63 ideas
| 12667 | Metaphysics aims at the simplest explanation, without regard to testability [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The methodology of metaphysics... is that of arguing to the simplest explanation, without regard to testability. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: I love that! I'd be a bit cautious about 'simplest', since 'everything is the output of an ineffable God' is beautifully simple, and brings the whole discussion to a halt. I certainly think metaphysics goes deeper than testing. String Theory? |
| 12666 | We can base logic on acceptability, and abandon the Fregean account by truth-preservation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In logic, acceptability conditions can replace truth conditions, ..and the only price one has to pay for this is that one has to abandon the implausible Fregean idea that logic is the theory of truth preservation. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This has always struck me as correct, given that if you assign T and F in a semantics, they don't have to mean 'true' and 'false', and that you can do very good logic with propositions which you think are entirely false. |
| 12688 | Mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I wish to explore the idea that mathematics is the formal study of the categorical dimensions of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: Categorical dimensions are spatiotemporal relations and other non-causal properties. Ellis defends categorical properties as an aspect of science. The obvious connection seems to be with structuralism in mathematics. Shapiro is sympathetic. |
| 12683 | Objects and substances are a subcategory of the natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The category of natural kinds of objects or substances should be regarded simply as a subcategory of the category of the natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is a new, and interesting, proposal from Ellis (which will be ignored by the philosophical community, as all new theories coming from elderly philosophers are ignored! Cf Idea 12652). A good knowledge of physics is behind Ellis's claim. |
| 12670 | A physical event is any change of distribution of energy [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical event as any change of distribution of energy in any of its forms. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to result in an awful lot of events. My own (new this morning) definition is: 'An event is a process which can be individuated in time'. Now you just have to work out what a 'process' is, but that's easier than understanding an 'event'. |
| 15682 | Even fairly simple animals make judgements based on categories [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: All organisms form categories: even mealworms have category-based preferences, and higher-order animals such as pigeons or octopi can display quite sophisticated categorical judgements. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
| A reaction: [She cites some 1980 research to support this] This comes as no surprise, as I take categorisation as almost definitive of what a mind is. My surmise is that some sort of 'labelling' system is at the heart of it (like Googlemail labels!). |
| 15691 | Children accept real stable categories, with nonobvious potential that gives causal explanations [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: By five children assume that a variety of categories have rich inductive potential, are stable over outward transformations, include crucial nonobvious properties, have innate potential, privilege causal features, can be explained causally, and are real. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: This is Gelman's helpful summary of the findings of research on childhood essentialising, and says the case for this phenomenon is 'compelling'. |
| 12673 | Physical properties are those relevant to how a physical system might act [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We may define a physical property as one whose value is relevant, in some circumstances, to how a physical system is likely to act. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: Fair enough, but can we use the same 'word' property when we are discussing abstractions? Does 'The Enlightenment' have properties? Do very simple things have properties? Can 'red' act, if it isn't part of any physical system? |
| 12665 | I support categorical properties, although most people only want causal powers [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I want to insist on the existence of a class of categorical properties distinct from causal powers. This is contentious, for there is a growing body of opinion that all properties are causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Alexander Bird makes a case against categorical properties. If what is meant is that 'being an electron' is the key property of an electron, then I disagree (quite strongly) with Ellis. Ellis says they are needed to explain causal powers. |
| 12682 | Essentialism needs categorical properties (spatiotemporal and numerical relations) and dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Essentialist metaphysics seem to require that there be at least two kinds of properties in nature: dispositional properties (causal powers, capacities and propensities), and categorical ones (spatiotemporal and numerical relations). | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: At last someone tells us what a 'categorical' property is! Couldn't find it in Stanford! Bird and Molnar reject the categorical ones as true properties. If there are six cats, which cat has the property of being six? Which cat is 'three metres apart'? |
| 12684 | Spatial, temporal and numerical relations have causal roles, without being causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal and numerical relations can have various causal roles without themselves being instances of causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: He cites gaps, aggregates, orientations, approaching and receding, as examples of categorical properties which make a causal difference. I would have thought these could be incorporated in accounts of more basic causal powers. |
| 12672 | Properties and relations are discovered, so they can't be mere sets of individuals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: To regard properties as sets of individuals, and relations as sets of ordered individuals, is to make a nonsense of the whole idea of discovering a new property or relationship. Sets are defined or constructed, not discovered. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This bizarre view of properties (as sets) drives me crazy, until it dawns on you that they are just using the word 'property' in a different way, probably coextensively with 'predicate', in order to make the logic work. |
