36 ideas
| 15053 | If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If there is no way of settling metaphysical questions, then who cares whether or not they make sense? | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4 n20) | |
| A reaction: This footnote is aimed at logical positivists, who seemed to worry about whether metaphysics made sense, and also dismissed its prospects even if it did make sense. |
| 21489 | Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's system, a super-ordinate discipline provides general laws or principles for subordinate disciplines, which in turn provide concrete examples of those general laws. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 1 'System' | |
| A reaction: Does he really mean that subordinate disciplines have no principles or laws? That can't be right. |
| 15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The 'quietist' view of metaphysics says that realist metaphysics should be abandoned, not because its questions cannot be framed, but because their answers cannot be found. The real world of metaphysics is akin to Kant's noumenal world. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Blackburn, Dworkin, A.Fine, and Putnam-1987 as quietists] Fine aims to clarify the concepts of factuality and of ground, in order to show that metaphysics is possible. |
| 17082 | Paradox: why do you analyse if you know it, and how do you analyse if you don't? [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: The alleged paradox of analysis asserts that if one knew what was involved in the concept, one would not need the analysis; if one did not know what was involved in the concept, no analysis could be forthcoming. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of problem that seemed to bug Plato a lot. You certainly can't analyse something if you don't understand it, but it seems obvious that you can illuminatingly analyse something of which you have a reasonable understanding. |
| 19095 | Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: In Peirce's naturalist view of truth, it is a catch-all for the particular local aims of enquiry - empirical adequacy, predictive power, coherence, simplicity, elegance, explanatory power, a reliable guide to action, fruitfulness, great understanding. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 1 | |
| A reaction: The aims I cited in my thesis on explanation. One given, for me, is that truth is an ideal, which may or may not be attainable, to varying degrees. It is just what thinking aims at. I suspect, though, that these listed items have one thing in common. |
| 19097 | Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce was not in the slightest bit tempted by the thought that a belief is true if it is useful. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 | |
| A reaction: All students of the pragmatic theory of truth should start with this idea, because it rejects the caricature view of pragmatic truth, a view which is easily rebutted. James seems to have been guilty of this sin. |
| 21494 | If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Two related worries about Peirce's account of truth are (from Royce) what are we to make of truth if enquiry never reaches an end, and (from Russell) what are we to make of truth if enquiry ends prematurely? | |
| From: comment on Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'issues' | |
| A reaction: The defence of Peirce must be that the theory is not holistic - referring to the whole Truth about absolutely everything. The discovery of the periodic table seems to me to support Peirce. In many areas basic enquiry has reached an end. |
| 21493 | Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The pure mathematician deals exclusively with hypotheses. Whether or not there is any corresponding real thing, he does not care. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP5.567), quoted by Albert Atkin - Peirce 3 'separation' | |
| A reaction: [Dated 1902] Maybe we should identify a huge branch of human learning as Hyptheticals. Professor of Hypotheticals at Cambridge University. The trouble is it would have to include computer games. So why does maths matter more than games? |
| 19102 | Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak] |
| Full Idea: Peirce takes bivalence not to be a law of logic, but a regulative assumption of enquiry. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Cheryl Misak - Pragmatism and Deflationism 2 n10 | |
| A reaction: I like this. For most enquiries it's either true or not true, it's either there or it's not there. When you aren't faced with these simple dichotomies (in history, or quantum mechanics) you can relax, and allow truth value gaps etc. |
| 15007 | If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: My main objection to Fine's notion of grounding as fundamental is that it violates 'purity' - that fundamental truths should involve only fundamental notions. | |
| From: comment on Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.2 | |
| A reaction: [p.106 of Sider for 'purity'] The point here is that to define a grounding relation you have to mention the 'higher' levels of the relationship (as in a 'city' being grounded in physical stuff), which doesn't seem fundamental enough. |
| 15006 | Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: When p 'grounds' q then q holds in virtue of p's holding; q's holding is nothing beyond p's holding; the truth of p explains the truth of q in a particularly tight sense (explanation of q by p in this sense requires that p necessitates q). | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 15-16) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.1 | |
| A reaction: This proposal has become a hot topic in current metaphysics, as attempts are made to employ 'grounding' in various logical, epistemological and ontological contexts. I'm a fan - it is at the heart of metaphysics as structure of reality. |
| 15055 | Grounding relations are best expressed as relations between sentences [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I recommend that a statement of ground be cast in the following 'canonical' form: Its being the case that S consists in nothing more than its being the case that T, U... (where S, T, U... are particular sentences). | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that grounding is to be undestood in terms of sentences (and 'its being the case that...'), rather than in terms of objects, properties or relations. Fine thus makes grounding a human activity, rather than a natural activity. |
