11 ideas
| 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. |
| 9558 | All scientific tests will verify mathematics, so it is a background, not something being tested [Sober] |
| Full Idea: If mathematical statements are part of every competing hypothesis, then no matter which hypothesis comes out best in the light of observations, they will be part of the best hypothesis. They are not tested, but are a background assumption. | |
| From: Elliott Sober (Mathematics and Indispensibility [1993], 45), quoted by Charles Chihara - A Structural Account of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice objection to the Quine-Putnam thesis that mathematics is confirmed by the ongoing successes of science. |
| 7602 | In the Bible God changes his mind (repenting of creating humanity, in the Flood) [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: In the Bible God changes his mind, as when he repents of having made man and decides to destroy the human race in the Flood. | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: It becomes apparent that the most startling feature of Christian fundamentalism is its uncritical reading of the Bible, in which passages are wilfully lifted from context, and inconvenient inconsistencies are ruthlessly ignored. |
| 7605 | Monotheism introduced intolerance into religious thinking [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: We have become so used to the intolerance of monotheism that we may not appreciate that its hostility towards other gods was a new religious attitude; paganism was an essentially tolerant faith. | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The comedian Dave Allen always signed off with "may your god go with you". To me the most striking feature of monotheists is frequently their barely controlled aggression, beneath a mask of strained compassion. |
| 7599 | Around 800 BCE teachers superseded gods in India [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: Around the eighth century BCE the gods ceased to be very important in India, and would be superseded by the religious teacher, who would be considered higher than the gods. | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: At least there has been one culture that gave an appropriate status to teachers. It seems astonishing in that age that human beings could have higher status than gods - way before the European 'humanists'. |
| 7597 | There is virtually no sign of monotheism in the Pentateuch [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: It is very difficult to find a single monotheistic statement in the whole of the Pentateuch, and even the Ten Commandments take the existence of other gods for granted ("There shall be no strange gods for you before my face"). | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: The transition from polytheism to monotheism is very strange. First God is 'jealous' of other gods, then supremely above them, and eventually totally exclusive. It's like watching the rise of Stalin. |
| 7606 | The idea that Jesus was God was only settled in the fourth century [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: Jesus himself certainly never claimed to be God, and the doctrine that Jesus had been God in human form was not finalised until the fourth century. | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It was this final view which seems to have provoked Muhammed into developing a religion with the slogan "there is only one God". In Christianity an initially promising set of teachings grew into a prolonged irrational hysteria. |
| 7596 | Faith is not just belief in propositions, but also putting trust in them [Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between belief in a set of propositions and a faith which enables us to put our trust in them. | |
| From: Karen Armstrong (A History of God [1993], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is interestingly distinct from the usual idea that faith is putting belief in propositions which are not sufficiently rationally justified. How many philosophers actually have faith in the propositions they say they believe? |