89 ideas
| 6979 | Serious metaphysics cares about entailment between sentences [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Serious metaphysics is committed to views about which sentences entail which other sentences. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This does not say that metaphysics is only about entailment, or (even worse) only about sentences. Put another way: if we wish to be wise, we must study the implications of our beliefs. Yes. |
| 6980 | Conceptual analysis studies whether one story is made true by another story [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual analysis is the very business of addressing when and whether a story told in one vocabulary is made true by one told in some allegedly more fundamental vocabulary. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a view of linguistic analysis as focusing on entailments rather than on usage or truth conditions. If philosophy is the attempt to acquire a totally consistent set of beliefs (a plausible view), then Jackson is right. |
| 6983 | Intuitions about possibilities are basic to conceptual analysis [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Intuitions about possibilities are the bread and butter of conceptual analysis. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Hence the centrality of the debate over conceivability and possibility. Which seems to reduce to the relationship between 'intuition' and 'imagination'. Imagination is a very weak guide to what is possible, and intuition is very uncertain.... |
| 14707 | Conceptual analysis is needed to establish that metaphysical reductions respect original meanings [Jackson, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: On the empiricist view of meaning, the relevance of conceptual analysis to metaphysics is that it establishes that a putative reduction respects the original meaning of the target expression. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], p.28) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.2.4 |
| 1502 | Parmenides was much more cautious about accepting ideas than his predecessors [Simplicius on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides would not agree with anything unless it seemed necessary, whereas his predecessors used to come up with unsubstantiated assertions. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A28) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.2- | |
| A reaction: from Eudemus |
| 7005 | Something can only have a place in a preferred account of things if it is entailed by the account [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: The one and only way of having a place in an account told in some set of preferred terms is by being entailed by that account - a view I will refer to as the entry by entailment thesis. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: How do we distinguish between the original account, which seems to be just accepted, and the additions which accrue because they are entailed by it? Why does this club distinguish members from guests? |
| 6994 | Truth supervenes on being [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Truth supervenes on being. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan for those of us who find the word 'truth' to be meaningful. |
| 14352 | '¬', '&', and 'v' are truth functions: the truth of the compound is fixed by the truth of the components [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: It is widely agreed that '¬', '&', and 'v' are 'truth functions': the truth value of a compound sentence formed using them is fully determined by the truth value or values of the component sentences. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Equiv') | |
| A reaction: A candidate for not being a truth function might be a conditional →, where the arrow adds something over and above the propositions it connects. The relationship has an additional truth value? Does A depend on B? |
| 448 | No necessity could produce Being either later or earlier, so it must exist absolutely or not at all [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: What necessity impelled Being, if it did spring from nothing, to be produced later or earlier? Thus it must be absolutely, or not at all. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 447 | Being must be eternal and uncreated, and hence it is timeless [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Being has no coming-to-be and no destruction, for it is whole of limb, without motion, and without end. And it never was, nor will be, because it is now, a whole all together, one, continuous; for what creation of it will you look for? | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 449 | Being is not divisible, since it is all alike [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Being is not divisible, since it is all alike. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 1503 | There is no such thing as nothing [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as nothing. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B06), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.86.27- |
| 445 | The realm of necessary non-existence cannot be explored, because it is unknowable [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The other way of enquiry, that IT IS NOT, and IT is bound NOT TO BE, cannot be explored, for you could neither recognise nor express that which IS NOT. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.28- |
| 21820 | Parmenides at least saw Being as the same as Nous, and separate from the sensed realm [Parmenides, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides made some approach to the doctrine of Plato in identifying Being with Intellectual-Principle [Nous] while separating Real Being from the realm of sense. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
| A reaction: The point is that for Parmenides the One is the essence of Being, but for platonists there is something prior to and higher than Being. For Plato it is the Good; for Plotinus it is a revised (non-Being) concept of the One. |
