136 ideas
19693 | There is practical wisdom (for action), and theoretical wisdom (for deep understanding) [Aristotle, by Whitcomb] |
Full Idea: Aristotle takes wisdom to come in two forms, the practical and the theoretical, the former of which is good judgement about how to act, and the latter of which is deep knowledge or understanding. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Dennis Whitcomb - Wisdom Intro | |
A reaction: The interesting question is then whether the two are connected. One might be thoroughly 'sensible' about action, without counting as 'wise', which seems to require a broader view of what is being done. Whitcomb endorses Aristotle on this idea. |
15209 | Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Just as the tiniest error in navigation may lead to a landfall even on the wrong continent, so the acceptance of apparently innocuous principles can lead to doctrines which, if accepted, would render intellectual life impossible. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: If one lived life by an axiom system, and one of the axioms was a bit off kilter, then this idea would be a powerful one. Note that it is only 'intellectual' life that is screwed up, but even there a plurality of ideas keep correcting one another. |
15215 | Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In our view the task of a philosopher is to devise and critically assess conceptual schemes in the service of some overall vision of the world. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
A reaction: This makes theology just as genuinely a branch of philosophy as their scientific essentialism. Is there any sort of philosophy, then, which is not 'in the service' of some independent worldview? Interesting. Note 'devise', as well as 'assess'. |
15212 | Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Adequate accounts of those concepts which are neither purely formal nor simply psychological can be achieved by attention to ....the content of our knowledge, content which goes beyond the reports of immediate experience. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I like this one. Most proponents of analysis are either bogged down in trying to reduce all of our talk to formal logic, or else they think that they are just analysing how we think. It's neither, because the concepts arise from the world. |
15210 | Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean view has led philosophers to suppose that their task is to provide an analysis of key concepts and relations wholly in terms drawn from formal logic, since relations of necessity are, in their view, fundamentally logical relations | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: A very sharp observation about why logic has become central to contemporary philosophy. As far as I can see, logic steadily increases its dominance, to the point where ordinary metaphysical thought is being squeezed out. |
15236 | Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Positivism is the doctrine that the content of scientific propositions is exhausted by what can be immediately experienced. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.I) | |
A reaction: The simple thing missing from positivism is inference to the best explanation. Also, if you actually rule out other propositions as 'meaningless', you rule out speculation, which would certainly cripple science. |
1575 | For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle logos is the ability to speak rationally about, with the hope of attaining knowledge, questions of value. | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.26 |
1589 | Aristotle is the supreme optimist about the ability of logos to explain nature [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos | |
From: comment on Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.95 |
15227 | Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: From a logical point of view all definitions look exactly alike, that is, they contain a logical subject and a set of predicates which are attributed of necessity to that subject. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) |
8200 | Aristotelian definitions aim to give the essential properties of the thing defined [Aristotle, by Quine] |
Full Idea: A real definition, according to the Aristotelian tradition, gives the essence of the kind of thing defined. Man is defined as a rational animal, and thus rationality and animality are of the essence of each of us. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Vagaries of Definition p.51 | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 4385. Personally I prefer the Aristotelian approach, but we may have to say 'We cannot identify the essence of x, and so x cannot be defined'. Compare 'his mood was hard to define' with 'his mood was hostile'. |
4385 | Aristotelian definition involves first stating the genus, then the differentia of the thing [Aristotle, by Urmson] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle, to give a definition one must first state the genus and then the differentia of the kind of thing to be defined. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by J.O. Urmson - Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean p.157 | |
A reaction: Presumably a modern definition would just be a list of properties, but Aristotle seeks the substance. How does he define a genus? - by placing it in a further genus? |
13282 | Aristotle relativises the notion of wholeness to different measures [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle proposes to relativise unity and plurality, so that a single object can be both one (indivisible) and many (divisible) simultaneously, without contradiction, relative to different measures. Wholeness has degrees, with the strength of the unity. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.12 | |
A reaction: [see Koslicki's account of Aristotle for details] As always, the Aristotelian approach looks by far the most promising. Simplistic mechanical accounts of how parts make wholes aren't going to work. We must include the conventional and conceptual bit. |
4730 | For Aristotle, the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected a substance-accident structure of reality [Aristotle, by O'Grady] |
Full Idea: Aristotle apparently believed that the subject-predicate structure of Greek reflected the substance-accident nature of reality. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.4 | |
A reaction: We need not assume that Aristotle is wrong. It is a chicken-and-egg. There is something obvious about subject-predicate language, if one assumes that unified objects are part of nature, and not just conventional. |
15273 | Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Points can be 'dense' by indefinitely prolonged division. To be 'continuous' is more stringent; the points must be cut into two sets, and meet the condition laid down by Boscovich and Dedekind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This idea goes with Idea 15274, which lays down the specification of the Dedekind Cut, which is the criterion for the real (and continuous) numbers. Harré and Madden are interested in whether time can support continuity of objects. |
