62 ideas
| 20678 | The Scientific Revolution was the discovery of our own ignorance [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The great discovery of the Scientific Revolution was that humans do not know the answers to their most important question. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
| A reaction: I think of that revolution as raising the bar in epistemology, but this idea gives a motivation for doing so. Why the discovery then, and not before? |
| 20686 | For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another [Harari] |
| Full Idea: For millenia people didn't know how to convert one type of energy into another, …and the only machine capable of performing energy conversion was the body. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Hence the huge and revolutionary importance of the steam engine and the electricity generator. |
| 7950 | Philosophy tries to explain how the actual is possible, given that it seems impossible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Philosophical problems are problems about how what is actual is possible, given that what is actual appears, because of some faulty argument, to be impossible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: [She is discussing universals when she makes this comment] A very appealing remark, given that most people come into philosophy because of a mixture of wonder and puzzlement. It is a rather Wittgensteinian view, though, that we must cure our own ills. |
| 7923 | 'Did it for the sake of x' doesn't involve a sake, so how can ontological commitments be inferred? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In 'She did it for the sake of her country' no one thinks that the expression 'the sake' refers to an individual thing, a sake. But given that, how can we work out what the ontological commitments of a theory actually are? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: For these sorts of reasons it rapidly became obvious that ordinary language analysis wasn't going to reveal much, but it is also a problem for a project like Quine's, which infers an ontology from the terms of a scientific theory. |
| 7933 | Don't assume that a thing has all the properties of its parts [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of composition makes the erroneous assumption that every property of the things that constitute a thing is a property of the thing as well. But every large object is constituted by small parts, and every red object by colourless parts. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: There are nice questions here like 'If you add lots of smallness together, why don't you get extreme smallness?' Colours always make bad examples in such cases (see Idea 5456). Distinctions are needed here (e.g. Idea 7007). |
| 17743 | De Morgan introduced a 'universe of discourse', to replace Boole's universe of 'all things' [De Morgan, by Walicki] |
| Full Idea: In 1846 De Morgan introduced the enormously influential notion of a possibly arbitrary and stipulated 'universe of discourse'. It replaced Boole's original - and metaphysically a bit suspect - universe of 'all things'. | |
| From: report of Augustus De Morgan (works [1846]) by Michal Walicki - Introduction to Mathematical Logic History D.1.1 | |
| A reaction: This not only brings formal logic under control, but also reflects normal talk, because there is always an explicit or implicit domain of discourse when we talk. Of virtually any conversation, you can say what it is 'about'. |
| 7944 | Reduce by bridge laws (plus property identities?), by elimination, or by reducing talk [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are four kinds of reduction: the identifying of entities of two theories by means of bridge or correlation laws; the elimination of entities in favour of the other theory; reducing by bridge laws and property identities; and merely reducing talk. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3 n5) | |
| A reaction: [She gives references] The idea of 'bridge laws' I regard with caution. If bridge laws are ceteris paribus, they are not much help, and if they are strict, or necessary, then there must be an underlying reason for that, which is probably elimination. |
| 7938 | Relational properties are clearly not essential to substances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: In statements attributing relational properties ('Felix is my favourite cat'), it seems clear that the property truly attributed to the substance is not essential to it. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A fairly obvious point, but an important one when mapping out (cautiously) what we actually mean by 'property'. However, maybe the relational property is essential: the ceiling is ('is' of predication!) above the room. |
| 7967 | Being taller is an external relation, but properties and substances have internal relations [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The relation of being taller than is an external relation, since it relates two independent material substances, but the relation of instantiation or exemplification is internal, in that it relates a substance with a property. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: An interesting revival of internal relations. To be plausible it would need clear notions of 'property' and 'substance'. We are getting a long way from physics, and I sense Ockham stropping his Razor. How do you individuate a 'relation'? |
