77 ideas
| 6928 | Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Only that which can be an object of religion is an object of philosophy. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §35) | |
| A reaction: The temple of Pythagoras at Solon sounds like an embodiment of this idea. The obvious candidate would be truth, to which philosophers must show almost religious respect. Some what motivates the philosophy of a minimalist (Idea 3750)? |
| 6918 | Philosophy should not focus on names, but on the determined nature of things [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy need not care about the conceptions that common usage or misuse attaches to a name; philosophy, however, has to bind itself to the determined nature of things, whose signs are names. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §23) | |
| A reaction: I like this attempt to nip ordinary language philosophy in the bud. Indeed I like the notion of philosophy binding itself to the 'determined nature of things' (which sound like essences to me), rather than to their names or descriptions. |
| 6904 | Modern philosophy begins with Descartes' abstraction from sensation and matter [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The beginning of Descartes' philosophy, namely, the abstraction from sensation and matter, is the beginning of modern speculative philosophy. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
| A reaction: In Britain it might be said that modern philosophy begins with a rebellion against Descartes' move. Feuerbach is charting the movement towards idealism. |
| 6931 | Empiricism is right about ideas, but forgets man himself as one of our objects [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Empiricism rightly derives the origin of our ideas from the senses; only it forgets that the most important and essential object of man is man himself. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
| A reaction: This seems to nicely pinpoint the objection of most 'continental' philosophy to British empiricism and analytic philosophy. It seems to point towards Husserl's phenomenology as the next step. It is true that empiricists divided person from world. |
| 6933 | The laws of reality are also the laws of thought [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The laws of reality are also the laws of thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §45) | |
| A reaction: I like this a lot, though it runs contrary to a lot of conventionalist thinking in the twentieth century. Russell, though, agrees with Feuerbach (Idea 5405). There is not much point to thought if it doesn't plug into reality at the roots. |
| 8625 | What physical facts could underlie 0 or 1, or very large numbers? [Frege on Mill] |
| Full Idea: What in the world can be the observed fact, or the physical fact, which is asserted in the definition of the number 777864? ...What a pity that Mill did not also illustrate the physical facts underlying the numbers 0 and 1! | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) §7 | |
| A reaction: I still think patterns could be an empirical foundation for arithmetic, though you still have to grasp the abstract concept of the pattern. An innate capacity to spot resemblance gets you a long way. |
| 17895 | Combining two distinct assertions does not necessarily lead to a single 'complex proposition' [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In 'Caesar is dead, and Brutus is alive' ...there are here two distinct assertions; and we might as well call a street a complex house, as these two propositions a complex proposition. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 1.04.3) | |
| A reaction: Arthur Prior, in his article on 'tonk', cites this to claim that the mere account of the and-introduction rule does not guarantee the existence of any conjunctive proposition that can result from it. Mill says you are adding a third proposition. |
| 10427 | All names are names of something, real or imaginary [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All names are names of something, real or imaginary. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.32), quoted by Mark Sainsbury - The Essence of Reference 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Mill's example of of being like a chalk mark on a door, but Sainsbury points out that names can be detached from bearers in a way that chalk marks can't. |
| 4944 | Mill says names have denotation but not connotation [Mill, by Kripke] |
| Full Idea: It is a well known doctrine of Mill that names have denotation but not connotation. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity lectures Lecture 1 | |
| A reaction: A nice starting point for any discussion of the topic. The obvious response is that a name like 'Attila the Hun' seems to have a very vague denotation for most of us, but a rather powerful connotation. |
| 7762 | Proper names are just labels for persons or objects, and the meaning is the object [Mill, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Mill seemed to defend the view that proper names are merely labels for individual persons or objects, and contribute no more than those individuals themselves to the meanings of sentences in which they occur. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by William Lycan - Philosophy of Language | |
| A reaction: Identity statements can become trivial on this view ('Twain is Clemens'). Modern views have become more sympathetic to Mill, since externalism places meanings outside the head of the speaker. |
| 9801 | Numbers must be assumed to have identical units, as horses are equalised in 'horse-power' [Mill] |
