58 ideas
6052 | Definitions identify two concepts, so they presuppose identity [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Any definition must presuppose the notion of identity precisely because a definition affirms the identity of two concepts. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: McGinn is arguing that identity is fundamental to thought, and this seems persuasive. It may be, though, that while identities are inescapable, definitions are impossible. |
6064 | Regresses are only vicious in the context of an explanation [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Regresses are only vicious in the context of some explanatory aim, not in themselves. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n11) | |
A reaction: A nice point. It is not quite clear how 'pure' reason could ever be vicious, or charming, or sycophantic. The problem about a vicious regress is precisely that it fails to explain anything. Now benign regresses are something else… (see Idea 2523) |
6088 | Truth is a method of deducing facts from propositions [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Truth is essentially a method of deducing facts from propositions. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Very persuasive. McGinn is offering a disquotational account of truth, but in a robust form. Of course, deduction normally takes the form of moving infallibly from one truth to another, but that model of deduction won't fit this particular proposal. |
6084 | 'Snow does not fall' corresponds to snow does fall [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We can say that the proposition that snow does not fall from the sky corresponds to the fact that snow does fall from the sky - in the sense that there is a mapping from fact to proposition. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: A very nice difficulty for the correspondence theory. It becomes essential to say how the two things correspond before it can offer any sort of account of the truth-relation. |
6085 | The idea of truth is built into the idea of correspondence [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The correspondence theory has an air of triviality, and hence undeniability, but this is because it implicitly builds the idea of truth into the notion of correspondence. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: If this is accepted, it is a really fatal objection to the theory. Russell tried to use the idea of 'congruency' between beliefs and reality, but that may be open to the same objection. McGinn is claiming that truth is essentially indefinable. |
6083 | The coherence theory of truth implies idealism, because facts are just coherent beliefs [McGinn] |
Full Idea: If 'snow falls from the sky' is true iff it coheres with other beliefs, this is a form of idealism; snow could surely fall from sky even if there were no beliefs in the world to cohere with each other. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: The coherence theory of truth strikes me as yet another blunder involving a confusion of ontology and epistemology. Of course, idealism may be true, but I have yet to hear a good reason why I should abandon commonsense realism. |
6086 | Truth is the property of propositions that makes it possible to deduce facts [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Truth is a property of a proposition from which one can deduce the fact stated by the proposition. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: This is McGinn's explanation of the disquotational account of truth ('p' is true iff p). The redundancy theorist would reply that you can deduce p from 'p' without mentioning truth, but it remains to ask why this deduction is possible. |
6087 | Without the disquotation device for truth, you could never form beliefs from others' testimony [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Imagine being in a community which had no concept of truth; ..you cannot disquote on p and hence form beliefs about the world as a result of testimony, since you lack the device of disquotation that is the essence of truth. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Whether his theory is right or not, the observation that testimony is the really crucial area where we must have a notion of truth is very good. How about 'truth is what turns propositions into beliefs'? |
17831 | Cantor gives informal versions of ZF axioms as ways of getting from one set to another [Cantor, by Lake] |
Full Idea: Cantor gives informal versions of the axioms of ZF as ways of getting from one set to another. | |
From: report of George Cantor (Later Letters to Dedekind [1899]) by John Lake - Approaches to Set Theory 1.6 | |
A reaction: Lake suggests that it should therefore be called CZF. |
6051 | In 'x is F and x is G' we must assume the identity of x in the two statements [McGinn] |
Full Idea: If we say 'for some x, x is F and x is G' we are making tacit appeal to the idea of identity in using 'x' twice here: it has to be the same object that is both F and G. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This may well be broadened to any utterances whatsoever. The only remaining question is to speculate about whether it is possible to think without identities. The Hopi presumably gave identity to processes rather objects. How does God think? |
6055 | Both non-contradiction and excluded middle need identity in their formulation [McGinn] |
Full Idea: To formulate the law of non-contradiction ('nothing can be both F and non-F') and the law of excluded middle ('everything is either F or it is not-F'), we need the concept of identity (in 'nothing' and 'everything'). | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Two good examples in McGinn's argument that identity is basic to all thinking. But the argument also works to say that necessity is basic (since both laws claim it) and properties are basic. Let's just declare everything 'basic', and we can all go home. |
6059 | Identity is unitary, indefinable, fundamental and a genuine relation [McGinn] |
