12 ideas
| 12772 | Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is a value- and attitude-driven enterprise; philosophy is in false consciousness when it sees itself otherwise. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: It is one thing to be permeated with values, and another to be value-driven. Truth, reason and logic are (I take it) granted a high value in philosophy, just as the offside rule is in football. I am trying to place reality in charge, not humanity. |
| 12771 | Is it likely that a successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: How likely is it that a truly successful, coherent, explanatory ontological hypothesis is true? | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Van Fraassen announces "I reject metaphysic" (p.3), so we know where he stands. Anything becomes less certain as it moves to a higher level of generality. Should we abandon generalisation? There is much illumination in metaphysics. |
| 12773 | Analytic philosophy has an exceptional arsenal of critical tools [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: Analytical philosophy can rightly pride itself on having produced the greatest critical arsenal the world has ever known. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is, of course, in the context of a scathing attack on the desire to use analytical methods to do speculative metaphysics. I say that if these are the best tools, then we should push forward with them to see how far we can get. |
| 12770 | We may end up with a huge theory of carefully constructed falsehoods [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: The specter that faces us is that we may end up having explained all that is dreamt of in our philosophies by intricately crafted postulates that are false. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: This is more persuasive that Idea 12769. People who cannot bear to live with a total absence of explanation (with Keats's 'negative capability') are most in danger from this threat. |
| 17644 | Metaphysical realism is committed to there being one ultimate true theory [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: What makes the metaphysical realist a 'metaphysical' realist is his belief that there is somewhere 'one true theory' (two theories which are true and complete descriptions of the world would be mere notational variants of each other). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
| A reaction: This is wrong!!!!! Commitment to one reality doesn't imply that only one comprehensive theory is possible. Theory-making (at least in any human language, or in mathematics) is an inherently limited activity. |
| 17648 | It is an illusion to think there could be one good scientific theory of reality [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a coherent theory of the noumena; consistent, systematic, and arrived at by 'the scientific method' seems to me to be chimerical. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Failure') | |
| A reaction: I sort of agree with this, but it definitely doesn't make me an anti-realist. |
| 17643 | Shape is essential relative to 'statue', but not essential relative to 'clay' [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Relative to the description 'that statue', a certain shape is an essential property of the object; relative to the description 'that piece of clay', the shape not an essential property (but being clay is). | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Relative to the description 'that loathsome object', is the statue essentially loathsome? Asserting the essence of an object is a response to the object, not a response to a description of it. This is not the solution to the statue problem. |
| 17642 | The old view that sense data are independent of mind is quite dotty [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Moore and Russell held the strange view that 'sensibilia' (sense data) are mind-independent entities: a view so dotty, on the face of it, that few analytic philosophers like to be reminded that this is how analytic philosophy started. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: I suspect the view was influenced by the anti-psychologism of Frege, and his idea that all the other concepts are mind-independent, living by their own rules in a 'third realm'. Personally I think analytic philosophy needs more psychology, not less. |
| 12769 | Inference to best explanation contains all sorts of hidden values [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: The very phrase 'inference to the best explanation' should wave a red flag for us. What is good, better, best? What values are slipped in here, under a common name, and where do they come from? | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: A point worth making, but overstated. If we are going to refuse to make judgements for fear that some wicked 'value' might creep in, our lives will be reduced to absurdity. |
| 12768 | We accept many scientific theories without endorsing them as true [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: The choice among theories in science may be a choice to accept in some sense falling far short of endorsement as true. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Empirical Stance [2002], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: When put like this, it is hard to deny the force of Van Fraassen's reservations about science. Lots of people, including me, use scientific theories as working assumptions for life, with nothing like full confidence in their truth. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 17645 | An alien might think oxygen was the main cause of a forest fire [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a Venusian lands on Earth and observes a forest fire, and says 'I know what caused that - the atmosphere is saturated with oxygen!'. Thus one man's 'background condition' can easily be another man's 'cause'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (Why there isn't a ready-made world [1981], 'Causation') | |
| A reaction: You can't sweep 'the' cause of a fire away so easily. There is always oxygen on Earth, but only occasional forest fires. The oxygen doesn't 'trigger' the fire (i.e. it isn't the proximate cause). |