| Full Idea: There is one hypothetical element in the basis of arithmetic, without which none of it would be true: all the numbers are numbers of the same or of equal units. When we talk of forty horse-power, we assume all horses are of equal strength. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.3) | |
| A reaction: Of course, horses are not all of equal strength, so there is a problem here for your hard-line empiricist. Mill needs processes of idealisation and abstraction before his empirical arithmetic can get off the ground. |
| 8742 | The only axioms needed are for equality, addition, and successive numbers [Mill, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Mill says arithmetic has two axioms, that 'things which are equal to the same thing are equal to each other', and 'equals added to equals make equal sums', plus a definition for each numeral as 'formed by the addition of a unit to the previous number'. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.610?) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.3 | |
| A reaction: The difficulty here seems to be the definition of 1, and (even worse for an empiricist), of 0. Then he may have a little trouble when he reaches infinity. |
| 9800 | Arithmetic is based on definitions, and Sums of equals are equal, and Differences of equals are equal [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The inductions of arithmetic are based on so-called definitions (such as '2 and 1 are three'), and on two axioms: The sums of equals are equal, The differences of equals are equal. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.3) | |
| A reaction: These are axioms for arithmetical operations, rather than for numbers themselves (which, for Mill, do not require axioms as they are empirically derived). |
| 5201 | Mill says logic and maths is induction based on a very large number of instances [Mill, by Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Mill maintained that the truths of logic and mathematics are not necessary or certain, by saying these propositions are inductive generalisations based on an extremely large number of instances. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Ayer asserts that they are necessary (but only because they are tautological). I like the idea that maths is the 'science of patterns', but that might lead from an empirical start to a rationalist belief in a priori synthetic truths. |
| 9360 | If two black and two white objects in practice produced five, what colour is the fifth one? [Lewis,CI on Mill] |
| Full Idea: If Mill has a demon who, every time two things are brought together with two other things, always introduces a fifth, then if two black marbles and two white ones are put in an urn, the demon could choose his color, but there would be more of one colour. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by C.I. Lewis - A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori p.367 | |
| A reaction: Nice to see philosophers fighting back against demons. This is a lovely argument against the absurdity of thinking that experience could ever controvert a priori knowledge (though Lewis is no great fan of the latter). |
| 9888 | Mill mistakes particular applications as integral to arithmetic, instead of general patterns [Dummett on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill's mistake is taking particular applications as integral to the sense of arithmetical propositions. But what is integral to arithmetic is the general principle that explains its applicability, and determines the pattern of particular applications. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6) by Michael Dummett - Frege philosophy of mathematics Ch.20 | |
| A reaction: [Dummett is summarising Frege's view] Sounds like a tidy objection, but you still have to connect the general principles and patterns to the physical world. 'Structure' could be the magic word to achieve this. |
| 9794 | There are no such things as numbers in the abstract [Mill] |
| Full Idea: There are no such things as numbers in the abstract. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Depends. Would we want to say that 'horses don't exist' (although each individual horse does exist)? It sounds odd to say of an idea that it doesn't exist, when you are currently thinking about it. I am, however, sympathetic to Mill. |
| 9796 | Things possess the properties of numbers, as quantity, and as countable parts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All things possess quantity; consist of parts which can be numbered; and in that character possess all the properties which are called properties of numbers. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Here Mill is skating on the very thinnest of ice, and I find myself reluctantly siding with Frege. It is a very optimistic empiricist who hopes to find the numbers actually occurring as properties of experienced objects. A pack of cards, for example. |
| 9795 | Numbers have generalised application to entities (such as bodies or sounds) [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 'Ten' must mean ten bodies, or ten sounds, or ten beatings of the pulse. But though numbers must be numbers of something, they may be numbers of anything. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Mill always prefers things in close proximity, in space or time. 'I've had ten headaches in the last year'. 'There are ten reasons for doubting p'. His second point puts him very close to Aristotle in his view. |
