27 ideas
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: That knowledge is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
| A reaction: A surprising view, coming from the father of modern science, but essentially correct. Obviously metaphysics aspires to avoid multiplicity, but it is riddled not only with complexity in its researches, but massive uncertainties. |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Knowledges are as pyramides, whereof history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is natural history, the stage next the basis is physic; the stage next the vertical point is metaphysic. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
| A reaction: The father of modern science keeps a place for metaphysics, as the most abstract level above the physical sciences. I would say he is right. It leads to my own slogan: science is the servant of philosophy. |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Physic should contemplate that which is inherent in matter, and therefore transitory; and metaphysic that which is abstracted and fixed | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites the ancients for this view, with which he agrees. One could do worse than hang onto metaphysics as the study of necessities, but must then face the attacks of the Quineans - that knowledge of necessities is beyond us. |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Physic inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and metaphysic handleth the formal and final causes. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 12119. This divides up Aristotle's famous Four Causes (or Explanations), outlined in 'Physics' II.3. The concept of 'matter', and the nature of 'cause' seem to me to fall with the purview of metaphysics. Interesting, though. |
| 18877 | Moral realism doesn't seem to entail the existence of any things [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Moral realism isn't realism about things, and it seems strange to suggest that moral realism is existence entailing in the way that realism about unobservable is. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Realism') | |
| A reaction: Cameron is questioning whether a realist has to believe in truthmakers. It seems to me that his doubts are because he insists that truthmaking is committed to the existence of 'things'. I assume any moral realism must supervene on nature. |
| 18868 | Surely if some propositions are grounded in existence, they all are? [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: What possible reason could one have for thinking of some propositions that they need to be grounded in what there is that doesn't apply to all propositions? | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: Well, if truthmaking said that all truths are grounded, then some could be grounded in what there is, and others in how it is, or maybe even how it isn't (if you get a decent account of negative truths). |
| 18867 | Orthodox Truthmaker applies to all propositions, and necessitates their truth [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Orthodox truthmaker theory (Armstrong's) entails Maximalism (that every true proposition has at least one truthmaker), and Necessitarianism (that the existence of a truthmaker necessitates the truth of its proposition). | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: I think I accept both of these. If you say only some truths have truthmakers, the other truths are then baffling. And how could a truthmaker fail in its job? But that doesn't necessitate the existence of the proposition. |
| 18873 | God fixes all the truths of the world by fixing what exists [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The truthmaker thought is that explanation only bottoms out at existence facts; for God to give a complete plan of the world He needs only make an inventory of what is to exist. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: He is defending Necessitarianism about truthmaking. I'm struggling with this. An inventory of the contents of my house doesn't begin to fix all the truths that arise from them. Why is Cameron so resistent to 'how' things are being part of the truthmaking? |
| 18879 | What the proposition says may not be its truthmaker [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of the truth of the proposition [p] doesn't stop at it being the case that p, so it's false to claim that whenever a proposition is true it's true in virtue of the world being as the proposition says it is. The features often lie deeper. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Grounding') | |
| A reaction: [He is opposing Jennifer Hornsby 2005] Cameron offers 'the average family has 2.4 children' as a counterexample' (since no one actually has 2.4 children). That seems compelling. Second example: 'the rose is beautiful'. |
| 18880 | Rather than what exists, some claim that the truthmakers are ways of existence, dispositions, modalities etc [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Rivals to the truthmaker claim that facts about what there is are the truthmakers, there are theories that add facts about how the things are, or add dispositional facts, or modal facts, or haecceitistic facts, or maybe moral facts. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Grounding') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] He seems to think his version has a monopoly on truthmaking, but I don't see why these other theories shouldn't count as truthmaking. The truthmaker for 'live grenades are dangerous' is not just the existence of grenades. |
| 18874 | Truthmaking doesn't require realism, because we can be anti-realist about truthmakers [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: It's definitely not sufficient to be a realist that one be a truthmaker theorist, since one can simply be anti-realist about the truthmakers. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Realism') | |
| A reaction: It is not quite clear how unreal truth makers could actually MAKE propositions true, rather than just being correlated with them. |
| 18869 | Without truthmakers, negative truths must be ungrounded [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: If negative truths don't have truthmakers then make no mistake: they are ungrounded. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: What would be the grounding for truths which expressed the necessary preconditions for all existence? Could 'nothing whatever exists' ever be a truth? |
