6 ideas
| 6782 | Realism is the only philosophy of science that doesn't make the success of science a miracle [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Realism….is the only philosophy science which does not make the success of science a miracle. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (works [1980]), quoted by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This was from his earlier work; he became more pragmatist and anti-realist later. Personally I approve of the remark. The philosophy of science must certainly offer an explanation for its success. Truth seems the obvious explanation. |
| 22181 | Putnam says anti-realism is a bad explanation of accurate predictions [Putnam, by Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Putnam's 'no miracle' argument says that being an anti-realist is akin to believing in miracles (because of the accurate predictons). …It is a plausibility argument - an inference to the best explanation. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (works [1980]) by Samir Okasha - Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) 4 | |
| A reaction: [not sure of ref] Putnam later backs off from this argument, but my personal realism rests on best explanation. Does anyone want to prefer an inferior explanation? The objection is that successful theories can turn out to be false. Phlogiston, ether. |
| 9073 | Abstraction from an ambiguous concept like 'mole' will define them as the same [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: The procedure of abstraction will not allow us to distinguish the ambiguity between 'mole' as an animal and as an artefact. The stages of abstraction will only end up with 'physical object', and this will then count as the definition. | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem if you adhere to a rather precise account of the steps of abstraction, with every stage explicit (and probably expressed in terms of sets), but I suspect that the real tangle of semi-conscious abstraction avoids this problem. |
| 9074 | Abstraction cannot produce the concept of a 'game', as there is no one common feature [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: Abstractions cannot account for those general terms whose instances do not have any set of features in common. The word 'game' is not ambiguous, but not all games have one thing in common; they are united by looser 'family resemblance'. | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: (This point comes from Wittgenstein, Idea 4141) English-speakers can't agree on borderline cases (avoiding cracks in pavements). Life is just a game. The objection would be refuted by discussion of higher-level abstractions to make connections. |
| 9072 | Defining concepts by abstractions will collect together far too many attributes from entities [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: If we create abstractions by collection of attributes common to groups of entities, we will collect far too many attributes, and wrongly put them into the definition (such as 'having hairless palms' when identifying 'men'). | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Defining 'man' is a hugely complex business (see Idea 1763!), unlike defining 'hair' or 'red'. Some attributes will strike perceivers immediately, but absence of an attribute is not actually 'perceived' at all. |
| 20344 | Music is not an expressive art, because it expresses no familiar emotions [Hanslick, by Wollheim] |
| Full Idea: Hanslick concluded from the fact that music doesn't express definite feelings like piety, love, joy, or sadness, that it isn't an art of expression. | |
| From: report of Eduard Hanslick (The Beautiful in Music [1854]) by Richard Wollheim - Art and Its Objects 48 | |
| A reaction: Whether music is 'expressive' (which it may not be) should not be confused with whether it is emotional, which it clearly is, even in its coolest examples. Hanslick viewed music as a code, not a language. |