Full Idea: I have endorsed four main theses about identity: it is unitary, it is indefinable, it is fundamental, and it is a genuine relation | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: That it is fundamental to our thinking seems certain (but to all possible thought?). That it is a relation looks worth questioning. One might challenge unitary by comparing the identity of numbers, values, electrons and continents. I can't define it. |
6042 | The quantifier is overrated as an analytical tool [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The quantifier has been overrated as a tool of logical and linguistic analysis. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Pref) | |
A reaction: I find this proposal quite thrilling. Twentieth century analytical philosophy has been in thrall to logic, giving the upper hand in philosophical discussion to the logicians, who are often not very good at philosophy. |
6067 | Existential quantifiers just express the quantity of things, leaving existence to the predicate 'exists' [McGinn] |
Full Idea: What the existential quantifier does is indicate the quantity of things in question - it says that some are; it is left up to the predicate 'exists' to express existence. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This seems right. The whole quantification business seems like a conjuring trick to conceal the embarrassingly indefinable and 'metaphysical' notion of 'existence'. Cf Idea 7697. |
6069 | 'Partial quantifier' would be a better name than 'existential quantifier', as no existence would be implied [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We would do much better to call 'some' the 'partial quantifier' (rather than the 'existential quantifier'), on analogy with the universal quantifier - as neither of them logically implies existence. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Like McGinn's other suggestions in this chapter, this strikes me as a potentially huge clarification in linguistic analysis. I wait with interest to see whether the philosophical logicians take it up. I bet they don't. |
6068 | We need an Intentional Quantifier ("some of the things we talk about.."), so existence goes into the proposition [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We could introduce an 'intentional quantifier' (Ix) which means 'some of the things we talk about..'; we could then say 'some of the things we talk about are F and exist' (Ix, x is F and x exists). | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a promising contribution to the analytical toolkit. McGinn is supporting his view that existence is a predicate, and so belongs inside the proposition, not outside. |
6070 | Existence is a primary quality, non-existence a secondary quality [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Existence is like a primary quality; non-existence is like a secondary quality. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2 n29) | |
A reaction: Since McGinn thinks existence really is a property, and hence, presumably, a predicate, I don't quite see why he uses the word "like". A nicely pithy and thought-provoking remark. |
6062 | Existence can't be analysed as instantiating a property, as instantiation requires existence [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Paraphrasing existence statements into statements about the instantiation of a property does not establish that existence is not a predicate, since the notion of instantiation must be taken to have existence built into it. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Thank you, Colin McGinn! This now strikes me as so obvious that it is astonishing that for the whole of the twentieth century no one seems to have said it. For a century philosophers had swept the ontological dirt under the mat. |
6065 | We can't analyse the sentence 'something exists' in terms of instantiated properties [McGinn] |
Full Idea: The problems of the orthodox view are made vivid by analysis of the sentence 'something exists'; this is meaningful and true, but what property are we saying is instantiated here? | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: A very nice point. McGinn claims that existence is a property, a very generalised one. Personally I don't think anyone is even remotely clear what a property is, so the whole discussion is a bit premature. Must properties have causal powers? |
6082 | If causal power is the test for reality, that will exclude necessities and possibilities [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Whether my body weight is necessary or contingent makes no difference at all to my causal powers, so modality is epiphenomenal; if you took causal potential as a test of reality you would have to declare modes unreal. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: We could try analysing modality into causal terms, as Lewis proposes with quantification across worlds, or as Quine proposes by reduction to natural regularities. I am not sure what it would mean to declare that modes are 'real'. |
6075 | Facts are object-plus-extension, or property-plus-set-of-properties, or object-plus-property [McGinn] |
Full Idea: A fact may be an object and an extension (Quine's view), or a property and a set of properties, or an object and a property; the view I favour is the third one, which seems the most natural. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Personally I tend to use the word 'fact' in a realist and non-linguistic way. There must be innumerable inexpressible facts, such as the single pattern made by all the particles of the universe. McGinn seems to be talking of 'atomic facts'. See Idea 6111. |
16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Causality is a clue to what properties are real. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 9.3) | |
A reaction: An interesting variant on the Shoemaker proposal that properties actually are causal. I'm not sure that there is anything more to causality that the expression in action of properties, which I take to be powers. Structures are not properties. |
