29 ideas
22353 | One view says objectivity is making a successful claim which captures the facts [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: One conception of objectivity is that the facts are 'out there', and it is the task of scientists to discover, analyze and sytematize them. 'Objective' is a success word: if a claim is objective, it successfully captures some feature of the world. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2) | |
A reaction: This seems to describe truth, rather than objectivity. You can establish accurate facts by subjective means. You can be fairly objective but miss the facts. Objectivity is a mode of thought, not a link to reality. |
22356 | An absolute scientific picture of reality must not involve sense experience, which is perspectival [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: Sense experience is necessarily perspectival, so to the extent to which scientific theories are to track the absolute conception [of reality], they must describe a world different from sense experience. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2.3) | |
A reaction: This is a beautifully simple and interesting point. Even when you are looking at a tree, to grasp its full reality you probably need to close your eyes (which is bad news for artists). |
22359 | Topic and application involve values, but can evidence and theory choice avoid them? [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: There may be values involved in the choice of a research problem, the gathering of evidence, the acceptance of a theory, and the application of results. ...The first and fourth do involve values, but what of the second and third? | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.1) | |
A reaction: [compressed] My own view is that the danger of hidden distorting values has to be recognised, but it is then possible, by honest self-criticism, to reduce them to near zero. Sociological enquiry is different, of course. |
22360 | The Value-Free Ideal in science avoids contextual values, but embraces epistemic values [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: According to the Value-Free Ideal, scientific objectivity is characterised by absence of contextual values and by exclusive commitment to epistemic values in scientific reasoning. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.1) | |
A reaction: This seems appealing, because it concedes that we cannot be value-free, without suggesting that we are unavoidably swamped by values. The obvious question is whether the two types of value can be sharply distinguished. |
22362 | Value-free science needs impartial evaluation, theories asserting facts, and right motivation [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: Three components of value-free science are Impartiality (appraising theories only by epistemic scientific standards), Neutrality (the theories make no value statements), and Autonomy (the theory is motivated only by science). | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 3.3) | |
A reaction: [They are summarising Hugh Lacey, 1999, 2002] I'm not sure why the third criterion matters, if the first two are met. If a tobacco company commissions research on cigarettes, that doesn't necessarily make the findings false or prejudiced. |
22364 | Thermometers depend on the substance used, and none of them are perfect [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: Thermometers assume the length of the fluid or gas is a function of temperature, and different substances yield different results. It was decided that different thermometers using the same substance should match, and air was the best, but not perfect. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [summarising Hasok Chang's research] This is a salutary warning that instruments do not necessarily solve the problem of objectivity, though thermometers do seem to be impersonal, and offer relative accuracy (i.e. ranking temperatures). Cf breathalysers. |
4642 | No fact can be real and no proposition true unless there is a Sufficient Reason (even if we can't know it) [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The principle of sufficient reason says no fact can be real or existing and no proposition can be true unless there is a sufficient reason why it should be thus and not otherwise, even though in most cases these reasons cannot be known to us. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §32) | |
A reaction: I think of this as my earliest philosophical perception, a childish rebellion against being told that there was 'no reason' for something. My intuition tells me that it is correct, and the foundation of ontology and truth. Don't ask me to justify it! |
2115 | Everything in the universe is interconnected, so potentially a mind could know everything [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Every body is sensitive to everything in the universe, so that one who saw everything could read in each body what is happening everywhere, and even what has happened and will happen. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §61) |
2111 | Falsehood involves a contradiction, and truth is contradictory of falsehood [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: We judge to be false that which involves a contradiction, and true that which is opposed or contradictory to the false. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §31) |
7644 | The monad idea incomprehensibly spiritualises matter, instead of materialising soul [La Mettrie on Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The Leibnizians with their monads have constructed an incomprehensible hypothesis. They have spiritualized matter rather than materialising the soul. | |
From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Julien Offray de La Mettrie - Machine Man p.3 | |
A reaction: I agree with La Mettrie. This disagreement shows, I think, how important the problem of interaction between mind and body was in the century after Descartes. Drastic action seemed needed to bridge the gap, one way or the other. |
11857 | He replaced Aristotelian continuants with monads [Leibniz, by Wiggins] |
Full Idea: In the end Leibniz dethroned Aristotelian continuants, seen as imperfect from his point of view, in favour of monads. | |
From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 3.1 | |
A reaction: I take the 'continuants' to be either the 'ultimate subject of predication' (in 'Categories'), or 'essences' (in 'Metaphysics'). Since monads seem to be mental (presumably to explain the powers of things), this strikes me as a bit mad. |
7843 | Is a drop of urine really an infinity of thinking monads? [Voltaire on Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Can you really maintain that a drop of urine is an infinity of monads, and that each one of these has ideas, however obscure, of the entire universe? | |
From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Francois-Marie Voltaire - works Vol 22:434 | |
A reaction: Monads are a bit like Christian theology - if you meet them cold they seem totally ridiculous, but if you meet them after ten years of careful preliminary study they make (apparently) complete sense. Defenders of panpsychism presumably like them. |
12751 | It is unclear in 'Monadology' how extended bodies relate to mind-like monads. [Garber on Leibniz] |
Full Idea: It is never clear in the 'Monadologie' how exactly the world of extended bodies is related to the world of simple substances, the world of non-extended and mind-like monads. | |
From: comment on Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 9 | |
A reaction: Leibniz was always going to hit the interaction problem, as soon as he started giving an increasingly spiritual account of what a substance, and hence marginalising the 'force' which had held centre-stage earlier on. Presumably they are 'parallel'. |
