32 ideas
| 23027 | Ideals and metaphysics are practical, not imaginative or speculative [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: To T.H. Green an ideal was no creation of an idle imagination, metaphysics no mere play of the speculative reason. Ideals were the most solid, and metaphysics the most practical thing about a man. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: This is despite the fact that Green was an idealist in the Hegelian tradition. I like this. I see it not just as ideals having practical guiding influence, but also that ideals themselves arising out of experience. |
| 23030 | Truth is a relation to a whole of organised knowledge in the collection of rational minds [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of anything as true or false, we do so on the ground of its relation to a whole of organised knowledge existing actually in no human mind, but prefigured in every mind which is possessed of reason. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I n1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the super-idealist view of the coherence account of truth. I have no idea what 'prefigured' means here. |
| 23708 | Humeans see properties as having no more essential features and relations than their distinctness [Friend/Kimpton-Nye, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view says properties are 'quiddities', which individuates properties by nothing more than their distinctness from one another, so that dispositions are not essential to them, and there is no limit to possible property recombination. | |
| From: report of Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.1) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: [my summary] All of this is implied by Hume, rather than stated. David Lewis supports this view. The theory of basic powers is the view's main opponent. This quidditist view is not found in physics, where a property's modal profile matters. |
| 23709 | Dispositions are what individuate properties, and they constitute their essence [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions constitute the essences of properties, and hence the identity of a property is not primitive ('quidditism'), but is given in terms of its dispositional relations to other properties. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.1) | |
| A reaction: I like the picture that powers are basic, giving rise to dispositions, which combine to produce qualitative and active properties. Powers are precise and relatively few, and properties are ill-defined and very numerous. Being 'influential', for example. |
| 23707 | Powers are properties which necessitate dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: In broad terms: powers are properties that necessitate dispositions. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: If powers are properties then they must be properties 'of' something, which then seems to be more fundamental than the powers. Maybe our concept of an electron helps, which seems to be a bundle of a few properties, but no one even asks 'of' what. |
| 23714 | Dispositional essentialism (unlike the grounding view) says only fundamental properties are powers [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Dispositional essentialism yields the view that just fundamental properties and some evolved macro properties are powers. The grounding view, by contrast, seems to yield the result that all properties are powers. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.7) | |
| A reaction: For the second view, Mumford (for example) claims that the sphericity of a ball is a power, but that seems to miss the whole motivation for the powers ontology, which offers a fairly fundamental explanation of laws and modality. |
| 23711 | A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: In the 'dispositional essentialist' account (the main view) …what it is to be a power is to be a property whose essence is exhaustively constituted by dispositions. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Sounds wrong to me. A very complex property (such as 'stormy' weather) could be nothing more than a large bundle of dispositions, but that wouldn't make it a 'power', which has to be simpler and more basic. |
| 23712 | Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: In the 'grounding' view of powers …powers are qualitative, because their essence can be specified independently of any dispositions or relations, but they fully ground dispositions. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] They give this as the rival view to dispositional essentialism. It may be a mistake to call a power a property (which needs to be 'of' something). Not sure how powers can be both fundamental and qualitative. Don't they also ground qualities? |
| 23698 | Dispositions have directed behaviour which occurs if triggered [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: The three platitudes about dispositions are that 1) they are directed towards some specific behaviour, 2) they can be triggered under specific conditions, and 3) their directedness is modal, meaning not 'when it is triggered' but 'it it were triggered'. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.1.1) | |
| A reaction: [PG summary] This is the preliminary to an attempt at a precise formal analysis, covering a number of hypothetical problem cases. 3) is the counterfactual rather than material conditional. Seems accurate. |
| 23699 | 'Masked' dispositions fail to react because something intervenes [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: A disposition is 'masked' when it fails to manifest due to interference, such as a fragile vase packed in bubble wrap, or an antidote taken after some poison. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The easiest account of these would be to say that the stimulus or trigger of the disposition never completely occurs. Poisons are only disposed to kill when they are fully ingested. Bubble wrapped vases can't be properly struck. |