6058 | Identity propositions are not always tautological, and have a key epistemic role [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Identity propositions are not always analytic or a priori (as Frege long ago taught us) so there is nothing trivial about such propositions; the claim of redundancy ignores the epistemic role that the concept of identity plays. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: He is referring to Frege's Morning Star/Evening Star distinction (Idea 4972). Wittgenstein wanted to eliminate our basic metaphysics by relabelling it as analytic or tautological, but his project failed. Long live metaphysics! |
6053 | Identity is as basic as any concept could ever be [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Identity has a universality and basicness that is hard to overstate; concepts don't get more basic than this - or more indispensable. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: I agree with this. It seems to me to follow that the natural numbers are just as basic, because they are entailed by the separateness of the identities of things. And the whole of mathematics is the science of the patterns within these numbers. |
6043 | Type-identity is close similarity in qualities [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Two things are said to be type-identical when they are similar enough to be declared qualitatively identical. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: A simple point which brings out the fact that type-identity is unlikely to be any sort of true identity (unless there is absolutely no different at all between two electrons, say). |
6044 | Qualitative identity is really numerical identity of properties [McGinn] |
Full Idea: A statement of so-called qualitative identity is really a statement of numerical identity (that is, identity tout court) about the properties of the objects in question - assuming that there are genuine universals. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: We might agree that two cars are type-identical, even though (under the microscope) we decided that none of their properties were absolutely identical. |
6046 | Qualitative identity can be analysed into numerical identity of the type involved [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We can analyse qualitative identity in terms of numerical identity, by saying that x and y are type-identical if there is a single type T that x and y both are, i.e. they both exemplify the same type. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This just seems to shift the problem onto the words 'are' and 'exemplify'. This takes us back to the problem of things 'partaking' of Plato's Forms. Better to say that qualitative identity isn't identity - it is resemblance (see Idea 6045). |
6045 | It is best to drop types of identity, and speak of 'identity' or 'resemblance' [McGinn] |
Full Idea: It would be better to drop talk of 'numerical' and 'qualitative' identity altogether, speaking instead simply of identity and resemblance. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n4) | |
A reaction: This is the kind of beautifully simple proposal I pay analytical philosophers to come up with. I will attempt in future to talk either of 'identity' (which is strict), or 'resemblance' (which comes in degrees). |
6066 | Existence is a property of all objects, but less universal than self-identity, which covers even conceivable objects [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Existence is a property universal to all objects that exist, somewhat like self-identity, but less universal, because self-identity holds of all conceivable objects, not merely those that happen to exist. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This is a splendidly defiant response to the Kantian slogan that 'existence is not a predicate', and I find McGinn persuasive. I can still not find anyone to explain to me exactly what a property is, so I will reserve judgement. |
6054 | Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Sherlock Holmes does not exist, but he is self-identical (he is certainly not indentical to Dr Watson). | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Most significant. Identity does not entail existence; identity is necessary for existence (I think) but not sufficient. But the notion of existence might be prior to the notion of identity, and the creation of Holmes be parasitic on real existence. |
6047 | All identity is necessary, though identity statements can be contingently true [McGinn] |
Full Idea: All identity is necessary, although there can be contingently true identity statements - those that contain non-rigid designators. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n5) | |
A reaction: A nice case of the need to keep epistemology and ontology separate. An example might be 'The Prime Minister wears a wig', where 'Prime Minister' may not be a rigid designator. 'Winston wears a wig' will be necessary, if true (which it wasn't). |
6049 | Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py' [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Leibniz's Law says 'x = y iff for all P, Px iff Py'. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: That is, two things are the same if when we say that one thing (x) has a property (P), then we are saying that the other thing (y) also has the property. A usefully concise statement of the Law. |
6048 | Leibniz's Law is so fundamental that it almost defines the concept of identity [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Leibniz's Law, which a defender of relative identity might opt to reject, is so fundamental to the notion of identity that rejecting it amounts to changing the subject. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1 n8) | |
A reaction: The Law here is the 'indiscernibility of identicals'. I agree with McGinn, and anyone who loses their grip on this notion of identity strikes me as losing all grip on reality, and threatening their own sanity (well, call it their 'philosophical sanity'). |
6050 | Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Leibniz's Law presupposes the notion of property identity. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: A very important observation, because it leads to recognition of the way in which basic concepts and categories of thought interconnect. Which is more metaphysically basic, identity or properties? It is not easy to say… |
