25 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!). |
| 13734 | Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is (such as properties, meanings and numbers). I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find that an enormously helpful distinction, and support the Aristotelian view. Schaffer's general line is that what exists is fairly uncontroversial and dull, but the interesting truths about the world emerge when we grasp its structure. |
| 13751 | If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is so tightly woven into the fabric of philosophy that it cannot be torn out without the whole tapestry unravelling. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I often wonder why the opponents of metaphysics still continue to do philosophy. I don't see how you address questions of ethics, or philosophy of mathematics (etc) without coming up against highly general and abstract over-questions. |
| 17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I shall make use of the admittedly imprecise notions of consilience, simplicity, analogy and fitting into a web of belief, or in short of 'coherence'. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.06) | |
| A reaction: Coherence sounds like a family of tests, rather than a single unified concept. I still like coherence, though. |
| 17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Not mere self-coherence, but comprehensiveness belongs to the notion of coherence. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) |
| 13743 | We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Occam's Razor should only be understood to concern substances: do not multiply basic entities without necessity. There is no problem with the multiplication of derivative entities - they are an 'ontological free lunch'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The phrase 'ontological free lunch' comes from Armstrong. This is probably what Occam meant. A few extra specks of dust, or even a few more numbers (thank you, Cantor!) don't seem to challenge the principle. |
| 13741 | If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: We can automatically infer 'there are roses' from 'there are red roses' (with no shift in the meaning of 'roses'). Likewise one can automatically infer 'there are numbers' from 'there are prime numbers'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: He similarly observes that the atheist's 'God is a fictional character' implies 'there are fictional characters'. Schaffer is not committing to a strong platonism with his claim - merely that the existence of numbers is hardly worth disputing. |
| 13748 | Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring. |
| 13747 | Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is mere modal correlation. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) |
| 13744 | The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: My preferred view is that there is only one fundamental entity - the whole concrete cosmos - from which all else exists by abstraction. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks to me like weak anti-realism - that there are no natural 'joints' in nature - but I don't think Schaffer intends that. I take the joints to be fundamentals, which necessitates that the cosmos has parts. His 'abstraction' is clearly a process. |
| 13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3) |
| 13742 | There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: I am happy to accept universal composition, on the grounds that there are heaps, piles etc with no integral unity, and that arbitrary composites are no less unified than heaps. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1 n11) | |
| A reaction: The metaphysical focus is then placed on what constitutes 'integral unity', which is precisely the question which most interested Aristotle. Clearly if there is nothing more to an entity than its components, scattering them isn't destruction. |
| 13752 | The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: The notion of grounding my capture a crucial mereological distinction (missing from classical mereology) between an integrated whole with genuine unity, and a mere aggregate. x is an integrated whole if it grounds its proper parts. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: That gives a nice theoretical notion, but if you remove each of the proper parts, does x remain? Is it a bare particular? I take it that it will have to be an abstract principle, the one Aristotle was aiming at with his notion of 'form'. Schaffer agrees. |
| 13749 | Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: One motivation for dialetheism is the view that there are impossible worlds. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) |
| 13740 | 'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: A 'Moorean certainty' is when something is more credible than any philosopher's argument to the contrary. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The reference is to G.E. Moore's famous claim that the existence of his hand is more certain than standard sceptical arguments. It sounds empiricist, but they might be parallel rational truths, of basic logic or arithmetic. |
| 17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The simplest way of fitting the putative observed phenomena of telepathy or clairvoyance into my web of belief is to refuse to take them at face value. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07-8) | |
| A reaction: Love it. It is very disconcerting for the sceptical naturalist to be faced with adamant claims that the paranormal has occurred, but my response is exactly the same as Smart's. I reject the reports, no matter how passionately they are asserted. |
| 17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
| Full Idea: You could imagine a person using the angle from a theodolite to decide a suitable spot to cut the height of the flagpole, …but since such circumstances would be very unusual we naturally say the flagpole subtends the angle because of its height. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.14) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he mentions Van Fraassen 1980:132-3 for a similar point] As a response this seems a bit lame, if the direction is fixed by what is 'usual'. I think the key point is that the direction of explanation is one way or the other, not both. |
| 17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The theory of the expansion of the universe renders the red shift no longer puzzling, whereas he expansion of the universe is hardly rendered less puzzling by facts about the red shift. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.15) | |
| A reaction: The direction of explanation is, I take it, made obvious by the direction of causation, with questions about what is 'puzzling' as mere side-effects. |
| 17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I want to characterise explanation of some fact as a matter of fitting belief in this fact into a system of beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good to me. Simple facts slot straight into daily beliefs, and deep obscure facts are explained when we hook them up to things we have already grasped. Quark theory fits into prior physics of forces, properties etc. |
| 17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
| Full Idea: An explanation may be bad if it fits only into a bad web of belief. It can also be bad if it fits into a (possibly good) web of belief in a bad sort of way. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.09) | |
| A reaction: Nice. If you think someone has an absurd web of beliefs, then it counts against some belief (for you) if it fits beautifully into the other person's belief system. Judgement of coherence comes in at different levels. |
| 17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The Hempelian deductive-nomological model of explanation clearly fits in well with the notion of explanation in terms of coherence. One way of fitting a belief into a system is to show that it is deducible from other beliefs. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.13) | |
| A reaction: Smart goes on to reject the law-based deductive approach, for familiar reasons, but at least it has something in common with the Smart view of explanation, which is the one I like. |
| 17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
| Full Idea: One explanation will be a better explanation that another if it also explains a set of phenomena from a different field ('consilience'). | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.07) | |
| A reaction: This would count as 'unexpected accommodation', rather than prediction. It is a nice addition to Lipton's comparison of mere accommodation versus prediction as criteria. It sounds like a strong criterion for a persuasive explanation. |
| 17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
| Full Idea: I class mathematical explanation with scientific explanation. This would be resisted by those who, unlike me, regard the notion of causation as essential to scientific explanation. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.02-3) | |
| A reaction: I aim to champion mathematical explanation, in terms of axioms etc., so I am realising that my instinctive attraction to exclusively causal explanation won't do. What explanation needs is a direction of dependence. |
| 17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
| Full Idea: The history of science suggests that most often explanation is reduction to the unfamiliar. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.11) | |
| A reaction: Boyle was keen to reduce things to the familiar, but that was early days for science, and some nasty shocks were coming our way. What would Boyle make of quantum non-locality? |
| 17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
| Full Idea: Newtonian celestial mechanics does not explain the advance of the perihelion of Mercury, while Einstein's general theory of relativity does. | |
| From: J.J.C. Smart (Explanation - Opening Address [1990], p.03) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of why explanation is the central concept in science, and probably in all epistemological activity. The desire to know is the desire for an explanation. Once the explanation is obvious, we know. |