12 ideas
| 10245 | One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré] |
| Full Idea: One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient. | |
| From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Method [1908], p.65), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: This is the culminating view after new geometries were developed by tinkering with Euclid's parallels postulate. |
| 15923 | Poincaré rejected the actual infinite, claiming definitions gave apparent infinity to finite objects [Poincaré, by Lavine] |
| Full Idea: Poincaré rejected the actual infinite. He viewed mathematics that is apparently concerned with the actual infinite as actually concerning the finite linguistic definitions the putatively describe actually infinite objects. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning [1894]) by Shaughan Lavine - Understanding the Infinite |
| 10180 | Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects [Poincaré] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians do not study objects, but relations between objects; it is a matter of indifference if the objects are replaced by others, provided the relations do not change. They are interested in form alone, not matter. | |
| From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Hypothesis [1902], p.20), quoted by E Reck / M Price - Structures and Structuralism in Phil of Maths §6 | |
| A reaction: This connects modern structuralism with Aritotle's interest in the 'form' of things. Contrary to the views of the likes of Frege, it is hard to see that the number '7' has any properties at all, apart from its relations. A daffodil would do just as well. |
| 9916 | Convention, yes! Arbitrary, no! [Poincaré, by Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Poincaré once exclaimed, 'Convention, yes! Arbitrary, no!'. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (talk [1901]) by Hilary Putnam - Models and Reality | |
| A reaction: An interesting view. It mustn't be assumed that conventions are not rooted in something. Maybe a sort of pragmatism is implied. |
| 18203 | Avoid non-predicative classifications and definitions [Poincaré] |
| Full Idea: Never consider any objects but those capable of being defined in a finite number of word ...Avoid non-predicative classifications and definitions. | |
| From: Henri Poincaré (The Logic of Infinity [1909], p.63), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics II.4 |
| 16062 | 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. |
| 16061 | 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. |
| 16060 | 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. |
| 16064 | 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. |
| 18088 | Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental [Place] |
| Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional. | |
| From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1) | |
| A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions. |
| 18089 | Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are. | |
| From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6) | |
| A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world. |
| 15877 | The aim of science is just to create a comprehensive, elegant language to describe brute facts [Poincaré, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: In Poincaré's view, we try to construct a language within which the brute facts of experience are expressed as comprehensively and as elegantly as possible. The job of science is the forging of a language precisely suited to that purpose. | |
| From: report of Henri Poincaré (The Value of Science [1906], Pt III) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: I'm often struck by how obscure and difficult our accounts of self-evident facts can be. Chairs are easy, and the metaphysics of chairs is hideous. Why is that? I'm a robust realist, but I like Poincaré's idea. He permits facts. |