64 ideas
3656 | The greatest good for a state is true philosophers [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The greatest good which can exist in a state is to have true philosophers. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], Pref) | |
A reaction: …because they understand true reality, especially the Good. |
16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Philosophers are skilled at resisting even the most inviting thoughts. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5) | |
A reaction: Not exactly 'despair', but it does show how far philosophers are able to stray from common sense. Monads, real possible worlds, real sets… Thomas Reid, the philosopher of common sense, might be the antidote. |
16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A Fregean dictum is that part of the sense of proper name is a criterion of identity for the thing in question. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.8) | |
A reaction: [She quotes Dummett 1981:545] We are asked to choose between this and the Kripke rigid/dubbing/causal account, with effectively no content. |
16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Imagine a perfectly homogeneous non-atomistic disc. A record of all the non-relational information about the world at that moment will not reveal whether the disc is rotating about a vertical axis through. This tells against Humean supervenience. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: [Armstrong 1980 originated this, and it is famously discussed by Kripke in lectures] There will, of course, be dispositions present because of the rotation, but Lewis excludes any such modal truths. |
16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Non-linguistic objects, properties, and states of affairs cannot be indeterminate because they cannot have determinate truth-values either. No cloud is indeterminate, just as no cloud is either determinately true or determinately false. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: If vagueness must be linguistic, this means animals can never experience it, which I doubt. Presumably 'this is a cloud' is only made vague by the vagueness of the object, rather than by the vagueness of the sentence? |
16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There is a question of whether there must be 'vagueness all the way down' for the world to be vague. One view is that if there is a base level of precisely describably facts, upon which all the others supervene, then the world is not really vague. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.5) | |
A reaction: My understanding of the physics is that it is non-vague all the way down, and then you get to the base level which is hopelessly vague! |
16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The epistemic account of vagueness is particularly attractive where persons are concerned. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.14) | |
A reaction: You'll have to see her text for details. Interesting that there might be different views of what vagueness is for different cases. Or putting it another way, absolutely everything (said, thought, existing or done) might be vague in some way! |
16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Supervaluationists take a present-tense predication as concerning a single, but vaguely specified, moment. …It is indeterminate which of a range of moments enters into the truth conditions, but it is true if satisfied by every member of the range. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.7) | |
A reaction: She is discussing stage theory, but this is a helpful clarification of the idea of supervaluation. Something can be satisfied by a whole bunch of values, even though you are not sure which one. |
16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A supervaluationist approach involves consideration of what the truth value of the utterance would have been if semantic indecision had been resolved in this way or that. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: At last, a lovely account of supervaluation in plain English that anyone can understand! Why don't they all do that? Well, done Katherine Hawley! ['semantic indecision' is uncertainty about what your words mean!] |
16230 | Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers suspect that properties are few and far between, that there are only properties like charge, mass, spin, and so on. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: I think properties are very sparse, and mainly consist of physical powers, but I am not sure what I think of this. It may be 'mere semantics'. Complex properties still seem to be properties. Powers combine to make properties, I suggest. |
16744 | All powers can be explained by obvious features like size, shape and motion of matter [Descartes] |
Full Idea: There are no powers in stones and plants that are not so mysterious that they cannot be explained …from principles that are known to all and admitted by all, namely the shape, size, position, and motion of particles of matter. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], IV.187), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6 | |
A reaction: This is an invocation of 'categorical' properties, against dispositions. I take this to be quite wrong. The explanation goes the other way. What supports the structures; what drives the motion; what initiates anything? |
5016 | Five universals: genus, species, difference, property, accident [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The five commonly enumerated universals are: genus, species, difference, property and accident. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.59) | |
A reaction: Interestingly, this seems to be Descartes passing on his medieval Aristotelian inheritance, in which things are defined by placing them in a class, and then noting what distinguishes them within that class. |
5015 | A universal is a single idea applied to individual things that are similar to one another [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Universals arise solely from the fact that we avail ourselves of one idea in order to think of all individual things that have a certain similitude. When we understand under the same name all the objects represented by this idea, that name is universal. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.59) | |
A reaction: Judging by the boldness of the pronouncement, it looks as if Descartes hasn't recognised the complexity of the problem. How do we spot a 'similarity', especially an abstraction like 'tool' or 'useful'? This sounds like Descartes trying to avoid Platonism. |
16232 | An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley] |
