67 ideas
| 13567 | Ontology should give insight into or an explanation of the world revealed by science [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A good ontology should provide insight into, or offer some kind of explanation of, the salient general features of the world that has been revealed to us by science. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this. The difficulty is that the most fundamental level revealed by science is a quantum one, so if you take a reductionist view then your ontology is both crazy, and resting on things which are not understood. |
| 18806 | Frege thought traditional categories had psychological and linguistic impurities [Frege, by Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Frege rejected the traditional categories as importing psychological and linguistic impurities into logic. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 1.2 | |
| A reaction: Resisting such impurities is the main motivation for making logic entirely symbolic, but it doesn't follow that the traditional categories have to be dropped. |
| 13604 | Real possibility and necessity has the logic of S5, which links equivalence classes of worlds of the same kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The logic of real possibilities and necessities is just S5. This is because the accessibility relation for real possibilities links possible worlds of the same natural kind, which is an equivalence class. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: Most people, except Nathan Salmon, agree with this. With full accessibility, you seem to take epistemological problems out of the system, and just focus on reality. |
| 8490 | First-level functions have objects as arguments; second-level functions take functions as arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Just as functions are fundamentally different from objects, so also functions whose arguments are and must be functions are fundamentally different from functions whose arguments are objects. The latter are first-level, the former second-level, functions. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38) | |
| A reaction: In 1884 he called it 'second-order'. This is the standard distinction between first- and second-order logic. The first quantifies over objects, the second over intensional entities such as properties and propositions. |
| 8492 | Relations are functions with two arguments [Frege] |
| Full Idea: Functions of one argument are concepts; functions of two arguments are relations. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.39) | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we would say 'two or more'. Another interesting move in the aim of analytic philosophy to reduce the puzzling features of the world to mathematical logic. There is, of course, rather more to some relations than being two-argument functions. |
| 13606 | Humean conceptions of reality drive the adoption of extensional logic [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A Humean conception of reality lies behind, and motivates, the development of extensional logics with extensional semantics. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.04) | |
| A reaction: His proposal seems to be that it rests on the vision of a domain of separated objects. The alternative view seems to be that it is mathematics, with its absolute equality between 'objects', which drives extensionalism. |
| 8487 | Arithmetic is a development of logic, so arithmetical symbolism must expand into logical symbolism [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I am of the opinion that arithmetic is a further development of logic, which leads to the requirement that the symbolic language of arithmetic must be expanded into a logical symbolism. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: This may the the one key idea at the heart of modern analytic philosophy (even though logicism may be a total mistake!). Logic and arithmetical foundations become the master of ontology, instead of the servant. The jury is out on the whole enterprise. |
| 18899 | Frege takes the existence of horses to be part of their concept [Frege, by Sommers] |
| Full Idea: Frege regarded the existence of horses as a property of the concept 'horse'. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by Fred Sommers - Intellectual Autobiography 'Realism' |
| 13584 | The extension of a property is a contingent fact, so cannot be the essence of the property [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The extension of a property in any given world is just a contingent fact about that world; its extension is not the essence of the property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.07) | |
| A reaction: The Quinean idea, common among logicians, that a predicate is just a set defined for some model, may be useful in the logic, but is preposterous as an account of what a property actually is in nature, even if the set covers possible worlds. |
| 13587 | There is no property of 'fragility', as things are each fragile in a distinctive way [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no natural property of 'fragility'; glasses, parchments, ecosystems and spiders' webs are fragile in their own ways, but they have nothing intrinsic or structural in common. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: This is important (and, I think, correct) because we are inclined to say that something is 'intrinsically' fragile, but that still isn't enough to identify a true property. Ellis wants universals to be involved, and even a nominalist must sort-of agree. |
| 13577 | Typical 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, such as shape [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The paradigmatically 'categorical' properties are spatio-temporal, depending on how things are distributed in space and time. Shape is the obvious example. ...Other examples are number, size and configuration. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm finding it very frustrating that this concept is much discussed in current philosophy of science (e.g. by Bird), but it is exceedingly hard to pin down any exact account of these 'categorical' properties, or even why they are so-called. |