| 452 | All our concepts of change and permanence are just names, not the truth [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: All things that mortals have established, believing in their truth, are just a name: Becoming and Perishing, Being and Not-Being, and change of position, and alteration of bright colour. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 6984 | Smooth reductions preserve high-level laws in the lower level [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: In a 'smooth' reduction the laws of the reduced theory (thermodynamics of gases) are pretty much preserved in (and isomorphic with) the corresponding laws in the reducing theory (molecular or kinetic theory of gases). | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Are the 'laws' of weather (e.g. linking humidity, temperature and pressure to rainfall) preserved at the level of physics? One might say that they are not preserved, but they are not lost either (they just fade away). Contradictions would be worrying. |
| 7508 | Good reductionism connects fields of knowledge, but doesn't replace one with another [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: Good reductionism (also called 'hierarchical reductionism') consists not of replacing one field of knowledge with another, but of connecting or unifying them. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: A nice simple clarification. In this sense I am definitely a reductionist about mind (indeed, about everything). There is nothing threatening to even 'spiritual' understanding by saying that it is connected to the brain. |
| 6978 | Baldness is just hair distribution, but the former is indeterminate, unlike the latter [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Baldness is a much more indeterminate matter than is hair distribution, nevetheless baldness is nothing over and above hair distribution. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], p.22) | |
| A reaction: This seems to support Williamson's view that there is no vagueness in nature, and that 'vague' is an entirely epistemological concept. |
| 6993 | Redness is a property, but only as a presentation to normal humans [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We typically count things as red just if they have a property that interacts with normal human beings to make the object look red in such a way that their so looking counts as a presentation of the property to normal humans. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is Jackson's careful statement of the 'Australian' primary property view of colours. He is trying to make red a real property of objects, but personally I take the mention of 'normal' humans as a huge danger sign. Nice try, but no. See Idea 5456. |
| 8499 | Nominalists cannot translate 'red resembles pink more than blue' into particulars [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: It is not always possible for nominalists to translate all statements putatively about universals as statements about particulars. It is not possible for 'red is a colour' and 'red resembles pink more than blue' | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Statements about Universals [1977], p.89) | |
| A reaction: His second example strikes me as the biggest challenge facing nominalism. I wish they wouldn't use secondary qualities as examples. I am unconvinced that the existence of universals will improve the explanation. It's a mystery. |
| 8500 | Colour resemblance isn't just resemblance between things; 'colour' must be mentioned [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Some red things resemble some blue things more than some pink things because of factors other than colour. Nominalists must offer 'anything red colour-resembles anything pink', but that may contain a universal in disguise. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Statements about Universals [1977], p.90) | |
| A reaction: Hume and Quine are probably right that we spot resemblances instantly, and only articulate the respect of the resemblance at a later stage. |
| 14633 | How do we tell a table's being contingently plastic from its being essentially plastic? [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: On a friendly reading of Quine, there is nothing to make the difference between a table's being contingently plastic and its being essentially plastic. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, the dreaded modern usage of 'essential' to just mean 'necessary' and nothing more. In my view, there may be a big problem with knowing whether a problem is necessary, but knowing whether it is essential is much easier. |
| 14635 | An x is essentially F if it is F in every possible world in which it appears [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: On the possible world's account, x's being essentially F is nothing more nor less than x's being F in every world in which it appears. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 6) | |
| A reaction: There you go - 'true in every possible world' is the definition of metaphysical necessity, not the definition of essence. Either get back to Aristotle, or stop (forever!) talking about 'essence'! |
| 14632 | Quine may have conflated de re and de dicto essentialism, but there is a real epistemological problem [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: The unfriendly response to Quine's objection to essentialism is that it conflates the de re and the de dicto. The friendly response is that behind that conflation is a real epistemological problem for essentialism. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Richard Cartwright 1968 for the friendly response. The epistemological question is how we can know the essentialness of an essence. |
