30 ideas
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised. |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Felix Klein's so-called 'Erlangerprogramm' in geometry involved characterizing the various branches of geometry by what transformations were irrelevant to each. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.137) |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Yellow' and 'water' are mass terms, concerned only with spread; 'apple' and 'square' are terms of divided reference, concerned with both spread and individuation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.124) | |
| A reaction: Would you like some apple? Pass me that water. It is helpful to see that it is a requirement of 'individuation' that is missing from terms for stuff. |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once we can legitimize a disposition term by defining the relevant similarity standard, we are apt to know the mechanism of the disposition, and so by-pass the similarity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.135) | |
| A reaction: I love mechanisms, but can we characterise mechanisms without mentioning powers and dispositions? Quine's dream is to eliminate 'similarity'. |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Intuitively, what qualifies a thing as soluble though it never gets into water is that it is of the same kind as the things that actually did or will dissolve; it is similar to them. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If you can judge that the similar things 'will' dissolve, you can cut to the chase and judge that this thing will dissolve. |
| 7720 | Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: A problem for resemblance nominalism is that in saying that two particulars 'resemble' one another, it is necessary to specify in what respect they do so (e.g. colour, shape, size), and this threatens to reintroduce what appears to be talk of universals. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: We see resemblance between faces instantly, long before we can specify the 'respects' of the resemblance. This supports the Humean hard-wired view of resemblance, rather than some appeal to Platonic universals. |
| 7712 | On substances, Leibniz emphasises unity, Spinoza independence, Locke relations to qualities [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Later philosophers emphasised different strands of Aristotle's concept of substances: Leibniz (in his theory of monads) emphasised their unity; Spinoza emphasised their ontological independence; Locke emphasised their role in relation to qualities. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Note that this Aristotelian idea had not been jettisoned in the late seventeenth century, unlike other Aristotelianisms. I think it is only with the success of atomism in chemistry that the idea of substance is forced to recede. |
| 12732 | Some necessary truths are brute, and others derive from final causes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is a difference between truths whose necessity is brute and geometric and those truths which have their source in fitness and final causes. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715.06.22/G III 645), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 6 | |
| A reaction: The second one is a necessity deriving from God's wisdom. Strictly it could have been otherwise, unlike 'geometrical' necessity, which is utterly fixed. |
| 7710 | Perception is a mode of belief-acquisition, and does not involve sensation [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: According to one school of thought, perception is simply a mode of belief-acquisition,and there is no reason to suppose that any element of sensation is literally involved in perception. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Blindsight would be an obvious supporting case for this view. I think this point is crucial in understanding what is wrong with Jackson's 'knowledge argument' (involving Mary, see Idea 7377). Sensation gives knowledge, so it can't be knowledge. |
| 7711 | Science requires a causal theory - perception of an object must be an experience caused by the object [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Only a causal theory of perception will respect the facts of physiology and physics ...meaning a theory which maintains that for a subject to perceive a physical object the subject should enjoy some appropriate perceptual experience caused by the object. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: If I hallucinate an object, then presumably I am not allowed to say that I 'perceive' it, but that seems to make the causal theory an idle tautology. If we are in virtual reality then there aren't any objects. |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Sciences differ from common sense only in the degree of methodological sophistication. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.129) | |
| A reaction: Science is normal thinking about the world, but it is teamwork, with the bar set very high. |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction is essentially only more of the same: animal expectation or habit formation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: My working definition of induction is 'learning from experience', but that doesn't disagree with Quine. Lipton has a richer account of different types of induction. Quine's point is that it rests on resemblance. |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction expresses our hopes that similar causes will have similar effects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: Some top philosophers are also top teachers, and Quine was one of them, in his writings. He boils it down for the layman. Once again, he is pointing to the fundamental role of the similarity relation. |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes Goodman's example a puzzle is the dubious scientific standing of a general notion of similarity, or of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. It might be best expressed as revealing a problem with sortal terms, as employed by Geach, or by Wiggins. Grue is a bit silly, but sortals are subject to convention and culture. 'Natural' properties seem needed. |
| 19438 | Our large perceptions and appetites are made up tiny unconscious fragments [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Our great perceptions and our great appetites of which we are conscious, are composed of innumerable little perceptions and little inclinations of which we cannot be conscious. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §2) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a wonderfully accurate report of how the mind is, in comparison with the much more simplistic views presented by most philosophers of that era. And so much understanding flows from Leibniz's account. |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought. |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122) | |
| A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction! |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be. |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134) | |
| A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable. |
| 7714 | Personal identity is a problem across time (diachronic) and at an instant (synchronic) [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: There is the question of the identity of a person over or across time ('diachronic' personal identity), and there is also the question of what makes for personal identity at a time ('synchronic' personal identity). | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be the first and most important distinction in the philosophy of personal identity, and they regularly get run together. Locke, for example, has an account of synchronic identity, which is often ignored. It applies to objects too. |
| 19415 | Passions reside in confused perceptions [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The passions of monads reside in their confused perceptions. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715) | |
| A reaction: He thinks perceptions come in degrees of confusion, all the way up to God, who alone has fully clear perceptions. He blames in on these confused perceptions. |
| 7715 | Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: 'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it? |
| 7722 | If meaning is mental pictures, explain "the cat (or dog!) is NOT on the mat" [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If meaning is a private mental picture, what does 'the cat is NOT on the mat' mean, and how does it differ from 'the dog is not on the mat?'. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7) | |
| A reaction: Not insurmountable. We picture an empty mat, combined with a cat (or whatever) located somewhere else. A mental 'picture' of something shouldn't be contrued as a single image in a neat black frame. |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6) | |
| A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'? |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The concept of natural kinds was reintroduced by Quine, who may now regret the way it has become a stand-in for the dubious but covertly popular concept of essences. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.2 n2 | |
| A reaction: He is right that Quine would regret it, and he is right that we can't assume that there are necessary essences just because there seem to be stable natural kinds, but personally I am an essentialist, so I'm not that bothered. |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here. |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: With the triadic relation of comparative similarity, kinds can contain one another, as well as overlapping. Red and colored things can both count as kinds. Colored things all resemble one another, even though less than red things do. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.119) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Quine claims that comparative similarity is necessary for kinds - that there be some 'foil' in a similarity - that A is more like C than B is. |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120) | |
| A reaction: [ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds. |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless. |
| 19439 | God produces possibilities, and thus ideas [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: God is the source of possibilities and consequently of ideas. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Remond de Montmort [1715], 1715 §8) | |
| A reaction: A wonderfully individual conception of the nature of God. He produces the possibilities from which creation is chosen, and ideas and concepts are of everything which is non-contradictory, and thus possible. It all makes lovely sense! |