| 15050 | Reduction might be producing a sentence which gets closer to the logical form [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: One line of reduction is logical analysis. To say one sentence reduces to another is to say that they express the same proposition (or fact), but the grammatical form of the second is closer to the logical form than the grammatical form of the first. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Fine objects that S-and-T reduces to S and T, which is two propositions. He also objects that this approach misses the de re ingredient in reduction (that it is about the things themselves, not the sentences). It also overemphasises logical form. |
| 15051 | Reduction might be semantic, where a reduced sentence is understood through its reduction [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A second line of reduction is semantic, and holds in virtue of the meaning of the sentences. It should then be possible to acquire an understanding of the reduced sentence on the basis of understanding the sentences to which it reduces. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Fine says this avoids the first objection to the grammatical approach (see Reaction to Idea 15050), but still can't handle the de re aspect of reduction. Fine also doubts whether this understanding qualifies as 'reduction'. |
| 15052 | Reduction is modal, if the reductions necessarily entail the truth of the target sentence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The third, more recent, approach to reduction is a modal matter. A class of propositions will reduce to - or supervene upon - another if, necessarily, any truth from the one is entailed by truths from the other. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Armstrong, Chalmers and Jackson for this approach] Fine notes that some people reject supervenience as a sort of reduction. He objects that this reduction doesn't necessarily lead to something more basic. |
| 15056 | The notion of reduction (unlike that of 'ground') implies the unreality of what is reduced [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The notion of ground should be distinguished from the strict notion of reduction. A statement of reduction implies the unreality of what is reduced, but a statement of ground does not. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: That seems like a bit of a caricature of reduction. If you see a grey cloud and it reduces to a swarm of mosquitoes, you do not say that the cloud was 'unreal'. Fine is setting up a stall for 'ground' in the metaphysical market. We all seek structure. |
| 15047 | What is real can only be settled in terms of 'ground' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This looks like being one of Fine's most important ideas, which is shifting the whole basis of contemporary metaphysics. Only Parmenides and Heidegger thought Being was the target. Aristotle aims at identity. What grounds what is a third alternative. |
| 15046 | Reality is a primitive metaphysical concept, which cannot be understood in other terms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I conclude that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Fine offers arguments to support his claim, but it seems hard to disagree with. The only alternative I can see is to understand reality in terms of our experiences, and this is the road to metaphysical hell. |
| 15060 | Why should what is explanatorily basic be therefore more real? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We may grant that some things are explanatorily more basic than others, but why should that make them more real? | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
| A reaction: This is the question asked by the 'quietist'. Fine's answer is that our whole conception of Reality, with its intrinsic structure, is what lies at the basis, and this is primitive. |
| 10352 | The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by Martin Kusch - Knowledge by Agreement Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: If this is anti-realism, then I don't like it. If it is realist, then it is probably a bit on the optimistic side (if you think about cultures that are into witchcraft and voodoo). |
| 15048 | In metaphysics, reality is regarded as either 'factual', or as 'fundamental' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The first main approach says metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'objective' or 'factual'. ...According to the second conception, metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'irreducible' or 'fundamental'. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Fine is defending the 'fundamental' approach, via the 'grounding' relation. The whole structure, though, seems to be reality. In particular, a complete story must include the relations which facilitate more than mere fundamentals. |
| 13498 | Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD] |
| Full Idea: It was Peirce and Schröder in the nineteenth century who began a systematic taxonomy of relations. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], 4) by William D. Hart - The Evolution of Logic 4 |
| 21491 | Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin] |
| Full Idea: The realism about possibilities, generalities, tendencies and habits that we find in Peirce's later maxim is something that the logical positivists would have been uncomfortable with. | |
| From: report of Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]) by Albert Atkin - Peirce 2 'Concl' | |
| A reaction: Atkin examines the various later statements of the earlier maxim, given here in Idea 21490. Ryle and Quine express the empiricist and logical positivist approach to dispositions. |
| 16376 | The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: The possible is necessarily general…..It is only actuality, the force of existence, which bursts the fluidity of the general and produces a discrete unit. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892]), quoted by François Recanati - Mental Files 13.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papers 4 1967:147] This was quoted by Prior, and is often cited. Recanati is interested in the notion of a singular thought being tied to actuality, by generating a mental file. |
| 19107 | Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4 | |