15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Divide points into left and right set. They're 'continuous' if that point is either last member of left set, and greatest lower bound of right (so no least member), or least upper bound of left set (so no last member) and first member of right set. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: The best attempt I have yet encountered to explain a Dedekind Cut for the layperson. I gather modern mathematicians no longer rely on this way of defining the real numbers. |
15211 | There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The assumption that there is an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the psychological is, in our view, an error of enormous consequence. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I agree entirely with this, and am opposed to the Fregean view of the matter. The psychology is the bridge between the physical world and the logic. Frege had to be a platonist, so that the formalism could latch onto something. |
15261 | Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro) | |
A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate. |
15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: On our view, 'event' is to be understood in terms of the ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: It has quite hard to take either objects or events, given that they seem to be amenable to analysis. I am tempted to take essences as primitive. They fix identity, endure change, bear accidental properties (including temporary intrinsics). |
15257 | The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: By a shift from events to things we claim to make the big problem of induction tractable. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
A reaction: [You'll have to read their chapter to get the whole picture] The idea of basing a metaphysics on 'events' gives me the creeps, given the difficulty of individuating an event. Events are not primitive; even animals can analyse their components. |
15300 | Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Fundamental particulars are incapable of change. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
A reaction: I quote this in order to challenge it. If the proton can decay (which seems to be the case) maybe everything can. The fundamentals of a lawn mower eventually rust away; it may be thus with universe. What evidence could deny this? |
15319 | Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is no metaphysical justification whatever for treating the solid, bounded, material object as the determiner of all thing concepts. Fluids are no less material things than are hard solid blocks. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: We don't tend to talk of a fluid as 'a' thing, and without distinct objects there would be virtually no structure, or interest, in nature, so what gives identity to the blocks must interest the metaphysician. |
15320 | Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The magnetic and the gravitation field can occupy all the same places without merging. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: We can divide stuff into two classes, then, according to whether they usually merge if coextensive in space. Oil and water can be mixed, but eventually separate again. |
15318 | Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The region around a magnetic body, the space between earth and moon, and the vicinity of an electric cable remain obstinately and, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: Ouch, if you are a strict 'materialist'! I call myself a 'naturalist', in a hand-wavy sort of way. On materialism and determinism I remain vague. |
15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A state of affairs consists of structures of particulars that endure (of which physical objects would be one type), the properties and powers of those particulars, and the relations obtaining among them. A common 'event' is a change in state of affairs. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I find 'event' to be so vague, and so dependent on pragmatic interests, that it has hard to find a place for it in an ontological system. Ditto with state of affairs. They overlap. States of affairs can survive change (like a political majority). |
15281 | Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The connectivity of ensembles of predicates is characteristic of natural science, while the independence of empirical predicates is the requirement of the Humean position. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: This is yet another excellent reason for getting rid of the hyperempirical Humean view of these things. The best explanation of the world is that its ingredients are clearly not 'independent' of each other. |
15279 | Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of energy was introduced into physics precisely to make possible the application of the 'store of potency' paradigm in cases like the contact of billiard balls, since the moving ball is clearly an agent of change. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I find this to be a hugely revealing little observation. For years the nature of energy has bothered me, and I have been struck by the active character of nature. I am beginning to understand the world! |
15276 | Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Some powerful particulars require to be stimulated before their powers are manifested. Others will manifest their powers whenever the impediments to action, the constraints, are removed. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.V) | |
A reaction: Sounds nice and clear, but if gunpowder explodes at a certain temperature, how can you distinguish temperatures as the 'stimulus' ones and the 'release' ones? We just remove the constraint of low temperature. |
15305 | Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Contrasted with variable powers are those powers which cannot be diminished or augmented without loss of identity for the particular to which they are ascribed. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
A reaction: They give the example of a Deputy Sheriff's powers, as one that cannot vary. I suppose the powers of an electron are in the fixed category. Fair enough. Can a fundamental power be variable (or only 'complex' powers)? |
15218 | Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: For scientists 'copper' refers to something having the properties of malleability, fusibility, ductility, electric conductivity, density 8.92, atomic weight 63.54, and atomic number 19. All but the last of these are dispositional. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: This is important because it is tempting to pick the atomic number as the essence of copper, but it is the only one on the list which is structural rather than dispositional. The deep question is why that substance has those dispositions. |
