16818 | The 'likeliest' explanation is the best supported; the 'loveliest' gives the most understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between the explanation best supported by the evidence, and the explanation that would provide the most understanding: in short, between the 'likeliest' and the 'loveliest' explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: A very nice, very real and very illuminating distinction. Presumably truth must play an important role in both likelihood and loveliness. |
| 16820 | Finding the 'loveliest' potential explanation links truth to understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We should considere Inference to the Loveliest Potential Explanation, …which links the search for truth and the search for understanding in a fundamental way. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') |
| 16819 | IBE is inferring that the best potential explanation is the actual explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to Inference to the Best Explanation we do not infer the best actual explanation; rather we infer that the best of the available potential explanations is an actual explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Clearly to say that you should just accept the best available explanation is asking for trouble, if all the available explanations are absurd. But what are the criteria for saying the best one is the actual one? |
| 16828 | IBE is not passive treatment of data, but involves feedback between theory and data search [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The slogan 'Inference to the Best Explanation' may bring to mind an excessively passive picture of scientific enquiry, …but there is the feedback between hypothesis formation and data acquisition that characterises actual enquiry. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it should be renamed 'Search for the Best Explanation'. |
| 16844 | A contrasting difference is the cause if it offers the best explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are to infer that a difference marks a cause just in case the difference would provide the best explanation of the contrast. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'Improved') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's offers this as his distinctive contribution to Mill's methods of enquiry. His point is that we draw inferences for explanatory reasons. He rests on Mill, and on contrastive explanation. It sounds rightish, but a bit optimistic. |
| 16853 | We select possible explanations for explanatory reasons, as well as choosing among them [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations can play a role in the generation of potential explanations as well as in the subsequent selection from among them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'The two-stage') | |
| A reaction: Lipton offers this to meet an obvious objection to Inference to the Best Explanation - that compiling the possible explanations seems to need guidance. Seems a good reply. |
| 16821 | Must we only have one explanation, and must all the data be made relevant? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Two problems for IBE are that only one explanation can be inferred from any set of data, and that the only data that are relevant to a hypothesis are data the hypothesis explains. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the theory prohibits a tie for what is 'best', given that you don't have to commit. The second one is partly to do with what observers should do about anomalies, and it is sometimes right to ignore them. |
| 16838 | Bayesians say best explanations build up an incoherent overall position [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Bayesians object to inference to the best explanation, because someone who favoured powerful ('lovely') explanations would end up with an incoherent distribution of states of belief. They would be persuaded by loss-making wagers (a 'dutch book'). | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Van Fraassen 1989 Ch.7] Lipton's Ch. 7 tries to address this issue. |
| 16855 | The best theory is boring: compare 'all planets move elliptically' with 'most of them do' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The best theory is almost always boring. …The claim that all planets move in ellipses is interesting, and the claim that some do not is not interesting. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') | |
| A reaction: This applies to any extraction of a universal 'law' by induction. The best theory just affirms what has been observed. How could generalising about what you haven't observed be 'better'? Answer: because it goes via the essence. |
| 16852 | Best explanation can't be a guide to truth, because the truth must precede explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inference to the best explanation cannot be epistemically effective, since an actual explanation must be true, so one would have to know the truth before one could infer an explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: Lipton rests on 'contrastive' explanation, so that the one that explains more is more likely to be true. If true, it explains. That seems to me correct, even though it could occasionally go horribly wrong. Approach explanation cautiously. |
| 6144 | You hold a child in your arms, so it is not mental substance, or mental state, or software [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: When you hold your child, you do exactly that - hold the child himself or herself - and not some stand-in. This implies that we are not two substances, and we are not mental states nor akin to software. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4) | |
| A reaction: And it is not just a brain, either. This is a nice simple example to support the sensible view that a person is a type of animal. Like all other physical objects that is a bit vague, so we should not be distracted by borderline cases like brain bisection. |
| 6140 | Maybe the word 'I' can only refer to persons [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: One might say that the word 'I' can only have a person as its reference. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §2.IV) | |
| A reaction: To infer the existence of persons from this would be to commit what I think of as the Linguistic Fallacy, of deducing ontology directly from language. We might allow (Dennett fashion) that folk categories require the fiction of persons. |
