161 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
| 15209 | Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Just as the tiniest error in navigation may lead to a landfall even on the wrong continent, so the acceptance of apparently innocuous principles can lead to doctrines which, if accepted, would render intellectual life impossible. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: If one lived life by an axiom system, and one of the axioms was a bit off kilter, then this idea would be a powerful one. Note that it is only 'intellectual' life that is screwed up, but even there a plurality of ideas keep correcting one another. |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
| 15215 | Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In our view the task of a philosopher is to devise and critically assess conceptual schemes in the service of some overall vision of the world. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
| A reaction: This makes theology just as genuinely a branch of philosophy as their scientific essentialism. Is there any sort of philosophy, then, which is not 'in the service' of some independent worldview? Interesting. Note 'devise', as well as 'assess'. |
| 15212 | Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Adequate accounts of those concepts which are neither purely formal nor simply psychological can be achieved by attention to ....the content of our knowledge, content which goes beyond the reports of immediate experience. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I like this one. Most proponents of analysis are either bogged down in trying to reduce all of our talk to formal logic, or else they think that they are just analysing how we think. It's neither, because the concepts arise from the world. |
| 15210 | Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view has led philosophers to suppose that their task is to provide an analysis of key concepts and relations wholly in terms drawn from formal logic, since relations of necessity are, in their view, fundamentally logical relations | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: A very sharp observation about why logic has become central to contemporary philosophy. As far as I can see, logic steadily increases its dominance, to the point where ordinary metaphysical thought is being squeezed out. |
| 15236 | Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Positivism is the doctrine that the content of scientific propositions is exhausted by what can be immediately experienced. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.I) | |
| A reaction: The simple thing missing from positivism is inference to the best explanation. Also, if you actually rule out other propositions as 'meaningless', you rule out speculation, which would certainly cripple science. |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| Full Idea: A single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I take this to imply that multiple viewpoints lead us towards objectivity. The single viewpoint of an expert is of much greater value than that of a novice, on the whole. |
| 22642 | Man has an intense natural interest in the consistency of his own thinking [James] |
| Full Idea: After man's interest in breathing freely, the greatest of all his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits….) is his interest in consistency, in feeling that what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions. | |
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Seventh') | |
| A reaction: People notoriously contradict themselves all the time, but I suspect that it is when they get out of their depth in complexities such as politics. They probably achieve great consistency within their own expertise, and in common knowledge. |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| Full Idea: Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of single underlying fact is like a musician's relief at discovering harmony. …The passion for economy of means in thought is the philosophic passion par excellence. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: We do, though, possess an inner klaxon warning against stupid simplistic reductions. Reducing all the miseries of life to the workings of the Devil is not satisfactory, even it it is economical. Simplicities are dangerously tempting. |
| 15227 | Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: From a logical point of view all definitions look exactly alike, that is, they contain a logical subject and a set of predicates which are attributed of necessity to that subject. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) |
| 6710 | You can only define a statement that something is 'true' by referring to its functional possibilities [James] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatism insists that statements and beliefs are inertly and statically true only by courtesy: they practically pass for true; but you cannot define what you mean by calling them true without referring to their functional possibilities. | |
| From: William James (The Meaning of the Word "Truth" [1907], p.2) | |
| A reaction: I think this clarifies an objection to pragmatism, because all functional definitions (e.g. of the mind, or of moral behaviour) are preceded by the question of WHY this thing is able to function in this way. What special quality makes this possible? |
| 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes [James] |
| Full Idea: Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as 'health' is a name for other processes in life. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: So the slogan is 'truth is success in belief'? Suicide and racist genocide can be 'successful'. I would have thought that truth was the end of a process, rather than the process itself. |
| 18983 | In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object [James] |
| Full Idea: When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases. |
| 18972 | Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences [James] |
| Full Idea: Pragmatists say that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by the close similarity (at least in James) of the pragmatic view of truth and the coherence theory of truth (associated later with Blanshard). Perhaps the coherence theory is one version of the pragmatic account |
| 18973 | New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs [James] |
| Full Idea: A new opinion counts as 'true' just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: Note the tell-tale locution 'counts as' true, rather than 'is' true. The obvious problem is that someone with a big stock of foolish beliefs will 'count as' true some bad interpretation which is gratifyingly assimilated to their current confusions. |
| 18984 | True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify (and false otherwise) [James] |
| Full Idea: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: The immediate question is why you should label something as 'false' simply on the grounds that you can't corroborate it. Proving the falsity is a stronger position than the ignorance James seems happy with. 'Assimilate' implies coherence. |
| 22305 | If the hypothesis of God is widely successful, it is true [James] |
| Full Idea: On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. | |
| From: William James (The Meaning of the Word "Truth" [1907], p.299), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 35 'Prag' | |
| A reaction: How you get from 'widely satisfactory' to 'true' is beyond my comprehension. This is dangerous nonsense. This view of truth seems to be a commonplace in American culture. Peirce hurray! James boo! James accepted verification, where possible. |
| 15273 | Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Points can be 'dense' by indefinitely prolonged division. To be 'continuous' is more stringent; the points must be cut into two sets, and meet the condition laid down by Boscovich and Dedekind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This idea goes with Idea 15274, which lays down the specification of the Dedekind Cut, which is the criterion for the real (and continuous) numbers. Harré and Madden are interested in whether time can support continuity of objects. |
