Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM, Bryan Magee and Homer

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10 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 3. Levels of Reality
A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C)
     A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C)
     A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B)
     A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism.
The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow]
     Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property.
     From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11)
     A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream.
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee]
     Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?'
     From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I)
     A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 8. Dualism of Mind Critique
Homer does not distinguish between soul and body [Homer, by Williams,B]
     Full Idea: Homer's descriptions of people did without a dualistic distinction between soul and body.
     From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.23
20. Action / B. Preliminaries of Action / 2. Willed Action / a. Will to Act
The 'will' doesn't exist; there is just conclusion, then action [Homer, by Williams,B]
     Full Idea: Homer left out another mental action lying between coming to a conclusion and acting on it; and he did well, since there is no such action, and the idea is the invention of bad philosophy.
     From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Shame and Necessity II - p.37
     A reaction: This is a characteristically empiricist view, which is found in Hobbes. The 'will' seems to have a useful role in folk psychology. We can at least say that coming to a conclusion that I should act, and then actually acting, are not the same thing.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / a. Form of the Good
Plato says the Good produces the Intellectual-Principle, which in turn produces the Soul [Homer, by Plotinus]
     Full Idea: In Plato the order of generation is from the Good, the Intellectual-Principle; from the Intellectual-Principle, the Soul.
     From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE], 509b) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
     A reaction: The doctrine of Plotinus merely echoes Plato, in that case, except that the One replaces the Form of the Good. Does this mean that what is first in Plotinus is less morally significant, and more concerned with reason and being?
24. Political Theory / C. Ruling a State / 2. Leaders / a. Autocracy
Let there be one ruler [Homer]
     Full Idea: The rule of many is not good; let there be one ruler.
     From: Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE], 2.204), quoted by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 8.9
     A reaction: [Quoted by Aristotle at Metaphysics 1076a04]
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Homer so enjoys the company of the gods that he must have been deeply irreligious [Homer, by Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Homer is so at home among his gods, and takes such delight in them as a poet, that he surely must have been deeply irreligious.
     From: report of Homer (The Iliad [c.850 BCE]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Human, All Too Human 125
     A reaction: Blake made a similar remark about where the true allegiance of Milton lay in 'Paradise Lost'.