Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Xenophanes, Paul Audi and Alan Turing

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21 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
Avoid 'in virtue of' for grounding, since it might imply a reflexive relation such as identity [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: We should not use 'in virtue of' where it might express a reflexive relation, such as identity. Since grounding is a relation of determination, and closely linked to the concept of explanation, it is irreflexive and asymmetric.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: E.g. he says someone isn't a bachelor in virtue of being an unmarried man, since a bachelor just is an unmarried man. I can't disagree. 'Determination' looks like the magic word, even if we don't know how it cashes out.
Ground relations depend on the properties [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: On my view, grounding relations depend on the natures of the properties involved in them.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: I'm cautious about this if we don't find out more exactly what properties are (and they had better not just be predicates). Maybe properties are the only apparatus we have here, though I prefer 'powers' for the fundamentals.
A ball's being spherical non-causally determines its power to roll [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The fact that a given thing is spherical non-causally determines the fact that it has the power to roll.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
     A reaction: Quine won't accept this, because you have added something called a 'power' to the ball (intrinsically, it seems), over and above its observable sphericity. Does being a ball 'determine' that it can't be in two places at once? Order of explanation?
Ground is irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, non-monotonic etc. [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The logical principles about grounding include irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, non-monotonicity, and so forth.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.8)
     A reaction: [It can't ground itself, there is no mutual grounding, grounds of grounds ground, and grounding judgements are not fixed]
The best critique of grounding says it is actually either identity or elimination [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: I think the most promising skeptical strategy is to insist on either identity or elimination wherever grounding is alleged to hold.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.9)
     A reaction: This comes after an assessment of the critiques of grounding by Oliver, Hofweber and Daly. So we don't say chemistry grounds biology, we either say biology is chemistry, or that there is no biology. Everything is just simples. Not for me.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / b. Relata of grounding
Grounding is a singular relation between worldly facts [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: On my view, grounding is a singular relation between facts. ...Facts, on this view, are obtaining states of affairs.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: He rest this claim on his 'worldly' view of facts, Idea 17293. I seem to be agreeing with him. Note that it is not between types of fact, even if there are such general truths, such as in chemistry.
If grounding relates facts, properties must be included, as well as objects [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: Taking facts to be the relata of grounding has the interesting consequence that it does not relate ordinary particulars, objects, considered apart from their properties.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.4)
     A reaction: It will depend on what you mean by properties, and it seems to me that something like 'powers' must be invoked, to get the active character that seems to be involved in grounding.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / c. Grounding and explanation
We must accept grounding, for our important explanations [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The reason we must countenance grounding is that it is indispensible to certain important explanations.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
     A reaction: I like this a lot. The first given of all philosophy is the drive to exlain. However, we mustn't go inventing features of the world, simply to give us the possibility of explaining it. The objective fact seems to be the without-which-not relation.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / d. Grounding and reduction
Reduction is just identity, so the two things are the same fact, so reduction isn't grounding [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: I deny that when p grounds q, q thereby reduces to p, and I deny that if q reduces to p, then p grounds q. ...On my view, reduction is nothing other than identity, so p is the same fact as q.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.5)
     A reaction: Very good. I can't disagree with any of it, and it is crystal clear. Philosophical heaven.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / b. Types of fact
Worldly facts are obtaining states of affairs, with constituents; conceptual facts also depend on concepts [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: The 'worldly' view of facts says they are obtaining states of affairs, individuated by their constituents and their combination. On the 'conceptual' view, facts will differ if they pick out an object or property via different concepts.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
     A reaction: Might it be that conceptual differences between facts are supervenient on worldly differences (with the worldly facts in charge)?
13. Knowledge Criteria / D. Scepticism / 1. Scepticism
If we succeed in speaking the truth, we cannot know we have done it [Xenophanes]
     Full Idea: No man has seen certain truth, and no man will ever know about the gods and other things I mentioned; for if he succeeds in saying what is fully true, he himself is unaware of it; opinion is fixed by fate on all things.
     From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B34), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 7.49.4
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 1. Relativism
If God had not created honey, men would say figs are sweeter [Xenophanes]
     Full Idea: If God had not created yellow honey, men would say that figs were sweeter.
     From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B38), quoted by Herodian - On Peculiar Speech 41.5
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / a. Types of explanation
Two things being identical (like water and H2O) is not an explanation [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: If there is identity between water and H2O, we have neither the asymmetry nor the irreflexivity that explanations require.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
     A reaction: Once you realise it is H2O, you understand its deeper features, which will open up new explanations. He's right, though.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / g. Causal explanations
There are plenty of examples of non-causal explanation [Audi,P]
     Full Idea: There are a number of explanations where it seems clear that causation is not involved at all: normative grounded in non-normative, disposition grounded in categorical, aesthetic grounded in non-aesthetic, semantic in social and psychological.
     From: Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
     A reaction: Apart from dispositions, perhaps, these all seem to be experienced phenomena grounded in the physical world. 'Determination' is the preferred term for non-causal grounding.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / b. Turing Machines
Turing showed that logical rules can be specified computationally and mechanically [Turing, by Rey]
     Full Idea: Turing showed that any formal process can be specified computationally, and captured by a Turing Machine. Hence logical rules (and arithmetic) could be obeyed not by someone representing and following them, but by causal organisation of the brain.
     From: report of Alan Turing (works [1935]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind 8.2
     A reaction: It is questionable whether logic is an entirely formal process, if it involves truth. You would need an entirely formal notion of truth for that. But a brain can do whatever a flow diagram can do.
The Turing Machine is the best idea yet about how the mind works [Fodor on Turing]
     Full Idea: Alan Turing had (in his theory of the 'Turing Machine') what I suppose is the best thought about how the mind works that anyone has had so far.
     From: comment on Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950]) by Jerry A. Fodor - Jerry A. Fodor on himself p.296
     A reaction: I am not convinced, because I don't think rationality is possible without consciousness. The brain may bypass the representations used by a computer.
18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / c. Turing Test
In 50 years computers will successfully imitate humans with a 70% success rate [Turing]
     Full Idea: In about fifty years' time it will be possible to program computers to play the imitation game so well that an average interrogator will not have more than 70% chance of making the right identification after five minutes of questioning.
     From: Alan Turing (Computing Machinery and Intelligence [1950], p.57), quoted by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §5.9
     A reaction: This is the famous prophecy called 'The Turing Test'. The current state (2004) seems to be that the figure of 70% is very near, but no one sees much prospect of advancing much further in the next 100 years. Dennett sees jokes as a big problem.
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / e. The One
The basic Eleatic belief was that all things are one [Xenophanes, by Plato]
     Full Idea: The Eleatic tribe, which had its beginnings from Xenophanes and still earlier, proceed on the grounds that all things so-called are one.
     From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Plato - The Sophist 242d
28. God / A. Divine Nature / 2. Divine Nature
Xenophanes said the essence of God was spherical and utterly inhuman [Xenophanes, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: Xenophanes taught that the essence of God was of a spherical form, in no respect resembling man.
     From: report of Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.2.3
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Ethiopian gods have black hair, and Thracian gods have red hair [Xenophanes]
     Full Idea: Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair.
     From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B16), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 7.22.1
Mortals believe gods are born, and have voices and clothes just like mortals [Xenophanes]
     Full Idea: Mortals believe the gods to be created by birth, and to have raiment, voice and body like mortals'.
     From: Xenophanes (fragments/reports [c.530 BCE], B14), quoted by Clement - Miscellanies 5.109.2