| 15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Divide points into left and right set. They're 'continuous' if that point is either last member of left set, and greatest lower bound of right (so no least member), or least upper bound of left set (so no last member) and first member of right set. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: The best attempt I have yet encountered to explain a Dedekind Cut for the layperson. I gather modern mathematicians no longer rely on this way of defining the real numbers. |
| 15211 | There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The assumption that there is an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the psychological is, in our view, an error of enormous consequence. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this, and am opposed to the Fregean view of the matter. The psychology is the bridge between the physical world and the logic. Frege had to be a platonist, so that the formalism could latch onto something. |
| 15261 | Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate. |
| 15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: On our view, 'event' is to be understood in terms of the ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: It has quite hard to take either objects or events, given that they seem to be amenable to analysis. I am tempted to take essences as primitive. They fix identity, endure change, bear accidental properties (including temporary intrinsics). |
| 15257 | The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: By a shift from events to things we claim to make the big problem of induction tractable. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: [You'll have to read their chapter to get the whole picture] The idea of basing a metaphysics on 'events' gives me the creeps, given the difficulty of individuating an event. Events are not primitive; even animals can analyse their components. |
| 17292 | Avoid 'in virtue of' for grounding, since it might imply a reflexive relation such as identity [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: We should not use 'in virtue of' where it might express a reflexive relation, such as identity. Since grounding is a relation of determination, and closely linked to the concept of explanation, it is irreflexive and asymmetric. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: E.g. he says someone isn't a bachelor in virtue of being an unmarried man, since a bachelor just is an unmarried man. I can't disagree. 'Determination' looks like the magic word, even if we don't know how it cashes out. |
| 17295 | Ground relations depend on the properties [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: On my view, grounding relations depend on the natures of the properties involved in them. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm cautious about this if we don't find out more exactly what properties are (and they had better not just be predicates). Maybe properties are the only apparatus we have here, though I prefer 'powers' for the fundamentals. |
| 17297 | A ball's being spherical non-causally determines its power to roll [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a given thing is spherical non-causally determines the fact that it has the power to roll. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Quine won't accept this, because you have added something called a 'power' to the ball (intrinsically, it seems), over and above its observable sphericity. Does being a ball 'determine' that it can't be in two places at once? Order of explanation? |
| 17302 | Ground is irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, non-monotonic etc. [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: The logical principles about grounding include irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, non-monotonicity, and so forth. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: [It can't ground itself, there is no mutual grounding, grounds of grounds ground, and grounding judgements are not fixed] |
| 17303 | The best critique of grounding says it is actually either identity or elimination [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: I think the most promising skeptical strategy is to insist on either identity or elimination wherever grounding is alleged to hold. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.9) | |
| A reaction: This comes after an assessment of the critiques of grounding by Oliver, Hofweber and Daly. So we don't say chemistry grounds biology, we either say biology is chemistry, or that there is no biology. Everything is just simples. Not for me. |
| 17294 | Grounding is a singular relation between worldly facts [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: On my view, grounding is a singular relation between facts. ...Facts, on this view, are obtaining states of affairs. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: He rest this claim on his 'worldly' view of facts, Idea 17293. I seem to be agreeing with him. Note that it is not between types of fact, even if there are such general truths, such as in chemistry. |
| 17300 | If grounding relates facts, properties must be included, as well as objects [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: Taking facts to be the relata of grounding has the interesting consequence that it does not relate ordinary particulars, objects, considered apart from their properties. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: It will depend on what you mean by properties, and it seems to me that something like 'powers' must be invoked, to get the active character that seems to be involved in grounding. |
| 17296 | We must accept grounding, for our important explanations [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: The reason we must countenance grounding is that it is indispensible to certain important explanations. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: I like this a lot. The first given of all philosophy is the drive to exlain. However, we mustn't go inventing features of the world, simply to give us the possibility of explaining it. The objective fact seems to be the without-which-not relation. |
| 17301 | Reduction is just identity, so the two things are the same fact, so reduction isn't grounding [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: I deny that when p grounds q, q thereby reduces to p, and I deny that if q reduces to p, then p grounds q. ...On my view, reduction is nothing other than identity, so p is the same fact as q. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Very good. I can't disagree with any of it, and it is crystal clear. Philosophical heaven. |
| 15300 | Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Fundamental particulars are incapable of change. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
| A reaction: I quote this in order to challenge it. If the proton can decay (which seems to be the case) maybe everything can. The fundamentals of a lawn mower eventually rust away; it may be thus with universe. What evidence could deny this? |
| 15319 | Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is no metaphysical justification whatever for treating the solid, bounded, material object as the determiner of all thing concepts. Fluids are no less material things than are hard solid blocks. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: We don't tend to talk of a fluid as 'a' thing, and without distinct objects there would be virtually no structure, or interest, in nature, so what gives identity to the blocks must interest the metaphysician. |
| 15320 | Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The magnetic and the gravitation field can occupy all the same places without merging. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: We can divide stuff into two classes, then, according to whether they usually merge if coextensive in space. Oil and water can be mixed, but eventually separate again. |
| 15318 | Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The region around a magnetic body, the space between earth and moon, and the vicinity of an electric cable remain obstinately and, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: Ouch, if you are a strict 'materialist'! I call myself a 'naturalist', in a hand-wavy sort of way. On materialism and determinism I remain vague. |
