15 ideas
| 12302 | Definitions formed an abstract hierarchy for Aristotle, as sets do for us [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For us it is sets which constitute the most natural example of a hierarchical structure within the abstract realm; but for Aristotle it would have been definitions, via their natural division into genus and differentia. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], §1 n4) | |
| A reaction: I suppose everyone who thinks about reality in abstraction ends up with a hierarchy. Compare the hierarchy of angelic hosts, or Greek gods. Could we get back to the Aristotelian view, instead of sets, which are out of control at the top end? |
| 14266 | Aristotle sees hierarchies in definitions using genus and differentia (as we see them in sets) [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: For us, sets constitute the most natural example of a hierarchical structure within the abstract realm. But for Aristotle it would have been definitions, via their natural division into genus and differentia. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1 n4) | |
| A reaction: Genus and differentia are only part of the story in Aristotle, and this remarks strikes me as perceptive. It is precisely the mapping of the explanatory hierarchy which Aristotle seeks in a good definition. |
| 14775 | Numbers are just names devised for counting [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Numbers are merely a system of names devised by men for the purpose of counting. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems a perfectly plausible view prior to the advent of Cantor, set theory and modern mathematical logic. I suppose the modern reply to this is that Peirce may be right about origin, but that men thereby stumbled on an Aladdin's Cave of riches. |
| 14776 | That two two-eyed people must have four eyes is a statement about numbers, not a fact [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: To say that 'if' there are two persons and each person has two eyes there 'will be' four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: One eye for each arm of the people is certainly a fact. Frege uses this equivalence to build numbers. I think Peirce is wrong. If it is not a fact that these people have four eyes, I don't know what 'four' means. It's being two pairs is also a fact. |
| 14268 | Maybe bottom-up grounding shows constitution, and top-down grounding shows essence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the two forms of grounding have a different source; the one from the bottom up is required for the constitution of the thing to be intelligible; the one from the top down is required for the essence of the thing to be intelligible. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aristotle Met. 1019a8-10 in support] Close reading of Fine would be needed to elucidate this properly, but it is a suggestive line of thought about how we should approach grounding. |
| 14267 | There is no distinctive idea of constitution, because you can't say constitution begins and ends [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If the parts of a body can constitute a man, then why should men not constitute a family? Why draw the line at the level of the man? ...Thus the idea of a distinctive notion of constitution, terminating in concrete substances, should be given up. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is in the context of Aristotle, but Fine's view seems to apply to Rudder Baker's distinctive approach. |
| 14264 | Is there a plausible Aristotelian notion of constitution, applicable to both physical and non-physical? [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is a question of whether there is a viable conception of constitution of the sort Aristotle supposes, one which is uniformly applicable to physical and non-physical objects alike, and which is capable of hierarchical application. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is part of an explication of Aristotle's 'matter' [hule], which might be better translated as 'ingredients', which would fit non-physical things quite well. |
| 14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: All positive reasoning is judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Hence we can never hope to attain absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
| A reaction: This is the basis of Peirce's fallibilism - that all 'positive' reasoning (whatever that it?) is based on statistical induction. I'm all in favour of fallibilism, but find Peirce's claim to be a bit too narrow. He was too mesmerised by physical science. |
| 14774 | Innate truths are very uncertain and full of error, so they certainly have exceptions [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It seems to me there is the most historic proof that innate truths are particularly uncertain and mixed up with error, and therefore a fortiori not without exception. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14772 | If we decide an idea is inspired, we still can't be sure we have got the idea right [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Even if we decide that an idea really is inspired, we cannot be sure, or nearly sure, that the statement is true. We know one of the commandments of the Bible was printed without a 'not' in it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14773 | A truth is hard for us to understand if it rests on nothing but inspiration [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: A truth which rests on the authority of inspiration only is of a somewhat incomprehensible nature; and we can never be sure that we rightly comprehend it. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14771 | Only reason can establish whether some deliverance of revelation really is inspired [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We never can be absolutely certain that any given deliverance [of revelation] really is inspired; for that can only be established by reasoning. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
| 14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: We can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], I) | |
| A reaction: The importance of this is its connection between imagination and 'rational' understanding. This is an important corrective to a crude traditional picture of the role of imagination. I would connect imagination with counterfactuals and best explanation. |
| 5655 | Happiness is not satisfaction of desires, but fulfilment of values [Bradley, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: For Bradley, the happiness of the individual is not to be understood in terms of his desires and needs, but rather in terms of his values - which is to say, in terms of those of his desires which he incorporates into his self. | |
| From: report of F.H. Bradley (Ethical Studies [1876]) by Roger Scruton - Short History of Modern Philosophy Ch.16 | |
| A reaction: Good. Bentham will reduce the values to a further set of desires, so that a value is a complex (second-level?) desire. I prefer to think of values as judgements, but I like Scruton's phrase of 'incorporating into his self'. Kant take note (Idea 1452). |
| 14265 | The components of abstract definitions could play the same role as matter for physical objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If one considers Aristotle's standard example of a definition, then it is plausible that its defining terms ('plane figure' in the case of a circle) should be constitutive of it in the same general way as physical matter constitutes something physical. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Aristotle on Matter [1992], 1) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that an appropriate translation for the Greek 'hule' might be the English 'ingredients', since Fine seems to be right about the broad application of hule in Aristotle. |