51 ideas
17663 | If you know what it is, investigation is pointless. If you don't, investigation is impossible [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Paradox of Analysis:if we ask what sort of thing an X is, then either we know what an X is or we do not. If we know then there is no need to ask the question. If we do not know then there is no way to begin the investigation. It's pointless or impossible | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.2) | |
A reaction: [G.E. Moore is the source of this, somewhere] Plato worried that to get to know something you must already know it. Solving this requires the concept of a 'benign' circularity. |
9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
Full Idea: To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
A reaction: He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story. |
17688 | Negative facts are supervenient on positive facts, suggesting they are positive facts [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Negative facts appear to be supervenient upon the positive facts, which suggests that they are nothing more than the positive facts. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 10.3) |
15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention. | |
From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here. |
17691 | Nothing is genuinely related to itself [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: I believe that nothing is genuinely related to itself. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 10.7) |
17679 | All instances of some property are strictly identical [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: A property ...is something which is strictly identical, strictly the same, in all its different instances. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.2) | |
A reaction: Some is gravitation one property, or an infinity of properties, for each of its values? What is the same between objects of different mass. I sort of believe in all the masses, but I'm not sure what 'mass' is. Abstraction, say I. |
15728 | The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton] |
Full Idea: The naturalness of a class depends as essentially on the nature of the observers who classify as it does on the nature of the objects that they classify. ...It depends on our perceptual apparatus, and on our relatively mutable needs and interests. | |
From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
A reaction: This seems to translate 'natural' as 'natural for us', which is not much use to scientists, who spend quite a lot of effort combating folk wisdom. Do desirable sports cars constitute a natural class? |
9407 | Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton] |
Full Idea: To say there are properties is to say there are natural classes, classes introduction to some of whose members enables people to pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
A reaction: Aristotle would like this approach, but it doesn't find many friends among modern logician/philosophers. We should go on to ask why people agree on these things. Causal powers will then come into it. |
12677 | Armstrong holds that all basic properties are categorical [Armstrong, by Ellis] |
Full Idea: I am against Armstrong's strong categoricalism, that is, the thesis that all basic properties are categorical. | |
From: report of David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983]) by Brian Ellis - The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism 3 | |
A reaction: I certainly agree with this, as I cannot see where the power would come from to get the whole thing off the ground. Armstrong depends on universals to necessitate what happens, which I find very peculiar. |
17666 | Actualism means that ontology cannot contain what is merely physically possible [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Actualism ...debars us from admitting into our ontology the merely possible, not only the merely logically possible, but also the merely physically possible. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.3) | |
A reaction: This is the big metaphysical question for fans (like myself) of 'powers' in nature. Armstrong declares himself an Actualist. I take it as obvious that the actual world contains powers, but how are we to characterise them? |
17667 | Dispositions exist, but their truth-makers are actual or categorical properties [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: It is not denied that statements attributing dispositions and/or powers to objects are often true. But the truth-makers or ontological ground for such statements must always be found in the actual, or categorical, properties of the objects involved. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.3) | |
A reaction: This is the big debate in the topic of powers. I love powers, but you always think there must be 'something' which has the power. Could reality entirely consist of powers? See Fetzer. |
17687 | If everything is powers there is a vicious regress, as powers are defined by more powers [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: I believe reducing all universals to powers is involved in vicious regress. The power is what it is by the sort of actualisations it gives rise to in suitable sorts of circumstances. But they themselves can be nothing but powers... | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 08.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed wording] I don't see this problem. Anything postulated as fundamental is going to be baffling. Why are categorical properties superior to powers? Postulate basic powers (or basic empowered stuff), then build up. |
17678 | Universals are just the repeatable features of a world [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Universals can be brought into the spatio-temporal world, becoming simply the repeatable features of that world. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.2) | |
A reaction: I wish Armstrong wouldn't use the word 'universal', which has so much historical baggage. The world obviously has repeatable features, but does that mean that our ontology must include things called 'features'? Hm. |