| 9798 | Different parcels made from three pebbles produce different actual sensations [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Three pebbles make different sense impressions in one parcel or in two. That the same pebbles by an alteration of place and arrangement may be made to produce either sensation is not the identical proposition. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Not quite clear, but Mill seems to be adamant that we really must experience the separation, and not just think what 'may' happen, so Frege is right that Mill is lucky that everything is not 'nailed down'. |
| 9797 | '2 pebbles and 1 pebble' and '3 pebbles' name the same aggregation, but different facts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The expressions '2 pebbles and 1 pebble' and '3 pebbles' stand for the same aggregation of objects, but do not stand for the same physical fact. They name the same objects in different states, 'denoting' the same things, with different 'connotations'. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Nothing in this would convert me from the analytic view to the empirical view of simple arithmetic, if I were that way inclined. Personally I think of three pebbles as 4 minus 1, because I am haunted by the thought of a missing stone. |
| 9799 | 3=2+1 presupposes collections of objects ('Threes'), which may be divided thus [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 'Three is two and one' presupposes that collections of objects exist, which while they impress the senses thus, ¶¶¶, may be separated into two parts, thus, ¶¶ ¶. This being granted, we term all such parcels Threes. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Mill is clearly in trouble here because he sticks to simple arithmetic. He must deal with parcels too big for humans to count, and parcels so big that they could not naturally exist, and that is before you even reach infinite parcels. |
| 9802 | Numbers denote physical properties of physical phenomena [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The fact asserted in the definition of a number is a physical fact. Each of the numbers two, three, four denotes physical phenomena, and connotes a physical property of those phenomena. Two denotes all pairs of things, and twelve all dozens. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: The least plausible part of Mill's thesis. Is the fact that a pair of things is fewer than five things also a property? You see two boots, or you see a pair of boots, depending partly on you. Is pure two a visible property? Courage and an onion? |
| 9803 | We can't easily distinguish 102 horses from 103, but we could arrange them to make it obvious [Mill] |
| Full Idea: 102 horses are not as easily distinguished from 103 as two are from three, yet the horses may be so placed that a difference will be perceptible. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: More trouble for Mill. We are now moving from the claim that we actually perceive numbers to the claim that we could if we arranged things right. But we would still only see which group of horses was bigger by one, not how many horses there were. |
| 9804 | Arithmetical results give a mode of formation of a given number [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Every statement of the result of an arithmetical operation is a statement of one of the modes of formation of a given number. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: Although Mill sticks cautiously to very simple arithmetic, inviting empirical accounts of much higher mathematics, I think the phrase 'modes of formation' of numbers is very helpful. It could take us either into structuralism, or into constructivism. |
| 9805 | 12 is the cube of 1728 means pebbles can be aggregated a certain way [Mill] |
| Full Idea: When we say 12 is the cube of 1728, we affirm that if we had sufficient pebbles, we put them into parcels or aggregates called twelves, and put those twelves into similar collections, and make twelve of these largests parcels, we have the aggregate 1728. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: There is always hidden modal thinking in Mill's proposals, despite his longing to stick to actual experience. Imagination actually plays a much bigger role in his theory than sense experience does. |
| 8741 | Numbers must be of something; they don't exist as abstractions [Mill] |
| Full Idea: All numbers must be numbers of something: there are no such things as numbers in the abstract. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.245?), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.3 | |
| A reaction: This shows why the concept of 'abstraction' is such a deep problem. Numbers can't be properties of objects, because two boots can become one boot without changing the surviving boot. But why should abstractions have to 'exist'? |
| 12411 | Mill is too imprecise, and is restricted to simple arithmetic [Kitcher on Mill] |
| Full Idea: The problem with Mill is that many of his formulations are imprecise, and he only considers the most rudimentary parts of arithmetic. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge Intro | |
| A reaction: This is from a fan of Mill, trying to restore his approach in the face of the authoritative and crushing criticisms offered by Frege. I too am a fan of Mill's approach. Patterns can be discerned in arrangements of pebbles. Infinities are a problem. |
| 5656 | Empirical theories of arithmetic ignore zero, limit our maths, and need probability to get started [Frege on Mill] |
| Full Idea: Mill does not give us a clue as to how to understand the number zero, he limits our mathematical knowledge to the limits of our experience, ..and induction can only give you probability, but that presupposes arithmetical laws. | |
| From: comment on John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by Gottlob Frege - Grundlagen der Arithmetik (Foundations) | |