| 17293 | Worldly facts are obtaining states of affairs, with constituents; conceptual facts also depend on concepts [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: The 'worldly' view of facts says they are obtaining states of affairs, individuated by their constituents and their combination. On the 'conceptual' view, facts will differ if they pick out an object or property via different concepts. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Might it be that conceptual differences between facts are supervenient on worldly differences (with the worldly facts in charge)? |
| 22641 | Realities just are, and beliefs are true of them [James] |
| Full Idea: Realities are not true, they are; and beliefs are true of them. | |
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Fourth') | |
| A reaction: At last, a remark by James about truth which I really like. For 'realities' I would use the word 'facts'. |
| 15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A state of affairs consists of structures of particulars that endure (of which physical objects would be one type), the properties and powers of those particulars, and the relations obtaining among them. A common 'event' is a change in state of affairs. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I find 'event' to be so vague, and so dependent on pragmatic interests, that it has hard to find a place for it in an ontological system. Ditto with state of affairs. They overlap. States of affairs can survive change (like a political majority). |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| Full Idea: Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose. Conceptions, 'kinds', are teleological instruments. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Could there not be ways of classifying which suit all of our purposes? If there were a naturally correct way to classifying things, then any pragmatist would probably welcome that. (I don't say there is such a way). |
| 15281 | Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The connectivity of ensembles of predicates is characteristic of natural science, while the independence of empirical predicates is the requirement of the Humean position. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: This is yet another excellent reason for getting rid of the hyperempirical Humean view of these things. The best explanation of the world is that its ingredients are clearly not 'independent' of each other. |
| 15279 | Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of energy was introduced into physics precisely to make possible the application of the 'store of potency' paradigm in cases like the contact of billiard balls, since the moving ball is clearly an agent of change. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I find this to be a hugely revealing little observation. For years the nature of energy has bothered me, and I have been struck by the active character of nature. I am beginning to understand the world! |
| 15276 | Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Some powerful particulars require to be stimulated before their powers are manifested. Others will manifest their powers whenever the impediments to action, the constraints, are removed. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.V) | |
| A reaction: Sounds nice and clear, but if gunpowder explodes at a certain temperature, how can you distinguish temperatures as the 'stimulus' ones and the 'release' ones? We just remove the constraint of low temperature. |
| 15305 | Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Contrasted with variable powers are those powers which cannot be diminished or augmented without loss of identity for the particular to which they are ascribed. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
| A reaction: They give the example of a Deputy Sheriff's powers, as one that cannot vary. I suppose the powers of an electron are in the fixed category. Fair enough. Can a fundamental power be variable (or only 'complex' powers)? |
| 15218 | Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: For scientists 'copper' refers to something having the properties of malleability, fusibility, ductility, electric conductivity, density 8.92, atomic weight 63.54, and atomic number 19. All but the last of these are dispositional. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: This is important because it is tempting to pick the atomic number as the essence of copper, but it is the only one on the list which is structural rather than dispositional. The deep question is why that substance has those dispositions. |
| 15302 | We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The power of particulars are always made understandable by the natures of those particulars, but finally such explanations come to rest with a power of a particular that has no explanation in the nature of that thing or bit of material. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: I'm glad they faced up to this matter. The question is whether the fundamental powers which are the terminus of explanation are the same sort of thing as the powers which were said to be the target for explanations. Just complex powers? |
| 15303 | Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: As the most promising candidate for entities which intrinsically qualify as ultimate because their nature is in principle identical with their powers we will offer a physical field. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: An electron comes fairly close to being nothing but a bundle of powers, but fields seem to have a slightly more basic role in physics, so this strikes me as a good suggestion. It meets Ladyman's mocking of the 'microbangings' view. |
| 15258 | Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: An attribution of a power opens up a certain direction of empirical investigation. It is not an attribution of an occult quality, because it is not a quality-attribution at all. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.II) | |
| A reaction: They seem to have a rather behaviouristic view of powers, which I am inclined to think misses how fundamental powers are. I see fundamental powers as the terminus of empirical investigation (which focuses on how powers combine). |
| 15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: How are we to conceive of a field of potentials when the very point of the notion is that it serves to describe what would happen at various places, and is not a description of what did or is happening? | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the answer is induction. If there were no events, the field would be beyond us. We infer the field from observed events, and infer possible events from the patterns of behaviour in the field, and its nature. |
| 18987 | A 'thing' is simply carved out of reality for human purposes [James] |
| Full Idea: What shall we call a 'thing' anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our human purposes. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 7) | |
| A reaction: James wrote just before the discovery of galaxies, which are much more obviously 'things' than constellations like the Plough are! This idea suggests a connection between pragmatism and the nihilist view of objects of Van Inwagen and co. |
| 15272 | The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In being properly critical about the merits of the concept of substance, ...the Humean finds he has lost the vitally important concept of a thing as well. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This is the whole reason that Aristotle and others started talking about substances in the first place. The big mistake is to think that Aristotle believes in a thing called 'substance'. The notion is a placeholder for whatever holds a thing together. |
| 18981 | 'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience [James] |
| Full Idea: 'Substance' appears now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are actually grouped and given in coherent forms. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |
| A reaction: This is the strongly empirical strain in James's empiricism. This sounds like a David Lewis comment on the Humean mosaic of experience. We Aristotelians at least believe that the groups run much deeper than the surface of experience. |