| 1504 | Something must be unchanging to make recognition and knowledge possible [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides and Melissus were the first to appreciate that there must be unchanging entities, if recognition and knowledge are to exist. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A25) by Aristotle - On the Heavens 298b14 |
| 6987 | We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We should not multiply senses of necessity beyond necessity. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: It would be nice if there was just one sense of necessity, with the multiplication arising from the different ways in which necessities arise. In chess, checkmate is a necessity which rests on contingencies. Absolute necessities seem different. |
| 444 | The first way of enquiry involves necessary existence [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The first way of enquiry is the one that IT IS, and it is not possible for IT NOT TO BE, which is the way of credibility, for it follows truth. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B02), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.116.28- | |
| A reaction: also Proclus 'Timeus' |
| 450 | Necessity sets limits on being, in order to give it identity [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Powerful necessity holds Being in the bonds of a limit, which constrains it round about, because divine law decrees that Being shall not be without boundary. For it is not lacking, but if it were spatially infinite, it would lack everything. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 14360 | Possible worlds for subjunctives (and dispositions), and no-truth for indicatives? [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Subjunctive conditionals are intimately connected with dispositional properties and causation. ...Consequently, a position some find attractive is that possible worlds theory applies to subjunctives, while the no-truth theory applies to indicatives. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Indicative') | |
| A reaction: My intuitions are to reject this and favour a unified account, where both sorts of conditionals are mappings of the relationships among the facts of actuality. Nice slogan! |
| 14288 | 'If A,B' affirms that A⊃B, and also that this wouldn't change if A were certain [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: According to Jackson, in asserting 'If A,B' the speaker expresses his belief that A⊃B, and also indicates that this belief is 'robust' with respect to the antecedent A - the speaker would not abandon A⊃B if he were to learn that A. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals [1979]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.2 | |
| A reaction: The point is that you must not believe A⊃B solely on the dubious grounds of ¬A. This is 'to ensure an assertable conditional is fit for modus ponens' - that is, that you really will affirm B when you learn that A is true. Nice idea. |
| 13769 | Conditionals are truth-functional, but should only be asserted when they are confident [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson holds that conditionals are truth-functional, but are governed by rules of assertability, rather like 'but' compared to 'and'. The belief must be 'robust' - the speaker would not abandon his belief that A⊃B if he were to learn that A. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (On Assertion and Indicative Conditionals [1979]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals 17.3.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to spell out more precisely the pragmatic approach to conditionals pioneered by Grice, in Idea 13767. The idea is make conditionals 'fit for modus ponens'. They mustn't just be based on a belief that ¬A. |
| 13858 | The truth-functional account of conditionals is right, if the antecedent is really acceptable [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson defends the truth-functional account by saying that for a conditional to be assertable, it must not only be believed that its truth-conditions are satisfied, but the belief must be robust or resilient with respect to the antecedent. | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals and Possibilia [1981]) by Dorothy Edgington - Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? 4 | |
| A reaction: ..That is, one would not abandon the conditional if one believed the antecedent to be true. |
| 14289 | There are some assertable conditionals one would reject if one learned the antecedent [Jackson, by Edgington] |
| Full Idea: Jackson came to realise that there are assertable conditionals which one would not continue to believe if one learned the antecedent, such as Lewis's "If Reagan worked for the KGB, I'll never find out". | |
| From: report of Frank Jackson (Conditionals [1987]) by Dorothy Edgington - Conditionals (Stanf) 4.2 | |
| A reaction: That pesky David Lewis made trouble for everybody. Edgington agrees that his earlier formulation (Idea 14288) holds good for nearly all cases. There is a self-referential element in Lewis's example. |
| 14353 | Modus ponens requires that A→B is F when A is T and B is F [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Modus ponens is intuitively valid, but in A,A→B|B if A is true and B is false that must be because A→B is false. So A→B is false when A is true and B is false. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Equiv') | |
| A reaction: This is his first step in showing how the truth functional account of A→B acquires its truth table. If you are giving up the truth functional view of conditionals, presumably you are not also going to give up modus ponens? |
| 14354 | When A and B have the same truth value, A→B is true, because A→A is a logical truth [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: (A→A) is a logical truth, so some conditionals with antecedent and consequent the same truth value are true. But if '→' is a truth function, that will be true for all cases. Hence whenever A and B are alike in truth value, (A→B) is true. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Equiv') | |