| A reaction: This summarises Frege's criticisms of Mill's empirical account of maths. I like 'maths is the science of patterns', in which case zero is just a late-introduced trick (it is hardly a Platonic Form!), and induction is the wrong account to give. |
| 9624 | Numbers are a very general property of objects [Mill, by Brown,JR] |
| Full Idea: Mill held that numbers are a kind of very general property that objects possess. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], Ch.4) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics | |
| A reaction: Intuitively this sounds hopeless, because if you place one apple next to another you introduce 'two', but which apple has changed its property? Both? It seems to be a Cambridge change. It isn't a change that would bother the apples. Kitcher pursues this. |
| 6919 | Absolute thought remains in another world from being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Absolute thought never extricates itself from itself to become being. Being remains in another world. …If being is to be added to an object of thought, so must something distinct from thought be added to thought itself. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §24/5) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit like a child wishing for the moon. Is he saying he doesn't just want to think about reality - he wants his mental states to BE external reality? The distinction between a thought and its content or intentionality would help here. |
| 19457 | Being is what is undetermined, and hence indistinguishable [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being in the sense in which it is an object of speculative thought is that which is purely and simply unmediated, that is, undetermined; in other words, there is nothing to distinguish and nothing to think of in being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], 26) | |
| A reaction: This sounds remarkably like the idea of 'prime matter' used in scholastic Aristotelian philosophy. Matter existing without form is somehow ungraspable, but presented from Hegel onwards as the ultimate mystery. |
| 6920 | Being posits essence, and my essence is my being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being is the positing of essence. That which is my essence is my being. The fish exists in water; you cannot, however, separate its essence from this being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §27) | |
| A reaction: This throws a different light on later (e.g. Heidegger) discussions of 'being', which may map onto Aristotelian discussions of essences. |
| 6921 | Particularity belongs to being, whereas generality belongs to thought [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Particularity and individuality belong to being, whereas generality belongs to thought. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: This agrees with Russell's view that every sentence (and proposition) must contain a universal (i.e a generality). The very notion of thinking 'about' a horse seems to require a move to the universal concept of a horse. |
| 6926 | The only true being is of the senses, perception, feeling and love [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Being as an object of being - and only this being is being and deserves the name of being - is the being of the senses, perception, feeling, and love. …Only passion is the hallmark of existence. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
| A reaction: This remark seems to make Feuerbach a romantic and anti-Enlightenment figure. I don't see why there shouldn't be just as much 'being' in doing maths as in admiring a landscape. The mention of love links him to Empedocles (Ideas 459 + 630). |
| 9806 | Whatever is made up of parts is made up of parts of those parts [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Whatever is made up of parts is made up of parts of those parts. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.24.5) | |
| A reaction: Mill considers this principle to be fundamental to the possibilities of arithmetic. Presumably he thought of it as an inductive inference from our dealings with physical objects. |
| 11156 | The essence is that without which a thing can neither be, nor be conceived to be [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The essence of a thing was said to be that without which the thing could neither be, nor be conceived to be. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 1.6.2) | |
| A reaction: Fine cites this as the 'modal' account of essence, as opposed to the 'definitional' account. |
| 12190 | Necessity is what will be, despite any alternative suppositions whatever [Mill] |
| Full Idea: That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be, whatever suppositions we may make in regard to all other things. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.06.6) | |
| A reaction: [Mill discusses causal necessity] This is quoted by McFetridge. This slightly firms up the definition as 'what has to be true', though it makes it dependent on our 'suppositions'. Presumably nothing beyond our powers of supposition could matter either. |
| 22623 | Necessity can only mean what must be, without conditions of any kind [Mill] |
| Full Idea: If there be any meaning which confessedly belongs to the term necessity, it is unconditionalness. That which is necessary, that which must be, means that which will be whatever supposition we make with regard to other things. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.339 [1974 ed]), quoted by R.D. Ingthorsson - A Powerful Particulars View of Causation 5.3 | |
| A reaction: 'It is necessary to leave now, if you want to catch the train' is a genuine type of necessity. Mill's type is probably Absolute necessity, to which nothing could make any difference. Or Metaphysical necessity, determined by all things. |