19363 | Changes in a monad come from an internal principle, and the diversity within its substance [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: A monad's natural changes come from an internal principle, ...but there must be diversity in that which changes, which produces the specification and variety of substances. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §11-12) | |
A reaction: You don't have to like monads to like this generalisation (and Perkins says Leibniz had a genius for generalisations). Metaphysics must give an account of change. Succeeding time-slices etc explain nothing. Principle and substance must meet. |
19352 | A 'monad' has basic perception and appetite; a 'soul' has distinct perception and memory [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: The general name 'monad' or 'entelechy' may suffice for those substances which have nothing but perception and appetition; the name 'souls' may be reserved for those having perception that is more distinct and accompanied by memory. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §19) | |
A reaction: It is basic to the study of Leibniz that you don't think monads are full-blown consciousnesses. He isn't really a panpsychist, because the level of mental activity is so minimal. There seem to be degrees of monadhood. |
7931 | If a substance is just a thing that has properties, it seems to be a characterless non-entity [Leibniz, by Macdonald,C] |
Full Idea: For Leibniz, to distinguish between a substance and its properties in order to provide a thing or entity in which properties can inhere leads necessarily to the absurd conclusion that the substance itself must be a truly characterless non-entity. | |
From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.3 | |
A reaction: This is obviously one of the basic thoughts in any discussion of substances. It is why physicists ignore them, and Leibniz opted for a 'bundle' theory. But the alternative seems daft too - free-floating properties, hooked onto one another. |
17554 | There must be some internal difference between any two beings in nature [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: There are never two beings in nature that are perfectly alike, two beings in which it is not possible to discover an internal difference, that is, one founded on an intrinsic denomination. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §09) | |
A reaction: From this it follows that if two things really are indiscernible, then we must say that they are one thing. He says monads all differ from one another. People certainly do. Leibniz must say this of electrons. How can he know this? |
2112 | Truths of reason are known by analysis, and are necessary; facts are contingent, and their opposites possible [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: There are two kinds of truths: of reasoning and of facts. Truths of reasoning are necessary and their opposites impossible. Facts are contingent and their opposites possible. A necessary truth is known by analysis. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §33) |
9344 | Mathematical analysis ends in primitive principles, which cannot be and need not be demonstrated [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: At the end of the analytical method in mathematics there are simple ideas of which no definition can be given. Moreover there are axioms and postulates, in short, primitive principles, which cannot be demonstrated and do not need demonstration. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §35) | |
A reaction: My view is that we do not know such principles when we apprehend them in isolation. I would call them 'intuitions'. They only ascend to the status of knowledge when the mathematics is extended and derived from them, and found to work. |
2110 | We all expect the sun to rise tomorrow by experience, but astronomers expect it by reason [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: When we expect it to be day tomorrow, we all behave as empiricists, because until now it has always happened thus. The astronomer alone knows this by reason. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §28) |
22357 | The 'experimenter's regress' says success needs reliability, which is only tested by success [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: The 'experimenter's regress' says that to know whether a result is correct, one needs to know whether the apparatus is reliable. But one doesn't know whether the apparatus is reliable unless one knows that it produces correct results ...and so on. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 2.3) | |
A reaction: [H. Collins (1985), a sociologist] I take this to be a case of the triumphant discovery of a vicious circle which destroys all knowledge turning out to be a benign circle. We build up a coherent relationship between reliable results and good apparatus. |
22365 | The Bayesian approach is explicitly subjective about probabilities [Reiss/Sprenger] |
Full Idea: The Bayesian approach is outspokenly subjective: probability is used for quantifying a scientist's subjective degree of belief in a particular hypothesis. ...It just provides sound rules for learning from experience. | |
From: Reiss,J/Spreger,J (Scientific Objectivity [2014], 4.2) |
2109 | Increase a conscious machine to the size of a mill - you still won't see perceptions in it [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: If a conscious machine were increased in size, one might enter it like a mill, but we should only see the parts impinging on one another; we should not see anything which would explain a perception. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §17) | |
A reaction: A wonderful image for capturing a widely held intuition. It seems to motivate Colin McGinn's 'Mysterianism'. The trouble is Leibniz didn't think big/small enough. Down at the level of molecules it might become obvious what a perception is. 'Might'. |
19362 | We know the 'I' and its contents by abstraction from awareness of necessary truths [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: It is through the knowledge of necessary truths and through their abstraction that we rise to reflective acts, which enable us to think of that which is called "I" and enable us to consider that this or that is in us. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §30) | |
A reaction: For Leibniz, necessary truth can only be known a priori. Sense experience won't reveal the self, as Hume observed. We evidently 'abstract' the idea of 'I' from the nature of a priori thought. Animals have no self (or morals) for this reason. |
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 |
12707 | The true elements are atomic monads [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: Monads are the true atoms of nature and, in brief, the elements of things. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], (opening)), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 2 | |
A reaction: Thus in one sentence Leibniz gives us a theory of natural elements, and an account of atoms. This kind of speculation got metaphysics a bad name when science unravelled a more accurate picture. The bones must be picked out of Leibniz. |
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. |
2114 | This is the most perfect possible universe, in its combination of variety with order [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: From all the possible universes God chooses this one to obtain as much variety as possible, but with the greatest order possible; that is, it is the means of obtaining the greatest perfection possible. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §58) |
2113 | God alone (the Necessary Being) has the privilege that He must exist if He is possible [Leibniz] |
Full Idea: God alone (or the Necessary Being) has the privilege that He must exist if He is possible. | |
From: Gottfried Leibniz (Monadology [1716], §45) |