| A reaction: [I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from] |
| 15061 | Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: As long as colour terms pick out fundamental physical properties, I would be willing to countenance their use in the description of Reality in itself, ..even if they are based on a peculiar form of sensory awareness. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
| A reaction: This seems to explain why metaphysicians are so fond of using colour as their example of a property, when it seems rather subjective. There seem to be good reasons for rejecting Fine's view. |
| 17087 | The 'symmetry thesis' says explanation and prediction only differ pragmatically [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: The 'symmetry thesis' holds that there is only a pragmatic, or epistemic, but no logical, difference between explaining and predicting. …The only difference is in what the producer of the deduction knows just before the deduction is produced. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 4) | |
| A reaction: He cites Mill has holding this view. It seems elementary to me that I can explain something but not predict it, or predict it but not explain it. The latter case is just Humean habitual induction. |
| 17081 | Usually explanations just involve giving information, with no reference to the act of explanation [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: Plato, Aristotle, Mill and Hempel believed that an explanatory product can be characterized solely in terms of the kind of information it conveys, no reference to the act of explaining being required. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 1) | |
| A reaction: Achinstein says it's about acts, because the same information could be an explanation, or a critique, or some other act. Ruben disagrees, and so do I. |
| 17092 | An explanation needs the world to have an appropriate structure [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: Objects or events in the world must really stand in some appropriate 'structural' relation before explanation is possible. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 7) | |
| A reaction: An important point. These days people talk of 'dependence relations'. Some sort of structure to reality (mainly imposed by the direction of time and causation, I would have thought) is a prerequisite of finding a direction to explanation. |
| 17090 | Most explanations are just sentences, not arguments [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: Typically, full explanations are not arguments, but singular sentences, or conjunctions thereof. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 6) | |
| A reaction: This is mainly objecting to the claim that explanations are deductions from laws and facts. I agree with Ruben. Explanations are just information, I think. Of course, Aristotle's demonstrations are arguments. |
| 17094 | The causal theory of explanation neglects determinations which are not causal [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: The fault of the causal theory of explanation was to overlook the fact that there are more ways of making something what it is or being responsible for it than by causing it. …Causation is a particular type of determinative relation. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 7) | |
| A reaction: The only thing I can think of is that certain abstract facts are 'determined' by other abtract facts, without being 'caused' by them. A useful word. |
| 17088 | Reducing one science to another is often said to be the perfect explanation [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: The reduction of one science to another has often been taken as paradigmatic of explanation. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 5) | |
| A reaction: It seems fairly obvious that the total reduction of chemistry to physics would involve the elimination of all the current concepts of chemistry. Could this possibly enhance our understanding of chemistry? I would have thought not. |
| 15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The main sources of evidence for judgments of ground are intuitive and explanatory. The relationship of ground is a form of explanation, ..explaining what makes a proposition true, which needs simplicity, breadth, coherence, non-circularity and strength. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: My thought is that not only must grounding explain, and therefore be a good explanation, but that the needs of explanation drive our decisions about what are the grounds. It is a bit indeterminate which is tail and which is dog. |
| 15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We take ground to be an explanatory relation: if the truth that P is grounded in other truths, then they account for its truth; P's being the case holds in virtue of the other truths' being the case. ...It is the ultimate form of explanation. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: To be 'ultimate' that which grounds would have to be something which thwarted all further explanation. Popper, for example, got quite angry at the suggestion that we should put a block on further investigation in this way. |
| 17089 | Facts explain facts, but only if they are conceptualised or named appropriately [Ruben] |
| Full Idea: Facts explain facts only when the features and the individuals the facts are about are appropriately conceptualized or named. | |
| From: David-Hillel Ruben (Explaining Explanation [1990], Ch 5) | |
| A reaction: He has a nice example that 'Cicero's speeches stop in 43 BCE' isn't explained by 'Tully died then', if you don't know that Cicero was Tully. Ruben is not defending pragmatic explanation, but to this extent he must be right. |
| 15058 | A proposition ingredient is 'essential' if changing it would change the truth-value [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: A proposition essentially contains a given constituent if its replacement by some other constituent induces a shift in truth value. Thus Socrates is essential to the proposition that Socrates is a philosopher, but not to Socrates is self-identical. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: In this view the replacement of 'is' by 'isn't' would make 'is' (or affirmation) part of the essence of most propositions. This is about linguistic essence, rather than real essence. It has the potential to be trivial. Replace 'slightly' by 'fairly'? |