| 6908 | Consciousness is absolute reality, and everything exists through consciousness [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Consciousness is the absolute reality, the measure of all existence; all that exists, exists only as being for consciousness, as comprehended in consciousness; for consciousness is first and foremost being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
| A reaction: This is Feuerbach declaring himself in favour of idealism even as he was trying to rebel against it, and move towards a more sensuous and human view of the world. I just see idealists as confusing ontology and epistemology. |
| 6932 | Ideas arise through communication, and reason is reached through community [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Only through communication and conversation between man and man do ideas arise; not alone, but only with others, does one reach notions and reason in general. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §41) | |
| A reaction: This is a strikingly modern view of the solipsism problem, and is close in spirit to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument (Ideas 4143 +4158). Feuerbach is interested in universals rather than rules. I prefer Feuerbach. |
| 6935 | In man the lowest senses of smell and taste elevate themselves to intellectual acts [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Even the lowest senses, smell and taste, elevate themselves in man to intellectual and scientific acts. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
| A reaction: Since Darwin we have, I am glad to say, lost this need to distinguish what is 'low' or 'high', and to try to show that even our 'lowest' functions are on the 'high' side. Personally, though, I still need the low/high distinction in moral thinking. |
| 16859 | Most perception is one-tenth observation and nine-tenths inference [Mill] |
| Full Idea: In almost every act of our perceiving faculties, observation and inference are intimately blended. What we are said to observe is usually a compound result, of which one-tenth may be observation, and the remaining nine-tenths inference. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.1.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: We seem to think that his kind of observation is a great realisation of twentieth century thought, but thoughtful empiricists spotted it much earlier. |
| 9082 | Clear concepts result from good observation, extensive experience, and accurate memory [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The principle requisites of clear conceptions, are habits of attentive observation, an extensive experience, and a memory which receives and retains an exact image of what is observed. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.5) | |
| A reaction: Empiricists are always crying out for people to 'attend to the evidence', and this is the deeper reason why. Not only will one know the world better in a direct way, but one will actually think more clearly. Darwin is the perfect model for this. |
| 21513 | We can no more expect a precise definition of coherence than we can of the moral ideal [Ewing] |
| Full Idea: I think it is wrong to tie down the advocates of the coherence theory to a precise definition. ...It would be altogether unreasonable to demand that the moral ideal should be exhaustively defined, and the same may be true of the ideal of thought. | |
| From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.231), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 7.6 | |
| A reaction: I strongly agree. It is not a council of despair. I think the criteria of coherence can be articulated quite well (e.g by Thagard), and the virtues of enquiry can also be quite well specified (e.g. by Zagzebski). Very dissimilar evidence must cohere. |
| 21497 | If undetailed, 'coherence' is just a vague words that covers all possible arguments [Ewing] |
| Full Idea: Without a detailed account, coherence is reduced to the mere muttering of the word 'coherence', which can be interpreted so as to cover all arguments, but only by making its meaning so wide as to rob it of almost all significance. | |
| From: A.C. Ewing (Idealism: a critical survey [1934], p.246), quoted by Erik J. Olsson - Against Coherence 2.2 | |
| A reaction: I'm a fan of coherence, but it is a placeholder, involving no intrinsic or detailed theory. I just think it points to the reality of how we make judgements, especially practical ones. We can categorise the inputs, and explain the required virtues. |
| 16860 | Inductive generalisation is more reliable than one of its instances; they can't all be wrong [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A general proposition collected from particulars is often more certainly true than any one of the particular propositions from which, by an act of induction, it was inferred. It might be erroneous in any instance, but cannot be erroneous in all of them. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.1.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: One anomaly can be ignored, but several can't, especially if the anomalies agree. |
| 16843 | Mill's methods (Difference,Agreement,Residues,Concomitance,Hypothesis) don't nail induction [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The Method of Difference, and even the full four 'experimental methods' (Difference, Agreement, Residues and Concomitant Variations) are agreed on all sides to be incomplete accounts of inductive inference. Mill himself added the Method of Hypothesis. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.14.4-5) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 08 'Improved' | |
