99 ideas
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes took his method from Galileo, of resolving any complex situation into its logically primitive, simple elements and then using the simple elements to show how the complex situation could be reconstructed. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Reverse engineering of reality. This idea, wherever it comes from, strikes me as the key to the advance of human understanding. No one has yet improved on it as a method, in science or philosophy. Reconstruction needs the mechanism. |
| 19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Slippery slope arguments are not intended as demonstrative arguments, but rather as a challenge to show where a boundary is, and to show that the boundary is not arbitrary. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: [extracted from details of its context] You could respond by saying that a slippery slope levels off, rather than hitting a wall or plunging to perdition. |
| 19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Deontic modality can be divided into sentence-modifying 'ought-to-be' modals, and predicate-modifying 'ought-to-do' modals. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.9.2) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Brennan 1993] These two seem to correspond to what is 'good' (ought to be), and what is 'right' (ought to do). Since I like that distinction, I also like this one. |
| 19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Wedgwood (2007:220) argues that S5 is undesirable because it excludes that necessary truths may have contingent grounds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4 n5) | |
| A reaction: Cameron defends the possibility of necessity grounded in contingency, against Blackburn's denial of it. It's interesting that we choose the logic on the basis of the metaphysics. Shouldn't there be internal reasons for a logic's correctness? |
| 19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Subscribers to the Barcan formula must either be committed to the existence of mere possibilia (such as possible unicorns), or deny many unactualised possibilities of existence. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the implications of the Barcan formula are ridiculous. Williamson is its champion, but I'm blowed if I can see why. What could a possible unicorn be like? Without them, must we say unicorns are impossible? |
| 19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We can think of the world as a 'whole' that has everything as its parts, like raisins in a cake, or we can think of the world as a 'container', which is disjoint from everything there is, like a bottle containing water. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Space and time seem to have a special role here, and it is hard to think of any other candidates for being the 'container'. I think I will apply my 'what's it made of' test to ontology, and opt for the world as a 'whole'. |
| 19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: 'Relational' grounding is between entities, best expressed by the two-place predicate 'x grounds y'. 'Operational' grounding is between sentences, best expressed by the two-place sentence operator read as 'because of' or 'in virtue of'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) |
| 19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience excludes modality - the whole modal package - from the supervenience base. The Humean world is, at root, thoroughly non-modal. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This sums up my problem with David Lewis with perfect clarity. He is just excessively empirical. Hume himself also excluded modality from the basic impressions. Locke allows powerful essences (even if they are well hidden). |
| 6504 | For physicalists, the only relations are spatial, temporal and causal [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal and causal relations are the only respectable candidates for relations for a physicalist. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and is an absolutely crucial principle upon which any respectable physicalist account of the world must be built. It means that physicalists must attempt to explain all mental events in causal terms. |
| 7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The world is corporeal, that is to say, body...and every part of the universe is body, and that which is not body is no part of the universe. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], IV.46) | |
| A reaction: [Hobbes concedes existence to visible spirits, but not invisible ones]. This is the kind of remark which got Hobbes hated. It is also the sort of thing that makes him the best candidate for the 'first modern man'. |
| 19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The crucial feature of the determinates / determinables relation is that to possess the determinable property, an object must possess exactly one of the determinate properties. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a determinable being a function, and the determinate being its output. If 'scarlet' is a determinate of the determinables 'red' or 'coloured', it is not obvious that there is only one possible shade of scarlet. This schema oversimplifies. |
| 6520 | If reality just has relational properties, what are its substantial ontological features? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Some thinkers claim the physical world consists just of relational properties - generally of active powers or fields; ..but an ontology of mutual influences is not an ontology at all unless the possessors of the influence have more substantial features. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this idea is one of the keys to wisdom. It is the same problem with functional explanations - you are left asking WHY this thing can have this particular function. Without the buck stopping at essences you are chasing your explanatory tail. |
| 19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: I do not have the ability to play the violin. Nor does my desk. Unlike my desk, however, I possess the ability to learn to play the violin - the ability, that is, to acquire the ability to play the violin. I have an 'iterated ability' to play the violin. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, though the examples are more likely to come from human behaviour than from the non-human physical world. |
| 19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think in terms of dispositions in terms of the manifestation alone - not as a disposition to ...if..., but as a disposition to ..., full stop. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: This way of individuating dispositions seems plausible. Some dispositions only have one trigger, but others have many. All sorts of things are inclined to trigger a human smile, but we are just disposed to smile. Some people smile at disasters. |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Nomological dispositions such as electric charge seem different from ordinary dispositions. A particle's being electrically charged is not just a possibility of exerting a certain force. Rather, the particle has to exert a force in certain circumstances. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: I can only pull when there is something to pull, but a magnet seems to have a 'field' of attraction which is pullish in character. Does it detect something to pull (like a monad)? Can there be a force which has no object? |
| 19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Spatiotemporal relations are a prime example of properties that are difficult to understand in dispositional terms. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [Vetter refers to A.Bird 2007 Ch.8 for an attempt] One approach would be to question whether they are 'properties'. I don't think of relations as properties, even if they are predicates. Is space a property of something? |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting. |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us. |
| 19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessity and possibility had a revival with the development of modal logic, treating them as special cases of the existential and universal quantifiers, ranging over an infinity of possible worlds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The problem seems to be that possible worlds offer a very useful and interesting 'model' of modality, but say nothing at all about its nature. Any more than a weather map will show you what weather is. |
| 19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessities mark the limits of the potentialities that objects have. More precisely, it is necessary that p just in case nothing has, or had, or will have a potentiality to be such that not-p. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [See Vetter's other ideas for her potentiality account of modality] If we wish to build a naturalistic account of modality (and if you don't want that then your untethered metaphysics will drift away in logical space) then this is the way to go. |
| 19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of possibility, we speak of potentiality in abstraction from its possessor; a possibility is a potentiality somewhere or other in the world, no matter where. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: I note that, as so often, this is psychological abstraction, which is usually sneered at by modern philosophers (e.g. Geach), and yet is employed all the time. This is Vetter's key thesis, which I like. |
| 19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality is, metaphorically speaking, possibility anchored in individual objects; I claim that all possibility is thus anchored in some individual object(s) or other. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This will be fine for specific physical possibilities, but may become tricky for possibilities that are increasingly abstract, or universal, or idealised. I agree with the general approach. Anchor modality in reality (which is physical!). |
| 19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think of possibility as potentiality in abstraction from its bearer. So 'it is possible that p' is defined as 'something has an iterated potentiality for it to be the case that p'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: If possibilities are abstractions from potentialities, I am inclined the treat potentialities as abstractions from dispositions, and dispositions (and properties) as abstractions from powers. Powers are not abstractions - they are the reality. |
| 19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Water has no potentiality to break. But water has a potentiality to be frozen and turn into ice, which does have a potentiality to break. So water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Thus potentially has an 'iterated' character to it, and an appropriate modal logic for it will have to allow for those iterations. She suggests a version of System T modal logic. |
| 19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities may get exercised despite having a degree that is too low for them to qualify as dispositions. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.4) | |
| A reaction: The key reason why her book is called 'Potentialities', rather than 'Dispositions'. She still wants to offer a naturalistic picture which ties potentialities to individual objects, but I am wondering whether potentialities are too abstract for the job. |
| 23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Although not all potentialities are dispositions, Vetter claims that all dispositions are potentialities which are had to a sufficiently high degree. | |
| From: report of Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015]) by Friend/Kimpton-Nye - Dispositions and Powers 2.4.2 | |
| A reaction: This sounds plausible. A potentiality could be faint or negligible, but once it is a serious possibility it becomes a 'disposition'. ...I suppose. But if the meteor is probably going to hit my house, it doesn't mean it has a disposition to do so. |
| 19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: This book is a plea for recognising potentiality as an explanans in the metaphysics of modality, rather than as something in need of explanation or reduction. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Something has to do the explaining, and it is obviously much better to have some aspect of the real world do the job, rather than remote abstractions such as laws, possible worlds or Forms. Personally I like the potentiality of 'powers'. |
| 19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality can now be recognised as the common genus of dispositions and such related properties as abilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Vetter defends a metaphysics of modality based on potentialities, rather than on narrower concepts such as dispositions, powers or essences. She can evade the problems which those narrower concepts raise. |
| 19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The logic for potentiality corresponds to modal system T, the minimum for metaphysics. The S4 axiom ◊◊φ → ◊φ says iterated potentialities collapse, and the S5 ◊φ → □◊φ says potentialities can't be lost. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems persuasive. I nice example of modern analytic metaphysics, that you have to find a logic that suits your theory. N.Salmon defends system T for all of metaphysics, though most people favour S5. |
| 19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities are 'potentialities to ....', while possibilities are 'possibilities that ....'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This feels a bit like a stipulation, rather than a precise description of normal usage. That said, it is quite a nice distinction. It sounds as if an event follows a potentiality, and a state of affairs follows a possibility. Active and passive? |
| 19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: If possible worlds are sets of propositions, we need some way to distinguish those sets of propositions that do from those that do not correspond to genuine possibilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea of a 'genuine' possibility does not seem to play a role in the conceptual scheme of those who treat possibility entirely in terms of possible worlds. If possibility is primitive, or is a set of worlds, there can be no criterion for 'genuine'. |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Is it not possible that there be objects with (natural) properties that no actual thing ever had the potentiality to have, to produce, or constitute? (Call such properties 'super-alien properties'). | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem for her potentiality account of possibility. Her solution is (roughly) to either deny the super-aliens, or have chains of iterated possibility which take this case back to actuality. That sounds OK to me. |
| 6485 | When a red object is viewed, the air in between does not become red [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: When the form of red passes from an object to the eye, the air in between does not become red. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a crucial and basic fact which must be faced by any philosopher offering a theory of perception. I would have thought it instantly eliminated any sort of direct or naïve realism. The quale of red is created by my brain. |
| 6521 | Representative realists believe that laws of phenomena will apply to the physical world [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: One thing which is meant by saying that the phenomenal world represents or resembles the transcendental physical world is that the scientific laws devised to apply to the former, if correct, also apply (at least approximately) to the latter. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: This is not, of course, an argument, or a claim which can be easily substantiated, but it does seem to be a nice statement of a central article of faith for representative realists. The laws of the phenomenal world are the only ones we are going to get. |
| 6509 | Representative realists believe some properties of sense-data are shared by the objects themselves [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: A representative realist believes that at least some of the properties that are ostensively demonstrable in virtue of being exemplified in sense-data are of the same kind as some of those exemplified in physical objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to pin down exactly what is being claimed here. Locke's primary qualities will obviously qualify, but could properties be 'exemplified' in sense-data without them actually being the same as those of the objects? |
| 6522 | Phenomenalism can be theistic (Berkeley), or sceptical (Hume), or analytic (20th century) [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: It is useful to identify three kinds of phenomenalism: theistic, sceptical and analytic; the first is represented by Berkeley, the second by Hume, and the third by most twentieth-century phenomenalists. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.4) | |
| A reaction: In Britain the third group is usually represented by A.J.Ayer. My simple objection to all phenomenalists is that they are intellectual cowards because they won't venture to give an explanation of the phenomena which confront them. |
| 6502 | Can we reduce perception to acquisition of information, which is reduced to causation or disposition? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Many modern physicalists first analyse perception as no more than the acquisition of beliefs or information through the senses, and then analyse belief and the possession of information in causal or dispositional terms. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.1) | |
| A reaction: (He mentions Armstrong, Dretske and Pitcher). A reduction to dispositions implies behaviourism. This all sounds more like an eliminativist strategy than a reductive one. I would start by saying that perception is only information after interpretation. |
| 6513 | Would someone who recovered their sight recognise felt shapes just by looking? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Molyneux's Problem is whether someone who was born blind and acquired sight would be able to recognise, on sight, which shapes were which; that is, would they see which shape was the one that felt so-and-so? | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VIII.7) | |
| A reaction: (Molyneux wrote a letter to John Locke about this). It is a good question, and much discussed in modern times. My estimation is that the person would recognise the shapes. We are partly synaesthetic, and see sharpness as well as feeling it. |