| 7965 | Does the knowledge of each property require an infinity of accompanying knowledge? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: An object's being two inches long seems to guarantee an infinite number of other properties, such as being less than three inches long. If we must understand the second property to understand the first, then there seems to be a vicious infinite regress. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: She dismisses this by saying that we don't need to know an infinity of numbers in order to count. I would say that we just need to distinguish between intrinsic and relational properties. You needn't know all a thing's relations to know the thing. |
| 7934 | Tropes are abstract (two can occupy the same place), but not universals (they have locations) [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are abstract entities, at least in the sense that more than one can be in the same place at the same time (e.g. redness and roundness). But they are not universals, because they have unique and particular locations. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I'm uneasy about the reification involved in this kind of talk. Does a coin possess a thing called 'roundness', which then has to be individuated, identified and located? I am drawn to the two extreme views, and suspicious of compromise. |
| 7958 | Properties are sets of exactly resembling property-particulars [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope Nominalism says properties are classes or sets of exactly similar or resembling tropes, where tropes are what we might called 'property-tokens' or 'particularized properties'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We still seem to have the problem of 'resembling' here, and we certainly have the perennial problem of why any given particular should be placed in any particular set. See Idea 7959. |
| 7972 | Tropes are abstract particulars, not concrete particulars, so the theory is not nominalist [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Trope 'Nominalism' is not a version of nominalism, because tropes are abstract particulars, rather than concrete particulars. Of course, a trope account of the relations between particulars and their properties has ramifications for concrete particulars. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 7971. At this point the boundary between nominalist and realist theories seems to blur. Possibly that is bad news for tropes. Not many dilemmas can be solved by simply blurring the boundary. |
| 7959 | How do a group of resembling tropes all resemble one another in the same way? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how a group of resembling tropes can be of the same type, that is, that they can resemble one another in the same way. This problem is not settled simply by positing tropes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a fundamental fact that there is no resemblance unless the respect of resemblance is specified. Two identical objects could still said to be different because of their locations. Is resemblance natural or conventional? Consider atoms. |
| 7960 | Trope Nominalism is the only nominalism to introduce new entities, inviting Ockham's Razor [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Of all the nominalist solutions, Trope Nominalism is the only one that tries to solve the problem at issue by introducing entities; all the others try to get by with concrete particulars and sets of them. This might invite Ockham's Razor. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: We could reply that tropes are necessities. The issue seems to be a key one, which is whether our fundamental onotology should include properties (in some form or other). I am inclined to exclude them (Ideas 3322, 3906, 4029). |
| 7951 | Numerical sameness is explained by theories of identity, but what explains qualitative identity? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can distinguish between numerical identity and qualitative identity. Numerical sameness is explained by a theory of identity, but what explains qualitative sameness? | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The distinction is between type and token identity. Tokens are particulars, and types are sets, so her question comes down to the one of what entitles something to be a member of a set? Nothing, if sets are totally conventional, but they aren't. |
| 7964 | How can universals connect instances, if they are nothing like them? [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The 'one over many' problem is to explain how universals can unify their instances if they are wholly other than them. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If universals are self-predicating (beauty is beautiful) then they have a massive amount in common, despite one being general. You then have the regress problem of explaining the beauty of the beautiful. Baffling regress, or baffling participation. |
| 7971 | Real Nominalism is only committed to concrete particulars, word-tokens, and (possibly) sets [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: All real forms of Nominalism should hold that the only objects relevant to the explanation of generality are concrete particulars, words (i.e. word-tokens, not word-types), and perhaps sets. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6 n16) | |
| A reaction: The addition of sets seems controversial (see Idea 7970). The context is her rejection of the use of tropes in nominalist theories. I would doubt whether a theory still counted as nominalist if it admitted sets (e.g. Quine). |
| 7955 | Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain either new resemblances, or absence of resemblances [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Resemblance Nominalism cannot explain the fact that we know when and in what way new objects resemble old ones, and that we know when and in what ways new objects do not resemble old ones. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear what sort of theory would be needed to 'explain' such a thing. Unless there is an explanation of resemblance waiting in the wings (beyond asserting that resemblance is a universal), then this is not a strong objection. |