15302 | We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The power of particulars are always made understandable by the natures of those particulars, but finally such explanations come to rest with a power of a particular that has no explanation in the nature of that thing or bit of material. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: I'm glad they faced up to this matter. The question is whether the fundamental powers which are the terminus of explanation are the same sort of thing as the powers which were said to be the target for explanations. Just complex powers? |
15303 | Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: As the most promising candidate for entities which intrinsically qualify as ultimate because their nature is in principle identical with their powers we will offer a physical field. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: An electron comes fairly close to being nothing but a bundle of powers, but fields seem to have a slightly more basic role in physics, so this strikes me as a good suggestion. It meets Ladyman's mocking of the 'microbangings' view. |
15258 | Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: An attribution of a power opens up a certain direction of empirical investigation. It is not an attribution of an occult quality, because it is not a quality-attribution at all. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.II) | |
A reaction: They seem to have a rather behaviouristic view of powers, which I am inclined to think misses how fundamental powers are. I see fundamental powers as the terminus of empirical investigation (which focuses on how powers combine). |
15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: How are we to conceive of a field of potentials when the very point of the notion is that it serves to describe what would happen at various places, and is not a description of what did or is happening? | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: I suppose the answer is induction. If there were no events, the field would be beyond us. We infer the field from observed events, and infer possible events from the patterns of behaviour in the field, and its nature. |
15272 | The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In being properly critical about the merits of the concept of substance, ...the Humean finds he has lost the vitally important concept of a thing as well. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This is the whole reason that Aristotle and others started talking about substances in the first place. The big mistake is to think that Aristotle believes in a thing called 'substance'. The notion is a placeholder for whatever holds a thing together. |
15304 | We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The importance of the field concept (as ultimate) is that it allows us to escape from the apparently pervasive concepts of substance and its properties. A field has no substance other than its powers (or its potentials). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: You can't run away from substance by only thinking about what is ultimate. Are they going to ignore separate objects? What gives them identity? Do they have any properties? What has the properties? More work needed here. |
13276 | The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6 | |
A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter. |
13277 | The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5 | |
A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact. |
15309 | The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The assumption that shape and solidity are the fundamental mechanical qualities requires an implausible hypothesis of a substance or material filling the space of bodies. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
A reaction: This is 'substance' in the sense of matter, rather than in the sense of an Aristotelian essence. They defend fields (rather than particles) as the fundamentals of the physical world. |
15264 | The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
A reaction: Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'. |
15262 | In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I) | |
A reaction: This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity? |
15297 | We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
A reaction: This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science. |
15266 | We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
A reaction: They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265). |
15220 | To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Talk about particulars remaining the same and yet lacking their usual capacities and powers is at once to assert and deny that a certain object or sample of material has a given nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: They imply that this is a contradiction, and hence impossible. So what do we say about something in which the powers fade? Do they both retain and lose their identity? Or can we separate essence from identity?? Aha! |
15222 | Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary! |
15296 | A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II) | |
A reaction: If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'. |
15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do? |
15271 | If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose. |
15256 | Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
A reaction: This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together. |
15290 | What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.IV) | |
A reaction: This is a deeply stirring idea, because it suddenly opens up a research project of narrowing the possibilities, with a stunning Holy Grail at the end of it. Sherlock Holmes said this first, of course. |
15291 | There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In addition to absolute necessity ('p is strictly implied by ¬p'), i.e. p strictly implied by any proposition whatever, C.I. Lewis also distinguished relative necessity ('p implied by what is given or known'). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: Once you accept this distinction you find that the 'relative' one comes in all sorts of degrees. You "have to" put more salt in this soup. (Deontic' necessity, someone on Twitter tells me!) |
15230 | Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the logical form of a statement is offered as the grounds for the judgement that it cannot be true we have logical necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a truth about logical necessity, but certainly not a full account of it, because contingent statements also have logical form. I can't think of any other criterion than the finding of a contradiction buried in the logical form. |
15214 | Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity is neither a mere reflection of logical necessity nor a roundabout way of referring to empirical contingency. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
