34 ideas
| 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
| Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |
| A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
| 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
| Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
| 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
| Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
| 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
| Full Idea: A single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |
| A reaction: I take this to imply that multiple viewpoints lead us towards objectivity. The single viewpoint of an expert is of much greater value than that of a novice, on the whole. |
| 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
| Full Idea: Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of single underlying fact is like a musician's relief at discovering harmony. …The passion for economy of means in thought is the philosophic passion par excellence. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: We do, though, possess an inner klaxon warning against stupid simplistic reductions. Reducing all the miseries of life to the workings of the Devil is not satisfactory, even it it is economical. Simplicities are dangerously tempting. |
| 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
| Full Idea: Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose. Conceptions, 'kinds', are teleological instruments. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.24) | |
| A reaction: Could there not be ways of classifying which suit all of our purposes? If there were a naturally correct way to classifying things, then any pragmatist would probably welcome that. (I don't say there is such a way). |
| 11984 | Asserting a possible property is to say it would have had the property if that world had been actual [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: To say than x has a property in a possible world is simply to say that x would have had the property if that world had been actual. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: Plantinga tries to defuse all the problems with identity across possible worlds, by hanging on to subjunctive verbs and modal modifiers. The point, though, was to explain these, or at least to try to give their logical form. |
| 11980 | A possible world is a maximal possible state of affairs [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: A possible world is just a maximal possible state of affairs. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that Plantinga includes the word 'possible' in his definition. Possibility defines the worlds, and so worlds cannot be used on their own to define possibility. |
| 11982 | If possible Socrates differs from actual Socrates, the Indiscernibility of Identicals says they are different [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: If the Socrates of the actual world has snubnosedness but Socrates-in-W does not, this is surely inconsistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals, a principle than which none sounder can be conceived. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: However, we allow Socrates to differ over time while remaining the same Socrates, so some similar approach should apply here. In both cases we need some notion of what is essential to Socrates. But what unites aged 3 with aged 70? |
| 11983 | It doesn't matter that we can't identify the possible Socrates; we can't identify adults from baby photos [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: We may say it makes no sense to say that Socrates exists at a world, if there is in principle no way of identifying him. ...But this is confused. To suppose Agnew was a precocious baby, we needn't be able to pick him from a gallery of babies. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], I) | |
| A reaction: This seems a good point, and yet we have a space-time line joining adult Agnew with baby Agnew, and no such causal link is available between persons in different possible worlds. What would be the criterion in each case? |
| 11985 | If individuals can only exist in one world, then they can never lack any of their properties [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: The Theory of Worldbound Individuals contends that no object exists in more than one possible world; this implies the outrageous view that - taking properties in the broadest sense - no object could have lacked any property that it in fact has. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz is the best known exponent of this 'outrageous view', though Plantinga shows that Lewis may be seen in the same light, since only counterparts are found in possible worlds, not the real thing. The Theory does seem wrong. |
| 11986 | The counterparts of Socrates have self-identity, but only the actual Socrates has identity-with-Socrates [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: While Socrates has no counterparts that lack self-identity, he does have counterparts that lack identity-with-Socrates. He alone has that - the property, that is, of being identical with the object that in fact instantiates Socrateity. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: I am never persuaded by arguments which rest on such dubious pseudo-properties. Whether or not a counterpart of Socrates has any sort of identity with Socrates cannot be prejudged, as it would beg the question. |
| 11987 | Counterpart Theory absurdly says I would be someone else if things went differently [Plantinga] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense to say I could have been someone else, yet Counterpart Theory implies not merely that I could have been distinct from myself, but that I would have been distinct from myself had things gone differently in even the most miniscule detail. | |
| From: Alvin Plantinga (Transworld Identity or worldbound Individuals? [1973], II) | |
| A reaction: A counterpart doesn't appear to be 'me being distinct from myself'. We have to combine counterparts over possible worlds with perdurance over time. I am a 'worm' of time-slices. Anything not in that worm is not strictly me. |
| 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
| Full Idea: What is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Clifford's famous principle. He isn't actually contraverting the principle, but it is a nice point about evidence. Simple empiricists think detectives only have to stare at the evidence and the solution creates itself. |
| 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
| Full Idea: Each tester of the truth of a theory …acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.42) | |
| A reaction: This is almost exactly Popper's falsificationist proposal for science, which interestingly shows the close relationship of his view to pragmatism. Believe it as long as it is still working. |
| 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
| Full Idea: That nature will follow tomorrow the same laws that she follows today is a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.39) | |
| A reaction: The stability of nature is something to be assessed, not something taken for granted. If you arrive in a new city and it all seems quiet, you keep your fingers crossed and treat it as stable. But revolution or coup could be just round the corner. |
| 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
| Full Idea: The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof solely by the size of a vulgar fraction, is as ideally inept as it is practically impossible. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |
| A reaction: James probably didn't know about Bayes, but this is directed at the Bayesian approach. My view is that full rational assessment of coherence is a much better bet than a Bayesian calculation. Factors must be weighted. |
| 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
| Full Idea: Alongside the passion for simplification …is the passion for distinguishing; it is the passion to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.22) | |
| A reaction: As I child I dismantled almost every toy I was given. This seems to be the motivation for a lot of analytic philosophy, but Aristotle also tended to think that way. |
| 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
| Full Idea: It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Hands evolved for manipulating tools end up playing the piano. Minds evolved for action can be afflicted with boredom. He's not wrong, but he is risking the etymological fallacy (origin = purpose). I take navigation to be the original purpose of mind. |