| 6149 | Free will and determinism are incompatible, since determinism destroys human choice [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The main recent support for incompatibilism is the 'no choice' argument: we have no choice that the past and the laws of nature entail human actions, we have no choice about what the past or the laws are like, so we have no choice about our actions. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §6.III) | |
| A reaction: Since I consider free will to be an absurd chimera, I think this argument involves a total misunderstanding of what a 'choice' is. Since the human brain is a wonderfully sophisticated choosing machine, our whole life consists of choices. |
| 6148 | Human organisms can exercise downward causation [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Human organisms have non-redundant causal powers, and so can exercise downward causation. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.VII) | |
| A reaction: The hallmark of property dualism. This notion needs a lot more expansion and exploration than Merricks gives it, and I don't think it will be enough to provide 'free will', or even, as Merricks hopes, to place humans in a distinct ontological category. |
| 6146 | Before Creation it is assumed that God still had many many mental properties [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The belief of theists that God might never have created implies that there is a possible world that contains just a single entity with many conscious mental properties. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.II) | |
| A reaction: So if we believe content is wide, we must believe that God was incapable of thought before creation, and thus couldn't plan creation, and so didn't create, and so the Creator is a logical impossibility. Cool. |
| 6147 | The hypothesis of solipsism doesn't seem to be made incoherent by the nature of mental properties [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The hypothesis of solipsism, that I - an entity with many conscious mental properties - am all that exists, while surely false, is not rendered incoherent simply by the nature of the mental properties. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Objects and Persons [2003], §4.II) | |
| A reaction: This, along with the thought of a pre-Creation God, is a nice intuitive case for showing that we strongly believe in some degree of narrow content. |
| 19217 | I don't accept that if a proposition is directly about an entity, it has a relation to the entity [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The Aboutness Assumption says that necessarily, if a proposition is directly about an entity, then that proposition stands in a relation to the entity. I shall argue that the Assumption is false. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 5.VII) | |
| A reaction: This feels sort of right, though the nature of aboutness remains elusive. He cites denials of existence. I take speech to be fairly internal, even though its main role is communication. Maybe its a Cambridge relation, as far as the entity is concerned. |
| 19203 | A sentence's truth conditions depend on context [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A sentence has truth conditions only in a context of use. And the truth conditions of many sentences can differ from one context of use to another (as in 'I am a philosopher'). | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 1.II) | |
| A reaction: He is building a defence of propositions, because they are eternal, and have their truth conditions essentially. I too am a fan of propositions. |
| 19200 | Propositions are standardly treated as possible worlds, or as structured [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that propositions are sets of possible worlds is one of the two leading accounts of the nature of propositions. The other leading account endorses structured propositions. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Merricks sets out to reject both main views. I take the idea that propositions actually are sets of possible worlds to be ridiculous (though they may offer a way of modelling them). The idea that they have no structure at all strikes me as odd. |
| 19206 | 'Cicero is an orator' represents the same situation as 'Tully is an orator', so they are one proposition [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The proposition expressed by 'Cicero is an orator' represents things as being exactly the same way as does the proposition expressed by 'Tully is an orator'. Hence two sentences express the same proposition. Fregeans about names deny this. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: Merricks makes the situation in the world fix the contents of the proposition. I don't agree. I would expand the first proposition as 'The person I know as 'Cicero' was an orator', but I might never have heard of 'Tully'. |
| 19202 | Propositions are necessary existents which essentially (but inexplicably) represent things [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: My account says that each proposition is a necessary existent that essentially represents things as being a certain way, ...and there is no explanation of how propositions do that. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Since I take propositions to be brain events, I don't expect much of an explanation either. The idea that propositions necessarily exist strikes me as false. If there were no minds, there would have been no propositions. |
| 19204 | True propositions existed prior to their being thought, and might never be thought [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: 1,000 years ago, no sentence had ever expressed, and no one had believed, the true proposition 'a water molecule has two hydrogen and one oxygen atoms'. There are surely true propositions that have never been, and never will be, expressed or believed. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 1.V) | |
| A reaction: 'Surely'? Surely not! How many propositions exist? Where do they exist? What are they made of? If they already exist when we think them, how do we tune into them? When did his example come into existence? Before water did? No! No! |
| 19210 | The standard view of propositions says they never change their truth-value [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: The standard view among philosophers nowadays seems to be that propositions do not and even cannot change in truth-value. But my own view is that some propositions can, and do, change in truth value. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 3.VII) | |
| A reaction: He gives 'that A sits' as an example of one which can change, though 'that A sits at time t' cannot change. I take Merricks to be obviously right, and cannot get my head round the 'standard' view. What on earth do they think a proposition is? |