A reaction: They offer a strong defence of natural necessity, which is basic to their scientific essentialism. The key point is that they, unlike some others, are not defending metaphysical necessity about nature, but finding a different type of necessity. Good. |
15221 | The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The relation between what a thing is and what it is capable of doing and undergoing is naturally necessary. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: Note that this was written in 1975, and in no way rests of Kripkean notions of rigid designation and necessary identities. Needs thought, but I take it to be an appealing proposal. |
15224 | A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is a necessity corresponding to the nature of the actual. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.C) | |
A reaction: A nice slogan for the assertion of a genuine and distinct natural necessity. Hence every possible world will have its own distinctive natural necessity. If the actual contains the possible, then there are possible new natural necessities in the actual! |
15232 | Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the natures of the operative powerful particulars, the constraining or stimulating effect of conditions and so on are offered as the grounds for the judgement that a certain effect cannot but happen (or fail), we have natural necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This is the view I subscribe to, the really right bit of scientific essentialism. Can this view be proved? Hm. I take the opposite view to be the misguided Humean idea that if you can imagine it not happening, then it might not happen. Firey furnace. |
15288 | People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: At the basis of all doubts about the rationality of science lies the idea that there is no rational resting place between logical necessity and absolute contingency. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: I'm struck by the fact that when someone says "I have to go now", they express a necessity. Are there thousands of types of necessity, or one conditional necessity resting on thousands of different foundations? |
15289 | Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when understood by scientists to be related by generative mechanisms, whose structure and components constitute the essential natures of the world. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: Does that mean that the relationship between an actual state and a possible state is metaphysically necessary, rather than naturally necessary? I think we need dispositions to be part of actuality, and hence replace 'co-existing' with 'possible'. |
15231 | Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the conditions for a rational being having knowledge of the nature of a world are offered as the grounds for the judgement that such a world must have certain characteristics, we have transcendental necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: It seems like a rather hard call to decide whether such characteristics pertain to the world, or to the mind of the rational being. Kant is obviously behind this one. You must read his first Critique at least four times to evaluate it. |
15234 | There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever is logically necessary must be reflected in a corresponding transcendental necessity. But there are a great range of transcendental necessities which are not reflected in any logical necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.C) | |
A reaction: That is, the world would be unknowable if any of the logical necessities failed to apply to it. I hope that doesn't mean that we are supposed to intuitively know all the logical necessities. Nowadays we are famous for being bad at that. |
15260 | Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We understand subjunctive conditionals as statements about possibilities, excluding those actualised. So that form is just right for part of the analysis of a power statement, since to say a thing has a power is to say what behaviour is possible for it. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VII) | |
A reaction: They seem unaware of the famous work of Stalnaker and Lewis on this type of analysis, but as a fan of powers I find this interesting, and it offers a nice extra piece for my big jigsaw. |
15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When a natural necessity is used as the basis for the inclusion or exclusion of the appropriate predicate in the meaning of a concept of a kind of particular, then it is conceptually necessary that that kind of particular has that property or power. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This is one of the bolder views of Harré and Madden, since many philosophers would say that conceptual necessity rests entirely on convention rather than on nature. We could cut them out by just saying that most of our conventions rest on nature. |
15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Described as a man it is quite contingent that he has a child, but described as a father it is conceptually necessary that he has a child. But that conceptual necessity is a reflection of the natural necessity of the father's role in reproduction. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
A reaction: This is a (good) response to Quine's claim that necessity depends entirely on the mode of description (and his mathematician cyclist example). |
15216 | Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The question about conceptual necessity is whether it is only stipulative and conventional in character or whether it mirrors something about the nature of physical systems. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.A) | |
A reaction: This is the key question, which fans of conventionalism (such as Sidelle) don't seem to face up to. I take it to be important that our concepts are not created by a committee of fools, but by people constantly relating to the world. |
15235 | There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When discoveries about the nature of a thing or substance explain or justify our holding that certain properties are its nominal essence, then the diachronic process of meaning development creates a genuine conceptual necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.VI) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a pretty good account of one of the bases for conceptual necessity. They seem to think that conceptual necessity rests on a mixture of real and nominal essence (but then some of the nominal features are also real). |
15228 | Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concepts of necessity and contingency are detached from those of the apriori and the a posteriori. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to arise quite independently of Kripke, from the attack by the authors on the Humean view of modality. They also mention the possibility of the apriori contingent. |
15252 | If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Even in cases (such as Goldbach's Conjecture) which, if true, are logically necessary, we may be able to conceive the opposite. We can conceive of there being a number which is not the sum of two primes. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: [attributed to Kneale] Ah, but can we conceive this (as Descartes would say) 'clearly and distinctly'? I can conceive circular squares, as long as I don't concentrate too hard. |
5991 | For Aristotle, knowledge is of causes, and is theoretical, practical or productive [Aristotle, by Code] |
Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that in general we have knowledge or understanding when we grasp causes, and he distinguishes three fundamental types of knowledge - theoretical, practical and productive. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Alan D. Code - Aristotle | |
A reaction: Productive knowledge we tend to label as 'knowing how'. The centrality of causes for knowledge would get Aristotle nowadays labelled as a 'naturalist'. It is hard to disagree with his three types, though they may overlap. |
15245 | It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: It would be silly to suggest that what is a matter of experience must be justified by reason, and it makes no sense to say that what we are insisting upon as a matter of direct experience must itself be established by experience. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: The first half is now known as the 'Moorean' view (Idea 6349). It does make sense, when faced with a weird experience, to assess and establish it by means of a combination of reason and other experiences. It's called 'coherence'! |
11239 | The notion of a priori truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of a priori truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11240. |
20298 | The traditional a priori is justified without experience; post-Quine it became unrevisable by experience [Rey] |
Full Idea: Where Kant and others had traditionally assumed that the a priori concerned beliefs 'justifiable independently of experience', Quine and others of the time came to regard it as beliefs 'unrevisable in the light of experience'. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
A reaction: That throws a rather striking light on Quine's project. Of course, if the a priori is also necessary, then it has to be unrevisable. But is a bachelor necessarily an unmarried man? It is not necessary that 'bachelor' has a fixed meaning. |
15244 | We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: It seems clear that we are never presented with a quality except of some object. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that that 'seems clear'. The idea of sense-data is that while it seems to be of an object, reason suggests that the experience of the quality must precede the object assembled thereby. How do you arbitrate? |
15248 | Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: To the objection that one is never aware of inferences in sensation, the unconvincing reply comes that such inferences are automatic, telescoped, non-discursive and unconscious. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: I think the 'unconvincing' reply is a bit more convincing in the light of modern research on the brain, which presents everything it does in a far less conscious light than the traditional view. Even reason seems barely conscious. |
23312 | Aristotle is a rationalist, but reason is slowly acquired through perception and experience [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: Aristotle is a rationalist …but reason for him is a disposition which we only acquire over time. Its acquisition is made possible primarily by perception and experience. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.173 | |
A reaction: I would describe this process as the gradual acquisition of the skill of objectivity, which needs the right knowledge and concepts to evaluate new experiences. |
15269 | Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean event, the impression, basic to his epistemology, is, as we have seen, instantaneous in nature, punctiform and elemenentary, and from this characterisation follows its atomicity, its lack of internal connections with anything else. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This simple point about Humean associationism is the key to grasping the whole hideous worldview that has gripped twentieth century philosophy. How many impressions make up an apple? And why do they sum to make something? |
16111 | Aristotle wants to fit common intuitions, and therefore uses language as a guide [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
Full Idea: Since Aristotle generally prefers a metaphysical theory that accords with common intuitions, he frequently relies on facts about language to guide his metaphysical claims. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
A reaction: I approve of his procedure. I take intuition to be largely rational justifications too complex for us to enunciate fully, and language embodies folk intuitions in its concepts (especially if the concepts occur in many languages). |
16971 | Plato says sciences are unified around Forms; Aristotle says they're unified around substance [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
Full Idea: Plato's unity of science principle states that all - legitimate - sciences are ultimately about the Forms. Aristotle's principle states that all sciences must be, ultimately, about substances, or aspects of substances. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], 1) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 |
15286 | Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3) | |
A reaction: I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection. |
15283 | Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: [They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms). |
15316 | The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists. |
15225 | Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The task of natural science is to investigate the nature of a thing or substance, and to test hypotheses as to the constitution of that thing or substance. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to suggest that science is only concerned with the very small, but it would include facts such as the dramatic change of a lump of uranium when it grows bigger. |
15298 | We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
A reaction: If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302. |
15255 | Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: 'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
A reaction: I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I. |
15270 | Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The atomicity of Humean events ensures the sequential independence of properties, ...and this in turn leads to the Humean problem of induction. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as pretty good analysis of what has gone wrong with the Humean account. As far as I can see, the 'problem' of induction just doesn't occur in scientific essentialism. |
