Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Reply to Foucher', 'The Problem of Natural Laws' and 'Analogy of Religion'

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7 ideas

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 5. The Infinite / d. Actual infinite
19406 I strongly believe in the actual infinite, which indicates the perfections of its author [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: I am so much for the actual infinite that instead of admitting that nature abhors it, as is commonly said, I hold that it affects nature everywhere in order to indicate the perfections of its author.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to Foucher [1693], p.99)
     A reaction: I would have thought that, for Leibniz, while infinities indicate the perfections of their author, that is not the reason why they exist. God wasn't, presumably, showing off. Leibniz does not think we can actually know these infinities.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 9. Sameness
21315 A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler]
     Full Idea: When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit.
16. Persons / B. Nature of the Self / 4. Presupposition of Self
21317 Despite consciousness fluctuating, we are aware that it belongs to one person [Butler]
     Full Idea: Though the successive consciousnesses which we have of our own existence are not the same, yet they are consciousnesses of one and the same thing or object; of the same person, self, or living agent.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: Butler's arguments seems to be that he appears to be the same person, so he is the same person. He is explicitly disagreeing with Locke.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / a. Memory is Self
21313 If consciousness of events makes our identity, then if we have forgotten them we didn't exist then [Butler]
     Full Idea: Though consciousness of what is past does ascertain our personal identity to ourselves, yet to say that it makes personal identity, or is necessary to our being the same persons is to say a person has not existed a single moment but what he can remember.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: An over-cautious scepticism has crept in about the reliability of bodily identity. Now we can have photographs and CCTV to prove that we experienced events we have forgotten. Butler is right.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / c. Inadequacy of mental continuity
21314 Consciousness presupposes personal identity, so it cannot constitute it [Butler]
     Full Idea: One would think it really self-evident that consciousness of personal identity presupposes, and therefore cannot constitute, personal identity, any more than knowledge can presuppose truth, which it presupposes.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: It rather begs the question to dogmatically assert that mere consciousness presupposes a self, especially after Hume's criticisms. That consciousness implies a subject to experience needs arguing for. Is it the best explanation?
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 5. Concerns of the Self
21318 If the self changes, we have no responsibilities, and no interest in past or future [Butler]
     Full Idea: If personality is a transient thing ...then it follows that it is a fallacy to charge ourselves with any thing we did, or to imagine our present selves interested in any thing which befell us yesterday, or what will befall us tomorrow.
     From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
     A reaction: We seem to care about the past and future of our children, without actually being our children. Can't my future self be my descendant, a close one, instead of me?
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 3. Laws and Generalities
4800 Natural laws result from eliminative induction, where enumerative induction gives generalisations [Cohen,LJ, by Psillos]
     Full Idea: Cohen contends that statements that express laws of nature are the products of eliminative induction, where accidentally true generalisations are the products of enumerative induction.
     From: report of L. Jonathan Cohen (The Problem of Natural Laws [1980], p.222) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §7.1
     A reaction: The idea is that enumerative induction only offers the support of positive instances, where eliminative induction involves attempts to falsify a range of hypotheses. This still bases laws on observed regularities, rather than essences or mechanisms.