6080 | Modality is not objects or properties, but the type of binding of objects to properties [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Modality has a special ontological category: it consists neither in objects (possible worlds theory) nor in properties (predicate modifier view), but items I have called 'modes', ..which can be hard/soft/rigid/pliable binding of objects to properties. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: As so often, McGinn is very persuasive. Essentially he is proposing that modality is adverbial. He associates the middle view with David Wiggins. |
6079 | If 'possible' is explained as quantification across worlds, there must be possible worlds [McGinn] |
Full Idea: If we replace modal words like 'possible' with quantification across worlds, clearly the notion of 'world' must exclude impossible worlds, otherwise 'possibly p' will be true if 'p' holds in an impossible world. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: The point here, of course, is that the question is being begged of what 'possible' and 'impossible' actually mean. |
6081 | Necessity and possibility are big threats to the empiricist view of knowledge [McGinn] |
Full Idea: It is clear that modality is a prima-facie threat to the usual kind of naturalistic-causal-empiricist theory of knowledge. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This is why modern empiricists spend of a lot of energy on trying to analyse counterfactuals and laws of nature. Rationalists are much happier to assert necessities a priori, but then they often don't have much basis for their claims. |
6071 | Scepticism about reality is possible because existence isn't part of appearances [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Scepticism about the external world is possible because you can never build existence into the appearances, so it must always be inferred or assumed. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: When McGinn's claim that existence is a very universal property begins to produce interesting observations like this, I think we should take it very seriously. |
16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: In explaining a phenomenon one can cite the causes of that phenomenon; or one can set the phenomenon in a general theoretical framework. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 4.1) | |
A reaction: The thing is, you need to root an explanation in something taken as basic, and theoretical frameworks need further explanation, whereas causes seem to be basic. |
16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: To explain a phenomenon is to find a model that fits it into the basic framework of the theory and that thus allows us to derive analogues for the messy and complicated phenomenological laws that are true of it. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 8.3) | |
A reaction: This summarises the core of her view in this book. She is after models rather than laws, and the models are based on causes. |
16167 | Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: We explain by ceteris paribus laws, by composition of causes, and by approximations that improve on what the fundamental laws dictate. In all of these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: It is rather headline-grabbing to say in this case that laws do not get the facts right. If they were actually 'wrong' and 'lied', there wouldn't be much point in building explanations on them. |
16169 | Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: When different kinds of causes compose, we want to explain what happens in the intersection of different domains. But the laws we use are designed only to tell truly what happens in each domain separately. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: Since presumably the laws are discovered through experiments which try to separate out a single domain, in those circumstances they actually are true, so they don't 'lie'. |
16176 | Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Much criticism of the original covering-law model objects that it lets in too much. It seems we can explain Henry's failure to get pregnant by his taking birth control pills, and we can explain the storm by the falling barometer. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.0) | |
A reaction: I take these examples to show that true explanations must be largely causal in character. The physicality of causation is what matters, not 'laws'. I'd say the same of attempts to account for causation through counterfactuals. |
16177 | I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Covering-law theorists tend to think that nature is well-regulated; in the extreme, that there is a law to cover every case. I do not. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.2) | |
A reaction: The problem of coincidence is somewhere at the back of this thought. Innumerable events have their own explanations, but it is hard to explain their coincidence (see Aristotle's case of bumping into a friend in the market). |
16180 | You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: 'Why does that quail in the garden bob its head up and down in that funny way whenever it walks?' …'Because they all do'. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.5) | |
A reaction: She cites this as an old complaint against the covering-law model of explanation. It captures beautifully the basic error of the approach. We want to know 'why', rather than just have a description of the pattern. 'They all do' is useful information. |
16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: The covering-law account supposes that there is, in principle, one 'right' explanation for each phenomenon. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: Presumably the law is held to be 'right', but there must be a bit of flexibility in describing the initial conditions, and the explanandum itself. |
