18 ideas
16415 | Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like. | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) | |
A reaction: He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up. |
16413 | Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do? | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good. |
17651 | Without words or other symbols, we have no world [Goodman] |
Full Idea: We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbols. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.3) | |
A reaction: Goodman seems to have a particularly extreme version of the commitment to philosophy as linguistic. Non-human animals have no world, it seems. |
17652 | Truth is irrelevant if no statements are involved [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Truth pertains solely to what is said ...For nonverbal versions and even for verbal versions without statements, truth is irrelevant. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.5) | |
A reaction: Goodman is a philosopher of language (like Dummett), but I am a philosopher of thought (like Evans). The test, for me, is whether truth is applicable to the thought of non-human animals. I take it to be obvious that it is applicable. |
16416 | The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber] |
Full Idea: The inferential role of the existential quantifier in first order logic does not carry over to the existential quantifier in English (we have empty names, singular terms that are not even in the business of denoting, and so on). | |
From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) |
17656 | Being primitive or prior always depends on a constructional system [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Nothing is primitive or derivationally prior to anything apart from a constructional system. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4c) | |
A reaction: Something may be primitive not just because we can't be bothered to analyse it any further, but because even God couldn't analyse it. Maybe. |
17661 | We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Recognising patterns is very much a matter of inventing or imposing them. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.7) | |
A reaction: I take this to be false. |
17659 | Reality is largely a matter of habit [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Reality in a world, like realism in a picture, is largely a matter of habit. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.6) | |
A reaction: I'm a robust realist, me, but I sort of see what he means. We become steeped in unspoken conventions about how we take our world to be, and filter out anything that conflicts with it. |
17657 | We build our world, and ignore anything that won't fit [Goodman] |
Full Idea: We dismiss as illusory or negligible what cannot be fitted into the architecture of the world we are building. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4d) | |
A reaction: I'm trying to think of an example of this, but can't. Maybe poor people are invisible to the rich? |
17654 | A world can be full of variety or not, depending on how we sort it [Goodman] |
Full Idea: A world may be unmanageably heterogeneous or unbearably monotonous according to how events are sorted into kinds. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4a) | |
A reaction: We might expect this from the man who invented 'grue', which allows you to classify things that change colour with things that don't. Could you describe a bird as 'might have been a fish', and classify it with fish? ('Projectible'?) |
17653 | Things can only be judged the 'same' by citing some respect of sameness [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Identification rests upon organization into entities and kinds. The response to the question 'Same or not the same?' must always be 'Same what?'. ...Identity or constancy in a world is identity with respect to what is within that world as organised. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4a) | |
A reaction: And the gist of his book is that 'organised' is done by us, not by the world. He seems to be committed to the full Geachean relative identity, rather than the mere Wigginsian relative individuation. An unfashionable view! |
17660 | Discovery is often just finding a fit, like a jigsaw puzzle [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Discovery often amounts, as when I place a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, not to arrival at a proposition for declaration or defense, but to finding a fit. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.7) | |
A reaction: I find Goodman's views here pretty alien, but I like this bit. Coherence really rocks. |
17658 | Users of digital thermometers recognise no temperatures in the gaps [Goodman] |
Full Idea: To use a digital thermometer with readings in tenths of a degree is to recognise no temperature as lying between 90 and 90.1 degrees. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4d) | |
A reaction: This appears to be nonsense, treating users of digital thermometers as if they were stupid. No one thinks temperatures go up and down in quantum leaps. We all know there is a gap between instrument and world. (Very American, I'm thinking!) |
17650 | We lack frames of reference to transform physics, biology and psychology into one another [Goodman] |
Full Idea: We have no neat frames of reference, no ready rules for transforming physics, biology and psychology into one another. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.2) |
17655 | Grue and green won't be in the same world, as that would block induction entirely [Goodman] |
Full Idea: Grue cannot be a relevant kind for induction in the same world as green, for that would preclude some of the decisions, right or wrong, that constitute inductive inference. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4b) | |
A reaction: This may make 'grue' less mad than I thought it was. I always assume we are slicing the world as 'green, blue and grue'. I still say 'green' is a basic predicate of experience, but 'grue' is amenable to analysis. |
17649 | If the world is one it has many aspects, and if there are many worlds they will collect into one [Goodman] |
Full Idea: If there is but one world, it embraces a multiplicity of contrasting aspects; if there are many worlds, the collection of them all is one. One world may be taken as many, or many worlds taken as one; whether one or many depends on the way of taking. | |
From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.2) | |
A reaction: He cites 'The Pluralistic Universe' by William James for this idea. The idea is that the distinction 'evaporates under analysis'. Parmenides seems to have thought that no features could be distinguished in the true One. |
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. |