43 ideas
| 21753 | If we look at the world rationally, the world assumes a rational aspect [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Whoever looks at the world rationally will find that it in turn assumes a rational aspect; the two exist in a reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], p.29), quoted by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 01 | |
| A reaction: What happens when I look at irrationality rationally? |
| 21974 | The world seems rational to those who look at it rationally [Hegel] |
| Full Idea: To him who looks at the world rationally, the world looks rationally back; the two exist in reciprocal relationship. | |
| From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on the Philosophy of (World) History [1837], Intro p.29), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This is a nice variation on the stoic idea that nature is essentially rational. If we are capable of rationality, then nature has made us that way. Romantics seem to prefer looking at nature less rationally, so what do they see in nature? |
| 4767 | Traditionally, rational beliefs are those which are justified by reasons [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of Reason is that all beliefs should be justified (that is, backed up by reasons) in order to be rational. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: I think it is the duty of all philosophers to either defend this traditional view, or quit philosophy for some other activity. Rorty suggests hermeneutics. In a democracy, rulers should be continually required to give reasons for their decisions. |
| 5784 | In its primary and formal sense, 'true' applies to propositions, not beliefs [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We call a belief true when it is belief in a true proposition, ..but it is to propositions that the primary formal meanings of 'truth' and 'falsehood' apply. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. A proposition such as 'it is raining' would need a date-and-time stamp to be a candidate for truth, and an indexical statement such as 'I am ill' would need to be asserted by a person. Of course, books can contain unread truths. |
| 5777 | The truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I take it as evident that the truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
| A reaction: A nice bold commitment to a controversial idea. The traditional objection is to ask how you are going to formulate the 'facts' except in terms of more beliefs, so you ending up comparing beliefs. Facts are a metaphysical commitment, not an acquaintance. |
| 5783 | Propositions of existence, generalities, disjunctions and hypotheticals make correspondence tricky [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence of proposition and fact grows increasingly complicated as we pass to more complicated types of propositions: existence-propositions, general propositions, disjunctive and hypothetical propositions, and so on. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: An important point. Truth must not just work for 'it is raining', but also for maths, logic, tautologies, laws etc. This is why so many modern philosophers have retreated to deflationary and minimal accounts of truth, which will cover all cases. |
| 4810 | Valid deduction is monotonic - that is, it remains valid if further premises are added [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Valid deductive arguments have the property of monotonicity; if the conclusion Q follows from the premises P, then it will also follow if further premises P* are added to P. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: For perversity's sake we could add a new premise which contradicted one of the original ones ('Socrates is a god'). Or one premise could be 'I believe..', and the new one could show that the belief was false. Induction is non-monotonic. |
| 4768 | The 'epistemic fallacy' is inferring what does exist from what can be known to exist [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The move from what can (or cannot) be known to exist to what does (or does not) exist has been dubbed the 'epistemic fallacy'. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: This should be a standard concept in all philosophical discussion. It is the commonest, simplest, and most profound blunder made by philosophers, and they do it all the time. |
| 5780 | The three questions about belief are its contents, its success, and its character [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There are three issues about belief: 1) the content which is believed, 2) the relation of the content to its 'objective' - the fact which makes it true or false, and 3) the element which is belief, as opposed to consideration or doubt or desire. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: The correct answers to the questions (trust me) are that propositions are the contents, the relation aimed at is truth, which is a 'metaphysical ideal' of correspondence to facts, and belief itself is an indefinable feeling. See Hume, Idea 2208. |
| 4807 | A good barometer will predict a storm, but not explain it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be predictions without explanations, as when a barometer successfully predicts storms, but on its own it does not explain them. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.8) | |
| A reaction: Actually, barometers contribute to explanations. A reasonable predictor might offer no explanation ('if he's out, she's probably out too'), but an infallible predictor is almost certain to involve causation, which helps a lot in explanation. |
| 4808 | If we say where Mars was two months ago, we offer an explanation without a prediction [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be explanations without predictions, as when we explain a previous position of Mars from its present one, plus a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.9) | |
| A reaction: If we don't mind stretching the word, I think we can 'predict' the past, as where I predict the location of an Egyptian tomb from my study of papyruses. |
| 4811 | Induction (unlike deduction) is non-monotonic - it can be invalidated by new premises [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Unlike deductive arguments, induction is non-monotonic - that is, it can be invalidated by the addition of new premises. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy way of stating the obvious, which is that induction is not a type of deduction. Hume is sometimes accused of this false assumption. Presumably induction is rational, even if it is not actually logical. |
| 4812 | Explanation is either showing predictability, or showing necessity, or showing causal relations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three types of explanation are 'epistemic' (the event is expectable because of a law), or 'modal' (the event is necessary because of a law), or 'ontic' (it is shown how the event fits into the world's causal structure). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §11.1) | |
| A reaction: Prediction, necessity or causes. It is hard to think of any other way to explain something. Presumably you would exclude necessities if you didn't believe in them. Hume would go for prediction, on the basis of regularities. Personally, I want it all. |
| 4802 | Just citing a cause does not enable us to understand an event; we also need a relevant law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Explanation has to do with understanding; just citing a cause would not offer an adequate understanding, unless it was accompanied by the citation of a law that connects the two events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: It is surely undeniable that being told the cause but not the law will increase our understanding. Understanding and explanation come in degrees. Full understanding would require an explanation of the law, and beyond. Any relevant truth helps. |
| 4804 | The 'covering law model' says only laws can explain the occurrence of single events [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The 'deductive-nomological' model became known as the 'covering law model': its main thesis is that laws and only laws adequately explain the occurrence of singular events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: But presumably you need other events to derive a law, so you could say that a singular event can only be explained if it isn't singular. A regularity pattern would offer a partial explanation, before any law had been derived. |
| 4805 | If laws explain the length of a flagpole's shadow, then the shadow also explains the length of the pole [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If we use geometry and optics to explain the length of shadow cast by a flag-pole, this seems to be reversible, so that the shadow will explain the length of the pole. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.5) | |
| A reaction: A neat example which presumably implies that an explanation must involve temporal statements. The laws of physics are totally reversible in time, and so will not suffice to explain events on their own. Time's arrow becomes an axiom of explanation? |
| 4395 | There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crucial basic point, which must be drummed into the minds of ruthless Quinean naturalists, who want to explain everything by quarks and electrons |
| 4806 | An explanation can just be a 'causal story', without laws, as when I knock over some ink [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Knocking over an ink bottle explains the stain on the carpet, and it is not in doubt because you cannot quote the laws involved; a 'causal story' can give a complete explanation without a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.6) | |
| A reaction: But why is he so clumsy, and the bottle so unstable? Was it really (Freudian) an 'accident'? There is no end to complete explanation. But 'I was clumsy this once' and 'I am always clumsy' are equally good explanations. |
| 4404 | Maybe explanation is entirely relative to the interests and presuppositions of the questioner [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers focus on the so-called 'pragmatics of explanation' - that an explanation is an answer to a 'why' question, and the relevant answer will depend on the presuppositions or interests of the questioner. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me right. Explanation is an entirely human business, not a feature of nature, and most explanations will track back to the big bang if you have the patience, but they always terminate because of pragmatic considerations. But fobbing off? |
| 4803 | An explanation is the removal of the surprise caused by the event [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: An explanation amounts to the removal of the initial surprise that accompanied the occurrence of the event. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice simple point. It makes explanation relative. God requires no explanations, small children require many. The implication is that explanations make events predictable, which means they must either offer inductive generalisations, or laws. |
| 4769 | It is hard to analyse causation, if it is presupposed in our theory of the functioning of the mind [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There is a problem if causation is the object of our analysis, but is also presupposed (as an empirical principle of human psychology) for the functioning of the mind. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.7) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound like a major problem. If it is, it is presumably impossible to analyse the mind, because a mind is presupposed in the process of analysis. |
| 5778 | If we object to all data which is 'introspective' we will cease to believe in toothaches [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If privacy is the main objection to introspective data, we shall have to include among such data all sensations; a toothache, for example, is essentially private; a dentist may see the bad condition of your tooth, but does not feel your ache. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §II) | |
| A reaction: Russell was perhaps the first to see why eliminative behaviourism is a non-starter as a theory of mind. Mental states are clearly a cause of behaviour, so they can't be the same thing. We might 'eliminate' mental states by reducing them, though. |
| 5779 | There are distinct sets of psychological and physical causal laws [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There do seem to be psychological and physical causal laws which are distinct from each other. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §II) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the essence of 'property dualism'. Reductive physicalists (like myself) say there is no distinction. Davidson, usually considered a property dualist, claims there are no psycho-physical laws. Russell notes that reduction may be possible. |
| 5781 | Our important beliefs all, if put into words, take the form of propositions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The important beliefs, even if they are not the only ones, are those which, if rendered into explicit words, take the form of a proposition. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: This assertion is close to the heart of the twentieth century linking of ontology and epistemology to language. It is open to challenges. Why is non-propositional belief unimportant? Do dogs have important beliefs? Can propositions exist non-verbally? |
| 5782 | A proposition expressed in words is a 'word-proposition', and one of images an 'image-proposition' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I shall distinguish a proposition expressed in words as a 'word-proposition', and one consisting of images as an 'image-proposition'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §III) | |
| A reaction: This, I think, is good, though it raises the question of what exactly an 'image' is when it is non-visual, as when a dog believes its owner called. This distinction prevents us from regarding all knowledge and ontology as verbal in form. |
| 5776 | A proposition is what we believe when we believe truly or falsely [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A proposition may be defined as: what we believe when we believe truly or falsely. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
| A reaction: If we define belief as 'commitment to truth', Russell's last six words become redundant. "Propositions are the contents of beliefs", it being beliefs which are candidates for truth, not propositions. (Russell agrees, on p.308!) |
| 4770 | Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Hume's is/ought claim - what he calls the mind 'spreading itself'. It is a powerful claim. Personally I think we have become TOO sceptical here, and have the delusion that crucial features of nature are created within our minds. |
| 4403 | We can't base our account of causation on explanation, because it is the wrong way round [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: We cannot distinguish between good and bad explanations of some phenomena, unless we first distinguish between causal and non-causal explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but it pushes us towards the idea that causation is non-analysable, and must be taken as a metaphysically basic axiom. If naturalistic accounts fail, that may be only alternative. |
| 4399 | Causes clearly make a difference, are recipes for events, explain effects, and are evidence [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The platitudes of causation are that 1) causes make a difference (counterfactually or probabilistically), 2) causes are recipes for events, 3) causes explain their effects, and 4) causes are evidence for effects. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A nice piece of analysis which offers some problems for anyone (like Russell) who wants to analyse causation completely out of our conceptual scheme. |
| 4400 | Theories of causation are based either on regularity, or on intrinsic relations of properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: While Humeans base their theories on the intuition of regularity, their opponents base theirs on the intuition that there is an intrinsic relation between the properties of two particular things involved (like a hammer and a vase). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I favour the intrinsic relation of properties view, but this leaves the question of whether we can explain a relation, apart from observing the regularities associated with the properties. |
| 4789 | Three divisions of causal theories: generalist/singularist, intrinsic/extrinsic, reductive/non-reductive [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three ways to divide theories on causation are: between generalist and singularist, between intrinsic and extrinsic characterisations of the causal relationship, and between reductive and non-reductive approaches. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5) | |
| A reaction: Okay. I vote for singularist, intrinsic and reductive. I'm guessing that that pushes me towards Salmon and Dowe's theory of the 'transfer of conserved quantities', which is certainly reductive, doesn't need regularities in the events, and seems intrinsic. |
| 4790 | If causation is 'intrinsic' it depends entirely on the properties and relations of the cause and effect [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If causation is taken to be an 'intrinsic' relation, then that c causes e will have to depend entirely on the properties of c and e, and the relations between c and e. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This view would move us towards 'essentialism', that the essences of objects produce the events and the laws, rather than external imposed forces and laws. |