17669 | Realist regularity theories of laws need universals, to pick out the same phenomena [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: A Realistic version of a Regularity theory of laws will have to postulate universals. How else will it be possible to say that the different instances of a certain uniformity are all instances of objectively the same phenomenon? | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 02.4) | |
A reaction: I disagree. We may (or may not) need properties, but they can be have a range. We just need stable language. We use one word 'red', even when the shade of redness varies. Non-realists presumably refer to sense-data. |
15442 | Universals are abstractions from their particular instances [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
Full Idea: Armstrong takes universals generally, and structural universals along with the rest, to be abstractions from their particular instances. | |
From: report of David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], p.83-4) by David Lewis - Against Structural Universals 'The pictorial' | |
A reaction: To me, 'abstracted' implies a process of human psychology, a way of thinking about the instances. I don't see how there can be an 'abstracted' relation which is a part of the external world. That makes his laws of nature human creations. |
17677 | Past, present and future must be equally real if universals are instantiated [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Past, present and future I take to be all and equally real. A universal need not be instantiated now. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.2) | |
A reaction: This is the price you must pay for saying that you only believe in universals which are instantiated. |
17686 | Universals are abstractions from states of affairs [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Universals are abstractions from states of affairs. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 7) | |
A reaction: I'm getting confused about Armstrong's commitments. He bases his whole theory on the existence of universals (repeatable features), but now says those are 'abstracted' from something else. Abstracted by us? |
15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
Full Idea: Properties that have no concrete instances must be defined in terms of those that have. | |
From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
A reaction: I wonder what the dodo used to smell like? |
17668 | It is likely that particulars can be individuated by unique conjunctions of properties [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: For each particular it is likely that there exists at least one individuating conjunction of properties, that is, a conjunction of properties such that the particular instantiates this conjunction and nothing else does. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 02.3) | |
A reaction: Armstrong commits to a famous Leibniz view, but I don't see his grounds for it. There is nothing incoherent about nature churning out perfect replicas of things, such as quarks and electrons. Would we care if two pens were perfectly identical? |
8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
Full Idea: Quinton proposes that an individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position. | |
From: report of Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], Pt I) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §5 | |
A reaction: This seems the obvious defence of a bundle account of objects against the charge that indiscernibles would have to be identical. It introduces, however, 'positions' into the ontology, but maybe that price must be paid. Materialism needs space. |
17680 | The identity of a thing with itself can be ruled out as a pseudo-property [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: There is reason to rule out as pseudo-properties such things as the identity of a thing with itself. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.2) | |
A reaction: Good on you, David. |
17693 | The necessary/contingent distinction may need to recognise possibilities as real [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: It may be that the necessary/contingent distinction is tied to a metaphysics which recognises possibility as a real something wider than actuality. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 11.2) | |
A reaction: Armstrong responds by trying to give an account of possibility in terms of 'combinations' from actuality. I think powers offer a much better strategy. |
17685 | Induction aims at 'all Fs', but abduction aims at hidden or theoretical entities [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Many philosophers of science have distinguished between 'simple induction' - the argument from observed Fs to all Fs - and the argument to hidden or theoretical entities (Peirce's 'abduction'). | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.7) | |
A reaction: 'Abduction' is (roughly) the same is inference to the best explanation, of which I am a great fan. |
17683 | Science suggests that the predicate 'grue' is not a genuine single universal [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: It is plausible to say, on the basis of total science, that 'grue' is a predicate to which no genuine, that is, unitary, universal corresponds. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.7) |
17675 | Unlike 'green', the 'grue' predicate involves a time and a change [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: The predicate 'grue' involves essential reference to a particular time, which 'green' does not. Also on the 'grue' hypothesis a change occurs in emeralds in a way that change does not occur on the 'green' hypothesis. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 04.5) | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to think that comparing 'grue' with 'green' is a category mistake. 'Grue' is a behaviour. Armstrong says this is no objection, because Goodman's argument is purely formal. |
17674 | The raven paradox has three disjuncts, confirmed by confirming any one of them [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: We could rewrite the generalisation as For all x, ((x is a raven and x is black) v (x is not a raven and x is black) v (x is not a raven and x is not black)). Instances of any one of the three disjuncts will do as confirmation. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 04.3) | |
A reaction: A nice clarification. |