| A reaction: His second step in demonstrating the truth table for →, assuming it is truth functional. |
| 14355 | (A&B)→A is a logical truth, even if antecedent false and consequent true, so it is T if A is F and B is T [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: (A&B)→A is a logical truth, but A can be true and B false, so that (A&B) is false. So some conditionals with false antecedent and true consequent are true. If → is a truth function, then whenever A is false and B is true (A→B) is true. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Equiv') | |
| A reaction: This is his third and final step in showing the truth table of → if it is truth functional. |
| 14358 | In the possible worlds account of conditionals, modus ponens and modus tollens are validated [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: In the possible worlds account modus ponens is validated (the closest world, the actual, is a B-world just if B is true), and modus tollens is validated (if B is false, the actual world is not an A-world, so A is false). | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Famous') | |
| A reaction: [see Jackson for slightly fuller versions] This looks like a minimal requirement for a decent theory of conditionals, so Jackson explains the attractions of the possible worlds view very persuasively. |
| 14359 | Only assertions have truth-values, and conditionals are not proper assertions [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: In the no-truth theory of conditionals they have justified assertion or acceptability conditions but not truth conditions. ...The motivation is that only assertions have truth values, and conditionals are arguments, not proper assertions. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'No-truth') | |
| A reaction: Once I trim this idea down to its basics, it suddenly looks very persuasive. Except that I am inclined to think that conditional truths do state facts about the world - perhaps as facts about how more basic truths are related to each other. |
| 14357 | Possible worlds account, unlike A⊃B, says nothing about when A is false [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: In the possible worlds account of conditionals A⊃B is not sufficient for A→B. If A is false then A⊃B is true, but here nothing is implied about whether the world most like the actual world except that A is true is or is not a B-world. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Possible') | |
| A reaction: The possible worlds account seems to be built on Ramsey's idea of just holding A true and seeing what you get. Being committed to B being automatically true if A is false seems highly counterintuitive. |
| 14356 | We can't insist that A is relevant to B, as conditionals can express lack of relevance [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: One addition to the truth functional account of conditionals is that A be somehow relevant to B. However, sometimes we use conditionals to express lack of relevance, as in 'If Fred works he will fail, and if Fred doesn't work he will fail'. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Conditionals [2006], 'Possible') | |
| A reaction: This certainly seems to put paid to an attractive instant solution to the problem. |
| 14631 | How can you show the necessity of an a posteriori necessity, if it might turn out to be false? [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: If something is offered as a candidate necessary a posteriori truth, how could we show that it is necessary, in the face of the fact that it takes investigation to show that it is true, and so, in some sense, it might have turned out to be false? | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Possible Worlds and Necessary A Posteriori [2010], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the topic of his paper, which he compares with how we can know that essences are essential. |
| 6988 | Mathematical sentences are a problem in a possible-worlds framework [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: There is notoriously a problem about what to say concerning mathematical sentences within the possible-worlds framework. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3 n25) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this concerns possible axioms and their combinations. |
| 6975 | Possible worlds could be concrete, abstract, universals, sentences, or properties [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Possible worlds might be concrete (Lewis), or abstract (Stalnaker), or structured universals (Forrest), or collections of sentences (Jeffrey), or mere combinations of properties and relations (Armstrong). | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: A helpful summary. I don't like concrete, or collections of sentences. Whatever they are, they had better be 'possible', so not any old collection or idea will do. |
| 451 | Thinking implies existence, because thinking depends on it [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: To think is the same as the thought that IT IS, for you will not find thinking without Being, on which it depends for its expression. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 6982 | Long arithmetic calculations show the a priori can be fallible [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We know that being fallible and being a priori can co-exist - the results of long numerical additions are well-known examples. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I see this realisation as a good example of progress in philosophy. Russell, who says self-evidence comes in degrees, deserves major credit. It is the key idea that once again makes rationalism respectable. |
| 1506 | Parmenides treats perception and intellectual activity as the same [Theophrastus on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Parmenides treats perception and intellectual activity as the same. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A46) by Theophrastus - On the Senses 3.1 | |