| 19201 | Propositions can be 'about' an entity, but that doesn't make the entity a constituent of it [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: If a singular proposition is 'directly about' an entity, I argue that a singular proposition does not have the entity that it is directly about as a constituent. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This opposes the view of the early Russell, that propositions actually contain the entities they are about, thus making propositions real features of the external world. I take that view of Russell's to be absurd. |
| 19211 | Early Russell says a proposition is identical with its truthmaking state of affairs [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I describe Russell's 1903 account of propositions as the view that each proposition is identical with the state of affairs that makes that proposition true. That is, a proposition is identical with its 'truthmaking' state of affairs. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: Russell soon gave this view up (false propositions proving tricky), and I'm amazed anyone takes it seriously. I take it as axiomatic that if there were no minds there would be no propositions. Was the Big Bang a set of propositions? |
| 19212 | Unity of the proposition questions: what unites them? can the same constituents make different ones? [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: What binds the constituents of a structured proposition together into a single unity, a proposition? Can the very same constituents constitute two distinct propositions? These are questions about 'the unity of the proposition'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: Merricks solves it by saying propositions have no structure. The problem is connected to the nature of predication (instantiation, partaking). You can't just list objects and their properties. Objects are united, and thus propositions are too. |
| 19213 | We want to explain not just what unites the constituents, but what unites them into a proposition [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: A successful account of the unity of the proposition tells us what unites the relevant constituents not merely into some entity or other, but into a proposition. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Propositions [2015], 4.X) | |
| A reaction: Merrickes takes propositions to be unanalysable unities, but their central activity is representation, so if they needed uniting, that would be the place to look. Some people say that we unite our propositions. Others say the world does. I dunno. |
| 16847 | Counterfactual causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual conception of causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient conditions for their effects. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Then causes would be necessary, but would not necessitate. So what makes a cause sufficient? |
| 17960 | Eternalism says all times are equally real, and future and past objects and properties are real [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Eternalism says all times are equally real. Objects existing at past times and objects existing at future times are just as real as objects existing at the present. Properties had at past and future times are as much properties as those at the present. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Goodbye Growing Block [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: He adds that the present is therefore 'subjective', resulting from one's perspective. Why would eternalists reject their subjective experiences of time, unless they reject all their other subjective experiences as well? |
| 17961 | Growing block has a subjective present and a growing edge - but these could come apart [Merricks, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Merricks argues that the growing block view says that we live in the subjective present, and that there is a growing edge of being, but he then suggests that these two could come apart, and it would make no difference, so the growing block is incoherent. | |
| From: report of Trenton Merricks (Goodbye Growing Block [2006], 4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: [I think that is the nub of his argument. I couldn't find a concise summary in his words] |
| 14406 | Presentists say that things have existed and will exist, not that they are instantaneous [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Presentists deny that everything is instantaneous; they think that many objects not only exist, but also have existed and will exist. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
| A reaction: The second half is because presentists are committed to the truth of tensed existence claims (despite a lack of any theory as to how they work). Does anyone hold a theory of Instantaneousism? |
| 14407 | Presentist should deny there is a present time, and just say that things 'exist' [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I think presentists should deny that there is anything at all that is the present time, just as they should deny that there are past times or future times. They should say that existing at the present time is just 'existing'. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
| A reaction: The whole context is needed to understand Merrick's interesting claim. If there is no present, when can events happen? |
| 14411 | Maybe only presentism allows change, by now having a property, and then lacking it [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: Maybe presentism alone allows for genuine change, by permitting the direct having of a property by something and then, later, the absolute lacking of that property by that same thing. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.IV n23) | |
| A reaction: Four-dimensionalism (perdurantism) is the view which is most often charged with not explaining change, and that tends to be associated with eternalism. Are there just two coherent packages of views here? |
| 14405 | How can a presentist explain an object's having existed? [Merricks] |
| Full Idea: I am not sure what account presentists should give of an object's having existed. | |
| From: Trenton Merricks (Truth and Ontology [2007], 6.I) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am pretty puzzled by the eternalist and growing-block accounts of an object having existed, so we are all up a gum tree here. The best bet is to pull truth and existence apart, but heaven knows what that implies. See Idea 14399. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |