16730
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If matter is entirely atoms, anything else we notice in it can only be modes [Gassendi]
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Full Idea:
Since these atoms are the whole of the corporeal matter or substance that exists in bodies, if we conceive or notice anything else to exist in these bodies, that is not a substance but only some kind of mode of the substance.
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From:
Pierre Gassendi (Syntagma [1658], II.1.6.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 22.4
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A reaction:
If the atoms have a few qualities of their own, are they just modes? If they are genuine powers, then there can be emergent powers, which are rather more than mere 'modes'.
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6715
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Universals do not have single meaning, but attach to many different particulars [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
There is no such thing as one precise and definite signification annexed to any general name, they all signifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §18)
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A reaction:
The term 'red' may be assigned to a range of colours, but we also recognise the precision of 'that red'. For 'electron', or 'three', or 'straight', the particulars are indistinguishable.
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16636
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A die has no distinct subject, but is merely a name for its modes or accidents [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
To me a die seems to be nothing distinct from those things which are termed its modes or accidents. And to say a die is hard, extended and square is not to attribute those qualities to a distinct subject, but only an explication of the word 'die'.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], n 49)
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A reaction:
This is apparently a reaction to Locke, and a final rejection of the medieval idea of a 'substance'. Unfortunately it leaves Berkeley with a 'bundle' view of objects (a typical empiricist account), which is even worse.
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6722
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Perception is existence for my table, but also possible perception, by me or a spirit [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
The table I write on I say exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed - meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §3)
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A reaction:
Berkeley is always (understandably) labelled as an 'idealist', but this seems to be what we call 'phenomenalism', because it allows possible experiences as well as actual ones. See Ideas 5170 and 6522.
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6728
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Motion is in the mind, since swifter ideas produce an appearance of slower motion [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
Is it not reasonable to say that motion is not without the mind, since if the succession of ideas in the mind become swifter the motion, it is acknowledged, shall appear slower without any alteration in any external object.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §14)
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A reaction:
An intriguing argument, based on what is now the principle of slow-motion photography. Fast minds slow down movement, like great tennis players. By what right does Berkeley say that the external subject is unaltered?
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6727
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Figure and extension seem just as dependent on the observer as heat and cold [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
If heat and cold are only affections of the mind (since the same body seems cold to one hand and warm to the other), why may we not argue that figure and extension also appear different to the same eye at different stations?
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §14)
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A reaction:
If the assessment of the qualities of an object is entirely a matter of our experiences of it, there is no denying Berkeley on this. However, judgement goes beyond experience, into speculations, inferences, and explanations.
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6720
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Knowledge is of ideas from senses, or ideas of the mind, or operations on sensations [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
The objects of knowledge are either ideas imprinted on the senses, or passions and operations of the mind, or ideas (formed by memory and imagination) compounding, dividing or barely representing the original perceptions.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §1)
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A reaction:
This is the germ of Hume's 'associations' (Idea 2189). There is not much room here for synthetic a priori knowledge, as the a priori part seems to merely know the mind. Most of Russell's epistemology is contained in the last part of the sentence.
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16619
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We observe qualities, and use 'induction' to refer to the substances lying under them [Gassendi]
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Full Idea:
Nothing beyond qualities is perceived by the senses. …When we refer to the substance in which the qualities inhere, we do this through induction, by which we reason that some subject lies under the quality.
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From:
Pierre Gassendi (Syntagma [1658], II.1.6.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 07.1
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A reaction:
He talks of 'induction' (in an older usage), but he seems to mean abduction, since he never makes any observations of the substances being proposed.
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6736
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I know other minds by ideas which are referred by me to other agents, as their effects [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
The knowledge I have of other spirits is not immediate, as is the knowledge of my ideas; but depending on the intervention of ideas, by me referred to agents or spirits distinct from myself, as effects or concomitant signs.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §145)
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A reaction:
This strikes me as gross intellectual dishonesty, since the argument Berkeley uses to assert other minds could equally be used to assert the existence of tables ('by me referred to agents distinct from myself, as effects'). Be a solipsist or a realist.
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6713
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If animals have ideas, and are not machines, they must have some reason [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
If the brutes have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], Intro §11)
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A reaction:
It seems possible to imagine a low level of mind, where a few ideas (or concepts) float around, but hardly anything worth the name of reason. However, a Darwinian view suggests that concepts must bestow an advantage, so the two go together.
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6491
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Berkeley replaced intentionality with an anti-abstractionist imagist theory of thought [Berkeley, by Robinson,H]
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Full Idea:
By Berkeley - with his anti-abstractionism and imagist theory of thought - the classical sense-datum conception was firmly established, and intentionality had disappeared as an intrinsic property, not only of perceptual states, but of all mental contents.
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From:
report of George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710]) by Howard Robinson - Perception 1.6
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A reaction:
Intentionality was originally a medieval concept, and was revived by Brentano in the late nineteenth century. Nowadays intentionality is taken for granted, but I still suspect that we could drop it, and talk of nothing but brain states caused by reality.
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10581
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I can only combine particulars in imagination; I can't create 'abstract' ideas [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
Whether others can abstract their ideas, they best can tell. For myself, I find I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, only the idea of those particular things I have perceived, and of compounding and dividing them.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], 10)
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A reaction:
He is admitting mixing experiences, but always particulars, never abstract. His examples are 'man' and 'motion'. Compare Aristotle Idea 9067. Berkeley is, I think, trapped in a false imagistic view of thought. My image of Plato blurs young and old.
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16593
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Atoms are not points, but hard indivisible things, which no force in nature can divide [Gassendi]
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Full Idea:
The vulgar think atoms lack parts and are free of all magnitude, and hence nothing other than a mathematical point, but it is something solid and hard and compact, as to leave no room for division, separation and cutting. No force in nature can divide it.
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From:
Pierre Gassendi (Syntagma [1658], II.1.3.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.2
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A reaction:
If you gloatingly think the atom has now been split, ask whether electrons and quarks now fit his description. Pasnau notes that though atoms are indivisible, they are not incorruptible, and could go out of existence, or be squashed.
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16729
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How do mere atoms produce qualities like colour, flavour and odour? [Gassendi]
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Full Idea:
If the only material principles of things are atoms, having only size, shape, and weight, or motion, then why are so many additional qualities created and existing within the things: color, heat, flavor, odor, and innumerable others?
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From:
Pierre Gassendi (Syntagma [1658], II.1.5.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 22.4
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A reaction:
This is pretty much the 'hard question' about the mind-body relation. Bacon said that heat was just motion of matter. I would say that this problem is gradually being solved in my lifetime.
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6731
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No one can explain how matter affects mind, so matter is redundant in philosophy [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
How matter should operate on a spirit, or produce any idea in it, is what no philosopher will pretend to explain; it is therefore evident there can be no use of matter in natural philosophy.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §50)
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A reaction:
An intriguing argument for idealism, which starts in Cartesian dualism, but then discards the physical world because of the notorious interaction problem. Of course, if he had thought that matter and spirit were one (Spinoza) the problem vanishes.
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6730
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We discover natural behaviour by observing settled laws of nature, not necessary connections [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; all this we know, not by discovering any necessary connexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §31)
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A reaction:
Hume is famous for this idea, but it is found in Hobbes too (Idea 2364), and is the standard empiricist view of causation. The word 'settled' I take to imply that the laws are contingent, because they could become unsettled at any time.
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6616
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Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005])
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A reaction:
As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects.
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6615
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A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action.
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6614
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A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out.
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6612
|
Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90)
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A reaction:
Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences.
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6737
|
Particular evils are really good when linked to the whole system of beings [Berkeley]
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Full Idea:
Those particular things which, considered in themselves, appear to be evil, have the nature of good, when considered as linked with the whole system of beings.
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From:
George Berkeley (The Principles of Human Knowledge [1710], §153)
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A reaction:
This wildly contradicts the rest of Berkeley's philosophy, which is strictly empiricist, and rests wholly on actual experience. What experience does he have of the 'whole system of beings', and its making evil into actual good?
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