| 12676 | Causal powers can't rest on things which lack causal power [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power can never be dependent on anything that does not have any causal powers. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds right, though you worry when philosophers make such bold assertions about such extreme generalities. But see Idea 12667. This is, of course, the key argument for saying that causal powers are the bedrock of reality, and of explanation. |
| 23781 | Categoricals exist to influence powers. Such as structures, orientations and magnitudes [Ellis, by Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Ellis allows categoricals alongside powers, …to influence the sort of manifestations produced by powers. He lists structures, arrangements, distances, orientations, and magnitudes. | |
| From: report of Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009]) by Neil E. Williams - The Powers Metaphysics 05.2 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that all of these could be understood as manifestations of powers. The odd one out is distances, but then space and time are commonly overlooked in every attempt to produce a complete ontology. [also Molnar 2003:164]. |
| 12686 | Causal powers are a proper subset of the dispositional properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers are just a proper subset of the dispositional properties. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 5) | |
| A reaction: Sounds wrong. Causal powers have a physical reality, while a disposition sounds as if it can wholly described by a counterfactual claim. It seems better to say that things have dispositions because they have powers. |
| 12685 | Categorical properties depend only on the structures they represent [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I would define categorical properties as those whose identities depend only on the kinds of structures they represent. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3 n8) | |
| A reaction: Aha. So categorical properties would be much more perspicaciously labelled as 'structural' properties. Why does philosophical terminology make it all more difficult than it needs to be? |
| 15700 | In India, upper-castes essentialize caste more than lower-castes do [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The notion of caste in India is more essentialized among upper-caste than lower-caste individuals. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: In a book defending fairly innate essentialism in the human race, Gelman offers this point as a warning that large cultural ingredients can be involved. Racism is the classic difficulty with essentialism. |
| 15685 | Essentialism is either natural to us, or an accident of our culture, or a necessary result of language [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The two views contrasting with essentialism naturally emerging in childhood are the claim that essentialism is a historical accident emerging from Western philosophy, and that essentialism is an inherent consequence of naming things. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Background') | |
| A reaction: Helpful. I take Idea 15682 to rule out the idea that it is just a feature of western culture. I can't conceive of early man surviving without essentialism. I don't think it rules out the naming view. Animals may do what emerges in us as full 'naming'. |
| 15684 | Children's concepts include nonobvious features, like internal parts, functions and causes [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Children incorporate a variety of nonobvious features into their concepts, including internal parts, functions, causes, and ontological distinctions. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
| A reaction: This remark sums up the general thesis of her book, which she supports with a wealth of first-hand evidence. It supports my view, that the desire and need for explanation is at the root of essentialist concepts. It's hard wired in us. |
| 15681 | Essentialism: real or representational? sortal, causal or ideal? real particulars, or placeholders? [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: We map types of essentialism by asking is it in the world or in our representations, is it sortal or causal or ideal, and is it specific particulars or placeholders for the unknown? | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
| A reaction: I am struck by the way that this practising experimental psychologist gets to ask questions and make distinctions much more extensively than most armchair philosophers on the subject. She focuses on the representational, causal, placeholder view. |
| 15678 | Essentialism says categories have a true hidden nature which gives an object its identity [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism is the view that categories have an underlying reality or true nature that one cannot observe directly but that gives an object its identity. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: I think the introduction of categories here is a misunderstanding. Does an uncategorisable thing therefore have no identity (even though it has properties)? If categories give objects their identity, what gives categories their identity? |
| 15683 | Sortals are needed for determining essence - the thing must be categorised first [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that sortals are likewise required for determining essence. One cannot answer the question 'What is the essence of this?' without supplying the sortal - of this 'what'. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') | |
| A reaction: I remain baffled by this view. I take the category to be an inductive generalisation from other similar individuals. It can't get off the ground if you don't start with the individuals. Sortals are just a shorthand. |
| 15697 | Kind (unlike individual) essentialism assumes preexisting natural categories [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: With kind essentialism the person assumes that the world is divided up into preexisting natural categories. Individual essentialism seems not to require any such commitment to kind realism. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism') | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints my difficulty: how do we decide whether some category or attributed essence is part of a preexisting natural kind? Some natural kinds are self-evident, like water (roughly), but others need subtle teasing out. How is the teasing done? |
| 12679 | A real essence is a kind's distinctive properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A distinctive set of intrinsic properties for a given kind is called a 'real essence'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Note that he thinks essence is a set of properties (rather than what gives rise to the properties), and that it is kinds (and not individuals) which have real essences, and that one role of the properties is to be 'distinctive' of the kind. Cf. Oderberg. |
