12 ideas
| 7661 | Truth is the opinion fated to be ultimately agreed by all investigators [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (How to Make our Ideas Clear [1878], p.38) | |
| A reaction: At least this affirms that truth is an ideal about which we dream, and is not confined merely to what we can actually know. But it rules out anything beyond the reach of all investigation, which seems a misconception of truth. What could angels know? |
| 15567 | Some events involve no change; they must, because causal histories involve unchanges [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Not all events involve change. We cannot afford to count the unchanges as nonevents, for the unchanges may be needed to complete causal histories. | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], VI) | |
| A reaction: You end up calling non-changes 'events' if you commit to a simplistic theory that all causal histories consist of events. Why not allow conditions as well as events? Lewis concedes that he may be abusing language. |
| 15561 | The events that suit semantics may not be the events that suit causation [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is no guarantee that events made for semantics are the same as events that are causes and effects. | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], I) | |
| A reaction: This little cri de couer could be a motto for a huge amount of analytic philosophy, which (for some odd reason) thought that mathematics, logic, set theory and formal semantics were good tools for explaining nature. |
| 15565 | Events have inbuilt essences, as necessary conditions for their occurrence [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Events have their essences built in, in the form of necessary conditions for their occurrence. | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], III) | |
| A reaction: Revealing. He thinks the essence of an event is something which precedes the event. I take it as obvious that if an event has an essence, it will be some features of the event that occur in it and during it. They need to be intrinsic. |
| 15566 | Events are classes, and so there is a mereology of their parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If events are classes, as I propose, then they have a mereology in the way that all classes do: the parts of a class are its subclasses. | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], V) | |
| A reaction: Lewis says events are properties, which he regards as classes. It is not clear that events are strictly mereological. Could one happening be two events? Is WWII a simple sum of its parts? [see p.260] |
| 15564 | An event is a property of a unique space-time region [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I propose to identify an event with a property, or in other words with a class, a unique spatio-temporal region corresponding to where that event occurs. | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], II) | |
| A reaction: [I've run together two separate bits, on p.244 and 245] Lewis cites Montague's similar view, that events are properties of times. |
| 15563 | Properties are very abundant (unlike universals), and are used for semantics and higher-order variables [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties are abundant, numbering at least beth-3 for properties of individuals alone; they are suited to serve as semantic values of arbitrarily complex predicates and gerunds, and higher-order variables. (If there are universals, they are sparse). | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], II n2) | |
| A reaction: To me this is an outrageous hijacking of the notion of property which is needed for explaining the natural world. He seems to be talking about predicates. He wants to leave me with his silly universals - well I don't want them, thank you. |
| 19089 | Our whole conception of an object is its possible practical consequences [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the objects of our conceptions to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (How to Make our Ideas Clear [1878], EP i.132), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'early' | |
| A reaction: This is his 1878 version, which was fine-tuned later in life. He seems to have extended his principle to include possibilities, as well as the mere objects. That is, he moved beyond mere nominalism. |
| 7660 | We are aware of beliefs, they appease our doubts, and they are rules of action, or habits [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: A belief has just three properties: first, it is something that we are aware of; second, it appeases the irritation of doubt; and, third, it involves the establishment in our nature of a rule of action, or, say for short, a habit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (How to Make our Ideas Clear [1878], p.28) | |
| A reaction: Peirce probably believed that Bismarck breathed oxygen, but was unaware of his belief, and no one ever dreamed of acting on such a belief, unless Bismarck was gasping for air. |
| 14906 | Non-positivist verificationism says only take a hypothesis seriously if it is scientifically based and testable [Ladyman/Ross on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: With Peirce, we endorse a non-positivist version of verificationism - no hypothesis should be taken seriously if apparently beyond our capacity to investigate, and serious metaphysics must concern at least two plausible scientific hypotheses. | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (How to Make our Ideas Clear [1878]) by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 1.3 | |
| A reaction: [compressed] They say this is NOT a theory about meaning, as 'The Big Bang was caused by Elvis' is perfectly meaningful. Verificationism always seems to rule out bold speculation. Don't say 'take string theory seriously', if we can't test it? |
| 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? |
| 15562 | Causation is a general relation derived from instances of causal dependence [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Causation is the ancestral of causal dependence: event c causes event e iff either e depends on c, or e depends on an intermediate event which in turn depends on c, or.... | |
| From: David Lewis (Events [1986], I) | |
| A reaction: This is Lewis making sure that we don't postulate some huge bogus thing called 'Causation' which is supposed to be in charge of Nature. Good point. |