| 6512 | Secondary qualities have one sensory mode, but primary qualities can have more [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Primary qualities and secondary qualities are often distinguished on the grounds that secondaries are restricted to one sensory modality, but primaries can appear in more. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VIII.7) | |
| A reaction: This distinction seems to me to be accurate and important. It is not just that the two types are phenomenally different - it is that the best explanation is that the secondaries depend on their one sense, but the primaries are independent. |
| 6497 | We say objects possess no intrinsic secondary qualities because physicists don't need them [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The idea that objects do not possess secondary qualities intrinsically rests on the thought that they do not figure in the physicist's account of the world; ..as they are causally idle, no purpose is served by attributing them to objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I agree with this, but colours (for example) are not causally idle, as they seem to affect the behaviour of insects. They are properties which can only have a causal effect if there is a brain in their vicinity. Physicists ignore brains. |
| 6494 | If objects are not coloured, and neither are sense-contents, we are left saying that nothing is coloured [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: If there are good reasons for thinking that physical objects are not literally coloured, and one also refuses to attribute them to sense-contents, then one will have the bizarre theory (which has been recently adopted) that nothing is actually coloured. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that objects are not literally coloured, that the air in between does not become coloured, and that my brain doesn't turn a funny colour, so that only leaves colour as an 'interior' feature of certain brain states. That's how it is. |
| 6499 | Shape can be experienced in different ways, but colour and sound only one way [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Shape can be directly experienced by either touch or sight, which are subjectively different; but colour and sound can be directly experienced only through experiences which are subjectively like sight and hearing. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key argument in support of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It seems to me that the distinction may be challenged and questioned, but to deny it completely (as Berkeley and Hume do) is absurd. |
| 6500 | If secondary qualities match senses, would new senses create new qualities? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: As secondary qualities are tailored to match senses, a proliferation of senses would lead to a proliferation of secondary qualities. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: One might reply that if we experienced, say, magnetism, we would just be discerning a new fine grained primary quality, not adding something new to the ontological stock of properties in the world. It is a matter of HOW we experience the magnetism. |
| 6484 | Most moderate empiricists adopt Locke's representative theory of perception [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The representative theory of perception is found in Locke, and is adopted by most moderate empiricists. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is, I think, my own position. Anything less than fairly robust realism strikes me as being a bit mad (despite Berkeley's endless assertions that he is preaching common sense), and direct realism seems obviously false. |
| 2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If colours or sounds were in the bodies or objects that cause them, they could not be severed from them, as by glasses, and in echoes by reflection, we see they are; where we know the thing we see is in one place, the appearance in another. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.01) |
| 6508 | Sense-data leads to either representative realism or phenomenalism or idealism [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The sense-datum theorist is either a representative realist or a phenomenalist (with which we can classify idealism for present purposes). | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative to these two positions seems to be some sort of direct realism. I class myself as a representative realist, as this just seems (after a very little thought about colour blindness) to be common sense. I'm open to persuasion. |
| 6482 | For idealists and phenomenalists sense-data are in objects; representative realists say they resemble objects [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: For idealists and phenomenalists sense-data are part of physical objects, for objects consist only of actual or actual and possible sense-data; representative realists say they just have an abstract and structural resemblance to objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: He puts Berkeley, Hume and Mill in the first group, and Locke in the second. Russell belongs in the second. The very fact that there can be two such different theories about the location of sense-data rather discredits the whole idea. |
| 6480 | Sense-data do not have any intrinsic intentionality [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: I understand sense-data as having no intrinsic intentionality; that is, though it may suggest, by habit, things beyond it, in itself it possesses only sensible qualities which do not refer beyond themselves. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, as the whole point of proposing sense-data was as something neutral between realism and anti-realism |
| 6505 | Sense-data are rejected because they are a veil between us and reality, leading to scepticism [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Resistance to the sense-datum theory is inspired mainly by the fear that such data constitute a veil of perception which stands between the observer and the external world, threatening scepticism, or even solipsism. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.1) | |
| A reaction: It is very intellectually dishonest to reject any theory because it leads to scepticism or relativism. This is a common failing among quite good professional philosophers. See Idea 241. |
