91 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. |
| 10468 | A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them) [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysical theory hs two parts: ontology and ideology. The ontology consists of the entities which the theory says exist; the ideology consists of the ideas which are expressed within the theory using predicates. Ideology sorts into categories. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02.1) | |
| A reaction: Say 'what there is', and 'what we can say about it'. The modern notion remains controversial (see Ladyman and Ross, for example), so it is as well to start crystalising what metaphysics is. I am enthusiastic, but nervous about what is being said. |
| 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]. |
| 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. |
| 10471 | Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One might give Ockham's Razor a bit more content by advising belief in only those entities which are causally efficacious. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: He cites Armstrong as taking this line, but I immediately think of Shoemaker's account of properties. It seems to me to be the only account which will separate properties from predicates, and bring them under common sense control. |
| 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. |
| 10749 | Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The definition of truth-makers entails that a truth-maker for a given necessary truth is equally a truth-maker for every other necessary truth. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: Maybe we could accept this. Necessary truths concern the way things have to be, so all realities will embody them. Are we to say that nothing makes a necessary truth true? |
| 10750 | Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Slingshot Argument: if truth-makers work for equivalent sentences and co-referring substitute sentences, then if 'the numbers + S1 = the numbers' has a truth-maker, then 'the numbers + S2 = the numbers' will have the same truth-maker. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Hence every sentence has the same truth-maker! Truth-maker fans must challenge one of the premises. |
| 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. |
| 7786 | Propositional logic handles negation, disjunction, conjunction; predicate logic adds quantifiers, predicates, relations [Girle] |
| Full Idea: Propositional logic can deal with negation, disjunction and conjunction of propositions, but predicate logic goes beyond it to deal with quantifiers, predicates and relations. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This is on the first page of an introduction to the next stage, which is to include modal notions like 'must' and 'possibly'. |
| 7798 | There are three axiom schemas for propositional logic [Girle] |
| Full Idea: The axioms of propositional logic are: A→(B→A); A→(B→C)→(A→B)→(A→C) ; and (¬A→¬B)→(B→A). | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 6.5) |
| 7799 | Proposition logic has definitions for its three operators: or, and, and identical [Girle] |
| Full Idea: The operators of propositional logic are defined as follows: 'or' (v) is not-A implies B; 'and' (ampersand) is not A-implies-not-B; and 'identity' (three line equals) is A-implies-B and B-implies-A. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 6.5) |
| 7797 | Axiom systems of logic contain axioms, inference rules, and definitions of proof and theorems [Girle] |
| Full Idea: An axiom system for a logic contains three elements: a set of axioms; a set of inference rules; and definitions for proofs and theorems. There are also definitions for the derivation of conclusions from sets of premises. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 6.5) |
| 7794 | There are seven modalities in S4, each with its negation [Girle] |
| Full Idea: In S4 there are fourteen modalities: no-operator; necessarily; possibly; necessarily-possibly; possibly-necessarily; necessarily-possibly-necessarily; and possibly-necessarily-possibly (each with its negation). | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: This is said to be 'more complex' than S5, but also 'weaker'. |
| 7793 | ◊p → □◊p is the hallmark of S5 [Girle] |
| Full Idea: The critical formula that distinguishes S5 from all others is: ◊p → □◊p. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: If it is possible that it is raining, then it is necessary that it is possible that it is raining. But if it is possible in this world, how can that possibility be necessary in all possible worlds? |
| 7795 | S5 has just six modalities, and all strings can be reduced to those [Girle] |
| Full Idea: In S5 there are six modalities: no-operator; necessarily; and possibly (and their negations). In any sequence of operators we may delete all but the last to gain an equivalent formula. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: Such drastic simplification seems attractive. Is there really no difference, though, between 'necessarily-possibly', 'possibly-possibly' and just 'possibly'? Could p be contingently possible in this world, and necessarily possible in another? |
| 7787 | Possible worlds logics use true-in-a-world rather than true [Girle] |
| Full Idea: In possible worlds logics a statement is true-in-a-world rather than just true. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This sounds relativist, but I don't think it is. It is the facts which change, not the concept of truth. So 'donkeys can talk' may be true in a world, but not in the actual one. |
| 7788 | Modal logic has four basic modal negation equivalences [Girle] |
| Full Idea: The four important logical equivalences in modal logic (the Modal Negation equivalences) are: ¬◊p↔□¬p, ◊¬p↔¬□p, □p↔¬◊¬p, and ◊p↔¬□¬p. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: [Possibly is written as a diamond, necessarily a square] These are parallel to a set of equivalences between quantifiers in predicate logic. They are called the four 'modal negation (MN) equivalences'. |
| 7796 | Modal logics were studied in terms of axioms, but now possible worlds semantics is added [Girle] |
| Full Idea: Modal logics were, for a long time, studied in terms of axiom systems. The advent of possible worlds semantics made it possible to study them in a semantic way as well. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 6.5) |
| 7789 | Necessary implication is called 'strict implication'; if successful, it is called 'entailment' [Girle] |
| Full Idea: Necessary implication is often called 'strict implication'. The sort of strict implication found in valid arguments, where the conjunction of the premises necessarily implies the conclusion, is often called 'entailment'. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: These are basic concept for all logic. |
| 7790 | If an argument is invalid, a truth tree will indicate a counter-example [Girle] |
