Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics', 'Beitrage' and 'Certain Physical Essays'

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5 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 1. Nature of Metaphysics

21959	Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things [Moore,AW]
	Full Idea: Metaphysics is the most general attempt to make sense of things.
	From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], Intro)
	A reaction: This is the first sentence of Moore's book, and a touchstone idea all the way through. It stands up well, because it says enough without committing to too much. I have to agree with it. It implies explanation as the key. I like generality too.

11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism

21958	Appearances are nothing beyond representations, which is transcendental ideality [Moore,AW]
	Full Idea: Appearances in general are nothing outside our representations, which is just what we mean by transcendental ideality.
	From: A.W. Moore (The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics [2012], B535/A507)

14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation

16736	Explanation is generally to deduce it from something better known, which comes in degrees [Boyle]
	Full Idea: Generally speaking, to render a reason of an effect or phenomenon is to deduce it from something else in nature more known than itself, and consequently there may be diverse kinds of degrees of explication of the same thing.
	From: Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:21), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
	A reaction: There is a picture of a real explanatory structure to nature, from which we pick bits that interest us for entirely pragmatic reasons. Boyle and I are as one on this matter.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 3. Best Explanation / b. Ultimate explanation

16737	The best explanations get down to primary basics, but others go less deep [Boyle]
	Full Idea: Explications be most satisfactory that show how the effect is produced by the more primitive affects of matter (bulk, shape and motion) but are not to be despised that deduce them from more familiar qualities such as heat, weight, fluidity, fermentation.
	From: Robert Boyle (Certain Physical Essays [1672], II:22), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.4
	A reaction: [Compressed, and continued from Idea 16736] So there is a causal structure, and the best explanations go to the bottom of it, but lesser explanations only go half way down. So a very skimpy explanation ('dormative power') is still an explanation.

18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 2. Abstracta by Selection

9145	We form the image of a cardinal number by a double abstraction, from the elements and from their order [Cantor]
	Full Idea: We call 'cardinal number' the general concept which, by means of our active faculty of thought, arises when we make abstraction from an aggregate of its various elements, and of their order. From this double abstraction the number is an image in our mind.
	From: George Cantor (Beitrage [1915], §1), quoted by Kit Fine - Cantorian Abstraction: Recon. and Defence Intro
	A reaction: [compressed] This is the great Cantor, creator of set theory, endorsing the traditional abstractionism which Frege and his followers so despise. Fine offers a defence of it. The Frege view is platonist, because it refuses to connect numbers to the world.