| 6506 | 'Sense redly' sounds peculiar, but 'senses redly-squarely tablely' sounds far worse [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: 'Sense redly' sounds peculiar, but 'senses redly-squarely' or 'red-squarely' or 'senses redly-squarely-tablely' and other variants sound far worse. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a comment on the adverbial theory, which is meant to replace representative theories based on sense-data. The problem is not that it sounds weird; it is that while plain red can be a mode of perception, being a table obviously can't. |
| 6507 | Adverbialism sees the contents of sense-experience as modes, not objects [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The defining claim of adverbialism is that the contents of sense-experience are modes, not objects, of sensory activity. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems quite a good account of simple 'modes' like colour, but not so good when you instantly perceive a house. It never seems wholly satisfactory to sidestep the question of 'what are you perceiving when you perceive red or square?' |
| 6511 | If there are only 'modes' of sensing, then an object can no more be red or square than it can be proud or lazy. [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: If only modes of sensing are ostensively available, ..then it is a category mistake to see any resemblance between what is available and properties of bodies; one could as sensibly say that a physical body is proud or lazy as that it is red or square. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This is an objection to the 'adverbial' theory of perception. It looks to me like a devastating objection, if the theory is meant to cover primary qualities as well as secondary. Red could be a mode of perception, but not square, surely? |
| 2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Because waking I often observe the absurdity of dreams, but never dream of the absurdity of my waking thoughts, I am well satisfied that, being awake, I know I dream not, though when I dream I think myself awake. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.02) |
| 6515 | An explanation presupposes something that is improbable unless it is explained [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Any search for an explanation presupposes that there is something in need of an explanation - that is, something which is improbable unless explained. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: Elementary enough, but it underlines the human perspective of all explanations. I may need an explanation of baseball, where you don't. |
| 6517 | If all possibilities are equal, order seems (a priori) to need an explanation - or does it? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The fact that order requires an explanation seems to be an a priori principle; ..we assume all possibilities are equally likely, and so no striking regularities should emerge; the sceptic replies that a highly ordered sequence is as likely as any other. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: An independent notion of 'order' is required. If I write down '14356', and then throw 1 4 3 5 6 on a die, the match is the order; instrinsically 14356 is nothing special. If you threw the die a million times, a run of six sixes seems quite likely. |
| 19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Patterns of behaviour may be explained by circumstances external to the individual, but dispositional explanations, based on the instrinsic make-up of individuals are typically more reliable and stable. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is very nice support for the view I have been defending. She doesn't deal in essences, and prefers 'potentialities' (as broader) to 'dispositions'. The point is to explain events by the natures of the ingredients. |
| 19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Grounding is a kind of explanation - and specifically, the kind of metaphysical explanation that metaphysicians are after. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Depending on how you interpret 'grounding', it is plausible that it is the sort of explanation that physicists and economists are after as well. If the aim is to understand the structure of everything, the target is to know what grounds what. |
| 6481 | If intentional states are intrinsically about other things, what are their own properties? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Intentional states are mysterious things; if they are intrinsically about other things, what properties, if any, do they possess intrinsically? | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question, which I suspect to be right at the heart of the tendency towards externalist accounts of the mind. Since you can only talk about the contents of the thoughts, you can't put forward a decent internalist account of what is going on. |
| 2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If a man should talk to me of a 'free-will', or any 'free' but free from being hindered by opposition, I should not say that he were in an error, but that his words were without a meaning, that is to say, absurd. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.05) |
| 6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Liberty and necessity are consistent: as in the water, that hath not only liberty, but a necessity of descending by the channel. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], II.Ch.XI) | |
| A reaction: Hume asserts something similar (Idea 2223), but they both miss the point, which is that libertarians about water would have to believe it didn't need to follow gravity, but could refuse to flow. Freedom of will and freedom of action are quite different. |
| 6503 | Physicalism cannot allow internal intentional objects, as brain states can't be 'about' anything [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: It is generally conceded by reductive physicalists that a state of the brain cannot be intrinsically about anything, for intentionality is not an intrinsic property of anything, so there can be no internal objects for a physicalist. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.4) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it is best to say that 'aboutness' is not a property of physics. We may say that a brain state 'represents' something, because the something caused the brain state, but representations have to be recognised |
