13 ideas
13931 | By using aporiai as his start, Aristotle can defer to the wise, as well as to the many [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: The Aristotelian method of working form aporia allows one to use as starting points not only what is said by 'the many', but also what is said by 'the wise', including philosophers. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 1 n2) | |
A reaction: [She mentions Nussbaum 1986:ch 7 for the opposing view] I like this thought a lot. Aristotle's democratic respect for widespread views can be a bit puzzling sometimes. |
13925 | Ontology disputes rest on more basic explanation disputes [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: Disputes over ontology derive from more fundamental disputes over forms of explanation. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 1) | |
A reaction: It immediately strikes me that Haslanger has stolen my master idea, but unfortunately the dating suggests that she has priority. The tricky part is to combine this view with realism. |
19489 | For me, fictions are internally true, without a significant internal or external truth-value [Yablo] |
Full Idea: A 'myth' or fiction for me is a true internal statement (a statement endorsed by the rules) whose external truth value is as may be, the point being that that truth value is from an internal standpoint quite irrelevant. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? [1998], IX) | |
A reaction: This contrasts with Carnap, for whom talk of 'ghosts' is false in an internal thing-framework. Yablo seems here to say a statement can be true while having no truth value. Presumably he is relaxing the internal rules. |
19490 | Make-believe can help us to reason about facts and scientific procedures [Yablo] |
Full Idea: Make-believe games can make it easier to reason about facts, to systematize them, to visualize them, to spot connections with other facts, and to evaluate potential lines of research. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? [1998], XI) | |
A reaction: This is the key pragmatic defence of the fictionalist view of abstract objects. Fictions are devices to help us think better. I think a lot of ontology turns out that way. |
19491 | 'The clouds are angry' can only mean '...if one were attributing emotions to clouds' [Yablo] |
Full Idea: It is an open question whether the clouds that we call 'angry' are literally F, for any F other than 'such that it would be natural and proper to regard them as angry if one were going to attribute emotions to clouds'. | |
From: Stephen Yablo (Does Ontology Rest on a Mistake? [1998], XII) | |
A reaction: His point is that it is TRUE, in those circumstances, that the clouds are angry. Thus fictions are a valid and useful part of ordinary sensible course, giving real information. I like it. |
13924 | The persistence of objects seems to be needed if the past is to explain the present [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: The notion that things persist through change is deeply embedded in ideas we have about explanation, and in particular, in the idea that the present is constrained by the past. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 1) | |
A reaction: I take this to be both an important and an attractive idea. Deniers of persistence (4D-ists) will presumably have some ability to explain the present, but it is the idea of the present being 'constrained' by the past which is a challenge. |
13930 | Persistence makes change and its products intelligible [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: Persistence offers intelligibility: the possibility of understanding a change, and of understanding the products of it. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 8) | |
A reaction: I think this is exactly right, and it is a powerful idea with wide implications for metaphysics. Haslanger claims that an understanding of 'substance' is needed, which leads towards my defence of essentialism. |
13927 | We must explain change amongst 'momentary entities', or else the world is inexplicable [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: If the world of time-slices is to be explicable, then it must be possible to provide explanations of change understood as a continual generation and destruction of these 'momentary entities'. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 7) | |
A reaction: While fans of time-slices can offer some sort of explanation, in the process of explaining a 'worm', there don't seem to be the sort of causal chains that we traditionally rely on. Maybe there are no explanations of anything? |
13928 | If the things which exist prior to now are totally distinct, they need not have existed [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: How is the case in which A exists prior to B, but is distinct from B, different (especially from B's point of view) from the case in which nothing exists prior to B? | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 7) | |
A reaction: I sympathise with her view, but this isn't persuasive. For A substitute 'Sally's mother' and for B substitute 'Sally'. A 4D-ist could bite the bullet and say that, indeed, previous parts of my 'worm' need not have existed. |
13929 | Natural explanations give the causal interconnections [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: Natural explanations work by showing the systematic causal interconnections between things. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 7) | |
A reaction: On the whole I love this sort of idea, but I am wondering if this one prevents mathematical or logical explanations from being natural. |
13926 | Best explanations, especially natural ones, need grounding, notably by persistent objects [Haslanger] |
Full Idea: I am not resting my ontology on a simple 'argument to the best explanation'. ..What I want to say is that there are general demands on a kind of explanation, in particular, natural explanation, which require that there are persisting things. | |
From: Sally Haslanger (Persistence, Change and Explanation [1989], 5) | |
A reaction: This is a really nice idea - that best explanation is not just about specific cases, but also about best foundations for explanations in general, which brings in our metaphysics. I defend the role of essences in these best explanations. |
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. |