16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: There are a huge number of cases in the history of science where we now know our best explanations were false. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 5.3) | |
A reaction: [She cites Laudan 1981 for this] The Ptolemaic system and aether are the standard example cited for this. I believe strongly in the importance of best explanation. Only a fool would just accept the best explanation available. Coherence is needed. |
6077 | Semantics should not be based on set-membership, but on instantiation of properties in objects [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Semantics should not employ the relationship of set-membership between objects and extensions, but rather the relation of instantiation between objects and properties. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: At least this means that philosophers won't be required to read fat books on set theory, but they will have to think very carefully about 'instantiation'. A good start is the ideas on 'Partaking' of Platonic Forms in this database (in 'Universals'). |
6074 | Clearly predicates have extensions (applicable objects), but are the extensions part of their meaning? [McGinn] |
Full Idea: We are taught that predicates have extensions - the class of objects of which the predicate is true - which seems hard to deny; but a stronger claim is also made - that extensions are semantically relevant features of predicates. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: He cites Quine as a spokesman for this view. McGinn is going on to challenge it, by defending universals. It seems to fit in with other externalist theories of concepts and meanings, none of which seems very appealing to me. |
16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: A cause ought to increase the frequency of the effect, but this fact may not show up in the probabilities if other causes are at work. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 1.1) | |
A reaction: [She cites Patrick Suppes for this one] Presumably in experimental situations you can weed out the interference, but that threatens to eliminate mere 'probability' entirely. |
6781 | There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird] |
Full Idea: Nancy Cartwright distinguishes between 'fundamental explanatory laws', which we should not believe, and 'phenomenological laws', which are regularities established on the basis of observation. | |
From: report of Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
A reaction: The distinction is helpful, so that we can be clearer about what everyone is claiming. We can probably all agree on the phenomenological laws, which are epistemological. Personally I claim truth for the best fundamental explanatory laws. |
16166 | Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Philosophers distinguish phenomenological from theoretical laws. Phenomenological laws are about appearances; theoretical ones are about the reality behind the appearances. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: I'm suspecting that Humeans only really believe in the phenomenological kind. I'm only interested in the theoretical kind, and I take inference to the best explanation to be the bridge between the two. Cartwright rejects the theoretical laws. |
16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: There is no reason to think that the principles that best organise will be true, nor that the principles that are true will organise much. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.5) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account of laws, as axiomatisations of the observed patterns in nature. |
16170 | To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: To get from a detailed factual knowledge of a situation to an equation, we must prepare the description of the situation to meet the mathematical needs of the theory. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: She is clearly on to something here, as Galileo is blatantly wrong in his claim that the book of nature is written in mathematics. Mathematics is the best we can manage in getting a grip on the chaos. |
16181 | Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: For explanation simple laws must have the same form when they act together as when they act singly. ..But then what the law states cannot literally be true, for the consequences that occur if it acts alone are not what occurs when they act in combination. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.6) | |
A reaction: This is Cartwright's basic thesis. Her point is that the laws 'lie', because they claim to predict a particular outcome which never ever actually occurs. She says we could know all the laws, and still not be able to explain anything. |
16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Where theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.3) | |
A reaction: There are attempts at so-called 'bridge laws', to get from complex theories to simple ones, but her point is well made about theories on the same 'level'. |
6072 | If Satan is the most imperfect conceivable being, he must have non-existence [McGinn] |
Full Idea: Satan cannot exist because he is the most imperfect conceivable being, and existence is one of the perfections. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: The logic of this seems right to me. Presumably the theologians would hastily deny this as a definition of Satan; he must have some positive qualities (like power) in order to enact his supreme moral imperfections. NIce, though. |
6073 | I think the fault of the Ontological Argument is taking the original idea to be well-defined [McGinn] |
Full Idea: My own suspicion about the Ontological Argument is that the fault lies in taking notions like 'the most perfect, impressive and powerful being conceivable' to be well-defined. | |
From: Colin McGinn (Logical Properties [2000], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: I'm tempted to put it more strongly: the single greatest challenge for the theist with intellectual integrity is to give a clear and coherent definition of God. There must be no internal contradictions, and it must be within the bounds of possibility. |