| 15687 | Kinship is essence that comes in degrees, and age groups are essences that change over time [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Kinship is essentialized, but admits of degrees, ...and people can be essentialist even about categories they do not view as fixed over time, such as age groupings. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 03 'Summary') | |
| A reaction: Given my notion of essence are necessarily explanatory, I embrace both of these points. Being very athletic comes in degrees, and changes over times. |
| 15679 | Essentialism comes from the cognitive need to categorise [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism has its source in the cognitive requirement of categorization in certain domains - particularly as they affect the young learner. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Essentialist') | |
| A reaction: I think the phenomenon is better understood as part of the cognitive requirement to understand and explain. Categorisation is just one way to aid explanation. Children try to understand (essentially) a new animal without categorisation. |
| 15698 | We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: We found no evidence that mothers teach essentialism to their children. ...Mothers teach children about kinds, not about essences, and mothers help children identify which categories are richly structured. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 07 'Conclusions') | |
| A reaction: This is a psychologist who specialises in this topic. If you think essentialism is inculcated by a our culture, you will have to blame the fathers. |
| 15709 | Essentialism is useful for predictions, but it is not the actual structure of reality [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism is a reasoning heuristic that allows us to make fairly good predictions much of the time, but it should not be confused with the structure of reality. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Discussion') | |
| A reaction: She particularly cites biology as the area where it might be inaccurate. I'm beginning to think that the operations of induction are the place to look for an good understanding of essentialism. |
| 15696 | Peope favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: People favor historical paths over outward properties when determining what something is. ...An object looking like a knife is less likely to be called 'a knife' if it is described as having been created by accident. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Essentialism') | |
| A reaction: I like this because it talks, suggestively, of 'historical paths' rather than of 'origin'. Thus we might judge a person's identity by their traumatic experience rather than by their birth. This doesn't challenge necessity of origin, but affects labels. |
| 12668 | Metaphysical necessity holds between things in the world and things they make true [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessitation is the relation that holds between things in the world and the things they make true. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: Not sure about that. It implies that it is sentences that have necessity, and he confirms it by calling it 'a semantic relation'. So there are no necessities if there are no sentences? Not the Brian Ellis we know and love. |
| 12687 | Metaphysical necessities are those depending on the essential nature of things [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysically necessary proposition is one that is true in virtue of the essential nature of things. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: It take this to be what Kit Fine argues for, though it tracks back to Aristotle. I also take it to be correct, though one might ask whether there are any other metaphysical necessities, ones not depending on essences. |
| 15707 | There is intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist and deontological understanding [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The modes of understanding (or modes of construal) which have been proposed are intentional, mechanical, teleological, essentialist, vitalist (perhaps), and deontological. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening') | |
| A reaction: She cites psychological research to support this, and calls it 'a relatively small number' of modes. Compare Aristotle's four modes of cause/explanation. |
| 15703 | Memories often conform to a theory, rather than being neutral [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Memory is notorious for conforming to theory (rather than memory being a neutral source of information). | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory') | |
| A reaction: This observation by a psychologist is music to sceptics about objectivity. Memory is so fundamental to our basic epistemology that it could even be the nature of thought itself. |
| 21515 | Incoherence may be more important for enquiry than coherence [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: While coherence may lack the positive role many have assigned to it, ...incoherence plays an important negative role in our enquiries. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Peirce as the main source for this idea] We can hardly by deeply impressed by incoherence if we have no sense of coherence. Incoherence is just one of many markers for theory failure. Missing the target, bad concepts... |
| 21514 | Coherence is the capacity to answer objections [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: According to Lehrer, coherence should be understood in terms of the capacity to answer objections. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 9) | |
| A reaction: [Keith Lehrer 1990] We can connect this with the Greek requirement of being able to give an account [logos], which is the hallmark of understanding. I take coherence to be the best method of achieving understanding. Any understanding meets Lehrer's test. |
| 21496 | Mere agreement of testimonies is not enough to make truth very likely [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: Far from guaranteeing a high likelihood of truth by itself, testimonial agreement can apparently do so only if the circumstances are favourable as regards independence, prior probability, and individual credibility. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is Olson's main thesis. His targets are C.I.Lewis and Bonjour, who hoped that a mere consensus of evidence would increase verisimilitude. I don't see a problem for coherence in general, since his favourable circumstances are part of it. |
| 21499 | Coherence is only needed if the information sources are not fully reliable [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: An enquirer who is fortunate enough to have at his or her disposal fully reliable information sources has no use for coherence, the need for which arises only in the context of less than fully reliable informations sources. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 2.6.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be entirely false. How do you assess reliability? 'I've seen it with my own eyes'. Why trust your eyes? In what visibility conditions do you begin to doubt your eyes? Why do rational people mistrust their intuitions? |