Full Idea: I suggest that our distinction between natural and unnatural (gerrymandered) objects corresponds to a distinction between series of stages which are and are not linked by certain non-supervenient relations. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.5) | |
A reaction: See Idea 16213 for the nature of these 'relations'. I don't understand how an abstraction (as I take it) like a relation can unify a physical object. A trout-turkey is unified by a relation of some sort. Hawley defends Stage Theory. |
16630 | If we perceive an attribute, we infer the existence of some substance [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Based on perceiving the presence of some attribute, we conclude there must also be present an existing thing or substance to which it can be attributed. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.52), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.1 | |
A reaction: A rainbow might be a tricky case. This illustrates the persistent belief in substances, even among philosophers who embraced the new corpuscular and mechanistic view of matter. |
5013 | A substance needs nothing else in order to exist [Descartes] |
Full Idea: By substance we can understand nothing else than a thing which so exists that it needs no other thing in order to exist. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.51) | |
A reaction: Properties, of course, are the things which have dependent existence. Can properties be reduced to substances (e.g. by adopting a materialist theory of mind)? Note that Descartes does not think that substances depend on God for existence. |
16200 | Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Many philosophers believe that sortal predicates are spatially maximal - for example, that no cat can be a proper spatial part of a cat. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This sounds reasonable until you cut the tail off a cat. Presumably what remains is a cat? So presumably that smaller part was always a cat? Only essentialism can make sense of this! You can't just invent rules for sortals. |
16237 | The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is difficult to establish a consensus about the modal features of the statue and the lump. Could that statue be made of a different lump? Could that statue of Goliath have been spherical? Not a realistic statue of Goliath, but still the same statue? | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6) | |
A reaction: The problem is with a wild wacky sculptor, who might say it is a statue of Goliath no matter what shape the lump takes. 'Goliath had a spherical character'. Sometimes we will say (pace Evans) it is 'roughly identical' to the original statue. |
16238 | Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Perdurance theory claims that lumps and statues differ modally whilst always being made of the same parts. A natural way to make this less mysterious is for perdurantists to adopt counterpart theory, where objects in different worlds are never identical. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
A reaction: This, of course, is exactly the system created by David Lewis. Personally I rather like counterparts, but perdurance seems a tad crazy. |
16220 | Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There are three main views of vagueness: the Epistemic view says we talk precisely, but don't know what we talk precisely about; the Semantic view is that it is loose talk, or semantic indecision; the Ontic view says it is part of how the world is. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [My summary of two paragraphs] She associates Williamson with the first view, Lewis with the second, and Van Inwagen with the third. |
16222 | Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There is no important distinction to be drawn between cases where indeterminacy is due to the object involved and cases where indeterminacy is due to the property involved. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.2) | |
A reaction: You could always paraphrase the object's situation propertywise, or the property's situation objectwise. 'His baldness is indeterminate'; 'where does the mountainous terrain end?' |
16228 | The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Constitution theorists are endurance theorists who believe that there can be more than one object exactly occupying a spatial region at a certain moment. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: I increasingly think that this is a ridiculous view. The constitution of an object isn't a further object. A constitution is a necessary requirement for a physical object. Hylomorphism! Constitutions can't be separate - they must constitute something! |
16229 | Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Constitution theorists need to posit sortal properties of 'being a thread' or 'being a sweater', as grounds for the differences betwween the sweater and the thread that constitutes it. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: This is further grounds for thinking the constitution view ridiculous, because there are no such properties. 'Being a sweater' is a category, which something belongs in if it has all the properties of a sweater. The final property triggers sweaterhood. |
14492 | If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The constitution theorists, who claim that the sweater and the thread are different things, should offer some explanation of why we tend to say that there is just one thing there. They must simply claim that we 'do not count by identity'. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.8) | |
A reaction: Her example is a sweater knitted from a single piece of thread. Presumably we could count by sortal identity, so there is one thread here, and there is one sweater here. We just can't add the two together. No ontological arithmetic. |
16633 | A substance has one principal property which is its nature and essence [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Each substance has one principal property that constitutes its nature and essence, to which all its other properties are referred. Extension in length, breadth, and depth constitutes the nature of corporeal substance; and thought of thinking substances. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.53), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.3 | |
A reaction: Property is likely to be 'propria', which is a property distinctive of some thing, not just any old modern property. This is quite a strikingly original view of the nature of essence. Descartes despised 'substantial forms'. |
16193 | 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Another strategy for the problem of change says that instantiation - the having of properties - is time-indexed, or relative to times, although properties themselves are not. This 'adverbialism' says that object has-at-t some property. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.5) | |