| 7961 | A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The so-called 'laws of thinghood' govern particulars, saying that one thing cannot be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Is this an empirical observation, or a tautology? Or might it even be a priori synthetic? What happens when two water drops or clouds merge? Or an amoeba fissions? In what sense is an image in two places at once? Se also Idea 2351. |
| 7926 | We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: We can usefully refer to 'individuation conditions', to distinguish objects of that kind from objects not of that kind, and to 'identity conditions', to distinguish objects within that kind from one another. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: So we individuate types or sets, and identify tokens or particulars. Sounds good. Should be in every philosopher's toolkit, and on every introductory philosophy course. |
| 7936 | Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances have a kind of unity that mere collocations of properties do not have, namely an instrinsic unity. So substances cannot be collocations - bundles - of properties. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A team is a unity. Compare a similar thought, Idea 1395, about personal identity. How can something which is a pure unity have more than one property? What distinguishes substances? Why can't a substance have a certain property? |
| 7930 | The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory of substance requires unconditional commitment to the truth of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: that things that are alike with respect to all of their properties are identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Since the identity of indiscernibles is very dubious (see Ideas 1365, 4476, 5746, 7928), this is bad news for the bundle theory. I suspect that all of these problems arise because no one seems to have a clear concept of a property. |
| 7932 | A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Commitment to the view that only what can be an object of possible sensory experience can exist eliminates the possibility of distinguishing between substance and attribute, leaving only one alternative, namely the bundle view. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Phenomenalism strikes me as a paradigm case of confusing ontology with epistemology. Presumably physicists (even empiricist ones) are committed to the 'interior' of quarks and electrons, but no one expects to experience them. |
| 7937 | When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory makes all true statements ascribing properties to substances uninformative, by making them logical truths. The property of being a feline animal is literally a constituent of a cat. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The solution would seem to a distinction between accidental and essential properties. Compare 'that plane is red' with 'that plane has wings'. 'Of course it does - it's a plane'. We might still survive without a plane-substance. |
| 7939 | Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Substances are capable of persisting through change, where this involves change in properties; but the bundle theory has the consequence that substances cannot survive change. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Her example is an apple remaining an apple when it turns brown. It doesn't look, though, as if there is a precise moment when the apple-substance ceases. The end of an apple seems to be more a matter of a loss of crucial properties. |
| 7940 | A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Maybe a substance is not itself a bundle of properties, but a sum or sequence of bundles of properties, a bundle of bundles of properties (which 'perdures' rather than 'endures'). | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: There remains the problem of deciding when the bundle has drifted too far away from the original to perdure correctly. A caterpillar can turn into a butterfly (which is pretty bizarre!), but not into a cathedral. Why? She says this idea denies change. |
| 7948 | A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Because a statue and the lump of matter that constitute it have different persistence conditions, they are not identical. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Maybe being a statue is a relational property? All the relational properties of a thing will have different persistence conditions. Suppose I see a face in a bowl of sugar, and you don't? |
| 7929 | A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The three main theories of substance are the bundle theory (Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Ayer), the bare substratum theory (Locke and Bergmann), and the essentialist theory. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Macdonald defends the essentialist theory. The essentialist view immediately appeals to me. Properties must be OF something, and the something must have the power to produce properties. So there. |
| 7941 | Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: A rival to the bundle theory says that, for each substance, there is a constituent of it that is not a property but is both essential and unique to it, this constituent being referred to as a 'bare particular' or 'substratum'. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound promising. It is unclear what existence devoid of all properties could be like. How could it 'have' its properties if it was devoid of features (it seems to need property-hooks)? It is an ontological black hole. How do you prove it? |