| A reaction: If induction is just 'learning from experience' (my preferred definition) then there is unlikely to be a precise account of its methods. Mill seems to have done a lovely job. |
| 16845 | The whole theory of induction rests on causes [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The notion of cause is the root of the whole theory of induction. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.2), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 08 'From cause' | |
| A reaction: This sounds much better to me than the Humean view that it rests on the psychology of regularity and habit. However, maybe Hume describes induction, and Mill is adding abduction (inference to the best explanation). |
| 17086 | Surprisingly, empiricists before Mill ignore explanation, which seems to transcend experience [Mill, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: It is surprising that no empiricist philosopher before Mill turned in an explicit way to the scrutiny of the concept of explanation, which had …every appearance of being experience-transcendent. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 4 | |
| A reaction: Yes indeed! This is why explanation is absolutely basic, to philosophy and to human understanding. The whole of philosophy is a quest for explanations, so to be strictly empirical about it strikes me as crazy. |
| 17091 | Explanation is fitting of facts into ever more general patterns of regularity [Mill, by Ruben] |
| Full Idea: For Mill, explanation was always the fitting of facts into ever more general patterns of regularity. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]) by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 6 | |
| A reaction: This seems to nicely capture the standard empirical approach to explanation. If you say that this fitting in doesn't explain much, the answer (I think) is that this is the best we can do. |
| 16805 | Causal inference is by spotting either Agreements or Differences [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The best known account of causal inference is Mill's Method of Agreement (only one antecedent is shared by the effects), and the Method of Difference (there is only one difference prior to the effect occurring or not occurring). | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.07) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 01 'Descr' | |
| A reaction: [my summary of Lipton's summary of Mill] |
| 16835 | The Methods of Difference and of Agreement are forms of inference to the best explanation [Mill, by Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Like Mill's Method of Difference, applications of the Method of Agreement are naturally construed as inferences to the best explanation. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.07/8) by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 06 'The Method' | |
| A reaction: This sort of thoroughly sensible approach to understanding modes of investigation has been absurdly sidelined by the desire to 'deduce' observations from 'laws'. Scientific investigation is no different from enquiry in daily life. Where are my glasses? |
| 9079 | We can focus our minds on what is common to a whole class, neglecting other aspects [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The voluntary power which the mind has, of attending to one part of what is present at any moment, and neglecting another part, enables us to be unaffected by anything in the idea which is not really common to the whole class. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: There is a question for empiricists of whether abstraction is a 'voluntary' power or a mechanical one. Associationism presents it as more mechanical. I would say, with Mill, that it is a least partly voluntary, and even rational. |
| 9081 | We don't recognise comparisons by something in our minds; the concepts result from the comparisons [Mill] |
| Full Idea: It is not a law of our intellect that in comparing things and noting their agreements we recognise as realized in the outward world something we already had in our minds. The conception found its way to us as the result of such a comparison. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.2) | |
| A reaction: He recognises, of course, that this gradually becomes a two-way process. In the physicalist view of things, it is not really of great importance which concepts are hard-wired, and which constructed culturally or through perception. |
| 6925 | The new philosophy thinks of the concrete in a concrete (not a abstract) manner [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The new philosophy is the philosophy that thinks of the concrete not in an abstract, but in a concrete manner. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §31) | |
| A reaction: This leads to placing a high value on art, and on virtuous action through particulars rather than principles, and on empirical science. The only problem is that what he proposes is impossible. To think 'about' is to abstract from the particulars. |
| 9078 | The study of the nature of Abstract Ideas does not belong to logic, but to a different science [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysical inquiry into the nature and composition of what have been called Abstract Ideas, or in other words, of the notions which answer in the mind to classes and to general names, belongs not to Logic, but to a different science. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't name the science, but the point here seems to be precisely what Frege so vigorously disagreed with. I would say that the state of being 'abstract' has logical aspects, and can be partly described by logic, but that Mill is basically right. |