| 4402 | Empiricists tried to reduce causation to explanation, which they reduced to logic-plus-a-law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The logical empiricists (esp. Hempel) analysed the concept of causation in terms of causal explanation, and analysed the latter as a species of deductive argument, with one premises stating a universal law (the so-called Deductive-Nomological model). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This feels wrong, as deduction seems insufficiently naturalistic, and the assumption of a law as premise seems to beg heaps of questions. |
| 4774 | Counterfactual claims about causation imply that it is more than just regular succession [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If counterfactual claims can be made about causation, this suggests that there is more to it than mere regular succession. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Even Hume makes counterfactual claims in his first definition of cause, and all claims of causation seem to go beyond the immediate evidence. |
| 4793 | "All gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" is a true universal generalisation, but not a law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The statement "all gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" seems to have all the features demanded of a lawlike statement, yet it can hardly be said to express a law. It is a merely true universal generalisation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.3) | |
| A reaction: Nice example. A trickier case is "all cubes of uranium are smaller than one cubic mile", which sounds like part of a law. It suggests a blurred borderline between the two. How much gold is there in the universe? Is that fact a natural necessity? |
| 4397 | Regularity doesn't seem sufficient for causation [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A rather important objection to Humeanism has been that regularity is not sufficient for causation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a crucial problem, but the Humean view can defend itself by introducing other constant conjunctions. We don't observe events in isolation, but as part of a pattern of regularities. |
| 4792 | A Humean view of causation says it is regularities, and causal facts supervene on non-causal facts [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view depends on the conjunction of two general theses: first, causation is tied to regularity; secondly, causal facts supervene on non-causal facts. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: If causation is just regularities, this means it is patterns observed by us, which means causation doesn't actually exist. So Hume is wrong. Singular causation is possible, and needs explanation. |
| 4801 | The regularity of a cock's crow is used to predict dawn, even though it doesn't cause it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A regularity can be used to predict a future event irrespective of whether it is deemed causal or not. A farmer can predict that dawn has broken on hearing the cock's crow. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a highly significant criticism of any view that says regularity leads to causation, which is the basis of induction, which leads to counterfactual claims, and thus arrives a the laws of nature. |
| 4401 | It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Good example, but it doesn't demolish the regularity view. We should come to conscious minds last. There aren't many other unfailing regularities that are not laws. |
| 4796 | Laws are sets of regularities within a simple and strong coherent system of wider regularities [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In the 'web-of-laws' approach, laws are those regularities that are members of a coherent system of regularities, in particular, a system that can be represented as a deductive axiomatic system, striking a good balance between simplicity and strength. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.6) | |
| A reaction: Psillos attribute this view to Mill, Ramsey and Lewis. It is the obvious candidate for a fully developed Humean empiricist system, where regularities reinforce one another. I think laws are found in mechanisms, not in regularities, which are symptoms. |
| 4799 | Dispositional essentialism can't explain its key distinction between essential and non-essential properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers will find dispositional essentialism unappealing, not least because it seems to fail to explain how (and in virtue of what) there is this supposed fundamental distinction between essential and non-essential properties. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002]) | |
| A reaction: Maybe there is no precise definition, but any idiot can see that some properties of gold are essential (mass) and others non-essential (attractive to jackdaws). It's a fair question, but is this the strongest objection to essentialism? |
| 4780 | In some counterfactuals, the counterfactual event happens later than its consequent [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In "had the acrobat jumped, there would have been a safety net" the antecedent of the counterfactual (the jumping) is temporally later than the consequent (the installation of the net). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: This blocks anyone (e.g. David Lewis) who tries to define counterfactual claims entirely in terms of a condition followed by a consequence. Nice example. |
| 4791 | Counterfactual theories say causes make a difference - if c hadn't occurred, then e wouldn't occur [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual theory is a non-Humean relation between singular events; the thought is that causation makes a difference - to say that c causes e is to say that if c hadn't occurred, e wouldn't have occurred either. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. I'm beginning to think that this theory is wrong. It gives an account of how we see causation, and a test for it, but it says nothing about what causation actually is. |