14 ideas
| 15842 | An ad hominem refutation is reasonable, if it uses the opponent's assumptions [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: Judicious use of an opponent's assumptions is quite capable of producing a perfectly reasonable ad hominem refutation of the opponent's thesis. | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 1.6) |
| 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. |
| 15841 | Mereology began as a nominalist revolt against the commitments of set theory [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: Historically, the evolution of mereology was associated with the desire to find alternatives to set theory for those with nomimalist qualms about the commitment to abstract objects like sets. | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: Goodman, for example. It is interesting to note that the hardline nominalist Quine, pal of Goodman, eventually accepted set theory. It is difficult to account for things by merely naming their parts. |
| 15858 | Traditionally, the four elements are just what persists through change [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: Earth, air, fire and water, viewed as elements, are, by tradition, the leading candidates for being the things that persist through change. | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Physics still offers us things that persist through change, as conservation laws. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 15848 | Mereology treats constitution as a criterion of identity, as shown in the axiom of extensionality [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: Mereologists do suppose that constitution is a criterion of identity. This view is enshrined in the Mereological axiom of extensionality; that objects with the same parts are identical. | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: A helpful explanation of why classical mereology is a very confused view of the world. It is at least obvious that a long wall and a house are different things, even if built of identical bricks. |
| 15837 | What exactly is a 'sum', and what exactly is 'composition'? [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: The difficulty with the claim that a whole is (just) the sum of its parts is what are we to understand by 'the sum'? ...If we say wholes are 'composites' of parts, how are we to understand the relation of composition? | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 1.1) |
| 15839 | If something is 'more than' the sum of its parts, is the extra thing another part, or not? [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: Holism inherits all the difficulties associated with the term 'sum' and adds one of its own, when it says a whole is 'more than' the sum of its parts. This seems to say it has something extra? Is this something extra a part? | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Most people take the claim that a thing is more than the sum of its parts as metaphorical, I would think (except perhaps emergentists about the mind, and they are wrong). |
| 15838 | The problem with the term 'sum' is that it is singular [Harte,V] |
| Full Idea: For my money, the real problem with the term 'sum' is that it is singular. | |
| From: Verity Harte (Plato on Parts and Wholes [2002], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Her point is that the surface grammar makes you accept a unity here, with no account of what unifies it, or even whether there is a unity. Does classical mereology have a concept (as the rest of us do) of 'disunity'? |
| 5692 | Introspection is not perception, because there are no extra qualities apart from the mental events themselves [Rosenthal] |
| Full Idea: Introspection cannot be a form of perceiving, since that invariably involves sensory qualities, and no qualities occur in introspection other than those of the sensations and perceptions we introspect; there are no additional qualities. | |
| From: David M. Rosenthal (Instrospection [1998]) | |
| A reaction: This sounds pretty conclusive. Presumably introspection is best described as meta-thought rather than perception, which means that it involves beliefs and judgements, rather than new perceptual qualities. It has to be conceptual, and probably linguistic. |