| 9080 | General conceptions are a necessary preliminary to Induction [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Forming general conceptions is a necessary preliminary to Induction. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 4.2.1) | |
| A reaction: A key link in the framework of empirical philosophies, which gets us from experience to science. Induction is the very process of generalisation. We can't bring a concept like 'evolution' to preliminary observations, so it must be formulated inductively. |
| 6924 | Plotinus was ashamed to have a body [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Plotinus, according to his biographers, was ashamed to have a body. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: When Feuerbach draws our attention to this, we see what an astonishing state it is for a human being to have got into. Modern thought is appalled by it, but it also has something heroic about it, like swimming all the time because you want to be a fish. |
| 6927 | If you love nothing, it doesn't matter whether something exists or not [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: To him who loves nothing it is all the same whether something does or does not exist. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §33) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be quite a good motto for the aim of education - just get them to love something, no matter what (well, almost!). Loving something, even if it is train-spotting, seems a good route to human happiness. |
| 6934 | Man is not a particular being, like animals, but a universal being [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Man is not a particular being, like the animals, but a universal being. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §53) | |
| A reaction: This sounds a bit extravagent. The capacity of man to use universals in thought seems crucial to Feuerbach (though he doesn't directly address the problem). 'We are particulars with access to universals' sounds better. |
| 6936 | The essence of man is in community, but with distinct individuals [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: The essence of man is contained only in the community and unity of man and man; it is a unity, however, which rests only on the reality of the distinction between I and thou. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §59) | |
| A reaction: In English provincial suburbs (where I live) it is astonishing how little interest in and need for their neighbours people seem to have. People seem to survive without community. Most of us, though, think full human happiness needs community. |
| 8345 | A cause is the total of all the conditions which inevitably produce the result [Mill] |
| Full Idea: A cause is the sum total of the conditions positive and negative taken together ...which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]), quoted by Donald Davidson - Causal Relations §1 | |
| A reaction: This has obvious problems. The absence of Napoleon was a cause of the English Civil War. The Big Bang was a cause of, well, every event. As Davidson notes, some narrowing down is needed. |
| 10391 | Causes and conditions are not distinct, because we select capriciously from among them [Mill] |
| Full Idea: Nothing can better show the absence of any scientific ground for the distinction between the cause of a phenomena and its conditions, than the capricious manner in which we select from among the conditions that which we choose to denominate the cause. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843]), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.2 | |
| A reaction: [ref Mill p.196, 1846 edn] Schaffer gives this as the main argument for the 'no-basis' view of the selection of what causes an event. The usual thought is that it is entirely our immediate interests which make us select THE cause. Not convinced. |
| 14547 | The strict cause is the total positive and negative conditions which ensure the consequent [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The cause, philosophically speaking, is the sum total of the conditions, positive and negative taken together; the whole of the contigencies of every description, which being realized, the consequent invariably follows. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.3) | |
| A reaction: This somewhat notorious remark is not going to be much help in a law court or a laboratory. It is that view which says that the Big Bang must be included in every causal list ever compiled. Well, yes... |
| 8377 | Causation is just invariability of succession between every natural fact and a preceding fact [Mill] |
| Full Idea: The Law of Causation, the recognition of which is the main pillar of inductive science, is but the familiar truth, that invariability of succession is found by observation between every fact in nature and some other fact which has preceded it. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.5.2), quoted by Bertrand Russell - On the Notion of Cause p.178 | |
| A reaction: Note that Mill rests causation on 'facts'. In the empiricist Mill endorsing the views of Hume. Russell attacks the bogus claim that science rests on causation. Personally I think Mill's view is incorrect. |
| 14545 | A cause is an antecedent which invariably and unconditionally leads to a phenomenon [Mill] |
| Full Idea: We may define the cause of a phenomenon to be the antecedent, or the concurrence of the antecedents, on which it is invariably and unconditionally consequent. | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.05.6) | |
| A reaction: This ignores the possibility of the world ending just before the effect occurs, the 'ceteris paribus' clause. If it only counts as a cause if the effect has actually occurred, we begin to suspect tautology. |