17672 | A good reason for something (the smoke) is not an explanation of it (the fire) [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: A good reason for P is not necessarily an explanation of P. The presence of smoke is a good reason for thinking that fire is present. But it is not an explanation of the presence of fire. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 04.2) | |
A reaction: This may be an equivocation on 'the reason for'. Smoke is a reason for thinking there is a fire, but no one would propose it as a reason for the fire. If the reason for the fire was arson, that would seem to explain it as well. |
17684 | To explain observations by a regular law is to explain the observations by the observations [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Given the Regularity theory, the explanatory element seems to vanish. For to say that all the observed Fs are Gs because all the Fs are Gs involves explaining the observations in terms of themselves. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.7) | |
A reaction: This point cries out, it is so obvious (once spotted). Tigers are ferocious because all tigers are ferocious (see?). |
17676 | Best explanations explain the most by means of the least [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: The best explanation explains the most by means of the least. Explanation unifies. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 05.4) | |
A reaction: To get unification, you need to cite the diversity of what is explained, and not the mere quantity. The force of gravity unifies because it applies to such a diversity of things. |
17664 | Each subject has an appropriate level of abstraction [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: To every subject, its appropriate level of abstraction. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.2) | |
A reaction: Mathematics rises through many levels of abstraction. Economics can be very concrete or very abstract. It think it is clearer to talk of being 'general', rather than 'abstract'. |
21075 | The state of nature always involves the threat of war [Kant] |
Full Idea: The state of nature is a state of war. For even if it does not involve active hostilities, it involves a constant threat of their breaking out. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2) | |
A reaction: Kant is siding with Hobbes against Rousseau, despite Rousseau's claim that Hobbes's pessimism concerns a more advanced situation that the true (and peaceful) state of nature. |
20569 | Kant made the social contract international and cosmopolitan [Kant, by Oksala] |
Full Idea: Kant developed the social contract theory into an international and cosmopolitan idea. | |
From: report of Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.6 | |
A reaction: That is, the contract both operates between states, and rises above them. I found this idea rather thrilling when I first met it (listening to Onora O'Neill). But then I remain a child of the Englightenment. |
21079 | The a priori general will of a people shows what is right [Kant] |
Full Idea: It is precisely the general will as it is given a priori, within a single people or in the mutual relationships of various peoples, which alone determines what is right among men. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], App 1) | |
A reaction: The clearest quotation for showing Kant's debt to Rousseau. Why should Rousseau bother to have a real assembly of the people, if the General Will can be worked out a priori? Indeed, the a priori version must be deemed superior to any meeting. |
21077 | Each nation should, from self-interest, join an international security constitution [Kant] |
Full Idea: Each nation, for the sake of its own security, can and ought to demand of the others that they should enter along with it into a constitution, similar to the civil one, within which the rights of each could be secured. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2.2nd) | |
A reaction: Not sure how close the United Nations takes us to this. You have to admire Kant for this one. |
21078 | A constitution must always be improved when necessary [Kant] |
Full Idea: Changes for the better are necessary, in order that the constitution may constantly approach the optimum end prescribed by laws of right. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], App 1) | |
A reaction: This should be a clause in every constitution. It is crazy to feel trapped by a misjudgement or outdated view of your ancestors. |
21076 | Equality is where you cannot impose a legal obligation you yourself wouldn't endure [Kant] |
Full Idea: Rightful equality within a state is a relationship among citizens where no-one can put anyone else under a legal obligation without submitting simultaneously to a law which requires that he can be put under the same kind of obligation by the other person. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2.1st n) | |
A reaction: This appears only to be legal equality, rather than political or economic or social equality. |
20570 | There is now a growing universal community, and violations of rights are felt everywhere [Kant] |
Full Idea: The peoples of the earth have entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
A reaction: I hope slavery was at the forefront of his mind when he wrote that. It is only in very recent times (since about 1960?) that major violations of rights are felt to matter to the whole human race. A long way to go, though. |
20571 | There are political and inter-national rights, but also universal cosmopolitan rights [Kant] |
Full Idea: The idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
A reaction: The interesting thought is that there are no 'natural rights', but there can be universal rights insofar as there exists a universal community. See the UN Declaration of Human Rights c.1948. |
21073 | Hiring soldiers is to use them as instruments, ignoring their personal rights [Kant] |
Full Idea: The hiring of men to kill or be killed seems to mean using them as mere machines and insturments in the hands of someone else (the state), which cannot easily be reconciled with the rights of man in one's own person. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.3) | |
A reaction: Kant was not a pacificist, though this makes him sound like one. Some men go off to war with enthusiasm, and then regret it. Exploitation of rational beings may be the worst sin in Kant's Enlightenment world. |
21074 | Some trust in the enemy is needed during wartime, or peace would be impossible [Kant] |