| 18871 | I support the correspondence theory because I believe in truthmakers [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I tend to think that the fundamental reason we can have the correspondence theory of truth is that truthmaker theory is correct. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: [This responds to Fumerton 2006, who gives the opposite view] Cameron gives himself the classic problem of spelling out the correspondence relation (perhaps as 'congruence'). I like truthmaking, but I'm unsure about correspondence. |
| 18870 | Maybe truthmaking and correspondence stand together, and are interdefinable [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: One view says truthmaker theory stands or falls with the correspondence theory of truth, because the truthmaker for p is just the portion of reality that p corresponds to: truthmaker and correspondence can be conversely defined. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: The normal view, which I prefer, is that correspondence is a particular theory of truthmaking, invoking a precise 'correspondence' relation. Hence abolishing correspondence would not abolish truthmaking, if you had a rival account. |
| 18881 | For realists it is analytic that truths are grounded in the world [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: The analytic commitment of realism is that truths are grounded in the world. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Grounding') | |
| A reaction: Certain fifth-level truths might be a long way from the actual world, and deeply interfused with human concepts and theories. Negative truths must be fitted into this picture. |
| 18875 | Realism says a discourse is true or false, and some of it is true [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: Realism about a discourse is 1) to think that the sentences are, when construed literally, literally true or false, and 2) to think that some of the sentences of the discourse are non-vacuously true. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Realism') | |
| A reaction: [Cameron adds 'non-vacuously' to an idea of Sayre-McCord 199 p.5] This is realism based on what is 'true', without specifying 'commitments', so I like it. Cameron says it makes mathematical postulationists into realists. He likes 'mind-independent'. |
| 18878 | Realism says truths rest on mind-independent reality; truthmaking theories are about which features [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: All that is necessary for realism, I claim, is that truth is grounded in mind-independent features of fundamental reality. Truthmaker theory comes into play because it is a theory about what those features are (…so it isn't a commitment to realism). | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Realism') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Michael Devitt for this approach] What is the word 'fundamental' doing here? Because the mind-dependent parts of reality are considered non-fundamental? The no-true-Scotsman-hates-whisky move? His truthmaking is committed to 'things'. |
| 18872 | We should reject distinct but indiscernible worlds [Cameron] |
| Full Idea: I think we should reject distinct but indiscernible worlds. | |
| From: Ross P. Cameron (Truthmakers, Realism and Ontology [2008], 'Max and Nec') | |
| A reaction: An interesting passing remark. Presumably there would be unknowable truths about such worlds, which wouldn't bother a full-blooded realist. Indiscernible to whom? Me? Humanity? A divine mind? |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.5) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of pithy remark for which Bacon is famous. It is an obvious point, but a nice corrective to anyone who wants to apply empirical principles in a rather gormless way. |
| 3916 | Hopi consistently prefers verbs and events to nouns and things [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: Hopi, with its preference for verbs, as contrasted to our own liking for nouns, perpetually turns our propositions about things into propositions about events. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.63) | |
| A reaction: This should provoke careful thought about ontology - without concluding that it is entirely relative to language. |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.1) | |
| A reaction: After several hundred years, I doubt whether anyone can come up with a better account of scientific method than Bacon's. |
| 3917 | Scientific thought is essentially a specialised part of Indo-European languages [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: What we call "scientific thought" is a specialisation of the western Indo-European type of language. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.246) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of an absurd extreme relativist view of science, based on a confusion about meaning and thought. |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.5) | |
| A reaction: He gives as his example that the Copernican system and the Ptolemaic system both seem to satisfy all the facts. He wrote in 1605, just before Galileo's telescope. His point is regularly made in modern discussions. In this case, he was wrong! |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: It is the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of particularity. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.1) | |
| A reaction: I have to plead guilty to this myself. He may have pinpointed the key motivation behind philosophy. We all want to know things, as Aristotle said, but some of us want the broad brush, and others want the fine detail. |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: To say 'leaves are for protecting of fruit', or that 'clouds are for watering the earth', is well inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic they are impertinent. They are hindrances, and the search of the physical causes hath been neglected. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard rebellion against Aristotle which gave rise to the birth of modern science. The story has been complicated by natural selection, which bestows a sort of purpose on living things. Nowadays we pursue both paths. |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: I assign to summary philosophy the operation of essences (as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility), with this distinction - that they be handled as they have efficacy in nature, and not logically. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a splendid motto for scientific essentialism, in a climate where modal logicians appear to have taken over the driving seat in our understanding of essences. |
| 3915 | The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: A Hopi has no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.57) | |
| A reaction: If true, this would not so much support relativism of language as the view that that conception of time is actually false. |