| 4773 | Mill's regularity theory of causation is based on an effect preceded by a conjunction of causes [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Millian causation is a version of the Regularity Theory, but with the addition that when claiming that an effect invariably follows from the cause, the cause is not a single factor, but a whole conjunction of necessary and sufficient conditions. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.217) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.2 | |
| A reaction: Psillos endorses this as an improvement on Hume. But while we may replicate one event preceding another to get regularity, groups of events are hardly ever identical, so no precise pattern will ever be seen. |
| 4775 | In Mill's 'Method of Agreement' cause is the common factor in a range of different cases [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In Mill's 'Method of Agreement' the cause is the common factor in a number of otherwise different cases in which the effect occurs. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.255) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.3 | |
| A reaction: This looks more likely to be good evidence for the cause of an event, rather than a definition of what a cause actually is. Suppose a footballer only scores if and only if I go to watch him? |
| 4776 | In Mill's 'Method of Difference' the cause is what stops the effect when it is removed [Mill, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In Mill's 'Method of Difference' the cause is the factor which is different in two cases which are similar, except that in one the effect occurs, and in the other it doesn't. | |
| From: report of John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], p.256) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.3 | |
| A reaction: Like the Method of Agreement, this is a good test, but is unlikely to be a conclusive hallmark of causation. A footballer may never score unless I go to watch him. I become his lucky mascot… |
| 9417 | What are the fewest propositions from which all natural uniformities could be inferred? [Mill] |
| Full Idea: What are the fewest general propositions from which all the uniformities which exist in the universe might be deductively inferred? | |
| From: John Stuart Mill (System of Logic [1843], 3.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the germ of the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. |
| 6913 | God's existence cannot be separated from essence and concept, which can only be thought as existing [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is the being in which existence cannot be separated from essence and concept and which cannot be thought except as existing. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §18) | |
| A reaction: This shows how faith in God endured through the Idealist movement by means of the Ontological Argument, despite the criticisms of Hume and Kant. To me this now appears as an odd abberation in the history of human thought. |
| 6903 | If God is only an object for man, then only the essence of man is revealed in God [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: If God is only an object of man, what is revealed to us in his essence? Nothing but the essence of man. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §07) | |
| A reaction: It is important to distinguish here between what we could know about God, and what we think God might actually be like. We may well only be able to read the essence of man into God, but we might speculate that God is more than that. |
| 6923 | God is what man would like to be [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God is what man would like to be. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §29) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see how even the most devout person could deny the truth of this. Perhaps the essential hallmark of humanity is a desire to be different from the way we are. |
| 6911 | God is for us a mere empty idea, which we fill with our own ego and essence [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: God exists, but he is for us a tabula rasa, an empty being, a mere idea; God, as we conceive and think of him, is our ego, our mind, and our essence. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §17) | |
| A reaction: He accepted God's existence because of the Ontological Argument. This is a little stronger than Hume's view (Idea 2185), because Hume seems to be talking about imagining God, but Feuerbach says this is our understanding of God. |
| 6902 | Catholicism concerns God in himself, Protestantism what God is for man [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Protestantism is no longer concerned, as Catholicism is, about what God is in himself, but about what he is for man. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §02) | |
| A reaction: It is certainly true that the major religions in their origins seem to be almost exclusively concerned with God alone, and have little interest in human life (or morality). |
| 6905 | Absolute idealism is the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism [Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Absolute idealism is nothing but the realized divine mind of Leibnizian theism. | |
| From: Ludwig Feuerbach (Principles of Philosophy of the Future [1843], §10) | |
| A reaction: In general it seems an accurate commentary that during the eighteenth century philosophers on the continent were designing a religion without God. Kantian duty tries to replace the authority of God with pure reason. |