Full Idea: It must remain possible, even in wartime, to have some sort of trust in the attitude of the enemy, otherwise peace could not be concluded and the hostilities would turn into a war of extermination. | |
From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.6) | |
A reaction: Consider the 'unconditional surrender' approach to the Nazis in 1944, and the peace of May 1945, made with very different Germans. How do you make peace with an enemy you cannot trust? |
17692 | We can't deduce the phenomena from the One [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: No serious and principled deduction of the phenomena from the One has ever been given, or looks likely to be given. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 11) | |
A reaction: This seems to pick out the best reason why hardly anybody (apart from Jonathan Schaffer) takes the One seriously. |
17689 | Absences might be effects, but surely not causes? [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Lacks and absences could perhaps by thought of as effects, but we ought to be deeply reluctant to think of them as causes. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 10.4) | |
A reaction: Odd. So we allow that they exist (as effects), but then deny that they have any causal powers? |
17662 | Science depends on laws of nature to study unobserved times and spaces [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: The scientist trying to establish the geography and history of the unobserved portion of the universe must depend upon what he takes to be the laws of the universe. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 01.1) | |
A reaction: This does seem to be the prime reason why we wish to invoke 'laws', but we could just as well say that we have to rely on induction. Spot patterns, then expect more of the same. Spot necessities? Mathematics is very valuable here, of course. |
17682 | A universe couldn't consist of mere laws [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: A universe could hardly consist of laws and nothing else. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.4) | |
A reaction: Hm. Discuss. How does a universe come into existence, if there are no laws to guide its creation? |
17690 | Oaken conditional laws, Iron universal laws, and Steel necessary laws [Armstrong, by PG] |
Full Idea: Three degress of law: 1) 'Oaken laws' where all Fs that aren't Hs are Gs; 2) 'Iron' laws where all Fs are Gs; and 3) 'Steel' laws where all Fs must be Gs. | |
From: report of David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 10.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: [My summary of Armstrong's distinction] One response is to say that all laws are actually Oaken - see Mumfor and Mumford/Lill Anjum. It's all ceteris paribus. |
17670 | Newton's First Law refers to bodies not acted upon by a force, but there may be no such body [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: Newton's First Law of Motion tells us what happens to a body which is not acted upon by a force. Yet it may be that the antecedent of the law is never instantiated. It may be that every body that there is, is acted upon by some force. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 02.7) |
8582 | Regularities are lawful if a second-order universal unites two first-order universals [Armstrong, by Lewis] |
Full Idea: Armstrong's theory holds that what makes certain regularities lawful are second-order states of affairs N(F,G) in which the two ordinary first-order universals F and G are related by a certain dyadic second-order universal N. | |
From: report of David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983]) by David Lewis - New work for a theory of universals 'Laws and C' | |
A reaction: [see Lewis's footnote] I take the view (from Shoemaker and Ellis) that laws of nature are just plain regularities which arise from the hierarchy of natural kinds. We don't need a commitment to 'universals'. |
17671 | A naive regularity view says if it never occurs then it is impossible [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: It is a Humean uniformity that no race of ravens is white-feathered. Hence, if the Naive Regularity analysis of law is correct, it is a law that no race of ravens is white-feathered, that is, such a race is physically impossible. A most unwelcome result. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 02.6) | |
A reaction: Chapters 2-4 of Armstrong are a storming attack on the regularity view of laws of nature, and this idea is particularly nice. Laws must refer to what could happen, not what happens to happen. |
17681 | The laws of nature link properties with properties [Armstrong] |
Full Idea: There is an utterly natural idea that the laws of nature link properties with properties. | |
From: David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983], 06.3) | |
A reaction: Put it this way: given that properties are expressions of invariant powers, the interaction of two properties will (ceteris paribus) be invariant, and laws are just invariances in natural behaviour. |
16246 | Rather than take necessitation between universals as primitive, just make laws primitive [Maudlin on Armstrong] |
Full Idea: My own view is simple: the laws of nature ought to be accepted as ontologically primitive. …They are preferable in point of familiarity to such necessitation relations between universals. | |
From: comment on David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983]) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics 1.4 | |
A reaction: I think you make natures of things primitive, and reduce laws to regularities and universals to resemblances. Job done. Natures are even more 'familiar' as primitives than laws are. |
9480 | Armstrong has an unclear notion of contingent necessitation, which can't necessitate anything [Bird on Armstrong] |
Full Idea: The two criticisms levelled against Armstrong are that it is unclear what his relation of contingent necessitation is, and that it is unclear how it is able to necessitate anything. | |
From: comment on David M. Armstrong (What is a Law of Nature? [1983]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 3.1.2 | |
A reaction: I suppose someone has to explore the middle ground between the mere contingencies of Humean regularities and the strong necessities of scientific essentialism. The area doesn't, however, look promising. |