| 9436 | The property of 'being an electron' is not of anything, and only electrons could have it [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There is no property of being an electron. It could only be instantiated by electrons, so it does not seem genuine. And what is the thing that supposedly instantiates the property of being an electron? | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 75,92), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Laws in Nature 7.3 | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely. Bird launches an excellent attack on categorial properties. |
| 4028 | Frege allows either too few properties (as extensions) or too many (as predicates) [Mellor/Oliver on Frege] |
| Full Idea: Frege's theory of properties (which he calls 'concepts') yields too few properties, by identifying coextensive properties, and also too many, by letting every predicate express a property. | |
| From: comment on Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §2 | |
| A reaction: Seems right; one extension may have two properties (have heart/kidneys), two predicates might express the same property. 'Cutting nature at the joints' covers properties as well as objects. |
| 13582 | 'Being a methane molecule' is not a property - it is just a predicate [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: In my view 'being a methane molecule' is not a property name, but a predicate that is constructed out of a natural kind name, and so pretends to name a property. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.03) | |
| A reaction: I can't tell you how strongly I agree with this. How long have you got? This is so incredibly right that... You get the idea. He observes that such properties cannot be instantiated 'in' anything. |
| 13580 | Causal powers must necessarily act the way they do [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no question of a causal power's acting one way in one world and another way in a different world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps the very core idea of scientific essentialism. It doesn't feel quite right that when you ask for the source of this necessity, you are only told that it is necessary for the very identity of a power. The truth is that it is a primitive of nature. |
| 13598 | Causal powers are often directional (e.g. centripetal, centrifugal, circulatory) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Causal powers are often directional. For example, they may be centripetal, centrifugal, or circulatory. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: The examples all seem to raise a few questions, about whether the directionality arises from the context, rather than from the intrinsic power. |
| 13568 | Basic powers may not be explained by structure, if at the bottom level there is no structure [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: It may be that the most fundamental things have no structure, and therefore no structure in virtue of which they have the powers they have. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Maybe the world has inexplicable powers, so there is a God? It seems obvious that there will be no explanation of the 'lowest level' of reality, and also obvious (to me and Leibniz, anyway) that this lowest level has to be active. |
| 13586 | Maybe dispositions can be explained by intrinsic properties or structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: One view is that there must be an intrinsic property or structure in virtue of which a given thing has the behavioural disposition in question. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.06) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Prior, Pargetter,Jackson 1982] A key question in the metaphysics of nature - whether dispositions should be taken as primitive, or whether we should try to explain them in other terms. I take powers and dispositions to be prior to properties. |
| 13585 | The most fundamental properties of nature (mass, charge, spin ...) all seem to be dispositions [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The properties of the most fundamental things in nature, including mass, charge, spin, and the like, would all appear to be dispositional. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.05) | |
| A reaction: This goes with the Leibnizian claim that the most fundamental features of nature must be active in character. |
| 13596 | A causal power is a disposition to produce forces [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: A causal power is a disposition of something to produce forces of a certain kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Leibniz was putting all his emphasis on the origin of the forces in nature, he was referring to exactly what we mean by 'powers'. From Ellis's formulation, I take powers to be more basic than dispositions. Does he realise this? |
| 13599 | Powers are dispositions of the essences of kinds that involve them in causation [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The causal powers of an object are the dispositional properties of that object that are the real essences of the natural kinds of processes that involve that object in the role of cause. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is Ellis's formal definition at the end of his discussion of causal powers. He only seems to allow powers to the kind rather than to the individual. How do we account for the causal powers of unique genius? I say the powers are the essences. |
| 13572 | There are 'substantive' (objects of some kind), 'dynamic' (events of some kind) and 'property' universals [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Three categories of universals: 'substantive' universals have instances that are members of natural kinds of objects or substances; 'dynamic' universals are kinds of events or processes; 'property' universals are tropes of real properties or relations. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: I would want to distinguish real properties from relations. It is important to remember that an object can traditionally instantiate a universal, and that they aren't just properties. |
| 13573 | Universals are all types of natural kind [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The various kinds of universals are all natural kinds of one sort or another. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.01) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound right. What about the universals of mathematics, or universals which are a matter of social or linguistic convention? I think Ellis is trying to hijack the word 'universal' in response to Armstrong's more idealistic account. |