15284 | Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation. |
15285 | The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view. |
15287 | The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The generating mechanism that produces black raven-like beings is assumed in the according of potential law status to the statement that all ravens are black. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: This is a very nice succinct statement of what I take to be the scientific essentialist view of induction. It isn't about building up Humean habits of regularity, but of gradually inferring explanatory mechanisms, which might even give necessities. |
11243 | Aristotelian explanations are facts, while modern explanations depend on human conceptions [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: For Aristotle things which explain (the explanantia) are facts, which should not be associated with the modern view that says explanations are dependent on how we conceive and describe the world (where causes are independent of us). | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
A reaction: There must be some room in modern thought for the Aristotelian view, if some sort of robust scientific realism is being maintained against the highly linguistic view of philosophy found in the twentieth century. |
15306 | Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Only changes require explanation. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
A reaction: This points to powers as the fundamentals of all explanations, whereas if stasis also has to be explained then structures and matter have to be explained. Why is there something rather than nothing? No explanations allowed! |
15293 | If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow. |
15294 | Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality. |
3320 | Aristotle's standard analysis of species and genus involves specifying things in terms of something more general [Aristotle, by Benardete,JA] |
Full Idea: The standard Aristotelian doctrine of species and genus in the theory of anything whatever involves specifying what the thing is in terms of something more general. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 |
15254 | If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
A reaction: They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct. |
15317 | Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Usually in science the powers/natures formula does lead to the imagining of hypothetical mechanisms which might be discovered to be real. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: The underlying mechanism is what I take Aristotle to have proposed, and it is the instinctive explanation by children (charted by Susan Gelman). |
15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say. |
12000 | Aristotle regularly says that essential properties explain other significant properties [Aristotle, by Kung] |
Full Idea: The view that essential properties are those in virtue of which other significant properties of the subjects under investigation can be explained is encountered repeatedly in Aristotle's work. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
A reaction: What does 'significant' mean here? I take it that the significant properties are the ones which explain the role, function and powers of the object. |
15219 | Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Capacities just as much as powers, what particulars and substances are liable to undergo as well as what they are able to do, are explained by reference to what the thing is in itself. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: This is an important warning against trying to give the whole account in terms of powers - unless the capacities and structures and categorical properties can also be explained in terms of the basic powers. |
15301 | The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concepts of power, capacity and the nature of a particular involve generalisations and hence already presuppose that there are grounds for extrapolation. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.V) | |
A reaction: I take sortal essentialism to be a serious misundertanding, but the mistake needs to be explained, and this idea is helpful towards that. I think the problem resides in the nature of the language we need to describe particulars. |
23300 | Aristotle and the Stoics denied rationality to animals, while Platonists affirmed it [Aristotle, by Sorabji] |
Full Idea: Aristotle, and also the Stoics, denied rationality to animals. …The Platonists, the Pythagoreans, and some more independent Aristotelians, did grant reason and intellect to animals. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Richard Sorabji - Rationality 'Denial' | |
A reaction: This is not the same as affirming or denying their consciousness. The debate depends on how rationality is conceived. |
15226 | What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A statement which asserts that a substance or thing must manifest certain properties in order to be identified as a thing or substance of that sort can be laid down a priori. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This observation is encountered in Sidelle, but this is earlier, and seems to be the key to the Twin Earth thing. It is just convention whether we call XYZ water, or whether there are two sorts of jade or one. Science has prestige. |
20300 | Externalist synonymy is there being a correct link to the same external phenomena [Rey] |
Full Idea: Externalists are typically committed to counting expressions as 'synonymous' if they happen to be linked in the right way to the same external phenomena, even if a thinker couldn't realise that they are by reflection alone. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.2) | |
A reaction: [He cites Fodor] Externalists always try to link to concrete things in the world, but most of our talk is full of generalities, abstractions and fiction which don't link directly to anything. |
20294 | 'Married' does not 'contain' its symmetry, nor 'bigger than' its transitivity [Rey] |
Full Idea: If Bob is married to Sue, then Sue is married to Bob. If x bigger than y, and y bigger than z, x is bigger than z. The symmetry of 'marriage' or transitivity of 'bigger than' are not obviously 'contained in' the corresponding thoughts. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
A reaction: [Also 'if something is red, then it is coloured'] This is a Fregean criticism of Kant. It is not so much that Kant was wrong, as that the concept of analyticity is seen to have a much wider application than Kant realised. Especially in mathematics. |
20293 | Analytic judgements can't be explained by contradiction, since that is what is assumed [Rey] |