A reaction: [She cites Johnson, Lowe and Haslanger for this] Promising. The question is whether the time index is attached to the object, to the property, or to the instantiation. The middle one is wrong. There aren't two properties - green-at-t1 and green-at-t2. |
16195 | Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Adopting presentism solves the problem of change, since it means that, once the banana is yellow, there just is no green banana, and the question of the relationship between yesterday's green banana and today's yellow one therefore does not arise. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.7) | |
A reaction: Change remains kind of odd, but it is no longer the puzzlement of two things being the same when they are admitted to be different. There is only ever one thing. This is my preferred account, I think. I certainly hope past bananas don't exist. |
16202 | The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is the insistence on identity between objects wholly present at different times which gives rise to the problem of change. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: My solution is to say things are the 'same', in a slightly loose non-transitive way, rather than formally identical, which is a concept from maths, not from reality. |
16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Endurance theory might claim a banana stands (atemporally) in different relations to different times (being-green-at to Monday), ..or has different instantiation relations to different properties (instantiates-on-Monday to being green). | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.3) | |
A reaction: She suggests that the first approach is more plausible for endurantists. I think she is right (assuming these are the only two options). Monday awaits a banana, but yellow doesn't. |
16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Endurance theory is not just a default 'no-theory' theory, for it must incorporate a sophisticated account of properties and instantiation, and requires a certain view of time if it is even to be formulable. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
A reaction: A bit odd to claim it is a sophisticated theory when it is held (at least in our culture) by absolutely everyone apart from a few philosophers and physicists. The sophistication may come with trying to describe it using current metaphysical vocabulary. |
16197 | How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A question for perdurance theory is whether it can account for the special concern we feel for our own future selves. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
A reaction: That is one of those questions that begins to look very mysterious whatever your theory. I favour endurantism, but me next year looks a very remote person for me to be concerned about, in comparison with the people around me now. |
16191 | Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Perdurance relies on our having an 'atemporal' perspective from which we can truly say a banana has both yellow and green parts, where this 'has' is not in the present tense. ..Perdurance theory cannot be expressed straightforwardly in the present tense. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to require the tenseless B-series view of time. It seems to need a tenseless view of the past, but what does it have to say about the future? |
16199 | If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The mass of an object is the sum of its nonoverlapping parts. Analogy would suggest that a persisting banana has, atemporally speaking, a mass that is the sum of all the masses of the 100g temporal parts, a worryingly large figure. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This is an objection to the Perdurance view that an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts. Their duration tends towards instantaneous, so the aggregate mass tends towards infinity. She says they should deny atemporal mass. |
16201 | Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley] |
Full Idea: According to Perdurance Theory, it is long-lived sums of stages which are tennis balls, whereas according to Stage Theory, it is the stages themselves which are tennis balls. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: These seem to be the two options if you are a four-dimensionalist, though Fine says you could be a weird three-dimensionalist and choose stage theory. |
16240 | If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It seems that perdurance theory should identify Descartes with the sum of his temporal parts, but that means Descartes essentially lived for 54 years, which seems absurd, as he could have lived longer or less long than he in fact did. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.10) | |
A reaction: [She credits Van Inwagen with this] I'm not clear why a counterpart of Descartes could not have a shorter or longer sum of parts, and still be Descartes. If the sum is rigidly designated, that is a problem for endurance too. |
16203 | Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The first worry for Stage Theory is that many present stages are bananas, and many stages tomorrow are bananas, but this seems to omit the important fact that some of those stages are intimately linked, that certain stages are the same banana. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Hawley has a theory to do with external relations, which I didn't find very persuasive. Just to say stages have a 'relation' seems too abstract. Stages of disparate things can also have 'relations', but presumably the wrong sort. |
16204 | Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The second worry for Stage Theory is that there are far too many bananas in the world on this account. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: The point is that each (instantaneous) stage is considered to be a whole banana (as opposed to one sum of all the stages of the banana, in the Perdurance view). A pretty serious problem, which she tries to deal with. |
16212 | An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A single isolated stage could not be a banana, because in order to be a banana a stage must be suitably related to other stages with appropriate properties. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.4.1) | |
A reaction: This seems at odds with the claim that each stage is the whole thing (rather than the long temporal 'worm' of perdurance theory). Isolated stages are instantaneous, so can't be anything, really. Her 'relations' seem hand-wavy to me. Connections? |
16213 | Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley] |
