17 ideas
| 3523 | Shadows are supervenient on their objects, but not reducible [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: Shadows are distinct from the physical objects casting the shadows and irreducible to them; any attempt at reduction would be incoherent, as it would entail identifying a shadow with the object of which it is a shadow. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: Another failure to find a decent analogy for what is claimed in property dualism. A 'shadow' is a reification of the abstract concept of an absence of light. Objects lose their shadows at dusk, but the object itself doesn't change. |
| 3517 | 'Ontology' means 'study of things which exist' [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: The word 'ontology' is derived from the Greek word 'ontia', which means 'things which exist'. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 1.1) |
| 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. |
| 3538 | Analogy to other minds is uncheckable, over-confident and chauvinistic [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: The argument from analogy makes it impossible to check my inductive inferences because of the privacy of other minds; it also seems irresponsible to generalise from a single case; and it seems like a case of human chauvinism. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: Privacy of other minds need not imply scepticism about them. I'm a believer, so I have no trouble checking my theories. Solipsists can't 'check' anything. It isn't 'irresponsible' to generalise from one case if that is all you have. |
| 3540 | If we are brains then we never meet each other [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: If I am my brain this leads to the odd result that you have never met me because you have never seen my brain. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 10.7) | |
| A reaction: 'Star Trek' is full of aliens who appear beautiful, and turn out to be ugly grey lumps. 'I am my face' would be just as odd, particularly if I were in a coma, or dead. |
| 3518 | I'm not the final authority on my understanding of maths [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: I may be the final authority on whether my shoe pinches, but I am manifestly not the final authority on whether I understand some mathematical theorem. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: However, it doesn't follow that his teachers are the final authority either, because he may get correct answers by an algorithm, and bluff his way when demonstrating his understanding. Who knows whether anyone really understands anything? |
| 3530 | Denial of purely mental causation will lead to epiphenomenalism [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: If mental events are causally efficacious only by virtue of their physical features and not their mental ones, …then anomalous monism leads straight to ephiphenomenalism. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: As epiphenomenalism strikes me as being incoherent (see Idea 7379), what this amounts to is that either mental effects are causally efficacious, or they are not worth mentioning. I take them to be causally efficacious because they are brain events. |
| 3520 | Token-identity removes the explanatory role of the physical [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: In token-identity mental and physical features seem as unrelated as colour and shape, which is very weak physicalism because it does not allow physical states an explanatory role in accounting for mental states. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 3.8.6) | |
| A reaction: Colour and shape are not totally unrelated, as they can both be totally explained by a full knowledge of the physical substance involved. ...But maybe if we fully understood Spinoza's single substance...? See Idea 4834. |
| 20543 | 'Social justice' is a confused idea, and inequalities need no justification [Hayek, by Swift] |
| Full Idea: Hayek thinks the whole idea of social justice involves a philosophical mistake, so that inequality doesn't really need justification in the first place. | |
| From: report of F.A. Hayek (The Mirage of Social Justice [1976]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 1 'Conc' | |
| A reaction: It is certainly hard to justify the claim that the state of nature involves equality, making its disturbance in need of justification. But surely inequalities in government policy (such as differential income tax) need justification? |
| 3528 | Causality may require that a law is being followed [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: The principle of nomological causality says that if two events are intrinsically causally related, there must be a strict physical law under which they can be subsumed. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.5) |
| 3525 | Strict laws make causation logically necessary [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: 'Deductive-nomological' explanation consists of two premises - a strict law with no exceptions and supporting deterministic counterfactuals, and a statement of an event which falls under the law - which together logically require the effect. | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.4) |
| 3527 | Strict laws allow no exceptions and are part of a closed system [Maslin] |
| Full Idea: 'Strict' laws of nature contain no ceteris paribus clauses ('all things being equal'), and are part of a closed system (so that whatever affects the system must be included within the system). | |
| From: Keith T. Maslin (Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind [2001], 7.5) |