| 23700 | A disposition is 'altered' when the stimulus reverses the disposition [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: A disposition is subject to 'altering' when the stimulus of the disposition influences whether (and to what degree) an object has that disposition. Either a live wire goes dead when it is touched, or a dead wire has a sensor making it live when touched. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.2) | |
| A reaction: The word 'fink' is used of such interference. Not much of a problem, I would say, because at the moment when the stimulus comes to do its job, there is no longer a disposition for it to trigger. No different from switching off a light. |
| 23701 | A disposition is 'mimicked' if a different cause produces that effect from that stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: A disposition is 'mimicked' by objects without that disposition which behave as though they do have it. Styrofoam plates are not fragile, but make a horrible sound when stressed, causing some annoyed person to break them. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.3) | |
| A reaction: A rather strained example! It shouldn't be a problem if the same cause (stress) leads to the same effect (breaking), but by a different path which is not the same as fragility. A formal analysis must obviously cover this case. |
| 23702 | A 'trick' can look like a stimulus for a disposition which will happen without it [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: A 'trick' can behave like a disposition, as when someone says 'abracadabra' over a hot cup of coffee, stimulating it (?) to gradually cool down. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.2.4) | |
| A reaction: This is like Humean constant conjunction which is obviously not a cause, such as night following day. Only a problem is this cup of coffee is seen in isolation from all other cups of coffee. Post hoc propter hoc does not apply to all stimuli! |
| 23703 | Some dispositions manifest themselves without a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Some dispositions, such as loquaciousness or irascibility, are disposed to manifest whether they are provoked to do so. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.3.3) | |
| A reaction: We might surmise that such people have internal triggers that get them going, rather than overt ones. The Sun has a disposition to shine, without an external stimulus. The theory of powers says nature is active, rather than being disposed to activity. |
| 23704 | We could analyse dispositions as 'possibilities', with no mention of a stimulus [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: We might abandon the relational analysis of dispositions (as stimulus-effect), and just say a disposition is a 'possibility', which simply can manifest, however that manifestation comes about. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 2.3.5) | |
| A reaction: [Compressed. He particularly cites Barbara Vetter] A mere 'possibility' seems to cover passive states as well as potentially active ones. A cushion can be dented, but I wouldn't say it was 'disposed' to dent. Radioactive decay is a disposition, though. |
| 23710 | Dispositionalism says modality is in the powers of this world, not outsourced to possible worlds [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionalism does not 'outsource' modality to other possible worlds, it roots modality in the powers of concrete individuals in this world. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.3.3) | |
| A reaction: Possible worlds are to abolish modality, by treating it as the non-modal facts of different worlds. I see the dispositional view as vastly superior, because the world is awash with vivid and undeniable potentialities, and one world is better ontology. |
| 23044 | All knowledge rests on a fundamental unity between the knower and what is known [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: All knowledge is seen on ultimate analysis to rest upon the idea of a fundamental unity between subject and object, between the knower and that which there is to be known. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand this thought, but I think it embodies the essence of Hegelian idealism. If I know a tree in the wood, any 'unity' between us strikes as merely imaginary. If the tree isn't separate, what does 'knowing' it mean? |
| 23034 | The ultimate test for truth is the systematic interdependence in nature [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Systematic interdependence in the world of nature is the ultimate test of truth. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Green (or Muirhead) drifts between coherence as the nature of truth and coherence as the nature of justification. He it is the 'test' for truth, which was Russell's view. |
| 23032 | What is distinctive of human life is the desire for self-improvement [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: All that is distinctively human in the life of man springs not from the desire to possess this or that object, and so far to realise a better, but to be something more and better than he is. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: An example of Victorian optimism, I think. I'm guessing that people who are not motivated by this impulse are not behaving in a way that is 'distinctively human'. That said, this is an interesting aspect of human nature. |
| 23033 | Hedonism offers no satisfaction, because what we desire is self-betterment [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: Hedonism failed because it offered as an end of human aspiration an object in which the human spirit, pledged by its own nature to self-betterment, …could never find satisfaction. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: It is always both sad and amusing to see that 150 years ago someone wrote of a doctrine that is still with us that it has 'failed'. Nowadays they try to say the same of physicalism. His objection rests on optimism about humanity. |
| 23045 | Politics is compromises, which seem supported by a social contract, but express the will of no one [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Where laws and institutions are apparently the work of deliberate volition, they are in reality the result of a compromise, which while by a kind of social contract it has the acquiescence of all, expresses the will of none. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State III | |