| 15304 | We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The importance of the field concept (as ultimate) is that it allows us to escape from the apparently pervasive concepts of substance and its properties. A field has no substance other than its powers (or its potentials). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
| A reaction: You can't run away from substance by only thinking about what is ultimate. Are they going to ignore separate objects? What gives them identity? Do they have any properties? What has the properties? More work needed here. |
| 15309 | The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The assumption that shape and solidity are the fundamental mechanical qualities requires an implausible hypothesis of a substance or material filling the space of bodies. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This is 'substance' in the sense of matter, rather than in the sense of an Aristotelian essence. They defend fields (rather than particles) as the fundamentals of the physical world. |
| 15264 | The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
| A reaction: Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'. |
| 15262 | In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I) | |
| A reaction: This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity? |
| 15297 | We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
| A reaction: This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science. |
| 15266 | We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
| A reaction: They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265). |
| 15220 | To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Talk about particulars remaining the same and yet lacking their usual capacities and powers is at once to assert and deny that a certain object or sample of material has a given nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: They imply that this is a contradiction, and hence impossible. So what do we say about something in which the powers fade? Do they both retain and lose their identity? Or can we separate essence from identity?? Aha! |
| 15222 | Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary! |
| 15296 | A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II) | |
| A reaction: If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'. |
| 15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do? |
| 15271 | If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose. |
| 15256 | Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
| A reaction: This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together. |
| 15290 | What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.IV) | |
| A reaction: This is a deeply stirring idea, because it suddenly opens up a research project of narrowing the possibilities, with a stunning Holy Grail at the end of it. Sherlock Holmes said this first, of course. |
| 15291 | There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In addition to absolute necessity ('p is strictly implied by ¬p'), i.e. p strictly implied by any proposition whatever, C.I. Lewis also distinguished relative necessity ('p implied by what is given or known'). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: Once you accept this distinction you find that the 'relative' one comes in all sorts of degrees. You "have to" put more salt in this soup. (Deontic' necessity, someone on Twitter tells me!) |
| 15230 | Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the logical form of a statement is offered as the grounds for the judgement that it cannot be true we have logical necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a truth about logical necessity, but certainly not a full account of it, because contingent statements also have logical form. I can't think of any other criterion than the finding of a contradiction buried in the logical form. |
| 15214 | Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity is neither a mere reflection of logical necessity nor a roundabout way of referring to empirical contingency. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
| A reaction: They offer a strong defence of natural necessity, which is basic to their scientific essentialism. The key point is that they, unlike some others, are not defending metaphysical necessity about nature, but finding a different type of necessity. Good. |
| 15221 | The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The relation between what a thing is and what it is capable of doing and undergoing is naturally necessary. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: Note that this was written in 1975, and in no way rests of Kripkean notions of rigid designation and necessary identities. Needs thought, but I take it to be an appealing proposal. |
| 15224 | A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is a necessity corresponding to the nature of the actual. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.C) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for the assertion of a genuine and distinct natural necessity. Hence every possible world will have its own distinctive natural necessity. If the actual contains the possible, then there are possible new natural necessities in the actual! |
| 15232 | Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the natures of the operative powerful particulars, the constraining or stimulating effect of conditions and so on are offered as the grounds for the judgement that a certain effect cannot but happen (or fail), we have natural necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I subscribe to, the really right bit of scientific essentialism. Can this view be proved? Hm. I take the opposite view to be the misguided Humean idea that if you can imagine it not happening, then it might not happen. Firey furnace. |
| 15288 | People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: At the basis of all doubts about the rationality of science lies the idea that there is no rational resting place between logical necessity and absolute contingency. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by the fact that when someone says "I have to go now", they express a necessity. Are there thousands of types of necessity, or one conditional necessity resting on thousands of different foundations? |
| 15289 | Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when understood by scientists to be related by generative mechanisms, whose structure and components constitute the essential natures of the world. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: Does that mean that the relationship between an actual state and a possible state is metaphysically necessary, rather than naturally necessary? I think we need dispositions to be part of actuality, and hence replace 'co-existing' with 'possible'. |
| 15231 | Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When the conditions for a rational being having knowledge of the nature of a world are offered as the grounds for the judgement that such a world must have certain characteristics, we have transcendental necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: It seems like a rather hard call to decide whether such characteristics pertain to the world, or to the mind of the rational being. Kant is obviously behind this one. You must read his first Critique at least four times to evaluate it. |
| 15234 | There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is logically necessary must be reflected in a corresponding transcendental necessity. But there are a great range of transcendental necessities which are not reflected in any logical necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.C) | |
| A reaction: That is, the world would be unknowable if any of the logical necessities failed to apply to it. I hope that doesn't mean that we are supposed to intuitively know all the logical necessities. Nowadays we are famous for being bad at that. |
| 15260 | Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We understand subjunctive conditionals as statements about possibilities, excluding those actualised. So that form is just right for part of the analysis of a power statement, since to say a thing has a power is to say what behaviour is possible for it. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VII) | |