| A reaction: cf Theaetetus pt 1 |
| 6991 | We examine objects to determine colour; we do not introspect [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We examine objects to determine their colour; we do not introspect. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but the theory of secondary qualities did not arise from experience, but from a theory about what is actually going on. Compare pain appearing to be in your foot. |
| 3058 | Only reason can prove the truth of facts [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Reason alone will prove the truth of facts. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.3.3 |
| 7510 | Connectionists say the mind is a general purpose learning device [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: Connectionists do not, of course, believe that the mind is a blank slate, but they do believe in the closest mechanistic equivalent, a general purpose learning device. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This shows the closeness of connectionism to Hume's associationism (Idea 2189), which was just a minimal step away from Locke's mind as 'white paper' (Idea 7507). Pinker is defending 'human nature', but connectionism has a point. |
| 7513 | Is memory stored in protein sequences, neurons, synapses, or synapse-strengths? [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: Are memories stored in protein sequences, in new neurons or synapses, or in changes in the strength of existing synapses? | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a neat summary of current neuroscientific thinking about memory. If you are thinking that memory couldn't possibly be so physical, don't forget the mind-boggling number of events involved in each tiny memory. See Idea 6668. |
| 4894 | I say Mary does not have new knowledge, but knows an old fact in a new way [Perry on Jackson] |
| Full Idea: I say Mary knows an old fact in a new way, but I do not find a new bit of knowledge and a new fact. | |
| From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.3 | |
| A reaction: This seems roughly the right way to attack Jackson's 'knowledge argument', by asking exactly what he means by 'knowledge'. It is hard to see how 'qualia' can be both the means of acquiring knowledge, and the thing itself. |
| 4895 | Is it unfair that physicalist knowledge can be written down, but dualist knowledge can't be [Perry on Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Jackson seems to imply that it isn't fair that all physicalist knowledge can be written down, but not all dualist knowledge can be. | |
| From: comment on Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986]) by John Perry - Knowledge, Possibility and Consciousness §7.5 | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints a problem for the 'Mary' example - that Mary's new sight of colour is claimed as 'knowledge', and yet the whole point is that it cannot be expressed in propositions (which seems to leave it as 'procedural' or 'acquaintance' knowledge). |
| 4886 | Mary knows all the physical facts of seeing red, but experiencing it is new knowledge [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Mary knows all the physical facts. ..It seems, however, that Mary does not know all there is to know. For when she is let out of the black and white room .. she will learn what it is like to see something red. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (What Mary Didn't Know [1986], §1.4) | |
| A reaction: Jackson is begging the question. A new physical event occurs when the red wavelength stimulates Mary's visual cortex for the first time. For an empiricist raw experience creates knowledge, so it can't BE knowledge. Does Mary acquire a new concept? |
| 7509 | Roundworms live successfully with 302 neurons, so human freedom comes from our trillions [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: The roundworm only has 959 cells, and 302 neurons in a fixed wiring diagram; it eats, mates, approaches and avoids certain smells, and that's about it. This makes it obvious that human 'free' behaviour comes from our complex biological makeup. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: I find this a persuasive example. Three hundred trillion neurons cannot possibly produce behaviour which is more than broadly predictable, and then it is the environment and culture that make it predictable, not the biology. |
| 6976 | In physicalism, the psychological depends on the physical, not the other way around [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Physicalism is associated with various asymmetry doctrines, most famously with the idea that the psychological depends in some sense on the physical, and not the other way around. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Sounds okay to me. Shadows depend on objects, and not the other way round. It might suggest properties depending on substances (or bare particulars), but I prefer the dependence of processes on mechanisms (waterfalls on liquid water). |
| 6986 | Is the dependence of the psychological on the physical a priori or a posteriori? [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Should the necessary passage from the physical account of the world to the psychological one that physicalists are committed to, be placed in the a posteriori or the a priori basket? | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: That is, is 'the physical entails the mental' empirical or a priori? See Idea 3989. If we can at least dream of substance dualism, it is hard to see how it could be fully a priori. I think I prefer to see it as an inductive explanation. |