| 8489 | The concept 'object' is too simple for analysis; unlike a function, it is an expression with no empty place [Frege] |
| Full Idea: I regard a regular definition of 'object' as impossible, since it is too simple to admit of logical analysis. Briefly: an object is anything that is not a function, so that an expression for it does not contain any empty place. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.32) | |
| A reaction: Here is the core of the programme for deriving our ontology from our logic and language, followed through by Russell and Quine. Once we extend objects beyond the physical, it becomes incredibly hard to individuate them. |
| 13571 | Scientific essentialism doesn't really need Kripkean individual essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: My current view is that individual essences (about which Kripke's essentialism has a lot to say) do not matter much from the point of view of a scientific essentialist. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Kripke parenthesis on p.54] Presumably this is because science is only committed to dealing in generalities, and so natural kinds are needed for such things. I'm inclined to regard individual essences as prior in the pure ontology of the thing. |
| 13578 | The old idea that identity depends on essence and behaviour is rejected by the empiricists [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: The old Aristotelian idea that the identity of a thing might depend on its essential nature, which would dispose it to behave in certain ways, is firmly rejected by empiricists. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.10) | |
| A reaction: Ellis is accusing empiricists of having a falsely passive concept of objects. This dispute is best captured in the disagreement between Locke and Leibniz on the subject. |
| 13576 | Necessities are distinguished by their grounds, not their different modalities [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking, the distinction between two brands of necessity is one of grounds, rather than modality. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This idea I associate with Kit Fine. I like it, because it allows 'necessity' to be a univocal concept, which seems right to me. The types of necessity arise from types of things which already occur in our ontology. |
| 13570 | Individual essences necessitate that individual; natural kind essences necessitate kind membership [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are necessities grounded in the individual real essences of things, and necessities grounded in the natural kind essences of things. In the first case, without the property it isn't that individual, and in the second it isn't a member of that kind. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the distinction we must hang onto to avoid a huge amount of confusion in this territory. I just say that ceasing to be that individual will presumably entail ceasing to be that kind, but not necessarily vice versa, so individual essences rule. |
| 13607 | If events are unconnected, then induction cannot be solved [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: If one believes, as Hume did, that all events are loose and separate, then the problem of induction is probably insoluble. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 8.09) | |
| A reaction: This points to the essentialist solution of induction - that we can genuinely derive inductive truths if we can inductively identify the essences which give rise to the necessities of further cases. I take that to be a correct account. |
| 13597 | Good explanations unify [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: An acceptable explanation must have some unifying power. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: There is a tension here, between the particular and the general. If I say 'why did the building collapse' and you say 'gravity', you have certainly got a unifying explanation, but we want something narrower. |
| 13601 | Explanations of particular events are not essentialist, as they don't reveal essential structures [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Explanations of particular events in history, geology, or evolution, are causal explanations, requiring belief in some causal mechanisms. But they are not essentialist explanations because they do not seek to lay bare the essential structure of anything. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.05) | |
| A reaction: The explanation might be two-stage, as when we explain an earthquake by a plate boundary rupture, which is in turn explained by a theory of plate techtonics. The relationship between mechanistic and essentialist explanation needs study. |
| 13569 | To give essentialist explanations there have to be natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There can be no essentialist explanations constructed in any field where the subject matter is not naturally divided into kinds. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crux. I like individual essences, such as the character of a particular person. However, Ellis may be right, since while we may identify an individual essence as the source of a behaviour, we may not then be able to give any 'explanation'. |
| 13600 | The point of models in theories is not to idealise, but to focus on what is essential [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Most model theories abstract from reality in order to focus on the essential nature of some kind of process or system of relations. ... The point of idealizing in this case is not to simplify, but to eliminate what is not essential. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 4.03) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea a lot. It is where scientific essentialism cashes out in actual scientific practice. Ellis's example is the idealised Carnot heat engine, which never can exist, but which captures what is essential about the process. |
| 9947 | Concepts are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: Concepts, for Frege, are the ontological counterparts of predicative expressions. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: That sounds awfully like what many philosophers call 'universals'. Frege, as a platonist (at least about numbers), I would take to be in sympathy with that. At least we can say that concepts seem to be properties. |
