Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Iris Marion Young, A.R. Lacey and Einstein,A/Infeld,L

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5 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / a. Sense-data theory

6455	Maybe 'sense-data' just help us to talk about unusual perceptual situations [Lacey]
	Full Idea: One possibility is that talk of sense-data is a mere linguistic convenience, providing a noun for talking about appearances, as when seeing a red object in sodium light (when it looks grey).
	From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
	A reaction: The term seems to have been coined to deal with situations where there is a gap between appearance and presumed reality, as in illusions. Maybe illusions prove the existence of sense-data, rather than it being a 'convenient' term.

12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / b. Nature of sense-data

6454	Where do sense-data begin or end? Can they change? What sort of thing are they? [Lacey]
	Full Idea: It is hard to individuate sense-data, saying where one ends and the next begins, and hard to say whether they can change; are they substances, qualities, events, or what?
	From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
	A reaction: The problem is not that these questions are unanswerable. The answer seems to be either that they are physical and external, or that they are mental and internal, and that there is no ontological space for them between the two.

6453	Some claim sense-data are public, and are parts of objects [Lacey]
	Full Idea: Sometimes it is said that sense-data are public, and parts either of objects or of the surfaces of objects.
	From: A.R. Lacey (A Dictionary of Philosophy [1976], p.196)
	A reaction: This suggests two drastically different theories, one making sense-data into mental events, the other placing them in the 'external' world. The latter theory can dovetail them with the physics, but then why would we need them?

24. Political Theory / D. Ideologies / 12. Feminism

20751	As a young girl assumes her status as feminine, she acts in a more fragile immobile way [Young,IM]
	Full Idea: The young girl acquires many subject habits of feminine body comportment - walking, tilting her head, standing and sitting like a girl, and so on ….The more a girl assumes her status as feminine, the more she takes herself to be fragile and immobile.
	From: Iris Marion Young (On Female Body Experience [2005], p.43), quoted by Kevin Aho - Existentialism: an introduction 3 'Aspects'
	A reaction: This strikes me as true of young women, but it largely wears off as they get older, at least among modern women. A whole book could be written about women and smiling.

27. Natural Reality / B. Modern Physics / 2. Electrodynamics / b. Fields

18202	The concept of a field gradually replaced the substances in explaining relations between charges [Einstein/Infeld]
	Full Idea: In the beginning the field concept was no more than a means of facilitating the understanding of phenomena. ...In the new field language it is the field and not the charges themselves which is essential. The substance was overshadowed by the field.
	From: Einstein,A/Infeld,L (The Evolution of Physics [1938], p.151), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.4
	A reaction: This is very important for philosophical metaphysicians, especially those like me who want to explain the universe by the nature of the stuff that composes it. The 'stuff' had better not be simplistic individual 'substances'.