| 7511 | Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: The appeal of neural networks is that they automatically generalize their training to similar new items. If one has been trained to think tigers eat frosted flakes, it will generalise that lions do too, because it knows tigers as sets of features. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This certainly is appealing, because it offers a mechanistic account of abstraction and universals, which everyone agrees are central to proper thinking. |
| 7512 | There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Connectionist networks have difficulty with the kind/individual distinction (ducks/this duck), with compositionality (relations), with quantification (reference of 'all'), with recursion (embedded thoughts), and the categorical reasoning (exceptions). | |
| From: report of Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.5) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: [Read Pinker p.80!] These are essentially all the more sophisticated aspects of logical reasoning that Pinker can think of. Personally I would be reluctant to say a priori that connectionism couldn't cope with these things, just because they seem tough. |
| 6992 | If different states can fulfil the same role, the converse must also be possible [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange if having learnt the lesson of multiple realisability that the same role may be filled by different states, we turned around and insisted that the converse - different roles filled by the same state - is impossible. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.4 n3) | |
| A reaction: Good. The world is full of creatures who seem to enjoy the smell of decay etc. Some people (not me) like horror films. The separation of qualia and role leaves type-type physicalism as a possibility. Survival needs similar roles, not similar qualia. |
| 7880 | If a blind persons suddenly sees a kestrel, that doesn't make visual and theoretical kestrels different [Papineau on Jackson] |
| Full Idea: An ornithological Mary might know everything theoretical about kestrels, but be blind from birth, then have her sight restored. She now knows "That bird eats mice", so visual kestrels must be ontologically distinct from theoretical ones. | |
| From: comment on Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia [1982]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 6.3 | |
| A reaction: A nice reductio, and I think this pinpoints best what is wrong with the knowledge argument. Knowledge, and the means of acquiring it, are two distinct things. When I see x, I don't acquire knowledge of x, AND knowledge of my seeing x. |
| 7378 | No one bothers to imagine what it would really be like to have ALL the physical information [Dennett on Jackson] |
| Full Idea: That Mary "has all the physical information" is not readily imaginable, so no one bothers. They just imagine she knows lots and lots - perhaps everything known today - but that is just a drop in the bucket. | |
| From: comment on Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia [1982]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.5 | |
| A reaction: I certainly don't see how we can rule out a priori the possibility that someone who really had all the physical knowledge might be able to infer the phenomenal properties of colour. |
| 7377 | Mary learns when she sees colour, so her complete physical information had missed something [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: It seems obvious that Mary will learn something about the world when she is released from her black-and-white room; but then it is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete; she had all the physical information, so there is more to have. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (Epiphenomenal Qualia [1982], §1) | |
| A reaction: This is Jackson's famous 'knowledge argument', which seems to me misconceived. Since I don't think phenomenal colours are properties of objects (Idea 5456), Mary learns more about herself, and about her means of acquiring knowledge. |
| 6996 | Folk psychology covers input, internal role, and output [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology has a tripartite nature, with input clauses, internal role clauses, and output clauses. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, particularly that folk psychology refers to internal roles, or attempts to explain what is going on inside the 'black box'. The folk have collectively worked out a standard flow diagram for human thought. |
| 6977 | Egocentric or de se content seems to be irreducibly so [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: I have been convinced by arguments (e.g. of Perry, Castañeda and Lewis) that egocentric or de se content is irreducibly so. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is associated with the use of indexicals (like 'I' and 'now') in language. Quine disagrees, and should not be written off. Any theory of content, concepts, meaning etc. must clearly taken account of such subjective language. |
| 6990 | Keep distinct the essential properties of water, and application conditions for the word 'water' [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: My guess is that objectors to the deflationary account of the Twin Earth parable are confusing the essential properties of water with the question of what is essential for being water. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: That is, we must distinguish between the actual ontology of water's properties and the conditions under which we (in our society) apply the word 'water'. Interesting. The latter issue, though, might push us back towards internalism... |
| 6985 | Analysis is finding necessary and sufficient conditions by studying possible cases [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual analysis is sometimes understood as the business of finding necessary and sufficient conditions by the method of possible cases. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Some (e.g. Stich) reject this, but it seems to me undeniable that the procedure can be very illuminating, even if it is never totally successful. Jackson prefers to see analysis as the study of entailments between stories about the world. |
| 6995 | Successful predication supervenes on nature [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Successful predication supervenes on nature. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: A nice slogan, but it is in danger of being a tautology. If I say x and y 'are my favourites/are interesting', is that 'successful' predication? Is 'Juliet is the sun' unsuccessful? |
| 6989 | I can understand "He has a beard", without identifying 'he', and hence the truth conditions [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: If I hear someone say "He has a beard", and I don't know whether it is Jackson, Jones, or someone else, I don't know which proposition is being expressed in the sense of not knowing the conditions under which what is said is true. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the neatest and simplest problem I have encountered for Davidson's truth-conditions account of meaning. However, we probably just say that we understand the sense but not the reference. The strict-and-literal but not contextual meaning. |
| 6998 | Folk morality does not clearly distinguish between doing and allowing [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We have, it seems to me, currently no clear sense of the place and rationale of the distinction between doing and allowing in folk morality. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that philosophers should endeavour to appear on television in order to improve folk morality, so that Jackson, back at the ranch, can then infer the meanings of moral terms from the new improved version? |
| 6997 | Moral functionalism says moral terms get their meaning from their role in folk morality [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: Moral functionalism is the view that the meanings of moral terms are given by their place in the network of input, internal clauses, and output that makes up folk psychology. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Jackson considers this enough to support a cognitivist view of morality. In assuming that there is something stable called 'folk morality' he seems to be ignoring questions about cultural relativism. |
| 7000 | Which are prior - thin concepts like right, good, ought; or thick concepts like kindness, equity etc.? [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: 'Centralists' (e.g. Bernard Williams) say thin ethical concepts (right, good, ought) are conceptually fundamental; 'non-centralists' (e.g. Susan Hurley) say that such concepts are not conceptually prior to kindness, equity and the like. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: My immediate intuition is to side with Susan Hurley, since morality grows out of immediate relationships, not out of intellectual principles and theoretical generalisations. This would go with particularist views of virtue theory. |
| 7505 | Many think that accepting human nature is to accept innumerable evils [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: To acknowledge human nature, many think, is to endorse racism, sexism, war, greed, genocide, nihilism, reactionary politics, and neglect of children and the disadvantaged. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: The point is that modern liberal thinking says everything is nurture (which can be changed), not nature (which can't). Virtue theory, of which I am a fan, requires a concept of human nature, as the thing which can attain excellence in its function. |
| 6999 | It is hard to justify the huge difference in our judgements of abortion and infanticide [Jackson] |
| Full Idea: We allow that abortion is permissible in many circumstances, but infanticide is hardly ever permissible, and yet it is hard to justify this disparity in moral judgement in the sense of finding the relevant difference. | |
| From: Frank Jackson (From Metaphysics to Ethics [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: The implications of this are tough to face. A foetus is (maybe) just not as important as a new-born babe - and so a new-born babe is of less importance than a five-year old. Birth is (or was) a hugely dangerous hurdle to be cleared. |
| 5081 | There could be movement within one thing, as there is within water [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Why does it follow from there being only one thing that it is unmoving, since, for example, water moves internally while remaining one? | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 186a16 | |
| A reaction: One suspects that Parmenides wasn't used to critical questions like this, and would have sharpened up his theory if it had been subjected to criticism. How big was the One? Maybe Aristotle is the real father of philosophy. |
| 1509 | The one can't be divisible, because if it was it could be infinitely divided down to nothing [Parmenides, by Simplicius] |
| Full Idea: Since the one is everywhere alike, then if it is divisible, it will be equally divisible everywhere….so let it be divided everywhere. It is obvious that nothing will remain and the whole will vanish, and so (if it is compound) it is composed of nothing. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.139.5- | |
| A reaction: he is quoting Porphyry |
| 20900 | Defenders of the One say motion needs the void - but that is not part of Being [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Defenders of the One say that there could not be motion without a void, and that void is what does not exist, and that nothing that is not belongs to being. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a26 | |
| A reaction: This is why motion is an illusion, a view also supported by the paradoxes of Zeno of Elea. Aristotle goes on to give Democritus's response to this idea. Parmenides was contemplating 'void', before Democritus got to it. |
| 226 | The one is without any kind of motion [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: The one is without any kind of motion. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Parmenides 139a |