| 10319 | An assertion about the concept 'horse' must indirectly speak of an object [Frege, by Hale] |
| Full Idea: Frege had a notorious difficulty over the concept 'horse', when he suggests that if we wish to assert something about a concept, we are obliged to proceed indirectly by speaking of an object that represents it. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], Ch.2.II) by Bob Hale - Abstract Objects | |
| A reaction: This sounds like the thin end of a wedge. The great champion of objects is forced to accept them here as a façon de parler, when elsewhere they have ontological status. |
| 8488 | A concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value [Frege] |
| Full Idea: A concept in logic is closely connected with what we call a function. Indeed, we may say at once: a concept is a function whose value is always a truth-value. ..I give the name 'function' to what is meant by the 'unsaturated' part. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.30) | |
| A reaction: So a function becomes a concept when the variable takes a value. Problems arise when the value is vague, or the truth-value is indeterminable. |
| 9948 | Unlike objects, concepts are inherently incomplete [Frege, by George/Velleman] |
| Full Idea: For Frege, concepts differ from objects in being inherently incomplete in nature. | |
| From: report of Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891]) by A.George / D.J.Velleman - Philosophies of Mathematics Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is because they are 'unsaturated', needing a quantified variable to complete the sentence. This could be a pointer towards Quine's view of properties, as simply an intrinsic feature of predication about objects, with no separate identity. |
| 4972 | I may regard a thought about Phosphorus as true, and the same thought about Hesperus as false [Frege] |
| Full Idea: From sameness of meaning there does not follow sameness of thought expressed. A fact about the Morning Star may express something different from a fact about the Evening Star, as someone may regard one as true and the other false. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.14) | |
| A reaction: This all gets clearer if we distinguish internalist and externalist theories of content. Why take sides on this? Why not just ask 'what is in the speaker's head?', 'what does the sentence mean in the community?', and 'what is the corresponding situation?' |
| 23125 | Most good social changes are incremental, rather than revolutionary [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: More permanent positive social change is made incrementally rather than by revolutionary transformation. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard liberal response to revolution. Revolutionaries obviously consider such a claim to be very naïve, and a failure to grasp how deep the changes need to go. |
| 23126 | Conservatives often want peace, prosperity and tolerance, but not social fairness [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Many conservatives want their world to be peaceful, properous, and pluralist, just as liberals do, but they don't particularly care that it be fair. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Every conservative will have a sense of what is fair (such as appropriate punishments, and keeping of contracts), but they are more inclined to think that fairness must be fought for by individuals, not imposed by governments. |
| 23132 | Conservatives believe obedience and rank are essential to social order [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The idea that the appearance of submission and obedience and rank are essential to order is at the heart of the conservative ideal. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: [He has just quoted Edmund Burke writing of Marie Antoinette] I once heard Richard Hare say that he thought social order would be best modelled on the army. A colleague once told me that obedience is a prime duty of a school teacher. |
| 23128 | The opposite of liberalism is dogmatism [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The opposite of liberalism is not conservatism but dogmatism. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. It pinpoints the liberal opposition to both extremes of normal politics. It might make anarchists their allies, though! |
| 23142 | People are fallible, so liberalism tries to distribute power [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Liberalism makes the idea of fallibility into a political practice by trying not to have too much power concentrated in one place or part of the system. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: There is a potential inefficiency and failure to focus on key goals implicit in this aim. It may be a good idea for a peacetime democracy, but a terrible idea for a wartime army. To stop corruption, don't let anyone do anything? |
| 23143 | Liberals have tried very hard to build a conscience into their institutions [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberalism can say on its own behalf is that no system of power in human history has tried harder to insert a corrective conscience into its institutions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: What we are learning in recent years is that wonderful liberal institutions can be quietly eroded by the forces of darkness, once those forces have sufficient control of the media to hide what they are doing. The 'rule of law' is wobbling. |
| 23141 | Left-wingers are inconsistent in their essentialist descriptions of social groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: A criticism of the left is that it is essentialist at some moments, and wildly anti-essentialist at others. We can call this opportunistic essentialism. Gender is fluid - except for transgender kids. Race is a construction - except for white races. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Interesting. Gopnik's solution seems to be to abandon all social essentialism as wicked. In this context he is probably right, but I am firmly committed to the idea that many entities in the world have essential natures. 'Bourgeois'. |