Full Idea: I claim that there are relations between the distinct stages of a persisting object which are not determined by the intrinsic properties of those stages. …The later stages depend, counterfactually and causally, upon the earlier stages. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
A reaction: This is the heart of her theory. How can there be a causal link between two stages which is not the result of intrinsic properties of the stages? This begins to sound like Malebranche's Occasionalism. |
16206 | Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley] |
Full Idea: To account for change, stages and temporal parts must be as fine-grained as change: a material thing must have as many stages or parts as it is in incompatible states during its lifetime. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.4) | |
A reaction: There seems to be a dilemma for stages here, of being so fat that they are divisible and change, or so thin that they barely exist. Lose-lose, I'd say. |
16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A third worry for Stage Theory is that the momentary stages themselves are just too thin to populate the world, and too thin to be the objects of reference. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Her three objections to her own theory add up to sufficient to refute it, in my view, though a large chunk of her book is spent trying to refute the objections. |
16225 | If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley] |
Full Idea: We can call the 'transference principle' the claim that if it is indeterminate whether two objects are identical, then nothing determinately true of one can be determinately false of the other. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.9) | |
A reaction: The point is that Leibniz's Law could immediately be invoked to show there is no possibility of their identity. |
16239 | To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley] |
Full Idea: When asked whether a possible object is a counterpart of something, we need to specify which sortal we are interested in. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
A reaction: The compares this to the 'respect' in which two things are similar. For example, what would count as a counterpart of the current British Prime Minister? De re or de dicto reference? |
3658 | Total doubt can't include your existence while doubting [Descartes] |
Full Idea: He who decides to doubt everything cannot nevertheless doubt that he exists while he doubts. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], Pref) |
5005 | I think, therefore I am, because for a thinking thing to not exist is a contradiction [Descartes] |
Full Idea: There is a contradiction in conceiving that what thinks does not (at the same time as it thinks) exist. Hence this conclusion I think, therefore I am, is the first and most certain that occurs to one who philosophises in an orderly way. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.07) | |
A reaction: The classic statement of his argument. The significance here is that it seems to have the structure of an argument, as it involves 'philosophising', which leads to a 'contradiction', and hence to the famous conclusion. It is not just intuitive. |
5006 | 'Thought' is all our conscious awareness, including feeling as well as understanding [Descartes] |
Full Idea: By the word 'thought' I understand everything we are conscious of as operating in us. And that is why not only understanding, willing, imagining, but also feeling, are here the same thing as thinking. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.09) | |
A reaction: There is a bit of tension here between Descartes' correct need to include feeling in thought for his Cogito argument, and his tendency to dismiss animal consciousness, on the grounds that they only sense things, and don't make judgements. |
5012 | 'Nothing comes from nothing' is an eternal truth found within the mind [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The proposition 'nothing comes from nothing' is not to be considered as an existing thing, or the mode of a thing, but as a certain eternal truth which has its seat in our mind and is a common notion or axiom. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.49) | |
A reaction: There is a tension here, in his assertion that it is 'eternal', but 'not existing'. How does one distinguish an innate idea from an innate truth? 'Eternal' sounds like an external guarantee of truth, but being 'in our mind' sounds less reliable. |
5004 | We can know basic Principles without further knowledge, but not the other way round [Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is on the Principles, or first causes, that the knowledge of other things depends, so the Principles can be known without these last, but the other things cannot reciprocally be known without the Principles. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], Pref) | |
A reaction: A particularly strong assertion of foundationalism, as it says that not only must the foundations exist, but also we must actually know them. This sounds false, as elementary knowledge then seems to require far too much sophistication. |
5014 | We can understand thinking occuring without imagination or sensation [Descartes] |
Full Idea: We can understand thinking without imagination or sensation, as is quite clear to anyone who attends to the matter. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.53) | |
A reaction: We may certainly take it that Descartes means if it is understandable then it is logically possible. To believe that thinking could occur without imagination strikes me as an astonishing error. I take imagination to be more central than understanding. |
16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is rather difficult to say why one should care about one's future self, even on an endurance theory account of the self. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.9) | |
A reaction: A nice passing remark, that strikes me forcibly as one of those basic mysteries of experience that philosophers can only gawp at, and have no theory to offer. |
5017 | In thinking we shut ourselves off from other substances, showing our identity and separateness [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Because each one of us understands what he thinks, and that in thinking he can shut himself off from every other substance, we may conclude that each of us is really distinct from every other thinking substance and from corporeal substance. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.60) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a novel argument which requires elucidation. I can 'shut myself off from every other substance'? If I shut myself off from thinking about food, does that mean hunger is not part of me? Or convince yourself that you don't have a brother? |