| 21502 | A purely coherent theory cannot be true of the world without some contact with the world [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: The Input Objection says a pure coherence theory would seem to allow that a system of beliefs be justified in spite of being utterly out of contact with the world it purports to describe, so long as it is, to a sufficient extent, coherent. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: Olson seems impressed by this objection, but I don't see how a system could be coherently about the world if it had no known contact with the world. Olson seems to ignore meta-coherence, which evaluates the status of the system being studied. |
| 21512 | Extending a system makes it less probable, so extending coherence can't make it more probable [Olsson] |
| Full Idea: Any non-trivial extension of a belief system is less probable than the original system, but there are extensions that are more coherent than the original system. Hence more coherence does not imply a higher probability. | |
| From: Erik J. Olsson (Against Coherence [2005], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: [Olson cites Klein and Warfield 1994; compressed] The example rightly says the extension could have high internal coherence, but not whether the extension is coherent with the system being extended. |
| 12669 | Science aims to explain things, not just describe them [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The primary aim of science is to explain what happens, not just to describe it. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a good motto for scientific essentialism. Any scientist who is happy with anything less than explanation is a mere journeyman, a servant in the kitchens of the great house of science. |
| 15708 | Inductive success is rewarded with more induction [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Inductive success is rewarded with more induction. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Broadening') | |
| A reaction: I love this one. Neat, accurate, and central to how we understand the world. I take inductive success to be stored as labels, concepts, categories, words and general truths, which are then our resource for further attempts. |
| 15694 | Children overestimate the power of a single example [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: We suggest that children overestimate the power of a single example. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
| A reaction: This conclusion arises from extensive psychological research. 'My grandma smoked, and she lived to be 97' - adults do this too. Wittgenstein says assuming other minds because of your own is induction from one example! |
| 15695 | Children make errors in induction by focusing too much on categories [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Because of their narrow focus, children's sensitivity to categories as the basis of induction is a reasoning bias that, though useful much of the time, results in systematic errors. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
| A reaction: This is the bad sense of 'essentialism' which worries its opponents. Presumably, though, my favoured scientific essentialism will be 'scientific', and avoid this problem. The relation between categories and induction needs to be clear. |
| 15692 | People tend to be satisfied with shallow explanations [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: People tend to be satisfied with rather shallow explanations. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'Is essentialism') | |
| A reaction: She cites some psychological research to support this. Pretty obvious really. I take the so-called 'scientific method' to be nothing more than ceasing to be satisfied with such shallowness. |
| 15680 | Folk essentialism rests on belief in natural kinds, in hidden properties, and on words indicating structures [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: The three components of essentialism as a folk belief are the idea that certain categories are natural kinds, the idea that some unobservable property causes the way things are, and the idea that words reflect real structures. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 01 'Prelims') |
| 15686 | Labels may indicate categories which embody an essence [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Labels may signal categories that are believed to embody an essence. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 02 'Privileged') | |
| A reaction: This is quoted by her, as a summary of a substantial body of research which she endorses. I cite it because it pinpoints my own view. I take 'labels' to be basic to minds, as organisers of thought, and this ties essences to labels. Satisfying picture. |
| 15690 | Causal properties are seen as more central to category concepts [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Properties that enter into causally meaningful links are better remembered and are treated as more central to the category than properties that are not causally meaningful. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation2') | |
| A reaction: This is a summary of considerable psychological research. This account not only sounds plausible, but would fit better withy why we form concepts and categories in the first place. We are trying to relate to the causations of nature. |
| 15688 | Categories are characterized by distance from a prototype [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: On prototype views, categories are characterized by distance from a prototype. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation') | |
| A reaction: Gelman observes that this view makes no reference to any causal features of things. This cuts them off from using underlying essences in the process of categorisation and concept-formation. How do you spot a prototype, with no category? |
| 15689 | Theory-based concepts use rich models to show which similarities really matter [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Theory-based approaches to categories are a response to the limitations of mere similarities holding the category together, and require knowledge-rich explanatory models to say which features are more central to a concept. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 05 'Causation1') | |
| A reaction: I see a promising account in linking theory theory to essentialism. For a physical object (or even for a process) infer a structure, and then identify what is most important in that structure. That gives you your stable, agreed concept. |
| 15699 | Prelinguistic infants acquire and use many categories [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Language does not appear to be necessary for forming categories, since prelinguistic infants acquire many categories, and even use categories to form inferences about unknown properties. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: She cites lots of research in support of this claim. The idea may come as a surprise to some people, but not to me. I take it that categorisation is what a brain is for, including animal brains. |