| 7942 | The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: If there is a substratum or bare particular within a substance, this gives an explanation of the unity of substances, and it is something which can survive intact when a substance changes. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: [v. compressed wording] Many problems here. The one that strikes me is that when things change they sometimes lose their unity and identity, and that seems to be decided entirely from observation of properties, not from assessing the substratum. |
| 7943 | A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be no way of identifying a substratum as the bearer of qualities without qualifiying it as bare (having the property of being bare?), ..and they cannot be used to individuate things, because they are necessarily indiscernible. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The defence would probably be a priori, claiming an axiomatic necessity for substrata in our thinking about the world, along with a denial that bareness is a property (any more than not being a contemporary of Napoleon is a property). |
| 7927 | At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: There are three distinct versions of Leibniz's Law, all traced to remarks made by Leibniz: the Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing), the Indiscernibility of Identicals (same thing, same properties), and the Substitution Principle. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: The best view seems to be to treat the second one as Leibniz's Law (and uncontroversially true), and the first one as being an interesting but dubious claim. |
| 7928 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: One common argument to the conclusion that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is false is that it is not necessarily true. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2 n32) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a good argument. If you test the Principle with an example ('this butler is the murderer') then total identity does not seem to necessitate identity, though it strongly implies it (the butler may have a twin etc). |
| 7947 | In continuity, what matters is not just the beginning and end states, but the process itself [Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: What matters to continuity is not just the beginning and end states of the process by which a thing persists, perhaps through change, but the process itself. | |
| From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a really important insight. Compare Idea 4931. If this is the key to understanding mind and personal identity, it means that the concept of a 'process' must be a central issue in ontology. How do you individuate a process? |
| 20692 | Money does produce happiness, but only up to a point [Harari] |
| Full Idea: An interesting conclusion (from questionnaires) is that money does indeed bring happiness. But only up to a point, and beyond that point it has little significance. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
| A reaction: The question is whether that flattening-off point is relative to those around us, or absolute, according to the needs of living. Though these two may not be separate. |
| 20663 | If a group is bound by gossip, the natural size is 150 people [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Sociological research has shown that the maximum 'natural' size of a group bound by gossip is about 150 individuals. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 02 'Legend') | |
| A reaction: On the other hand, most of us can learn the names of a group of about 450. Maybe the 'known' group and the 'gossip' group are equally significant. Not much use for a modern state, but of interest to communitarians. |
| 20677 | Since 1500 human population has increased fourteenfold, and consumption far more [Harari] |
| Full Idea: In the year 1500 there were about 500 million Homo sapiens in the world. Today there are 7 billion. …Human population has increased fourteenfold, our production 240-fold, and energy consumption 115-fold. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Discovery') | |
| A reaction: We really need to grasp how extraordinary this is. |
| 20688 | People 300m tons; domesticated animals 700m tons; larger wild animals 100m tons [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The combined mass of homo sapiens is about 300 million tons; the mass of all domesticated farmyard animals is about 700 million tons; the mass of the surviving larger wild animals (from porcupines up) is less than 100 million tons. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Permanent') | |
| A reaction: These really are figures that deserve much wider currency. Every school entrance hall needs a board with a few of the basic dramatic statistics about human life on Earth. |
| 20674 | The Nazi aim was to encourage progressive evolution, and avoid degeneration [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The main ambition of the Nazis was to protect humankind from degeneration and encourage its progressive evolution. …Given the state of scientific knowledge in 1933, Nazi beliefs were hardly outside the pale. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Worship') | |
| A reaction: It still sounds a fairly worthy ambition, close to the heart of educationalists everywhere. The problems start with the definition of 'degeneration' and 'progress'. |