| 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
| Full Idea: A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of what is going to happen next. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.31) | |
| A reaction: Good. A nice corrective to people like myself who are tempted to inflate animal rationality, in order to emphasise human evolutionary continuity with them. It is hard to disagree with his observation. But dogs do make judgements! True/false! |
| 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
| Full Idea: Can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational? | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.25) | |
| A reaction: This is the perennial problem in deciding grounds, and in deciding what to treat as primitive. The stoics see the whole of nature as rational. Cf how can the ground of what is physical be itself physical? |
| 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
| Full Idea: I think there are very good grounds for upholding the view that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feelings of irrationality. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.20) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting proposal. Nothing is more basic to logic (well, plausible versions of logic) than the principle of non-contradiction - perhaps because it is the foundation of our natural intellectual equipment. |
| 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44) | |
| A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives. |
| 8337 | Some says mental causation is distinct because we can recognise single occurrences [Mackie] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes suggested that our ability to recognise a single occurrence as an instance of mental causation is a feature which distinguishes mental causation from physical or 'Humean' causation. | |
| From: J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965], §9) | |
| A reaction: Hume says regularities are needed for mental causation too. Concentrate hard on causing a lightning flash - 'did I do that?' Gradually recovering from paralysis; you wouldn't just move your leg once, and know it was all right! |
| 8342 | Mackie tries to analyse singular causal statements, but his entities are too vague for events [Kim on Mackie] |
| Full Idea: In spite of Mackie's announced aim of analysing singular causal statements, it is doubtful that the entities that he is concerned with can be consistently interpreted as spatio-temporally bounded individual events. | |
| From: comment on J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965]) by Jaegwon Kim - Causes and Events: Mackie on causation §3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Mackie mainly talks about 'conditions'. Nearly every theory I encounter in modern philosophy gets accused of either circular definitions, or inadequate individuation conditions for key components. A tough world for theory-makers. |
| 8343 | Necessity and sufficiency are best suited to properties and generic events, not individual events [Kim on Mackie] |
| Full Idea: Relations of necessity and sufficiency seem best suited for properties and for property-like entities such as generic states and events; their application to individual events and states is best explained as derivative from properties and generic events. | |
| From: comment on J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965]) by Jaegwon Kim - Causes and Events: Mackie on causation §4 | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that necessity must either derive from laws, or from powers. It is certainly hard to see how you could do Mackie's assessment of necessary and sufficient components, without comparing similar events. |
| 8385 | A cause is part of a wider set of conditions which suffices for its effect [Mackie, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: The details of Mackie's analysis are complex, but the general idea is that the cause is part of a wider set of conditions which suffices for its effect. | |
| From: report of J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965]) by Tim Crane - Causation 1.3.3 | |
| A reaction: Helpful. Why does something have to be 'the' cause? Immediacy is a vital part of it. A house could be a 'fire waiting to happen'. Oxygen is an INUS condition for a fire. |
| 8335 | Necessary conditions are like counterfactuals, and sufficient conditions are like factual conditionals [Mackie] |
| Full Idea: A necessary causal condition is closely related to a counterfactual conditional: if no-cause then no-effect, and a sufficient causal condition is closely related to a factual conditional (Goodman's phrase): since cause-here then effect. | |
| From: J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965], §4) | |
| A reaction: The 'factual conditional' just seems to be an assertion that causation occurred (dressed up with the logical-sounding 'since'). An important distinction for Lewis. Sufficiency doesn't seem to need possible-worlds talk. |
| 8336 | The INUS account interprets single events, and sequences, causally, without laws being known [Mackie] |
| Full Idea: My account shows how a singular causal statement can be interpreted, and how the corresponding sequence can be shown to be causal, even if the corresponding complete laws are not known. | |
| From: J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965], §9) | |
| A reaction: Since the 'complete' laws are virtually never known, it would be a bit much to require that to assert causation. His theory is the 'INUS' account of causal conditions - see Idea 8333. |
| 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
| Full Idea: The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |
| A reaction: This is certainly the psychological motivation for trying to identify 'the' cause of something, but James always tries to sell such things as subjective. 'Useless' to one person is a subjective criterion; useless to anyone is much more objective. |
| 8333 | A cause is an Insufficient but Necessary part of an Unnecessary but Sufficient condition [Mackie] |
| Full Idea: If a short-circuit causes a fire, the so-called cause is, and is known to be, an Insufficient but Necessary part of a condition which is itself Unnecessary but Sufficient for the result. Let us call this an INUS condition. | |
| From: J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965], §1) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why it is necessary, given that the fire could have started without the short-circuit. The final situation must certainly be sufficient. If only one situation can cause an effect, then the whole situation is necessary. |
| 8395 | Mackie has a nomological account of general causes, and a subjunctive conditional account of single ones [Mackie, by Tooley] |
| Full Idea: For general causal statements Mackie favours a nomological account, but for singular causal statements he argued for an analysis in terms of subjunctive conditionals. | |
| From: report of J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965]) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience 5.2 | |
| A reaction: These seem to be consistent, by explaining each by placing it within a broader account of reality. Personally I think Ducasse gives the best account of how you get from the particular to the general (via similarity and utility). |
| 8334 | The virus causes yellow fever, and is 'the' cause; sweets cause tooth decay, but they are not 'the' cause [Mackie] |
| Full Idea: We may say not merely that this virus causes yellow fever, but also that it is 'the' cause of yellow fever; but we could only say that sweet-eating causes dental decay, not that it is the cause of dental decay (except in an individual case). | |
| From: J.L. Mackie (Causes and Conditions [1965], §3) | |
| A reaction: A bit confusing, but there seems to be something important here, concerning the relation between singular causation and law-governed causation. 'The' cause may not be sufficient (I'm immune to yellow fever). So 'the' cause is the only necessary one? |
| 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
| Full Idea: In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked. | |
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.36) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche says these are the virtues of a good slave. Previous virtues were dominated by military needs, but the new virtues are those of large cities, where communal living with strangers is the challenge. |