Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Law and Causality', 'Nietzsche: a philosophical biography' and 'Prcis of 'Ruling Passions''

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7 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 4. Later European Philosophy / d. Nineteenth century philosophy
20110 Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to know Kant's thing-in-itself, as ego, or nature, or spirit [Safranski]
     Full Idea: The 'thing in iself' acted on Kant's successors like a hole in the closed world of knowledge...Hegel, Fichte and Schelling wanted to penetrate into what they presumed to be the heart of things, by the invention of means of 'ego', or 'nature', or 'spirit.,
     From: Rüdiger Safranski (Nietzsche: a philosophical biography [2000], 07)
     A reaction: [a bit compressed] Although no scientist claims to know the ultimate essence of matter, the authority of science largely comes from persuasively moving us several steps closer to the thing in itself (more persuasively than these three).
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / d. Non-truthfunction conditionals
10993 Ramsey's Test: believe the consequent if you believe the antecedent [Ramsey, by Read]
     Full Idea: Ramsey's Test for conditionals is that a conditional should be believed if a belief in its antecedent would commit one to believing its consequent.
     From: report of Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.3
     A reaction: A rather pragmatic approach to conditionals
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 8. Conditionals / e. Supposition conditionals
14279 Asking 'If p, will q?' when p is uncertain, then first add p hypothetically to your knowledge [Ramsey]
     Full Idea: If two people are arguing 'If p, will q?' and are both in doubt as to p, they are adding p hypothetically to their stock of knowledge, and arguing on that basis about q; ...they are fixing their degrees of belief in q given p.
     From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], B 155 n)
     A reaction: This has become famous as the 'Ramsey Test'. Bennett emphasises that he is not saying that you should actually believe p - you are just trying it for size. The presupposition approach to conditionals seems attractive. Edgington likes 'degrees'.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 8. Ramsey Sentences
6894 Mental terms can be replaced in a sentence by a variable and an existential quantifier [Ramsey]
     Full Idea: Ramsey Sentences are his technique for eliminating theoretical terms in science (and can be applied to mental terms, or to social rights); a term in a sentence is replaced by a variable and an existential quantifier.
     From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928]), quoted by Thomas Mautner - Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy p.469
     A reaction: The technique is used by functionalists and results in a sort of eliminativism. The intrinsic nature of mental states is eliminated, because everything worth saying can be expressed in terms of functional/causal role. Sounds wrong to me.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 1. Nature of Ethics / d. Ethical theory
11911 Some philosophers always want more from morality; for others, nature is enough [Blackburn]
     Full Idea: The history of moral theory is largely a history of battles between people who want more (truth, absolutes...) - Plato, Locke, Cudworth, Kant, Nagel - and people content with what we have (nature) - Aristotle, Epicurus, Hobbes, Hume, Stevenson.
     From: Simon Blackburn (Précis of 'Ruling Passions' [2002], p.133)
     A reaction: [Thanks to Neil Sinclair for this one] As a devotee of Aristotle, I like this. I'm always impressed, though, by people who go the extra mile in morality, because they are in the grips of purer and loftier ideals than I am. They also turn into monsters!
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 4. Regularities / b. Best system theory
9418 All knowledge needs systematizing, and the axioms would be the laws of nature [Ramsey]
     Full Idea: Even if we knew everything, we should still want to systematize our knowledge as a deductive system, and the general axioms in that system would be the fundamental laws of nature.
     From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §A)
     A reaction: This is the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis view. Cf. Idea 9420.
9420 Causal laws result from the simplest axioms of a complete deductive system [Ramsey]
     Full Idea: Causal laws are consequences of those propositions which we should take as axioms if we knew everything and organized it as simply as possible in a deductive system.
     From: Frank P. Ramsey (Law and Causality [1928], §B)
     A reaction: Cf. Idea 9418.