| 23124 | Liberal community is not blood ties or tradition, but shared choices, and sympathy for the losers [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The liberal idea of community is not one, as it is for many conservatives, of blood ties or traditional authority. It rest on the idea of shared choices …including even a sense of sympathy for those caught on the losing side of the argument. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: The key point is that most liberals (other than extreme libertarians) have a strong sense of community, contrary to the standard criticisms offered by communitarians. |
| 23127 | Liberal community includes flight from the family, into energetic reforming groups [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Where conservatives believe in the renewal of traditional community, liberals believe as well in the flight from family and tradition into new kinds of communal order. …It is an idea of assembling confidence and energies for reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 1) | |
| A reaction: He cites Greenwich Village as an example. This suggests that his vision is a little narrow. His communities are for radicals who flee to join like minds in big cities. Politics must care about community for those left behind. Pubs, sport and pets. |
| 23129 | Right-wingers attack liberal faith in reason, left-wingers attack its faith in reform [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The right-wing critique of liberalism is largely an attack on its overreliance on reason; the left-wing one, mostly an attack on its false faith in reform. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: I doubt whether sensible liberals do rely too much on reason, though they do rely of scientific evidence (after peer review!). No one can doubt that lots of reforms have occurred, so it must be frustration with the very slow process. |
| 23133 | Cosmopolitan liberals lack national loyalty, and welcome excessive immigration [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Critics say liberal cosmopolitanism is indifference to national loyalty, making them easily contemplate going elsewhere and, worse still, welcoming in the world through unsifted immigration. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: There is certainly some truth in this. Not all liberals are so cosmopolitan, though. It is interesting to observe whether people who retire stay in their old community or move to somewhere quite new. |
| 23138 | Modern left-wingers criticise liberalism's control of culture [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Most left-wing critiques of liberalism now turn more often on its cultural power and its cultural illusions. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: As opposed to older Marxists critiques of the exploitation of workers. This is certainly fertile ground for interesting studies of our culture. It is very hard to grasp the influence had by the endless stories we expose ourselves to. |
| 23139 | Liberalism's attempt to be neutral and colour-blind erases cultural identities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The 'colour-blind' universe of 'neutral' liberalism is actually an attempt to erase cultural identity and history. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern critique of liberalism [centred on the Intersectionality of Bell Hooks or Kimberlé Crenshaw], which analyses alienated minorities, and their emphasis on their difference in response. It can lead to 'identity politics'. |
| 23135 | Classic Marxists see liberalism as the ideology of the bourgeoisie [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The classic Marxist account shows liberalism as merely the ideology of the bourgeoisie. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: The word 'merely' does an awful lot of work in philosohy! I suspect that 'bourgeoisie' is self-defining here - as the believers in liberalism - given that lots of Marxists emerge from the middle classes. |
| 23140 | Environmental disasters result not from capitalism, but from a general drive for growth [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: It is the drive for growth, not capitalism in particular, that makes environmental disasters happen. Those caused by the command economics of Eastern Europe were far greater than even the worst known in Western Europe. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: So the next question is whether you can have capitalism without a drive for growth. I would have thought not, given the role recycled profit plays in driving capitalism. Command economies are more easily swept away. |
| 23130 | Popular imperialism gives the poor the belief that their acts have world historical meaning [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: Popular imperialism is the cosmopolitanism of the poor, the lever by which the small and impotent come to believe that their acts have world historical meaning. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: It is not only the poor who like imperialism. The focus of this popular attitude is the armed forces, and especially the army, where personal bravery is most obvious. The army gets strong support, no matter how dubious are its activities. |
| 23131 | Patriots love their place, but nationalists have a paranoid ethnic hostility [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: The patriot loves his place and its cheeses; …the nationalist has not particular affection for the place, but employs his obsessive sense of encirclement and grievance on behalf of acts of ethnic vengeance. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 2) | |
| A reaction: 'Vengeance' seems a bit strong. John Le Carré said nationalists are distinguished by the need to have enemies. Russia is particularly obsessed with 'encirclement'. |
| 23136 | Liberal free speech is actually paid speech [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: What liberals call free speech or a free press is invariably paid speech. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: He give this as the left-wing view of liberalism. The much-hated social media are a substantial breech in this tendency. Sales of newspapers are declining everywhere, so the battle is for television channels. |
| 23134 | A 'free' society implies a free market, which always produces predatory capitalism and inequalities [Gopnik] |
| Full Idea: 'Free societies', as a matter of practical fact, always mean free-market societies - and free markets will never sponsor more than predatory capitalism. Inequalities always emerge. | |
