more from this thinker
|
more from this text
Single Idea 14733
[filed under theme 9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / e. Substance critique
]
Full Idea
There may be a substance at the centre of an object, but is no reason to think so, since the group of events making up the object will produce exactly the same percepts; so the substance, if there is one, is an abstract possibility irrelevant to science.
Gist of Idea
An object produces the same percepts with or without a substance, so that is irrelevant to science
Source
Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927], 23)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'The Analysis of Matter' [Routledge 1992], p.244
A Reaction
All empiricists (as Russell is in this passage) seem to neglect inference to the best explanation. Things can be indirectly testable, and I would say that there are genuine general entities which are too close to abstraction to ever be testable.
Related Idea
Idea 14732
A perceived physical object is events grouped around a centre [Russell]
The
20 ideas
with the same theme
[objections to the very concept of substances]:
3628
|
Substance cannot be conceived or explained to others
[Gassendi on Descartes]
|
16774
|
Descartes thinks distinguishing substances from aggregates is pointless
[Descartes, by Pasnau]
|
12485
|
We don't know what substance is, and only vaguely know what it does
[Locke]
|
7931
|
If a substance is just a thing that has properties, it seems to be a characterless non-entity
[Leibniz, by Macdonald,C]
|
16636
|
A die has no distinct subject, but is merely a name for its modes or accidents
[Berkeley]
|
12048
|
The only meaning we have for substance is a collection of qualities
[Hume]
|
13424
|
Aristotelians propose accidents supported by substance, but they don't understand either of them
[Hume]
|
11833
|
The substance, once the predicates are removed, remains unknown to us
[Kant]
|
18981
|
'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience
[James]
|
14733
|
An object produces the same percepts with or without a substance, so that is irrelevant to science
[Russell]
|
6465
|
We need not deny substance, but there seems no reason to assert it
[Russell]
|
6471
|
The assumption by physicists of permanent substance is not metaphysically legitimate
[Russell]
|
15304
|
We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate
[Harré/Madden]
|
7046
|
Rather than 'substance' I use 'objects', which have properties
[Heil]
|
12252
|
Empiricists gave up 'substance', as unknowable substratum, or reducible to a bundle
[Oderberg]
|
7932
|
A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view
[Macdonald,C]
|
7937
|
When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology
[Macdonald,C]
|
7939
|
Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't
[Macdonald,C]
|
7940
|
A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle
[Macdonald,C]
|
16775
|
For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts
[Pasnau]
|