| 12681 | There are natural kinds of processes [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are natural kinds of processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I am tempted by the view that processes are the most basic feature of reality, since I think of the mind as a process, and quantum reality seems more like processes than like objects. |
| 15693 | One sample of gold is enough, but one tree doesn't give the height of trees [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: We can confidently determine the chemical composition of gold from just a single sample, but we cannot determine the height of trees from just a single tree. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 06 'The role') | |
| A reaction: The tricky word here is 'confidently'. If you meet one Latvian who is nice, do you assume they are all nice? At what point do you decide gold etc. really are natural kinds, where one sample tells all? Evolution of species... |
| 12680 | Natural kind structures go right down to the bottom level [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kind structures go all the way down to the most basic levels of existence. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: Even the bottom level? Is there anything to explain why the bottom level is a kind, given that all the higher kinds presumably have an explanation? |
| 15701 | Nouns seem to invoke stable kinds more than predicates do [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Children judged personal characteristics as more stable when they were referred to by a noun ('She is a carrot eater') than by a verbal predicate ('She eats carrots whenever she can') | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 08 'Naming') | |
| A reaction: This fits with my feeling that 'labels' are the basis of how the mind works. The noun invokes a genuine category of thing, where a predicate attaches to some preselected category ('she'). Gelman says names encourage inductions. |
| 12675 | Laws of nature are just descriptions of how things are disposed to behave [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature must be supposed to be just descriptions of the ways in which things are intrinsically disposed to behave: of how they would behave if they existed as closed and isolated systems. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this, and therefore take 'laws of nature' to be eliminable from any plausible ontology (which just contains the things and their behaviour). Ellis tends to defend laws, when he doesn't need to. |
| 15705 | Essentialism encourages us to think about the world scientifically [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism encourages a 'scientific' mindset in thinking about the natural world, a belief that intensive study of a natural domain will yield ever more underlying properties. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Maybe scientists must be committed to essences, the way mathematicians must be committed to numbers? This idea spendidly opposes the doubts expressed by Popper. |
| 15702 | Essentialism doesn't mean we know the essences [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism does not entail that people know what the essence is. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 09 'Theory') | |
| A reaction: This is a fundamental and (I would say) fairly obvious point, but it needs to be made to the more passionate opponents of essentialism. |
| 15704 | Essentialism starts from richly structured categories, leading to a search for underlying properties [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: If my speculations are correct, then essentialism starts out strictly as a belief that many categories are richly structured kinds, then additionally becomes a search for underlying inherent properties. | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 10 'Figuring') | |
| A reaction: This is her summary of extensive essentialist research among children. She favours the priority of kinds and categories. We actually change taxonomies on the basis of revisions in our accounts of essence. Science negotiates. |
| 15706 | A major objection to real essences is the essentialising of social categories like race, caste and occupation [Gelman] |
| Full Idea: One major argument against the view that essences are real is the rampant essentializing of categories that are socially constructed (such as race, caste and occupation). | |
| From: Susan A. Gelman (The Essential Child [2003], 11 'Is essentialism') | |
| A reaction: You can't argue with that. It raises the question of whether the approach of scientific essentialism has any value in the social, rather than physical, sciences. We jokingly essentialise groups of people such as referees or Oxonians. |
| 12671 | I deny forces as entities that intervene in causation, but are not themselves causal [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The classical conception of force is an entity that intervenes between a physical cause and its effect, but is not itself a physical cause. I see no reason to believe in forces of this kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: The difference of view between Leibniz and Newton is very illuminating on this one (coming this way soon!). Can you either have forces and drop causation, or have causation and drop forces? |
| 12674 | Energy is the key multi-valued property, vital to scientific realism [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the most important of all multi-valued properties is energy itself. I think a scientific realist must believe that energy exists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: It's odd that the existence of the most basic thing in physics needs a credo from a certain sort of believer. I have been bothered by notion of 'energy' for fifty years, and am still none the wiser. I'm sure I could be scientific realist without it. |
| 12689 | Simultaneity can be temporal equidistance from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Cosmologists have a concept of objective simultaneity, which they take to mean something like 'temporally equidistant from the Big Bang'. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I find this very appealing, when faced with all the relativity theory that tells me there is no such thing as global simultaneity, a claim which I find deeply counterintuitive, but seems to have the science on its side. Bravo. |
| 12690 | The present is the collapse of the light wavefront from the Big Bang [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The global wavefront that collapses when a light signal from the Big Bang is observed is what most plausibly defines the frontier between past and future. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism [2009], 6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but it is clearly worth passing on. Of all the deep mysteries, the 'present' time may be the deepest. |