14 ideas
| 9786 | Philosophers working like teams of scientists is absurd, yet isolation is hard [Cartwright,R] |
| Full Idea: The notion that philosophy can be done cooperatively, in the manner of scientists or engineers engaged in a research project, seems to me absurd. And yet few philosophers can survive in isolation. | |
| From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xxi) | |
| A reaction: This why Nietzsche said that philosophers were 'rare plants'. |
| 9784 | A false proposition isn't truer because it is part of a coherent system [Cartwright,R] |
| Full Idea: You do not improve the truth value of a false proposition by calling attention to a coherent system of propositions of which it is one. | |
| From: Richard Cartwright (Intro to 'Philosophical Essays' [1987], xi) | |
| A reaction: We need to disentangle the truth-value from the justification here. If it is false, then we can safely assume that is false, but we are struggling to decide whether it is false, and we want all the evidence we can get. Falsehood tends towards incoherence. |
| 14330 | To be realists about dispositions, we can only discuss them through their categorical basis [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: It is only to the extent that we relate disposition to 'categorical basis', and difference of disposition to difference of 'categorical basis', that we can speak of dispositions. We must be Realists, not Phenomenalists, about dispositions. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of Mind (Rev) [1968], 6.VI) | |
| A reaction: It is Armstrong's realism which motivates this claim, because he thinks only categorical properties are real. But categorical properties seem to be passive, and the world is active. |
| 11976 | Aristotelian essentialism says essences are not relative to specification [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: So-called 'Aristotelian essentialism' is the doctrine of essences not relative to specifications. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: In other words, they are so-called 'real essences', understood as de re. Quine says essences are all de dicto, and relative to some specification. I vote for Aristotle. |
| 11978 | Causal necessities hold in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Just as a sentence is necessary if it holds in all worlds, so it is causally necessary if it holds in all worlds compatible with the laws of nature. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], V) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe in the so-called 'laws of nature', so I'm not buying that. Is there no distinction in Lewis's view between those sentences which must hold, and those which happen to hold universally? |
| 11979 | It doesn't take the whole of a possible Humphrey to win the election [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Even if Humphrey is a modal continuant, it doesn't take the whole of him to do such things as winning. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], Post B) | |
| A reaction: This responds to Kripke's famous example, that people only care about what happens to themselves, and not to some 'counterpart' of themselves. |
| 16994 | Counterpart theory is bizarre, as no one cares what happens to a mere counterpart [Kripke on Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Probably Humphrey could not care less whether someone else, no matter how much resembling him, would have been victorious in another possible world. Thus Lewis's view seems even more bizarre that the usual transworld identification it replaces. | |
| From: comment on David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968]) by Saul A. Kripke - Naming and Necessity notes and addenda note 13 | |
| A reaction: I begin to see this as a devastating reply to a theory I previously found quite congenial. |
| 11974 | Counterparts are not the original thing, but resemble it more than other things do [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Your counterparts resemble you closely in content and context in important respects. They resemble you more closely than do the other things in their worlds. But they are not really you. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: It is a dilemma. If my counterpart were exactly me, I couldn't contemplate possibly losing a leg, or my sanity. But if my counterpart isn't exactly me, then I don't have much interest in its fate. Only essences can save us here. Cf. me tomorrow. |
| 11975 | If the closest resembler to you is in fact quite unlike you, then you have no counterpart [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If whatever thing in world w6 it is that resembles you more closely than anything else in w6 is nevertheless quite unlike you; nothing in w6 resembles you at all closely. If so, you have no counterpart in w6. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], I) | |
| A reaction: This is the nub, because the whole theory rests on deciding whether two things resemble sufficiently 'closely'. But then we need a criterion of closeness, so we must start talking about which properties matter. Essences loom. |
| 11977 | Essential attributes are those shared with all the counterparts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: An essential attribute of something is an attribute it shares with all its counterparts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Counterpart theory and Quant. Modal Logic [1968], III) | |
| A reaction: I don't like this. It ties essence entirely to identity, but I think essence precedes identity. Essence is a nexus of causal and explanatory powers which bestows an identity on each thing. But essence might be unstable, and identity with it. |
| 6498 | Armstrong suggests secondary qualities are blurred primary qualities [Armstrong, by Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: According to D.M. Armstrong and others, when we perceive secondary qualities we are in fact perceiving primary qualities in a confused, indistinct or blurred way. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of Mind (Rev) [1968], 270-90) by Howard Robinson - Perception III.1 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously an attempt to fit secondary qualities into a reductive physicalist account of the mind. Personally I favour Armstrong's project, but doubt whether this strategy is necessary. I just don't think there is anything 'primary' about redness. |
| 5690 | A mental state without belief refutes self-intimation; a belief with no state refutes infallibility [Armstrong, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: For Armstrong, introspection involves a belief, and mental states and their accompanying beliefs are 'distinct existences', so a state without belief shows states are not self-intimating, and the belief without the state shows beliefs aren't infallible. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of Mind (Rev) [1968]) by Sydney Shoemaker - Introspection | |
| A reaction: I agree with Armstrong. Introspection is a two-level activity, which animals probably can't do, and there is always the possibility of a mismatch between the two levels, so introspection is neither self-intimating nor infallibe (though incorrigible). |
| 5493 | If pains are defined causally, and research shows that the causal role is physical, then pains are physical [Armstrong, by Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Armstrong and Lewis said that mental items were defined in terms of typical causes and effects; if, as seems likely, research reveals that a particular causal niche is occupied by a physical state, it follows that pain is a physical state. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of Mind (Rev) [1968]) by William Lycan - Introduction - Ontology p.5 | |
| A reaction: I am not fully convinced of the first step in the argument. It sounds like the epistemology and the ontology have got muddled (as usual). We define mental states as we define electrons, in terms of observed behaviour, but what are they? |
| 4600 | Armstrong and Lewis see functionalism as an identity of the function and its realiser [Armstrong, by Heil] |
| Full Idea: The Armstrong/Lewis version of functionalism takes mental properties to be functional properties, but identifies these with what other functionalists would regard as their realisers. | |
| From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Materialist Theory of Mind (Rev) [1968]) by John Heil - Philosophy of Mind Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Heil rejects this, but I am beginning to think that this is the answer. If functions do not have an ontological life of their own (the 'ringing' of the bell), then functionalist mental states can't either. Function is not an ontological category. |