| 23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie] |
| Full Idea: For Hobbes the 'simple passions' were appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], I.6) by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 4 'Evidence' | |
| A reaction: This is the standard approach to emotions of Hobbes's time. Modern thinkers probably reject the idea that passions can be simple or basic. Rightly, I think. |
| 2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In deliberation, the last appetite or aversion immediately adhering to the action, or to the omission thereof, is that we call the Will. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: I share his caution about 'the will', but his observation strikes me as inaccurate. When I drink, my 'will' is not my thirst. I take the will to be a feature of my reason. I gave my thirst permission to indulge itself. The will is practical reason? |
| 2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Reasoning is in general words, but deliberation for the most part is of particulars. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
| 2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth 'Good'; and the object of his hate or aversion 'Evil'. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: This meets the Frege-Geach Problem - that we can have these feelings while reading ancient history, but we can't possibly 'desire' any of that. This is better on evil than on good. |
| 2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions, till they know a law that forbids them. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) | |
| A reaction: That is a pretty flat rejection of natural law, as you might expect from an empiricist. So prior to the first law-making, no one ever did anything wrong? Hm. |
| 2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Desire and love are the same thing, save that by desire we always signify the absence of the object, by love most commonly the presence of the same. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) | |
| A reaction: Implausible reductivism from Hobbes. Plenty of counterexamples to this. You work it out! |
| 2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Of the voluntary acts of every man, the object is some good to himself. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) | |
| A reaction: Nonsense. You can only describe sacrificial acts for loved ones, such as children, in this way if this proposal is a tautology. Hobbes cannot know the truth of this claim. |
| 2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The mutual transferring of right is that which men call 'contract'. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes makes two incompatible demands of the original contract: he wishes it to be the foundation of all shared and common standards and rules; but he also wishes it to be a contract, which needs prior shared and common standards. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: At the very least, the participants in a contract must be committed to keeping it even when it is not convenient. But a common purpose seems to be needed too, which makes the contract itself intrinsically valuable. Similar objections to Kant. |
| 2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He that performeth first in the case of a contract, is said to 'merit' that which he is to receive by the performance of the other, and he hath it as due. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes put the Golden Rule as 'do NOT do to others what you would NOT want done to yourself'. Jesus's formulation encouraged active love. Most Westerners conceive their moral duty as not to do harm, rather than actively doing good. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Owen Flanagan - The Problem of the Soul p.20n | |
| A reaction: This idea probably runs very deep into western culture, where most people feel that they are being very morally good when they are sitting at home and not actually annoying anyone. Utilitarianism also offers a challenge to such complacency. |
| 2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If a covenant is made with neither party performing presently, but trust one another, in the condition of mere nature (which is war between men) upon reasonable suspicion, it is void. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes has such a limited view of human motives that he cannot provide any other explanation for the acceptance of authority than the fear of sanctions.. | |
| From: comment on Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], Pt 1) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: There are two alternative views - the conservative view that people naturally welcome and even need authority, because they need to be led; or the Aristotelian view that people are naturally communal, and authority is part of community life. |
| 2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If there be a common power set over both parties in a contract, with right and force sufficient to compel performance, a contract does not become void as soon as the parties are suspicious. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He therefore that breaketh his covenant, and consequently declareth that he thinks he may with reason do so, cannot be received into any society. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: If any fault of man be sufficient to discharge our covenant made, the same ought in reason to have been sufficient to have hindered the making of it. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He which performeth first in a contract, does but betray himself to his enemy. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: He that should be modest and tractable, and perform all the promises, in such time and place where no man else should do so, should but make himself a prey to others. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The writers of moral philosophy, though they acknowledge the same virtues and vices, yet not seeing wherein consisted their goodness, nor that they come to be praised as the means of peaceable, sociable and comfortable living. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The definition of 'injustice' is no other than the not performance of covenant….. and 'justice' is the constant will of giving to every man his own. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In a time of war…. there is continual fear, and danger of violent death, and the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