| From: Adam Gopnik (A Thousand Small Sanities [2019], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his account of left-wing objections to liberalism. The crux of the liberal view is a conviction that the worst of capitalism can be restrained. This began to look doubtful once huge multinational companies emerged. What to do? |
| 13583 | There might be uninstantiated natural kinds, such as transuranic elements which have never occurred [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There are reasons to believe that there are natural kinds that might never be instantiated, such as a transuranic element, capable of existing for some fraction of a second, but which has never actually existed anywhere. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 2.05) | |
| A reaction: He cautiously claims that kinds are ontologically prior to their individual members. I would say that there is no natural kind of the type that he describes. He says you have at least some grounds for predicting what kinds are possible. |
| 13574 | Natural kinds are distinguished by resting on essences [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are distinguished from other sorts of things by their associations with essential properties and real essences. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.02) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree with this. I rest my notion of natural kind on the elementary realising that to know all about this kind you only have to examine one sample of it, as in the Upanishads. The source of such a phenomenon is an open question. |
| 13575 | If there are borderline cases between natural kinds, that makes them superficial [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be any borderline cases between the real essences of different natural kinds because, if there were, the distinctions between the kinds would be superficial, like the blue/green distinction. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.05) | |
| A reaction: His particular target here is biological natural kinds, in which he doesn't believe, because they blur across time, in the evolutionary process. Personally I am inclined to relax the notion of a natural kind, otherwise they are too basic to explain. |
| 13595 | Laws don't exist in the world; they are true of the world [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Laws are not things that exist in the world; they are things that are true of the world. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: I'm happy with this formulation. The one to get rid of is the idea of laws which could precede creation of the universe, and survive its demise. That might be possible, but we have absolutely no grounds for the claim. Humeans ought to agree. |
| 13566 | A proton must have its causal role, because without it it wouldn't be a proton [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I assume it is metaphysically impossible for a proton to have a different causal role, ...which is plausible because a proton would appear to have no identity at all apart from its role in causal processes. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key idea in scientific essentialism, which links essentialism of identity with essentialism in the laws of nature. Could a proton become not-quite-a-proton? |
| 13579 | What is most distinctive of scientific essentialism is regarding processes as natural kinds [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: What is most distinctive of the scientific version of essentialism is that scientific essentialists are realists about natural kinds of processes, as well as natural kinds of objects and substances. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.11) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure whether other scientific essentialists would agree with this, but I am happy to go along with it. A process like melting or sublimation seems to be a standard widespread phenomenon which is always intrinsically the same, as kinds must be. |
| 13581 | Scientific essentialism is more concerned with explanation than with identity (Locke, not Kripke) [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialism is less concerned with questions of identity, and more with questions of explanation, than is the essentialism of Aristotle or of Kripke. It is closest to the kind of essentialism described by Locke. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 1.12) | |
| A reaction: Locke is popularly held to be anti-essentialist, but that is only because of his epistemological problems. I think Ellis is here misreading Aristotle, and I would ally Aristotle, Locke (cautiously), Leibniz, Ellis and Fine against Kripkeans on this one. |
| 13594 | The ontological fundamentals are dispositions, and also categorical (spatio-temporal and structural) properties [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: We do not claim, as some do, that fundamental dispositional properties are the ontological basis of all properties. On the contrary, there are equally fundamental categorical properties - for example, spatio-temporal relations and structures. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 3.09) | |
| A reaction: The source of disagreement between Bird and Ellis. Bird denies the existence of 'categorical properties'. I think I am with Bird. Space and time are as much part of the given as the elements, and then categorical properties result from dispositions. |
| 13603 | A primary aim of science is to show the limits of the possible [Ellis] |
| Full Idea: Scientific essentialists hold that one of the primary aims of science is to define the limits of the possible. | |
| From: Brian Ellis (Scientific Essentialism [2001], 7.06) | |
| A reaction: I like this. It breaks down into the study of modal profiles, and it can work for abstracta as well as for the physical world. It even covers the study of character, and you could say that it is the subject matter of Jane Austen. |
| 8491 | The Ontological Argument fallaciously treats existence as a first-level concept [Frege] |
| Full Idea: The ontological proof of God's existence suffers from the fallacy of treating existence as a first-level concept. | |
| From: Gottlob Frege (Function and Concept [1891], p.38 n) | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 8490 for first- and second-order functions] This is usually summarised as the idea that existence is a quantifier rather than a predicate. |