Full Idea: Rejecting 'a married bachelor' as contradictory would seem to have no justification other than the claim that 'All bachelors are unmarried is analytic, and so cannot serve to justify or explain that claim. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 1.2) | |
A reaction: Rey is discussing Frege's objection to Kant (who tried to prove the necessity of analytic judgements, on the basis of the denial being a contradiction). |
20297 | Analytic statements are undeniable (because of meaning), rather than unrevisable [Rey] |
Full Idea: What's peculiar about the analytic is that denying it seem unintelligible. Far from unrevisability explaining analyticity, it seems to be analyticitiy that explains unrevisability; we only balk at denying unmarried bachelors because that's what it means! | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 3.7) | |
A reaction: This is a criticism of Quine, who attacked analyticity when it is understood as unrevisability. Obviously we could revise the concept of 'bachelor', if our marriage customs changed a lot. Rey seems right here. |
20301 | The meaning properties of a term are those which explain how the term is typically used [Rey] |
Full Idea: It may be that the meaning properties of a term are the ones that play a basic explanatory role with regard to the use of the term generally, the ones in virtue ultimately of which a term is used with that meaning. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.3) | |
A reaction: [He cites Devitt 1996, 2002, and Horwich 1998, 2005) I spring to philosophical life whenever I see the word 'explanatory', because that is the point of the whole game. They are pointing to the essence of the concept (which is explanatory, say I). |
20302 | An intrinsic language faculty may fix what is meaningful (as well as grammatical) [Rey] |
Full Idea: The existence of a separate language faculty may be an odd but psychologically real fact about us, and it may thereby supply a real basis for commitments about not only what is or is not grammatical, but about what is a matter of natural language meaning. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is the Chomskyan view of analytic sentences. An example from Chomsky (1977:142) is the semantic relationships of persuade, intend and believe. It's hard to see how the secret faculty on its own could do the job. Consensus is needed. |
20303 | Research throws doubts on the claimed intuitions which support analyticity [Rey] |
Full Idea: The movement of 'experimental philosophy' has pointed to evidence of considerable malleability of subject's 'intuitions' with regard to the standard kinds of thought experiments on which defenses of analytic claims typically rely. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.4) | |
A reaction: See Cappelen's interesting attack on the idea that philosophy relies on intuitions, and hence his attack on experimental philosophy. Our consensus on ordinary English usage hardly qualifies as somewhat vague 'intuitions'. |
11240 | The notion of analytic truth is absent in Aristotle [Aristotle, by Politis] |
Full Idea: The notion of analytic truth is conspicuously absent in Aristotle. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.5 | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 11239. |
20299 | If we claim direct insight to what is analytic, how do we know it is not sub-consciously empirical? [Rey] |
Full Idea: How in the end are we going to distinguish claims or the analytic as 'rational insight', 'primitive compulsion', inferential practice or folk belief from merely some deeply held empirical conviction, indeed, from mere dogma. | |
From: Georges Rey (The Analytic/Synthetic Distinction [2013], 4.1) | |
A reaction: This is Rey's summary of the persisting Quinean challenge to analytic truths, in the face of a set of replies, summarised by the various phrases here. So do we reject a dogma of empiricism, by asserting dogmatic empiricism? |
15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: To attribute necessity to a condition, an outcome or effect, the truth of a statement, or a conclusion, is to indicate within the relevant context that no alternative is possible. In each context there are appropriate grounds for such judgements. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V) | |
A reaction: This anticipipates Kit Fine's account of necessity by 25 years, and seems to be the right way to understand it. In ordinary usage, 'there is no alternative' is obvious a quite different claim in very different contexts. |
6559 | Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal [Aristotle, by Fogelin] |
Full Idea: To the best of my knowledge (and somewhat to my surprise), Aristotle never actually says that man is a rational animal; however, he all but says it. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.1 | |
A reaction: When I read this I thought that this database would prove Fogelin wrong, but it actually supports him, as I can't find it in Aristotle either. Descartes refers to it in Med.Two. In Idea 5133 Aristotle does say that man is a 'social being'. But 22586! |
11150 | It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain an idea without accepting it. | |
From: Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) | |
A reaction: The epigraph on a David Chalmers website. A wonderful remark, and it should be on the wall of every beginners' philosophy class. However, while it is in the spirit of Aristotle, it appears to be a misattribution with no ancient provenance. |
3037 | Aristotle said the educated were superior to the uneducated as the living are to the dead [Aristotle, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Aristotle was asked how much educated men were superior to those uneducated; "As much," he said, "as the living are to the dead." | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 05.1.11 |
8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michčle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity involves the concept of generative mechanisms and powerful particulars, and these in turn can be the basis of a useful notion of a natural kind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: Not sure about that. Say gold and silver are two kinds that lead to two outcomes. Each is a natural necessity. How do you distinguish them? Only by one being the gold-necessity and the other the silver-necessity. Circular? |
15299 | Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We know from biology that naturally occurring species do not exhibit the constancy required by the concept of natural kind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
A reaction: This view has been challenged recently. How much constancy does a natural kind need? Even protons decay eventually, it seems. I think a natural kind just needs a fair degree of stability over a reasonable time-period. Tigers qualify. |
15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics. |
15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different. |
15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient. |
15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'. |