| 20679 | We stabilise societies with dogmas, either of dubious science, or of non-scientific values [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Modern attempts to stabilise the sociopolitical order either declare a scientific theory (such as racial theories for Nazis, or economic ones for Communists) to be an absolute truths, or declare non-scientific dogmas (such as liberal values) | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 14 'Ignoramus') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 20690 | The state fostered individualism, to break the power of family and community [Harari] |
| Full Idea: States and markets use their growing power to weaken the bonds of family and community. They made an offer that couldn't be refused - 'become individuals' (over marriage, jobs and residence). The 'romantic individual' is not a rebel against the state. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] See the film 'Breaking the Waves'. An interesting slant on the Romantic movement. See Wordsworth's 'Michael'. Capitalism needs shoppers with their own money, and a mobile workforce. |
| 20689 | In 1750 losing your family and community meant death [Harari] |
| Full Idea: A person who lost her family and community around 1750 was as good as dead. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Collapse') | |
| A reaction: This is a very good advert for liberal individualism, and marks the downside of 'too much community'. |
| 20681 | The sacred command of capitalism is that profits must be used to increase production [Harari] |
| Full Idea: In the new capitalist creed, the first and most sacred commandment is: The profits of production must be reinvested in increasing production. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: In this sense, capitalism is less greedy than its predecessors. 17th century aristocratic monopolists simply spent the profits of their activities. See the gorgeous clothes then (and pyramids and palaces), and the quiet suits of capitalists. |
| 20682 | The main rule of capitalism is that all other goods depend on economic growth [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The principle tenet of capitalism is that economic growth is the supreme good, or at least a proxy for it, because justice, freedom, and even happiness all depend on economic growth. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: In this respect, the main opponent of captitalism is green politics, rather than marxism. |
| 20683 | The progress of capitalism depends entirely on the new discoveries and gadgets of science [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The history of capitalism is unintelligible without taking science into account. …The human economy has managed to keep on going only thanks to the fact that scientists come up with a new discovery or gadget every few years. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Growing') | |
| A reaction: For example, the desperate but unconvincing attempts to persuade us of the novelty of new models of car. Built-in obsolescence is needed once a design becomes static. |
| 20687 | In capitalism the rich invest, and the rest of us go shopping [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The supreme commandment of the rich is 'invest!', and the supreme commandment of the rest of us is 'buy!' | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 17 'Age') | |
| A reaction: Hence not only do the rich get much richer, while most of us remain roughly where we were, but there is a huge gulf between the investors and the non-investors. Encouraging small investors is a step forward. |
| 20685 | No market is free of political bias, and markets need protection of their freedoms [Harari] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as a market free of all political bias, …and markets by themselves offer no protection against fraud, theft and violence. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Cult') | |
| A reaction: Is this in theory, or in practice? In Sicily the free market has been a tool of the mafia. |
| 20693 | Freedom may work against us, as individuals can choose to leave, and make fewer commitments [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The freedom we value so highly may work against us. We can choose our spouses, friends and neighbours, but they can choose to leave us. With the individual wielding unprecedented power to decide her own path, we find it ever harder to make commitments. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 19 'Counting') | |
| A reaction: This is the worry of the communitarian. I take freedom to be a great social virtue - but an overrated one. |
| 20691 | Real peace is the implausibility of war (and not just its absence) [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Real peace is not the mere absence of war. Real peace is the implausibility of war. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 18 'Pax') | |
| A reaction: I have a nasty feeling that war only becomes implausible because it hasn't happened for a long time. War looked implausible for Britain in 1890. War certainly now looks implausible in western Europe. |
| 20684 | Financing is increasingly through credit rather than taxes; people prefer investing to taxation [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The European conquest of the world was increasingly financed through credit rather than taxes. …Nobody wants to pay taxes, but everyone is happy to invest. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 16 'Columbus') | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the mechanism that drives the unstoppable increase of the gulf between the rich and the poor in modern times. With investment, the rich get richer. |
| 20675 | The more you know about history, the harder it becomes to explain [Harari] |
| Full Idea: A distinguishing mark of history is that the better you know a historical period, the harder it becomes to explain why things happened one way and not another. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
