9 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 8378 | Philosophers usually learn science from each other, not from science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are too apt to take their views on science from each other, not from science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.178) | |
| A reaction: This wasn't true of Russell, but it is certainly true of me. I rely on philosophical researchers to find the interesting bits of science for me (like blindsight). Memo to myself: read more science. |
| 13127 | Categories can't overlap; they are either disjoint, or inclusive [Sommers, by Westerhoff] |
| Full Idea: Fred Sommers, in his treatment of types, says that two ontological categories cannot overlap; they are either disjoint, or one properly includes the other. This is sometimes referred to as Sommers' Law. | |
| From: report of Fred Sommers (Types and Ontology [1963], p.355) by Jan Westerhoff - Ontological Categories §24 | |
| A reaction: The 'types', of course, go back to Bertrand Russell's theory of types, which is important in discussions of ontological categories. Carnap pursued it, trying to derive ontological categories from grammatical categories. 85% agree with Sommers. |
| 8375 | 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, saying it is true for all values of its argument [Russell] |
| Full Idea: 'Necessary' is a predicate of a propositional function, meaning that it is true for all possible values of its argument or arguments. Thus 'If x is a man, x is mortal' is necessary, because it is true for any possible value of x. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.175) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the intermediate definition of necessity, prior to modern talk of possible worlds. Since it is a predicate about functions, it is presumably a metalinguistic concept, like the semantic concept of truth. |
| 4396 | The law of causality is a source of confusion, and should be dropped from philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.173) | |
| A reaction: A bold proposal which should be taken seriously. However, if we drop it from scientific explanation, we may well find ourselves permanently stuck with it in 'folk' explanation. What is the alternative? |
| 8376 | If causes are contiguous with events, only the last bit is relevant, or the event's timing is baffling [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A cause is an event lasting for a finite time, but if cause and effect are contiguous then the earlier part of a changing cause can be altered without altering the effect, and a static cause will exist placidly for some time and then explode into effect. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.177) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] He concludes that they can't be contiguous (and eventually rejects cause entirely). This kind of problem is the sort of thing that only bothers philosophers - the question of how anything can happen at all. Why change? |
| 8380 | Striking a match causes its igniting, even if it sometimes doesn't work [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A may be the cause of B even if there actually are cases of B not following A. Striking a match will be the cause of its igniting, in spite of the fact that some matches are damp and fail to ignite. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.185) | |
| A reaction: An important point, although defenders of the constant conjunction view can cope with it. There is a further regularity between dampness of matches and their failure to strike. |
| 8379 | In causal laws, 'events' must recur, so they have to be universals, not particulars [Russell] |
| Full Idea: An 'event' (in a statement of the 'law of causation') is intended to be something that is likely to recur, since otherwise the law becomes trivial. It follows that an 'event' is not some particular, but a universal of which there may be many instances. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.179) | |
| A reaction: I am very struck by this. It may be a key insight into understanding what a law of nature actually is. It doesn't follow that we must be realists about universals, but the process of abstraction from particulars is at the heart of generalisation. |
| 8381 | The constancy of scientific laws rests on differential equations, not on cause and effect [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is not in the sameness of causes and effects that the constancy of scientific law consists, but in sameness of relations. And even 'sameness of relations' is too simple a phrase; 'sameness of differential equations' is the only correct phrase. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On the Notion of Cause [1912], p.186) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a commitment to the regularity view, since there is nothing more to natural law than that the variables keeping obeying the equations. It also seems to be a very instrumentalist view. |