15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B) | |
A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered. |
15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation. |
15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The original Humean suggestion was that lawlike statements must contain only purely qualitative predicates - that is, predicates which do not require in a statement of their meaning a reference to any particular object or spatio-temporal location. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: Harré and Madden are keen to promote particulars (with powers) as the foundation of scientific theory, and I agree with them. It strikes me as quite elementary that generalisations arise from particulars, so can't fundamentally explain them. |
15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The whole idea of a formal analysis of the concept of lawlikeness has come to seem hopeless; every syntactical criterion proposed has a counter-example. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: They seem unaware of Lewis's work in this area, which may be the most sophisticated attempt at a (Humean) attempt at formal analysis. Personally I see nothing in Lewis that would make them change their minds. |
15223 | Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Given some general theory specifying the fundamental causal powers and thereby laying down the general lineaments of a world, the necessity of certain effects can be inferred. They will be 'hypothetically necessary' (given those powers). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.B) | |
A reaction: This is a pretty good statement of the core idea of necessity at the heart of scientific essentialism. Are we to call this 'natural' necessity or 'metaphysical' necessity? Presumably it is 'relative' necessity. Big implications for induction! |
15241 | Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Humeans say there can be no element of necessity in the causal relation because the conjunction of a description of a cause with the negation of a description of its usual effect is never self-contradictory. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
A reaction: We might say there actually is a contradiction, because you assert the existence of something, and then deny that existence by denying that the effect could occur. If the object is inert this is wrong, but if it is defined by its powers it is right. |
15240 | In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The only sure way of distinguishing lawful and accidental universal statements is to point out that in the former cases we see why the regularity must hold, while in the latter case we do not. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: I agree with this, and also take it to be the solution to the problem of induction. That smoking causes cancer will be a true generalisation but not a law, until we see clearly why it happens. |
15239 | We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome. |
15243 | We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A moving thing is perceptually distinct from a motionless thing, but takes on no new quality. The perception of its motion is a genuine perception. Its motion is not inferred from observation of its successive occupations of different relative positions. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a response to Russell's reductive 'at-at' account of motion, which always struck me as wrong. It doesn't prove Russell wrong, of course, and they are trying to demonstrate that we perceive causation directly. |
15265 | 'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In the case of electron/positron/gamma ray annihilation scientists maintain the paradigm of rational explanation by inventing a quasi-substance as the bearer of continuity, and all three are seen in terms of 'energy'. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
A reaction: What a relief to see energy described as a 'quasi-substance'. I spent all of my physics studies bewildered by the nature of energy (especially when described as 'pure energy'). What does e=mc^2 mean if e is a quasi-substance? |
15280 | 'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The 'store' of kinetic energy is used as a latency concept to explain the power of bringing about changes which is manifested by the moving thing when its motion is arrested. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: These ideas have been most illuminating in connecting for me the general idea of a 'power' to the rather dubious concept of 'energy' in physics. |
15321 | Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Space lacks a place, and does not qualify as an individual, since the ordinary notion of individuals relates to place not space. ...But we can think of space as present in every place through the necessary connection between space and all places. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I understand it being present in every place, given that it is every place. |
15259 | Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The same electronic constitution confers two distinct powers upon chemical atoms: the power of entering only into certain chemical combinations and the power to radiate a particular spectrum. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VI) | |
A reaction: Presumably radioactive elements emit other radiation. Do atoms have passive powers as well as active ones? |
15263 | Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Modern chemistry is not, as chemistry, purely structural. ...Thus CO2 is a different substance from SO2. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
A reaction: I don't think I ever thought the chemistry was purely structural, but if you go in for the idea that reality is essentially geometrical (inspired by physics, presumably, like Ladyman) then you might make this mistake. |
15295 | Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Theism is supposedly a positive view that renders the world more intelligible than its alternatives, and this professed programme requires the production of results. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.VI) | |
A reaction: A nice articulation of a view of theism which will make believers wince, because Harré and Madden see it as a scientific theory, intended to explain the world. I'm with them. I see Plato's theory of Forms as a scientific theory. |
22729 | The concepts of gods arose from observing the soul, and the cosmos [Aristotle, by Sext.Empiricus] |
Full Idea: Aristotle said that the conception of gods arose among mankind from two originating causes, namely from events which concern the soul and from celestial phenomena. | |
From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE], Frag 10) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.20 | |
A reaction: The cosmos suggests order, and possible creation. What do events of the soul suggest? It doesn't seem to be its non-physical nature, because Aristotle is more of a functionalist. Puzzling. (It says later that gods are like the soul). |