5010 | Our free will is so self-evident to us that it must be a basic innate idea [Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is so evident that we are possessed of a free will that can give or withhold its assent, that this may be counted as one of the first and most common notions found innately in us. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.39) | |
A reaction: It seems to me plausible to say that we have an innate conception of our own will (our ability to make decisions), though Hume says we only learn about the will from experience, but the idea that it is absolutely 'free' might never cross our minds. |
5011 | There are two ultimate classes of existence: thinking substance and extended substance [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I observe two ultimate classes of things: intellectual or thinking things, pertaining to the mind or to thinking substance, and material things, pertaining to extended substance or to body. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.48) | |
A reaction: This is clear confirmation that Descartes believed the mind is a substance, rather than an insubstantial world of thinking. It leaves open the possibility of a different theory: that mind is not a substance, but is a Platonic adjunct to reality. |
5018 | Even if tightly united, mind and body are different, as God could separate them [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Even if we suppose God had united a body and a soul so closely that they couldn't be closer, and made a single thing out of the two, they would still remain distinct, because God has the power of separating them, or conserving out without the other. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.60) | |
A reaction: If Descartes lost his belief in God (after discussing existence with Kant) would he cease to be a dualist? This quotation seems to be close to conceding a mind-body relationship more like supervenience than interaction. |
5007 | Most errors of judgement result from an inaccurate perception of the facts [Descartes] |
Full Idea: What usually misleads us is that we very frequently form a judgement although we do not have an accurate perception of what we judge. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.33) | |
A reaction: This seems to me a generally accurate observation, particularly in the making of moral judgements (which was probably not what Descartes was considering). The implication is that judgements are to a large extent forced by our perceptions. |
5009 | We do not praise the acts of an efficient automaton, as their acts are necessary [Descartes] |
Full Idea: We do not praise automata, although they respond exactly to the movements they were designed to produce, since their actions are performed necessarily | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.37) | |
A reaction: I say we attribute responsibility when we perceive something like a 'person' as causing them. We don't blame small animals, because there is 'no one at home', but we blame children as they develop a full character and identity. We can ignore free will. |
5008 | The greatest perfection of man is to act by free will, and thus merit praise or blame [Descartes] |
Full Idea: That the will should extend widely accords with its nature, and it is the greatest perfection in man to be able to act by its means, that is, freely, and by so doing we are in peculiar way masters of our actions, and thereby merit praise or blame. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], I.37) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be a deep-rooted and false understanding which philosophy has inherited from theology. It doesn't strike me that there must an absolute 'buck-stop' to make us responsible. Why is it better for a decision to appear out of nowhere? |
15987 | Physics only needs geometry or abstract mathematics, which can explain and demonstrate everything [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I do not accept or desire any other principle in physics than in geometry or abstract mathematics, because all the phenomena of nature may be explained by their means, and sure demonstrations can be given of them. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], 2.64), quoted by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 7 | |
A reaction: This is his famous and rather extreme view, which might be described as hyper-pythagoreanism (by adding geometry to numbers). It seems to leave out matter, forces and activity. |
12730 | We will not try to understand natural or divine ends, or final causes [Descartes] |
Full Idea:
We will not seek for the reason of natural things from the end which God or nature has set before him in their creation |
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From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], §28) | |
A reaction: Teleology is more relevant to biology than to the other sciences, and it is hard to understand an eye without a notion of 'what it is for'. Planetary motion reveals nothing about purposes. If you demand a purpose, it becomes more baffling. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
16601 | Matter is not hard, heavy or coloured, but merely extended in space [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The nature of matter, or body viewed as a whole, consists not in its being something which is hard, heavy, or colored, or which in any other way affects the senses, but only in its being a thing extended in length, breadth and depth. | |
From: René Descartes (Principles of Philosophy [1646], 2.4), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 04.5 |
16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Counterfactual accounts of causation say that a causal connection is exhausted by the counterfactuals it appears to ground. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
A reaction: I am bewildered as to how this became a respectable view in philosophy. I quite understand that this might exhaust the 'logic' of causal relations. Presumably you can have counterfactuals in mathematics which are not causal? |
16207 | Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There seem to be three possible ways for time to be fine-grained. The ordering of instants could be discrete (like the integers), dense (like the rational numbers) or continuous (like the real numbers). | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.5) | |
A reaction: She seems to assume that time must be 'grained', but I would take the continuous view to imply that there is no grain at all (which is bad news for her version of stage theory). |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |