19 ideas
18270 | Choice suggests that intensions are not needed to ensure classes [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The axiom of choice was an assumption that implicitly questioned the necessity of intensions to guarantee the presence of classes. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'Log') | |
A reaction: The point is that Choice just picks out members for no particular reason. So classes, it seems, don't need a reason to exist. |
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. |
3523 | Shadows are supervenient on their objects, but not reducible [Maslin] |
Full Idea: Shadows are distinct from the physical objects casting the shadows and irreducible to them; any attempt at reduction would be incoherent, as it would entail identifying a shadow with the object of which it is a shadow. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 6.3) | |
A reaction: Another failure to find a decent analogy for what is claimed in property dualism. A 'shadow' is a reification of the abstract concept of an absence of light. Objects lose their shadows at dusk, but the object itself doesn't change. |
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. |
3517 | 'Ontology' means 'study of things which exist' [Maslin] |
Full Idea: The word 'ontology' is derived from the Greek word 'ontia', which means 'things which exist'. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 1.1) |
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. |
18263 | The semantic tradition aimed to explain the a priori semantically, not by Kantian intuition [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The semantic tradition's problem was the a priori; its enemy, Kantian pure intuition; its purpose, to develop a conception of the a priori in which pure intuition played no role; its strategy, to base that theory on a development of semantics. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 2 Intro) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that intuition, in the modern sense, has been unnecessarily demonised. I would define it as 'rational insights which cannot be fully articulated'. Sherlock Holmes embodies it. |
18272 | Platonism defines the a priori in a way that makes it unknowable [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The trouble with Platonism had always been its inability to define a priori knowledge in a way that made it possible for human beings to have it. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 7 'What') | |
A reaction: This is the famous argument of Benacerraf 1973. |
3538 | Analogy to other minds is uncheckable, over-confident and chauvinistic [Maslin] |
Full Idea: The argument from analogy makes it impossible to check my inductive inferences because of the privacy of other minds; it also seems irresponsible to generalise from a single case; and it seems like a case of human chauvinism. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 8.2) | |
A reaction: Privacy of other minds need not imply scepticism about them. I'm a believer, so I have no trouble checking my theories. Solipsists can't 'check' anything. It isn't 'irresponsible' to generalise from one case if that is all you have. |
18266 | Mathematics generalises by using variables [Coffa] |
Full Idea: The instrument of generality in mathematics is the variable. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991], 4 'The conc') | |
A reaction: I like the idea that there are variables in ordinary speech, pronouns being the most obvious example. 'Cats' is a variable involving quantification over a domain of lovable fluffy mammals. |
3540 | If we are brains then we never meet each other [Maslin] |
Full Idea: If I am my brain this leads to the odd result that you have never met me because you have never seen my brain. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 10.7) | |
A reaction: 'Star Trek' is full of aliens who appear beautiful, and turn out to be ugly grey lumps. 'I am my face' would be just as odd, particularly if I were in a coma, or dead. |
3518 | I'm not the final authority on my understanding of maths [Maslin] |
Full Idea: I may be the final authority on whether my shoe pinches, but I am manifestly not the final authority on whether I understand some mathematical theorem. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 1.7) | |
A reaction: However, it doesn't follow that his teachers are the final authority either, because he may get correct answers by an algorithm, and bluff his way when demonstrating his understanding. Who knows whether anyone really understands anything? |
3530 | Denial of purely mental causation will lead to epiphenomenalism [Maslin] |
Full Idea: If mental events are causally efficacious only by virtue of their physical features and not their mental ones, …then anomalous monism leads straight to ephiphenomenalism. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.6) | |
A reaction: As epiphenomenalism strikes me as being incoherent (see Idea 7379), what this amounts to is that either mental effects are causally efficacious, or they are not worth mentioning. I take them to be causally efficacious because they are brain events. |
3520 | Token-identity removes the explanatory role of the physical [Maslin] |
Full Idea: In token-identity mental and physical features seem as unrelated as colour and shape, which is very weak physicalism because it does not allow physical states an explanatory role in accounting for mental states. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 3.8.6) | |
A reaction: Colour and shape are not totally unrelated, as they can both be totally explained by a full knowledge of the physical substance involved. ...But maybe if we fully understood Spinoza's single substance...? See Idea 4834. |
3528 | Causality may require that a law is being followed [Maslin] |
Full Idea: The principle of nomological causality says that if two events are intrinsically causally related, there must be a strict physical law under which they can be subsumed. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.5) |
3525 | Strict laws make causation logically necessary [Maslin] |
Full Idea: 'Deductive-nomological' explanation consists of two premises - a strict law with no exceptions and supporting deterministic counterfactuals, and a statement of an event which falls under the law - which together logically require the effect. | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.4) |
3527 | Strict laws allow no exceptions and are part of a closed system [Maslin] |
Full Idea: 'Strict' laws of nature contain no ceteris paribus clauses ('all things being equal'), and are part of a closed system (so that whatever affects the system must be included within the system). | |
From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.5) |
18279 | Relativity is as absolutist about space-time as Newton was about space [Coffa] |
Full Idea: If the theory of relativity might be thought to support an idealist construal of space and time, it is no less absolutistic about space-time than Newton's theory was about space. | |
From: J. Alberto Coffa (The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap [1991]) | |
A reaction: [He cites Minkowski, Weyl and Cartan for this conclusion] Coffa is clearly a bit cross about philosophers who draw naive idealist and relativist conclusions from relativity. |