| A reaction: Presumaby that means it resembles statistics. Each individual reading is perplexing, but some patterns emerge on the large scale. |
| 20676 | History teaches us that the present was not inevitable, and shows us the possibilities [Harari] |
| Full Idea: We study history not to know the future but to widen our horizons, to understand that our present situation is neither natural nor inevitable, and the we consequently have many more possibilities before us than we can imagine. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 13 'Hindsight') | |
| A reaction: On the whole winners forget history, and losers are branded through and through with it. If you don't know history, you can never understand the latter group. |
| 20671 | In order to explain both order and evil, a single evil creator is best, but no one favours that [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Monotheism explains order but not evil, and dualist religion explains evil but not order. One logical solution is a single omnipotent God who created the universe, and is evil - but nobody in history has had much stomach for that belief. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Eh? Is there not also good, which also needs explaining? And there is some chaos to be explained too. Hume offers the best explanations. An inexperienced god, a team of squabbling gods, a god with shifting moods…. Study the facts first. |
| 20664 | Animism is belief that every part of nature is aware and feeling, and can communicate [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Animism is the belief that almost every place, every animal, every plant and every natural phenomenon has awareness and feelings, and can communicated direct with humans. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 03 'Talking') | |
| A reaction: So does this count as a 'supernatural' belief system? It seems not, if the awareness is integral to the natural feature, and dies with it. Panpsychism is not supernatural either. A problem for anyone trying to define Naturalism. |
| 20666 | Most polytheist recognise one supreme power or law, behind the various gods [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism does not necessarily dispute the existence of a single power or law governing the entire universe. Most poytheist and even animist religions recognised such a supreme power that stands behind all the different gods, demons and holy rocks. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
| A reaction: Presumably this one supreme power was always taken to be too remote for communication or worship. Are the other gods seen as slaves, or friends, or ambassadors of the Supreme One? |
| 20667 | Polytheism is open-minded, and rarely persecutes opponents [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism is inherently open-minded, and rarely persecutes 'heretics' and 'infidels'. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Benefits') | |
| A reaction: The Old Testament tells of the Jews turning on local pagans, and India was presumably tolerant Hindus encountering less tolerant Muslims. Then there's Christians in Africa. Dreadful bunch, the monotheists. Romans killed very few Christians. |
| 20665 | Mythologies are usual contracts with the gods, exchanging devotion for control of nature [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Much of ancient mythology is a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Silencing') | |
| A reaction: [He cites the first book of Genesis] So how readily do you swith allegiance, if someone else's gods are more successful? Why be loyal a loser. It should be like shopping - but I bet it wasn't. |
| 20669 | Dualist religions see everything as a battleground of good and evil forces [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Polytheism gave birth to monotheism, and to dualistic religions. Dualism explains that the entire universe is a battleground between good and evil forces, and everything that happens is part of that struggle. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Presumably we are supposed to support the good guys, so the gods are not equals. God v Satan seems the right model, but Satan has to be beyond God's control, or else the problem of evil has to be solved. Empedocles held something like this. |
| 20670 | Dualist religions say the cosmos is a battleground, so can’t explain its order [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Dualist religions solve the problem of evil, but are unnerved by the Problem of Order. …If Good and Evil battle for control of the world, who enforces the laws governing this cosmic war? | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: You might explain it if one side was persistently winning, which is roughly God v Satan. |
| 20673 | Manichaeans and Gnostics: good made spirit, evil made flesh [Harari] |
| Full Idea: Manichaeans and Gnostics argued that the good god created the spirit and the soul, whereas matter and bodes are the creation of the evil god. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'Battle') | |
| A reaction: Hm. What motivated the evil god to do that? The evil god's achievement looks a lot more impressive. |
| 20668 | Monotheism appeared in Egypt in 1350 BCE, when the god Aten was declared supreme [Harari] |
| Full Idea: The first monotheist religion known to us appeared in Egypt c.1350 BCE, when Pharaoh Akenaten declared that one of minor deities of the Egyptian pantheon, the god Aten, was in fact the supreme power ruling the universe. | |
| From: Yuval Noah Harari (Sapiens: brief history of humankind [2014], 12 'God') | |
| A reaction: Zeus seems to have started like a tribal chief, and eventually turned into something like God. |