| 1505 | Reason sees reality as one, the senses see it as many [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Since he is forced to be guided by appearances, he assumes that the one exists from the viewpoint of reason, but that a plurality exists from the viewpoint of the sense, and so he posits two principles and causes - hot and cold. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], A24) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 986b27- | |
| A reaction: A profound thought. Empiricists emphasies experience, and end up with fragmented reality. Reason explains experience, and in the process sees the world as unities (like objects), though a single unity is going too far. |
| 453 | Reality is symmetrical and balanced, like a sphere, with no reason to be greater one way rather than another [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Since there is a spatial limit, it is complete on every side, like the mass of a well-rounded sphere, equally balanced from its centre in every direction; for it is not bound to be at all either greater or less in this direction or that. | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE], B08 ll.?), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 9.145.1- |
| 555 | People who say that the cosmos is one forget that they must explain movement [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: Those who assert that the universe is one and a single nature, when they try to give the causes of generation and destruction, miss out the cause of movement. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 988b |
| 1792 | He taught that there are two elements, fire the maker, and earth the matter [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He taught that there were two elements, fire and earth; and that one of them occupies the place of the maker, the other that of the matter. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.2 |
| 5115 | It is feeble-minded to look for explanations of everything being at rest [Aristotle on Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: For people to ignore the evidence of their senses and look for an explanation for everything being at rest is feeble-minded. | |
| From: comment on Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 253a32 | |
| A reaction: Not exactly an argument, but an interestingly robust assertion of commonsense against dodgy arguments. Aristotle is not exactly an empiricist, but he is on that side of the fence. |
| 13217 | The void can't exist, and without the void there can't be movement or separation [Parmenides, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers thought what is must be one and immovable. The void, they say, is not: but unless there is a void what is cannot be moved, nor can it be many, since there is nothing to keep things apart. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 325a06 | |
| A reaction: Somehow this doesn't seem very persuasive any more! I suppose we would distinguish various degrees of void, and assert the existence of sufficient void to allow movement and separation. We must surely agree that total nothingness doesn't exist. |
| 22918 | What could have triggered the beginning [of time and being]? [Parmenides] |
| Full Idea: What need would have aroused it later or sooner, starting from nothing to come into being? | |
| From: Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 02 'Everything' | |
| A reaction: [Barnes 1982:178] This remains an excellent question. The last I heard was a 'quantum fluctuation', but that seems to be an event, which therefore needs time. |
| 1794 | He was the first to discover the identity of the Morning and Evening Stars [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He appears to have been the first to discover that Hesperus and Lucifer were the same star. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the famous example used by Frege to discuss reference and meaning. |
| 1791 | He was the first person to say the earth is spherical [Parmenides, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He was the first person who asserted that the earth was of a spherical form. | |
| From: report of Parmenides (fragments/reports [c.474 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.Pa.2 |
| 7516 | In 1828, the stuff of life was shown to be ordinary chemistry, not a magic gel [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: In 1828 Friedrich Wöhler showed [by synthesising urea in the laboratory] that the stuff of life is not a magical, pulsating gel, but ordinary compounds following the laws of chemistry. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Wöhler synthesised urea in the laboratory. |
| 7515 | All the evidence says evolution is cruel and wasteful, not intelligent [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: The overwhelming evidence is that the process of evolution, far from being intelligent and purposeful, is wasteful and cruel. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This is why opponents should reject evolution totally, rather than compromise with it. Stick to a 6000-year-old world, fossils sent to test our faith, and species created in a flash (with no pain or waste). |
| 7514 | Intelligent Design says that every unexplained phenomenon must be design, by default [Pinker] |
| Full Idea: The originator of 'intelligent design' (the biochemist Michael Behe) takes every phenomenon whose evolutionary history has not yet been figured out, and chalks it up to design by default. | |
| From: Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate [2002], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: This seems to summarise the strategy very nicely. The theory essentially exploits the 'wow!' factor. The bigger the wow! the more likely it is that it was created by God. But research has been eroding our wows steadily for four hundred years. |