| A reaction: Politicians who claim to be enacting the 'will of the people' (e.g. when they won a referendum 52-48) are simply lying. Committees usually end up enacting one person's will, but often without realising what has happened. |
| 23050 | The ideal is a society in which all citizens are ladies and gentlemen [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: With all seriousness and reverence we may hope and pray for a condition of English society in which all honest citizens will recognise themselves and be recognised by each other as gentlemen. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: Call me old fashioned but, as long as we expand this to include ladies, I like this thought. Chaucer's knight (in his Prologue) should be our national role model. The true gentleman is an Aristotelian ideal. |
| 23052 | Enfranchisement is an end in itself; it makes a person moral, and gives a basis for respect [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Enfranchisement of the people is an end in itself. …Only citizenship makes the moral man; only citizenship gives that respect which is the true basis of the respect for others. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:436), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State IV | |
| A reaction: Should people respect their betters? If so, that is a sort of deferential respect which is different from the mutual respect between equals. That said, I wholly approve of this idea. |
| 23036 | The good is identified by the capacities of its participants [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: The modern idea of the good has developed in respect of the range of persons who have the capacity and therefore the right to participate in this good. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Green is a notable Victorian liberal, starting from an idealist metaphysics. This is an intriguing view of liberal values. The concept of the good should be what suits persons with full capacity. Having the capacity bestows the right of access to it. Hm. |
| 23039 | A true state is only unified and stabilised by acknowledging individuality [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: In so far as society commits itself to the principle of individuality of its citizens does it realise the unity and stability that constitute it a true 'State'. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: This asserts the liberal vision of a state, rather than asserting a fact. A state consistently mostly of slaves still seems to be a state, and may achieve a lot. |
| 23038 | People only develop their personality through co-operation with the social whole [Green,TH, by Muirhead] |
| Full Idea: In so far as the individual commits himself to the principle of co-operation in a social whole does he realise his end as individual personality. | |
| From: report of T.H. Green (works [1875]) by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: This makes for a very communitarian type of liberalism. The question is whether we create insitutions which suck our free citizens into a communal way of life, or whether that is a matter of their own initiative. |
| 23040 | If something develops, its true nature is embodied in its end [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: To anyone who understands a process of development, the result being developed is the reality; and it is its ability to become this that the subject undergoing development has its true nature. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii: 224), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Although this contains the dubious Hegelian idea that development tends towards some 'end', presented as fixed and final, it still seems important that anything accepted as a 'development' is the expression of some natural potential. |
| 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 |
| 23706 | Hume's Dictum says no connections are necessary - so mass and spacetime warping could separate [Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Hume's Dictum says there are no necessary connections between existences, …and also between the distinct properties that individuals instantiate. …It follows that an object's property of mass and its disposition to warp space-time could come apart. | |
| From: Friend/Kimpton-Nye (Dispositions and Powers [2023], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This nicely pinpoints the heart of the Humean view, to which scientific essentialists and fans of powers in nature object. The objectors include me. |
| 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. |
| 23031 | God is the ideal end of the mature mind's final development [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: God is a subject which is eternally all that the self-conscious subject as developed in time has the possibility of becoming. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875]), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State I | |
| A reaction: [Ethics p.197] Reminiscent of Peirce's account of truth, as the ideal end of enquiry. If God is a human ideal, we either limit God, or exaggerate our powers of idealisation. |
| 23041 | God is the realisation of the possibilities of each man's self [Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: God is identical with the self of every man in the sense of being the realisation of its determinate possibilities.…In being conscious of himself man is conscious of God and thus knows that God is, but only in so far as he knows what he himself really is. | |
| From: T.H. Green (works [1875], iii:226-7), quoted by John H. Muirhead - The Service of the State II | |
| A reaction: Does this, by the transitivity of identity, imply the identity of all individual men? Do we all contain identical possibilities, which converge on a unified concept of God? I always take the monotheistic God to far exceed mere human possibilities. |