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8660
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There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend]
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Full Idea:
Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent.
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From:
report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3
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A reaction:
Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle.
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8383
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Day and night are constantly conjoined, but they don't cause one another [Reid, by Crane]
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Full Idea:
A famous example of Thomas Reid: day regularly follows night, and night regularly follows day. There is therefore a constant conjunction between night and day. But day does not cause night, nor does night cause day.
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From:
report of Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788]) by Tim Crane - Causation 1.2.2
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A reaction:
Not a fatal objection to Hume, of course, because in the complex real world there are huge numbers of nested constant conjunctions. Night and the rotation of the Earth are conjoined. But how do you tell which constant conjunctions are causal?
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23667
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Regular events don't imply a cause, without an innate conviction of universal causation [Reid]
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Full Idea:
A train of events following one another ever so regularly, could never lead us to the notion of a cause, if we had not, from our constitution, a conviction of the necessity of a cause for every event.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 5)
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A reaction:
Presumably a theist like Reid must assume that the actions of God are freely chosen, rather than necessities. It's hard to see why this principle should be innate in us, and hard to see why it must thereby be true. A bit Kantian, this idea.
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23670
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Scientists don't know the cause of magnetism, and only discover its regulations [Reid]
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Full Idea:
A Newtonian philosopher …confesses his ignorance of the true cause of magnetic motion, and thinks that his business, as a philosopher, is only to find from experiment the laws by which it is regulated in all cases.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 6)
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A reaction:
Since there is a 'true cause', that implies that the laws don't actively 'regulate' the magnetism, but only describe its regularity, which I think is the correct view of laws.
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