| A reaction: They seem unaware of the famous work of Stalnaker and Lewis on this type of analysis, but as a fan of powers I find this interesting, and it offers a nice extra piece for my big jigsaw. |
| 15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When a natural necessity is used as the basis for the inclusion or exclusion of the appropriate predicate in the meaning of a concept of a kind of particular, then it is conceptually necessary that that kind of particular has that property or power. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the bolder views of Harré and Madden, since many philosophers would say that conceptual necessity rests entirely on convention rather than on nature. We could cut them out by just saying that most of our conventions rest on nature. |
| 15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Described as a man it is quite contingent that he has a child, but described as a father it is conceptually necessary that he has a child. But that conceptual necessity is a reflection of the natural necessity of the father's role in reproduction. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: This is a (good) response to Quine's claim that necessity depends entirely on the mode of description (and his mathematician cyclist example). |
| 15216 | Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The question about conceptual necessity is whether it is only stipulative and conventional in character or whether it mirrors something about the nature of physical systems. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.A) | |
| A reaction: This is the key question, which fans of conventionalism (such as Sidelle) don't seem to face up to. I take it to be important that our concepts are not created by a committee of fools, but by people constantly relating to the world. |
| 15235 | There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: When discoveries about the nature of a thing or substance explain or justify our holding that certain properties are its nominal essence, then the diachronic process of meaning development creates a genuine conceptual necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.VI) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a pretty good account of one of the bases for conceptual necessity. They seem to think that conceptual necessity rests on a mixture of real and nominal essence (but then some of the nominal features are also real). |
| 15228 | Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concepts of necessity and contingency are detached from those of the apriori and the a posteriori. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to arise quite independently of Kripke, from the attack by the authors on the Humean view of modality. They also mention the possibility of the apriori contingent. |
| 15252 | If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Even in cases (such as Goldbach's Conjecture) which, if true, are logically necessary, we may be able to conceive the opposite. We can conceive of there being a number which is not the sum of two primes. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: [attributed to Kneale] Ah, but can we conceive this (as Descartes would say) 'clearly and distinctly'? I can conceive circular squares, as long as I don't concentrate too hard. |
| 18974 | Truth is a species of good, being whatever proves itself good in the way of belief [James] |
| Full Idea: Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: The trouble is that false optimism can often often be what is 'good in the way of belief'. That said, I think quite a good way to specify 'truth' is 'success in belief', but I mean intrinsically successful, not pragmatically successful. |
| 15245 | It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: It would be silly to suggest that what is a matter of experience must be justified by reason, and it makes no sense to say that what we are insisting upon as a matter of direct experience must itself be established by experience. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: The first half is now known as the 'Moorean' view (Idea 6349). It does make sense, when faced with a weird experience, to assess and establish it by means of a combination of reason and other experiences. It's called 'coherence'! |
| 15244 | We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: It seems clear that we are never presented with a quality except of some object. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that that 'seems clear'. The idea of sense-data is that while it seems to be of an object, reason suggests that the experience of the quality must precede the object assembled thereby. How do you arbitrate? |
| 15248 | Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: To the objection that one is never aware of inferences in sensation, the unconvincing reply comes that such inferences are automatic, telescoped, non-discursive and unconscious. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: I think the 'unconvincing' reply is a bit more convincing in the light of modern research on the brain, which presents everything it does in a far less conscious light than the traditional view. Even reason seems barely conscious. |
| 15269 | Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean event, the impression, basic to his epistemology, is, as we have seen, instantaneous in nature, punctiform and elemenentary, and from this characterisation follows its atomicity, its lack of internal connections with anything else. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This simple point about Humean associationism is the key to grasping the whole hideous worldview that has gripped twentieth century philosophy. How many impressions make up an apple? And why do they sum to make something? |
| 18989 | Pragmatism accepts any hypothesis which has useful consequences [James] |
| Full Idea: On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: Most governments seem to find lies more useful than the truth. Maybe most children are better off not knowing the truth about their parents. It might be disastrous to know the truth about what other people are thinking. Is 'useful but false' meaningful? |
| 22640 | We find satisfaction in consistency of all of our beliefs, perceptions and mental connections [James] |
| Full Idea: We find satisfaction in consistency between the present idea and the entire rest of our mental equipment, including the whole order of our sensations, and that of our intuitions of likeness and difference, and our whole stock previously acquired truths. | |
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Fourth') | |
| A reaction: I like this, apart from the idea that the criterion of good coherence seems to be subjective 'satisfaction'. We should ask why some large set of beliefs is coherent. I assume nature is coherent, and truth is the best explanation of our coherence about it. |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| Full Idea: What is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Clifford's famous principle. He isn't actually contraverting the principle, but it is a nice point about evidence. Simple empiricists think detectives only have to stare at the evidence and the solution creates itself. |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| Full Idea: Each tester of the truth of a theory …acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.42) | |
| A reaction: This is almost exactly Popper's falsificationist proposal for science, which interestingly shows the close relationship of his view to pragmatism. Believe it as long as it is still working. |
| 15286 | Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection. |
| 15283 | Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms). |
| 15316 | The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists. |
| 18971 | Theories are practical tools for progress, not answers to enigmas [James] |
| Full Idea: Theories are instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one to work. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |
| A reaction: This follows his criticism of the quest for 'solving names' - big words that give bogus solutions to problems. James's view is not the same as 'instrumentalism', though he would probably sympathise with that view. The defines theories badly. |
| 15298 | We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
| A reaction: If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302. |
| 15225 | Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The task of natural science is to investigate the nature of a thing or substance, and to test hypotheses as to the constitution of that thing or substance. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that science is only concerned with the very small, but it would include facts such as the dramatic change of a lump of uranium when it grows bigger. |
| 18985 | True thoughts are just valuable instruments of action [James] |
| Full Idea: The possession of true thoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of action. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |
| A reaction: It looks to me like we should distinguish 'active' and 'passive' instrumentalism. The passive version says there is no more to theories and truth than what instruments record. James's active version says truth is an instrument for doing things well. |
| 18982 | Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality [James] |
| Full Idea: The pragmatist view is that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world enigma. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 5) | |
| A reaction: This treats instrumentalism as the pragmatic idea of theories as what works (and nothing more), with, presumably, no interest in grasping something called 'reality'. Presumably instrumentalism might have other motivations - such as fun. |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| Full Idea: That nature will follow tomorrow the same laws that she follows today is a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.39) | |
| A reaction: The stability of nature is something to be assessed, not something taken for granted. If you arrive in a new city and it all seems quiet, you keep your fingers crossed and treat it as stable. But revolution or coup could be just round the corner. |
| 15255 | Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: 'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I. |
| 15270 | Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The atomicity of Humean events ensures the sequential independence of properties, ...and this in turn leads to the Humean problem of induction. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as pretty good analysis of what has gone wrong with the Humean account. As far as I can see, the 'problem' of induction just doesn't occur in scientific essentialism. |
| 15284 | Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation. |
| 15285 | The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view. |
| 15287 | The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The generating mechanism that produces black raven-like beings is assumed in the according of potential law status to the statement that all ravens are black. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
| A reaction: This is a very nice succinct statement of what I take to be the scientific essentialist view of induction. It isn't about building up Humean habits of regularity, but of gradually inferring explanatory mechanisms, which might even give necessities. |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| Full Idea: The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof solely by the size of a vulgar fraction, is as ideally inept as it is practically impossible. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: James probably didn't know about Bayes, but this is directed at the Bayesian approach. My view is that full rational assessment of coherence is a much better bet than a Bayesian calculation. Factors must be weighted. |
| 15306 | Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Only changes require explanation. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
| A reaction: This points to powers as the fundamentals of all explanations, whereas if stasis also has to be explained then structures and matter have to be explained. Why is there something rather than nothing? No explanations allowed! |
| 15293 | If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow. |
| 15294 | Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality. |
| 17298 | Two things being identical (like water and H2O) is not an explanation [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: If there is identity between water and H2O, we have neither the asymmetry nor the irreflexivity that explanations require. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Once you realise it is H2O, you understand its deeper features, which will open up new explanations. He's right, though. |
| 17299 | There are plenty of examples of non-causal explanation [Audi,P] |
| Full Idea: There are a number of explanations where it seems clear that causation is not involved at all: normative grounded in non-normative, disposition grounded in categorical, aesthetic grounded in non-aesthetic, semantic in social and psychological. | |
| From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: Apart from dispositions, perhaps, these all seem to be experienced phenomena grounded in the physical world. 'Determination' is the preferred term for non-causal grounding. |
| 15254 | If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
| A reaction: They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct. |
| 15317 | Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Usually in science the powers/natures formula does lead to the imagining of hypothetical mechanisms which might be discovered to be real. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
| A reaction: The underlying mechanism is what I take Aristotle to have proposed, and it is the instinctive explanation by children (charted by Susan Gelman). |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| Full Idea: Alongside the passion for simplification …is the passion for distinguishing; it is the passion to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.22) | |
| A reaction: As I child I dismantled almost every toy I was given. This seems to be the motivation for a lot of analytic philosophy, but Aristotle also tended to think that way. |
| 15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say. |
| 15219 | Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Capacities just as much as powers, what particulars and substances are liable to undergo as well as what they are able to do, are explained by reference to what the thing is in itself. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
| A reaction: This is an important warning against trying to give the whole account in terms of powers - unless the capacities and structures and categorical properties can also be explained in terms of the basic powers. |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| Full Idea: It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Hands evolved for manipulating tools end up playing the piano. Minds evolved for action can be afflicted with boredom. He's not wrong, but he is risking the etymological fallacy (origin = purpose). I take navigation to be the original purpose of mind. |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| Full Idea: A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of what is going to happen next. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Good. A nice corrective to people like myself who are tempted to inflate animal rationality, in order to emphasise human evolutionary continuity with them. It is hard to disagree with his observation. But dogs do make judgements! True/false! |
| 9286 | Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences [James] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and not a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are, but are known, is best explained by their relations to one another, the relations being experiences. | |
| From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], §3) | |
| A reaction: This view has suddenly caught people's interest. It might be better than the higher/lower relationship, which seems to leave the basic problem untouched. Does a whole network of relations between experiences gradually 'add up' to consciousness? |
| 15301 | The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concepts of power, capacity and the nature of a particular involve generalisations and hence already presuppose that there are grounds for extrapolation. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.V) | |
| A reaction: I take sortal essentialism to be a serious misundertanding, but the mistake needs to be explained, and this idea is helpful towards that. I think the problem resides in the nature of the language we need to describe particulars. |
| 9285 | 'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' [James] |
| Full Idea: 'Consciousness' is the name of a nonentity. ..Those who cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy. ..I deny that it stands for an entity, but it does stand for a function. | |
| From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This kind of view is often treated as being preposterous, but I think it is correct. No one is denying the phenomenology, but it is the ontology which is at stake. Either you are a substance dualist, or mind must be eliminated as an 'entity'. |
| 23981 | Rage is inconceivable without bodily responses; so there are no disembodied emotions [James] |
| Full Idea: Can one fancy a state of rage and picture no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action? …A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. | |
| From: William James (What is an Emotion? [1884], p.194), quoted by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 3 'Bodily' | |
| A reaction: Plausible for rage, but less so for irritation or admiration. Goldie thinks James is wrong. James says if intellectual feelings don't become bodily then they don't qualify as emotions. No True Scotsman! |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| Full Idea: Can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is the perennial problem in deciding grounds, and in deciding what to treat as primitive. The stoics see the whole of nature as rational. Cf how can the ground of what is physical be itself physical? |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| Full Idea: I think there are very good grounds for upholding the view that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feelings of irrationality. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.20) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting proposal. Nothing is more basic to logic (well, plausible versions of logic) than the principle of non-contradiction - perhaps because it is the foundation of our natural intellectual equipment. |
| 15226 | What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A statement which asserts that a substance or thing must manifest certain properties in order to be identified as a thing or substance of that sort can be laid down a priori. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
| A reaction: This observation is encountered in Sidelle, but this is earlier, and seems to be the key to the Twin Earth thing. It is just convention whether we call XYZ water, or whether there are two sorts of jade or one. Science has prestige. |
| 18975 | We return to experience with concepts, where they show us differences [James] |
| Full Idea: Concepts for the pragmatist are things to come back into experience with, things to make us look for differences. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: That's good. I like both halves of this. Experience gives us the concepts, but then we 'come back' into experience equipped with them. Presumably animals can look for differences, but concepts enhance that hugely. Know the names of the flowers. |
| 15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: To attribute necessity to a condition, an outcome or effect, the truth of a statement, or a conclusion, is to indicate within the relevant context that no alternative is possible. In each context there are appropriate grounds for such judgements. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V) | |
| A reaction: This anticipipates Kit Fine's account of necessity by 25 years, and seems to be the right way to understand it. In ordinary usage, 'there is no alternative' is obvious a quite different claim in very different contexts. |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44) | |
| A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives. |
| 6570 | Imagine millions made happy on condition that one person suffers endless lonely torture [James] |
| Full Idea: Consider a case in which millions could be made permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture. | |
| From: William James (The Will to Believe [1896], p.188), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be one of the earliest pinpointings of a key problem with utilitiarianism, which is that other values than happiness (in this case, fairness) seem to be utterly overruled. If we ignore fairness, why shouldn't we ignore happiness? |
| 15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Natural necessity involves the concept of generative mechanisms and powerful particulars, and these in turn can be the basis of a useful notion of a natural kind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. Say gold and silver are two kinds that lead to two outcomes. Each is a natural necessity. How do you distinguish them? Only by one being the gold-necessity and the other the silver-necessity. Circular? |
| 15299 | Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We know from biology that naturally occurring species do not exhibit the constancy required by the concept of natural kind. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
| A reaction: This view has been challenged recently. How much constancy does a natural kind need? Even protons decay eventually, it seems. I think a natural kind just needs a fair degree of stability over a reasonable time-period. Tigers qualify. |
| 15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics. |
| 15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different. |
| 15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient. |
| 15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'. |
| 15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B) | |
| A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered. |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| Full Idea: The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly the psychological motivation for trying to identify 'the' cause of something, but James always tries to sell such things as subjective. 'Useless' to one person is a subjective criterion; useless to anyone is much more objective. |
| 15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation. |
| 15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The original Humean suggestion was that lawlike statements must contain only purely qualitative predicates - that is, predicates which do not require in a statement of their meaning a reference to any particular object or spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: Harré and Madden are keen to promote particulars (with powers) as the foundation of scientific theory, and I agree with them. It strikes me as quite elementary that generalisations arise from particulars, so can't fundamentally explain them. |
| 15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The whole idea of a formal analysis of the concept of lawlikeness has come to seem hopeless; every syntactical criterion proposed has a counter-example. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: They seem unaware of Lewis's work in this area, which may be the most sophisticated attempt at a (Humean) attempt at formal analysis. Personally I see nothing in Lewis that would make them change their minds. |
| 15223 | Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Given some general theory specifying the fundamental causal powers and thereby laying down the general lineaments of a world, the necessity of certain effects can be inferred. They will be 'hypothetically necessary' (given those powers). | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.B) | |
| A reaction: This is a pretty good statement of the core idea of necessity at the heart of scientific essentialism. Are we to call this 'natural' necessity or 'metaphysical' necessity? Presumably it is 'relative' necessity. Big implications for induction! |
| 15241 | Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Humeans say there can be no element of necessity in the causal relation because the conjunction of a description of a cause with the negation of a description of its usual effect is never self-contradictory. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
| A reaction: We might say there actually is a contradiction, because you assert the existence of something, and then deny that existence by denying that the effect could occur. If the object is inert this is wrong, but if it is defined by its powers it is right. |
| 15240 | In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The only sure way of distinguishing lawful and accidental universal statements is to point out that in the former cases we see why the regularity must hold, while in the latter case we do not. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and also take it to be the solution to the problem of induction. That smoking causes cancer will be a true generalisation but not a law, until we see clearly why it happens. |
| 15239 | We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome. |
| 15243 | We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: A moving thing is perceptually distinct from a motionless thing, but takes on no new quality. The perception of its motion is a genuine perception. Its motion is not inferred from observation of its successive occupations of different relative positions. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a response to Russell's reductive 'at-at' account of motion, which always struck me as wrong. It doesn't prove Russell wrong, of course, and they are trying to demonstrate that we perceive causation directly. |
| 15265 | 'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: In the case of electron/positron/gamma ray annihilation scientists maintain the paradigm of rational explanation by inventing a quasi-substance as the bearer of continuity, and all three are seen in terms of 'energy'. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
| A reaction: What a relief to see energy described as a 'quasi-substance'. I spent all of my physics studies bewildered by the nature of energy (especially when described as 'pure energy'). What does e=mc^2 mean if e is a quasi-substance? |
| 15280 | 'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The 'store' of kinetic energy is used as a latency concept to explain the power of bringing about changes which is manifested by the moving thing when its motion is arrested. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
| A reaction: These ideas have been most illuminating in connecting for me the general idea of a 'power' to the rather dubious concept of 'energy' in physics. |
| 15321 | Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Space lacks a place, and does not qualify as an individual, since the ordinary notion of individuals relates to place not space. ...But we can think of space as present in every place through the necessary connection between space and all places. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand it being present in every place, given that it is every place. |
| 15259 | Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: The same electronic constitution confers two distinct powers upon chemical atoms: the power of entering only into certain chemical combinations and the power to radiate a particular spectrum. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VI) | |
| A reaction: Presumably radioactive elements emit other radiation. Do atoms have passive powers as well as active ones? |
| 15263 | Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Modern chemistry is not, as chemistry, purely structural. ...Thus CO2 is a different substance from SO2. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I ever thought the chemistry was purely structural, but if you go in for the idea that reality is essentially geometrical (inspired by physics, presumably, like Ladyman) then you might make this mistake. |
| 18980 | If there is a 'greatest knower', it doesn't follow that they know absolutely everything [James] |
| Full Idea: The greatest knower of them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know what he does know at one single stroke: - he may be liable to forget. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |
| A reaction: And that's before you get to the problem of how the greatest knower could possibly know whether or not they knew absolutely everything, or whether there might be some fact which was irremediably hidden from them. |
| 18978 | It is hard to grasp a cosmic mind which produces such a mixture of goods and evils [James] |
| Full Idea: We can with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of good and evils that we find in this actual world's particulars. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: And, of course, what counts as 'goods' or 'evils' seems to have a highly relative aspect to it. To claim that really it is all good is massive hope based on flimsy evidence. |
| 18991 | If the God hypothesis works well, then it is true [James] |
| Full Idea: On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: The truth of God's existence certainly is a challenging test case for the pragmatic theory of truth, and James really bites the bullet here. Pragmatism may ultimately founder on the impossibility of specifying what 'works satisfactorily' means. |
| 18977 | The wonderful design of a woodpecker looks diabolical to its victims [James] |
| Full Idea: To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: What an elegant sentence! The huge problem for religious people who accept (probably reluctantly) evolution by natural selection is the moral nature of the divine being who could use such a ruthless method of design. |
| 18979 | Things with parts always have some structure, so they always appear to be designed [James] |
| Full Idea: The parts of things must always make some definite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: In so far as the design argument is an analogy with human affairs, we can't deny that high levels of order suggest an organising mind, and mere chaos suggests a coincidence of unco-ordinated forces. |
| 18976 | Private experience is the main evidence for God [James] |
| Full Idea: I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experience. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |
| A reaction: There is not much you can say to someone who claims incontrovertible evidence which is utterly private to themselves. Does total absence of private religious experience count as evidence on the subject? |
| 15295 | Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden] |
| Full Idea: Theism is supposedly a positive view that renders the world more intelligible than its alternatives, and this professed programme requires the production of results. | |
| From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.VI) | |
| A reaction: A nice articulation of a view of theism which will make believers wince, because Harré and Madden see it as a scientific theory, intended to explain the world. I'm with them. I see Plato's theory of Forms as a scientific theory. |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
| Full Idea: In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.36) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche says these are the virtues of a good slave. Previous virtues were dominated by military needs, but the new virtues are those of large cities, where communal living with strangers is the challenge. |
| 18990 | Nirvana means safety from sense experience, and hindus and buddhists are just afraid of life [James] |
| Full Idea: Nirvana means safety from the everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. | |
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |
| A reaction: Wonderfully American! From what I have seen of eastern thought, including Taoism, I agree with James, in general. There is a rejection of knowledge and of human life which I find shocking. I suspect it is a defence mechanism for downtrodden people. |