5 ideas
| 21829 | Philosophy aims to understand how things (broadly understood) hang together (broadly understood) [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term. | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.3), quoted by Owen Flanagan - The Really Hard Problem 1 'Vocation' | |
| A reaction: I'm happier with broad things than broad hanging together, but to me this sounds about right. |
| 6550 | Reduction requires that an object's properties consist of its constituents' properties and relations [Sellars] |
| Full Idea: The 'Principle of Reducibility' says if an object is a system of objects, then every property of the object must consist in the fact that its constituents have such and such qualities and such and such relations | |
| From: Wilfrid Sellars (Philosophy and Scientific Image of Man [1962], p.27), quoted by William Lycan - Consciousness | |
| A reaction: This sounds to me a more promising attitude to reduction than all this talk of Ernest Nagel's 'Bridge Laws'. If we ask HOW a higher level property arises because of a lower level property, we can describe a mechanism rather than a law. |
| 12191 | Counterfactuals are true if logical or natural laws imply the consequence [Goodman, by McFetridge] |
| Full Idea: Goodman's central idea was: 'If that match had been scratched, it would have lighted' is true if there are suitable truths from which, with the antecedent, the consequent can be inferred by means of a logical, or more typically natural, law. | |
| From: report of Nelson Goodman (The Problem of Counterfactual Conditionals [1947]) by Ian McFetridge - Logical Necessity: Some Issues §4 | |
| A reaction: Goodman then discusses the problem of identifying the natural laws, and identifying the suitable truths. I'm inclined to think counterfactuals are vaguer than that; they are plausible if coherent reasons can be offered for the inference. |
| 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 |
| 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. |