| Full Idea: The truth trees method for establishing the validity of arguments and formulas is easy to use, and has the advantage that if an argument or formula is not valid, then a counter-example can be retrieved from the tree. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 1.4) |
| 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'. |
| 10747 | Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The route to the existence of properties via ontological commitment provides little information about what properties are like. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: NIce point, and rather important, I would say. I could hardly be committed to something for the sole reason that I had expressed a statement which contained an ontological commitment. Start from the reason for making the statement. |
| 10748 | Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: For a predicate to have a referential function is one way, but not the only way, to harbour ontological commitment. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the main idea is that the predicate makes some important contribution to a sentence which is held to be true. Maybe reference is achieved by the whole sentence, rather than by one bit of it. |
| 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). |
| 10719 | There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Four adequacy conditions for particulars and properties: asymmetry of instantiation; different particulars can have the same property; particulars can have many properties; two properties can be instantiated by the same particulars. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: The distinction between particulars and universals has been challenged (e.g. by Ramsey and MacBride). There are difficulties in the notion of 'instantiation', and in the notion of two properties being 'the same'. |
| 10721 | If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If properties are sui generis entities, one must decide whether they are abstract or concrete. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: A nice basic question! I take the real properties to be concrete, but we abstract from them, especially from their similarities, and then become deeply confused about the ontology, because our language doesn't mark the distinctions clearly. |
| 10716 | There are just as many properties as the laws require [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One conception of properties says there are only as many properties as are needed to be constituents of laws. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: I take this view to the be precise opposite of the real situation. The properties are what lead to the laws. Properties are internal to nature, and laws are imposed from outside, which is ridiculous unless you think there is an active deity. |
| 10720 | We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Both properties and particulars can be taken as either sui generis or as constructions, so we have four options: both sui generis, or both constructions, or one of each. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: I think I favour both being sui generis. God didn't make the objects, then add their properties, or make the properties then create some instantiations. There can't be objects without properties, or objectless properties (except in thought). |
| 10714 | The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The types of expressions which have properties as their meanings may vary, the chief candidates being predicates, such as '...is wise', and abstract singular terms, such as 'wisdom'. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be important, because there is too much emphasis on predicates. If this idea is correct, we need some account of what 'abstract' means, which is notoriously tricky. |
| 10715 | There are five main semantic theories for properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties in semantic theory: functions from worlds to extensions ('Californian'), reference, as opposed to sense, of predicates (Frege), reference to universals (Russell), reference to situations (Barwise/Perry), and composition from context (Lewis). | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02 n12) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; 'Californian' refers to Carnap and Montague; the Lewis view is p,67 of Oliver]. Frege misses out singular terms, or tries to paraphrase them away. Barwise and Perry sound promising to me. Situations involve powers. |
| 10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I rule that tropes are not properties, because it is not true that one and the same trope of redness is instantiated by two books. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but has very far-reaching implications, because it means there are no properties, and no two things have the same properties, so there can be no generalisations about properties, let alone laws. ..But they have equivalence sets. |
| 10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Using the predicate '...is exactly similar to...' we can sort tropes into equivalence sets, these sets serving as properties and relations. For example, the property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of redness. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: You have somehow to get from scarlet and vermilion, which have exact similarity within their sets, to redness, which doesn't. |
| 10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: It is usual to hold an aristotelian conception of tropes, according to which tropes are present in their particular instances, and which does not allow for uninstantiated tropes. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: What are you discussing when you ask what colour the wall should be painted? Presumably we can imagine non-existent tropes. If I vividly imagine my wall looking yellow, have I brought anything into existence? |
| 10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Some trope theorists give accounts of particulars. Sets of tropes will not do because they are always abstract, but we might say that particulars are (concrete) mereological wholes of the tropes which they instantiate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: Looks like a non-starter to me. How can abstract entities add up to a mereological whole which is concrete? |
| 10742 | Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: More than one trope can occupy the same place at the same time, and a trope occupies a place without having parts which occupy parts of the place. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This is the general question of the size of a spatial trope, or 'how many red tropes in a tin of red paint?' |
| 10472 | 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The 'structural universals' methane and butane are each made up of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §07) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lewis 1986, who is criticising Armstrong. If you insist on having universals, they might (in this case) best be described as 'patterns', which would be useful for structuralism in mathematics. They reduce to relations. |
| 10724 | Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: So-called aristotelian universals have some queer features: one universal can be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two universals can occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: If you want to make a metaphysical doctrine look ridiculous, stating it in very simple language will often do the job. Belief in fairies is more plausible than the first of these two claims. |
| 7963 | Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged, but they would have no spatio-temporal location, so they cannot instantiate Aristotelian universals, there being nowhere for such universals to be. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Maybe. Why can't the second-order properties be in the same location as the first-order ones? If the reply is that they would seem to be in many places at once, that is only restating the original problem of universals at a higher level. |
| 10730 | If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If universals are to ground similarities, it is hard to see why one should admit universals which only happen to be instantiated once. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: He is criticising Armstrong, who holds that universals must be instantiated. This is a good point about any metaphysics which makes resemblance basic. |
| 10727 | Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We may have to accept uninstantiated universals because the properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This is the problem of 'abstract reference'. 'Courage matters more than kindness'; 'Pink is more like red than like yellow'. Not an impressive argument. All you need is second-level abstraction. |
| 7962 | Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Uninstantiated properties and relations may do some useful philosophical work. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Their value isn't just philosophical; hopes and speculations depend on them. This doesn't make universals mind-independent. I think the secret is a clear understanding of the word 'abstract' (which I don't have). |
| 10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One view of instantiation is that it is the set-membership predicate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §10) | |
| A reaction: This cuts the Gordian knot rather nicely, but I don't like it, if the view of sets is extensional. We need to account for natural properties, and we need to exclude mere 'categorial' properties. |
| 10744 | Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We can say that 'Harvard-nominalism' is the thesis that there are no abstract objects, 'Oz-nominalism' that there are no universals, and Goodman's nominalism rejects entities, such as sets, which fail to obey a certain principle of composition. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15 n46) | |
| A reaction: Personally I'm a Goodman-Harvard-Oz nominalist. What are you rebelling against? What have you got? We've been mesmerized by the workings of our own minds, which are trying to grapple with a purely physical world. |
| 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. |
| 10726 | Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say it is a mereological fusion of them, but if two universals can be instantiated by more than one particular, then two particulars can have the same universals, and be the same thing. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This and Idea 10725 pretty thoroughly demolish the idea that objects could be just bundles of universals. The problem pushes some philosophers back to the idea of 'substance', or some sort of 'substratum' which has the universals. |
| 10725 | Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say that it is the set of its universals, but this won't work because the thing can be concrete but sets are abstract. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This objection applies just as much to tropes (abstract particulars) as it does to universals. |
| 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. |
| 7800 | Analytic truths are divided into logically and conceptually necessary [Girle] |
| Full Idea: It has been customary to see analytic truths as dividing into the logically necessary and the conceptually necessary. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this neglected distinction is important in discussions of Quine's elimination of the analytic/synthetic distinction. Was Quine too influenced by what is logically necessary, which might shift with a change of axioms? |
| 7801 | Possibilities can be logical, theoretical, physical, economic or human [Girle] |
| Full Idea: Qualified modalities seem to form a hierarchy, if we say that 'the possibility that there might be no hunger' is possible logically, theoretically, physically, economically, and humanly. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: Girle also mentions conceptual possibility. I take 'physically' to be the same as 'naturally'. I would take 'metaphysically' possible to equate to 'theoretically' rather than 'logically'. Almost anything might be logically possible, with bizarre logic. |
| 10745 | Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Natural science is up to its ears in modal notions because of its use of the concepts of disposition, causation and law. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Quine. It might be possible for an auster physicist to dispense with these concepts, by merely describing patterns of observed behaviour. |
| 7792 | A world has 'access' to a world it generates, which is important in possible worlds semantics [Girle] |
| Full Idea: When one world generates another then it has 'access' to the world it generated. The accessibility relation between worlds is very important in possible worlds semantics. | |
| From: Rod Girle (Modal Logics and Philosophy [2000], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This invites the obvious question what is meant by 'generates'. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 10746 | Conceptual priority is barely intelligible [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I find the notion of conceptual priority barely intelligible. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §19 n48) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree, though there is a lot of vagueness and intuition involved, and not a lot of hard argument. Can you derive A from B, but not B from A? Is A inconceivable without B, but B conceivable without A? |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |