52 ideas
| 23770 | Reductive analysis makes a concept clearer, by giving an alternative simpler set [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: A reductive analysis is one that provides an alternative set of concepts by which some target concept can be understood. It must be non-circular, and given in terms of concepts that are themselves better understood. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: There seem to be two aims of analysis: this one emphasises understanding, but the other one concerns ontology - by demonstrating that some concept or thing can be understood fully by what happens at a lower level. |
| 11051 | Frege's logical approach dominates the analytical tradition [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Pure logic constantly controls Frege's philosophy, and in turn Frege's logically oriented philosophy constantly controls the analytic tradition. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Hanna seeks to reintroduce the dreaded psychological aspect of logic, and I say 'good for him'. |
| 11054 | Scientism says most knowledge comes from the exact sciences [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Scientism says that the exact sciences are the leading sources of knowledge about the world. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I almost agree, but I would describe the exact sciences as the chief 'evidence' for our knowledge, with the chief 'source' being our own ability to make coherent sense of the evidence. Exact sciences rest on mathematics. |
| 23769 | Promoting an ontology by its implied good metaphysic is an 'argument-by-display' [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The form of argument which sells an ontology on the basis a metaphysic is known as an 'argument-by-display'. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: [Attributed to John Bigelow 1999] New to me, but I'm quite a fan of this. For example, my rejection of platonism is not based on specific arguments, but on looking at the whole platonic picture of reality. |
| 11070 | 'Denying the antecedent' fallacy: φ→ψ, ¬φ, so ¬ψ [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'denying the antecedent' is of the form φ→ψ, ¬φ, so ¬ψ. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.4) |
| 11071 | 'Affirming the consequent' fallacy: φ→ψ, ψ, so φ [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of 'affirming the consequent' is of the form φ→ψ, ψ, so φ. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.4) |
| 11088 | We can list at least fourteen informal fallacies [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Informal fallacies: appeals to force, circumstantial factors, ignorance, pity, popular consensus, authority, generalisation, confused causes, begging the question, complex questions, irrelevance, equivocation, black-and-white, slippery slope etc. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 7.3) |
| 11059 | Circular arguments are formally valid, though informally inadmissible [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: A circular argument - one whose conclusion is to be found among its premises - is inadmissible in most informal contexts, even though it is formally valid. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this is a matter of conversational implicature - that you are under a conventional obligation to say things which go somewhere, rather than circling around their starting place. |
| 11089 | Formally, composition and division fallacies occur in mereology [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Informal fallacies of composition and division go over into formal fallacies of mereological logic. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 7.3) |
| 11058 | Logic is explanatorily and ontologically dependent on rational animals [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Logic is explanatorily and ontologically dependent on rational animals. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendid defiance of the standard Fregean view of logic as having an inner validity of its own, having nothing to do with the psychology of thinkers. But if Hanna is right, why does logical consequence seem to be necessary? |
| 11072 | Logic is personal and variable, but it has a universal core [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Beyond an innate and thus universally share protologic, each reasoner's mental logic is only more or less similar to the mental logic of any other reasoner. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the main thesis of Hanna's book. I like the combination of this idea with Stephen Read's remark that each student should work out a personal logic which has their own private endorsement. |
| 11061 | Intensional consequence is based on the content of the concepts [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In intensional logic the consequence relation is based on the form or content of the concepts or properties expressed by the predicates. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.2) |
| 11063 | Logicism struggles because there is no decent theory of analyticity [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: All versions of the thesis that arithmetic is reducible to logic remain questionable as long as no good theory of analyticity is available. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: He rejects the attempts by Frege, Wittgenstein and Carnap to provide a theory of analyticity. |
| 23783 | Change exists, it is causal, and it needs an explanation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: There is a phenomenon of change. I am starting with the assumptions that it is a causal phenomenon, and that it requires explanation. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that we need a theory which explains change, rather than just describing it. Well said. Williams says, roughly, that each stage causes the next stage. |
| 23784 | Processes don't begin or end; they just change direction unexpectedly [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: No process every really starts or ends. …A process we see as derailed is really just an expected sequence that continues in an unexpected direction. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.3) | |
| A reaction: Obviously if you cannot individuate processes, then the concept of a process is not much use in ontology. Williams rejects processes, and I think he is probably right. He breaks processes down into smaller units. |
| 23790 | Processes are either strings of short unchanging states, or continuous and unreducible events [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Processes can be modelled in two ways. They are drawn out events encompassing many changes, but dissectible into short-lived states, none including change. Or they are continuous and impenetrable, and to split them is impossible. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 09.3) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a process has temporal moments in it, so the unsplittability is conceptual. I find the concept of changeless parts baffling. But if processes are drawn out, they can't be basic to ontology. |
| 11055 | Supervenience can add covariation, upward dependence, and nomological connection [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: 'Strong supervenience' involves necessary covariation of the properties, and upward dependence of higher level on lower level. ...If we add a nomological connection between the two, then we have 'superdupervenience'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Very helpful. A superdupervenient relationship between mind and brain would be rather baffling if they were not essentially the same thing. (which is what I take them to be). |
| 23786 | The status quo is part of what exists, and so needs metaphysical explanation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The status quo is part of what exists, and thus it is a proper topic of concern for the metaphysician, and so it warrants explanation. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: His point is that ontology as a mere inventory of things gives no account of why they remain unchanged, as well as their processes and connections. |
| 23768 | A metaphysic is a set of wider explanations derived from a basic ontology [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysic is what you get when you embed a fundamental ontology within a larger metaphysical framework by repeatedly appealing to elements of that ontology in explaining metaphysical phenomena. …Only then do you see what the ontology is worth. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Confirming my mantra that metaphysics is an explanatory activity. I think it is important that the ontology includes relations (such as 'determinations'), and is not just an inventory of types of entity. |
| 23773 | Humeans say properties are passive, possibility is vast, laws are descriptions, causation is weak [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The main components of neo-Humean metaphysics are that properties are inherently non-modal and passive, that what is possible is restricted only by imagination and coherence, that laws are non-governing descriptions, and causation is weak and extrinsic. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Williams identifying the enemy, prior to offering the much more active and restictive powers ontology. I'm with Williams. |
| 23779 | We shouldn't posit the existence of anything we have a word for [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be a mysterious desire to posit entities simply because certain terms pop up in our vocabulary. But we should not be so indiscriminate about our posits, even if our talk is properly vetted. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.1) | |
| A reaction: This should hardly need saying, and the familiar example is 'for the sake of' entailing sakes, but it seems to be a vice that is still found in metaphysical philosophy. The word 'nothingness' comes to mind. |
| 23775 | Powers are 'multi-track' if they can produce a variety of manifestations [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers are 'multi-track', meaning that they are capable of producing a variety of different manifestations when me with diverse stimuli. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: He later mentions magnetism. Not convinced of this. Powers probably never exist in isolation, so a different manifestation could be because a different power becomes involved. (Bird is a single-tracker). |
| 23780 | Every possible state of affairs is written into its originating powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: On the model of powers I prefer, every possible state of affairs that can arise is written into the powers that would constitute them. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't make any sense of 'written into', any more than I could when Leibniz proposed roughly the same thing about monads. I presume he means that any state of affairs which ever arises is the expression of the intrinsic nature of powers. |
| 23789 | Naming powers is unwise, because that it usually done by a single manifestation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Naming powers is unwise; the main reason is that there is a long tradition of naming powers according to the manifestations they can produce, and that does not square well with multi-track powers. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: On the other hand there must be some attempt to individuate powers (by scientists, if not by philosophers), and that can only rely on the manifestations. Describe them, rather than name them? Just assign them a number! |
| 23771 | Fundamental physics describes everything in terms of powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Physics describes fundamental entities exclusively in terms of what sound like powers. 'Charge' names the power to produce electromagnetic fields; 'spin' the power to contribute to the angular momentum of of system; 'mass' to produce gravitational force. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: These are the three basic properties of an electron, which is fundamental in the standard model. You can say that their field is more fundamental than the particles, but the field is also only known as a set of powers. Powers rule! |
| 23776 | Rather than pure powers or pure categoricals, I favour basics which are both at once [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Power Monism: all properties are powers. Categoricalism: all fundamentals are categorical. Dualism allows both types. I defend Mixed Monism - that there is a single class of fundamental properties that are at once powerful and categorical. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the main dilemma for the powers ontology - of how powers can be basic, if there needs to be some entity which possesses the power. But what possesses the powers of an electron? I like Williams's idea, without being clear about it. |
| 23777 | Powers are more complicated than properties which are always on display [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The mode in which a power presents itself is more complicated than those properties that have (strictly) nothing more to them than that which is always on display. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea that nature is dynamic, and so must consist of potentials as well as actuals. Interesting distinction. A basic division between those properties 'always on display', and those that are not? |
| 23774 | There are basic powers, which underlie dispositions, potentialities, capacities etc [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: It is no surprise that talk of dispositions, capacities, abilities, tendencies, powers, and potentialities are part of our everyday interactions. …I have in mind a basic set of powers, the sort which underlie all of these. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the correct picture. It is misleading say that a ball has a 'power' to roll smoothly. The powers are inside the ball. |
| 23791 | Dispositions are just useful descriptions, which are explained by underlying powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers are the properties at the core of the powers ontology, and dispositions are more like useful talk. …Dispositions are the phenomena to be explained by the power metaphysic. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: The picture I subscribe to. The first step is to see nature as dynamic (as Aristotle does with his 'potentialities'), and the next step to understand what must ground these dynamic dispositional properties. He calls dispositions 'process initiators'. |
| 23772 | If objects are property bundles, the properties need combining powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: If objects are bundles of properties …they must be robust enough to enter into building relations with one another such that they can form objects. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice point. The Humean bundle view of objects just seems to take properties to be 'impressions' or verbal predicates, but they must have causal powers to be a grounding for ontology. |
| 23788 | Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: 'Perdurantism' is the view that objects persist by being composed of temporal parts. When it is commonly combined with the eternalist account of the ontology of time, the result is known as 'four-dimensionalism'. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: At last, a clear account of the distinction between these two! They're both wrong. He says the result is the spatiotemporal 'worm' view (i.e. one temporal extended thing, rather than a collection of parts). |
| 11083 | A sentence is necessary if it is true in a set of worlds, and nonfalse in the other worlds [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: On my view, necessity is the truth of a sentence in every member of a set of possible worlds, together with its nonfalsity in every other possible worlds. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) |
| 11086 | Metaphysical necessity can be 'weak' (same as logical) and 'strong' (based on essences) [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Weak metaphysical necessity is either over the set of all logically possible worlds (in which case it is the same as logical necessity), or it is of a smaller set of worlds, and is determined by the underlying essence or nature of the actual world. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: I take the first to be of no interest, as I have no interest in a world which is somehow rated as logically possible, but is not naturally possible. The second type should the principle aim of all human cognitive enquiry. The strong version is synthetic. |
| 11084 | Logical necessity is truth in all logically possible worlds, because of laws and concepts [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Logical necessity is the truth of a sentence by virtue of logical laws or intrinsic conceptual connections alone, and thus true in all logically possible worlds. Put in traditional terms, logical necessity is analyticity. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) |
| 11085 | Nomological necessity is truth in all logically possible worlds with our laws [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Physical or nomological necessity is the truth of a sentence in all logically possible worlds governed by our actual laws of nature. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think 'natural necessity' is the best label for this, as it avoids firm commitment to reductive physicalism, and it also avoids commitment to actual necessitating laws. |
| 11077 | Intuition includes apriority, clarity, modality, authority, fallibility and no inferences [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The nine features of intuition are: a mental act, apriority, content-comprehensiveness, clarity and distinctness, strict-modality-attributivity, authoritativeness,noninferentiality, cognitive indispensability, and fallibility. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [See Hanna for a full explanation of this lot] Seems like a good stab at it. Note the trade-off between authority and fallibility. |
| 11080 | Intuition is more like memory, imagination or understanding, than like perception [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why intuition should be cognitively analogous not to sense perception but instead to either memory, imagination, or conceptual understanding. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: It is Russell's spotting the analogy with memory that made me come to believe that a priori knowledge is possible, as long as we accept it as being fallible. [Hanna has a good discussion of intuition; he votes for the imagination analogy] |
| 11078 | Intuition is only outside the 'space of reasons' if all reasons are inferential [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Intuition is outside the 'space of reasons' if we assume that all reasons are inferential, but inside if we assume that reasons need not always be inferential. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: I take it that intuition can be firmly inside the space of reasons, and that not all reasons are inferential. |
| 11053 | Explanatory reduction is stronger than ontological reduction [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: As standardly construed, reduction can be either explanatory or ontological. Explanatory reduction is the strongest sort of reduction. ...Ontological reduction can still have an 'explanatory gap'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 1.1) |
| 11081 | Imagination grasps abstracta, generates images, and has its own correctness conditions [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Three features of imagination are that its objects can be abstract, that it generates spatial images directly available to introspection, and its correctness conditions are not based on either efficacious causation or effective tracking. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Hanna makes the imagination faculty central to our grasp of his proto-logic. |
| 11082 | Should we take the 'depictivist' or the 'descriptivist/propositionalist' view of mental imagery? [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In the debate in cognitive science on the nature of mental imagery, there is a 'depictivist' side (Johnson-Laird, Kosslyn, Shepard - good images are isomorphic), and a 'descriptivist' or 'propositionalist' side (Pylyshyn and others). | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Hanna votes firmly in favour of the first view, and implies that they have more or less won the debate. |
| 11067 | Rational animals have a normative concept of necessity [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: A rational animal is one that is a normative-reflective possessor of the concepts of necessity, certainty and unconditional obligation. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: The addition of obligation shows the Kantian roots of this. It isn't enough just to possess a few concepts. You wouldn't count as rational if you didn't desire truth, as well as understanding it. Robots be warned. |
| 11068 | One tradition says talking is the essence of rationality; the other says the essence is logic [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: In the tradition of Descartes, Chomsky and Davidson, rational animals are essentially talking animals. But in the view of Kant, and perhaps Fodor, it is the cognitive capacity for logic that is the essence of human rationality. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], 4.9) |
| 11047 | Hegelian holistic rationality is the capacity to seek coherence [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'holistic' (Hegelian) sense of rationality means the capacity for systematically seeking coherence (or 'reflective equilibrium') across a network or web of beliefs, desires, emotions, intentions and volitions. Traditionally 'the truth is the whole'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: On the whole this is my preferred view (which sounds Quinean as well as Hegelian), though I reject the notion that truth is a whole. I take coherence to be the hallmark of justification, though not of truth, and reason aims to justify. |
| 11048 | Humean Instrumental rationality is the capacity to seek contingent truths [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'instrumental' (Humean) sense of rationality means a capacity for generating or recognizing contingent truths, contextually normative rules, consequentialist obligations, and hypothetical 'ought' claims. Reason is 'the slave of the passions'. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 11046 | Kantian principled rationality is recognition of a priori universal truths [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: The 'principled' (Kantian) sense of rationality means the possession of a capacity for generating or recognizing necessary truths, a priori beliefs, strictly universal normative rules, nonconsequentialist moral obligations, and categorical 'ought' claims. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 11045 | Most psychologists are now cognitivists [Hanna] |
| Full Idea: Most psychologists have now dropped behaviourism and adopted cognitivism: the thesis that the rational human mind is essentially an active innately specified information-processor. | |
| From: Robert Hanna (Rationality and Logic [2006], Intro) |
| 23785 | Causation needs to explain stasis, as well as change [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: I believe that it is also the job of a theory of causation to explain non-change | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Good point. Most attempts to pin down causation refer only to changes and differences. Two playing cards propping one another up is his example. |
| 23782 | Causation is the exercise of powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Causation is the exercising of powers. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: Job done. Get over it. This is the view I prefer. |
| 23787 | If causes and effects overlap, that makes changes impossible [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: It would be shocking if an account of causation ruled out the possibility of change. But if a cause perfectly overlaps its effect in time, then the rejection of change is precisely what follows. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.6) | |
| A reaction: He cites Kant, Martin, Heil and Mumford/Anjum for this view. The latter seem to see causation as a 'process' (allowing change), which Williams as ruled out. The Williams point must be correct. |
| 23778 | Powers contain lawlike features, pointing to possible future states [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers carry their lawlike features within them: it is part of their essence, qua power. Their pointing at future states just is their internal law-like nature; it is what gets expressed in such and such conditions. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Modern writers on powers seem unaware that Leibniz got there first. This seems to me the correct account of the ontology of laws. The formulation of laws is probably the best descriptive system for nature's patterns (over time as well as space). |
| 3029 | Stilpo said if Athena is a daughter of Zeus, then a statue is only the child of a sculptor, and so is not a god [Stilpo, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Stilpo asked a man whether Athena is the daughter of Zeus, and when he said yes, said,"But this statue of Athena by Phidias is the child of Phidias, so it is not a god." | |
| From: report of Stilpo (fragments/reports [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.10.5 |