| 19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes had wrongly injected into the savage man's concern for self-preservation the need to satisfy a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Part I | |
| A reaction: Hobbes's famous remark concerns a state of war, which is quite a sophisticated state of conflict between well formed social groups. Rousseau's savage is fairly solitary, so won't be involved in war. |
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
| Full Idea: While Hobbes had held that the people were the final source of political authority, he had argued that in entering the social contract they gave up their sovereignty by transferring all power to an absolute ruler. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Johanna Oksala - Political Philosophy: all that matters Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: Later the idea of 'inalienable' rights crept in. If you volunteer for exploitation or slavery, that still doesn't justify them. Sadism is presumably not justified by masochism. |
| 2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: The difference between man and man is not so considerable as that one man can thereupon claim to himself any benefit to which another may not pretend as well as he. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.13) |
| 20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes's principle of equality was a claim about the mental and physical capabilities of all people. For Locke it is a moral claim about rights: no person has a natural right to subordinate any other. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Locke' | |
| A reaction: There are obvious questions to ask about the claim that people are naturally equal. For the second one, does the lion have a natural right to subordinate the gazelle? Who cares! I'm inclined to be consequentialist about equality. |
| 2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: From the first law of nature (that we seek peace, but also defend ourselves) comes the second: that a man be willing to lay down his rights to all things, and be contented with so much liberty against other men as he would allow other men against himself. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.14) |
| 20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes's position is that we have a duty to obey the Laws of Nature when others around us are known (or can reasonably be expected) to be obeying them too, and so our compliance will not be exploited. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Jonathan Wolff - An Introduction to Political Philosophy (Rev) 1 'Hobbes' | |
| A reaction: In particular, we should keep contracts. Hobbes doesn't seem fully committed to keeping facts and values separate. |
| 7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes was one of the first to propose the view known as 'legal positivism' - that the criterion for deciding whether a rule is a genuine law is entirely formal or procedural | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This was opposed to the tradition of natural law, deriving from Aquinas. It is part of a picture of values draining out of the world as science comes to dominate. The is/ought distinction is its culmination. Power replaces virtue, and Thrasymachus wins. |
| 2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: We are forbidden to inflict punishment with any other design than for correction of the offender, or direction of others. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |
| 2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Fear of power invisible, feigned by the mind or imagined from tales publicly allowed, is religion; not allowed, is superstition. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.06) |
| 6519 | Locke's solidity is not matter, because that is impenetrability and hardness combined [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Notoriously, Locke's filler for Descartes's geometrical matter, solidity, will not do, for that quality collapses on examination into a composite of the dispositional-cum-relational propery of impenetrability, and the secondary quality of hardness. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought the problem was that 'matter is solidity' turns out on analysis to be a tautology. We have a handful of nearly synonymous words for matter and our experiences of it, but they boil down to some 'given' thing for which we lack words. |
| 2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In knowing the meaning of 'causing', men can only observe and remember what they have seen to precede the like effect at some other time, without seeing between the antecedent and subsequent event any dependence or connexion at all. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
| 19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The Armstrong/Tooley/Dretske view, which takes laws to be substantial but grounded in a relation of nomic necessitation external to the properties themselves, is not an attractive option for the dispositionalist. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the dispositionalist sees laws as grounded in the properties. I prefer her other option, of dispositionalism plus a 'shallow' view of laws (which she attributes to Mumford). The laws are as Lewis says, but powers explain them. |
| 19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Even on the dispositional essentialist view the world might have been governed by different laws, if those laws involved different properties. What is excluded is the possibility of different laws involving the same properties as our actual laws. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: Important. Critics of dispositional essentialism accuse it of promoting the idea that the laws of nature are necessary, a claim for which we obviously have no evidence. I prefer to say they are necessary given that 'stuff', rather than those properties. |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Any defender of the symmetry of time will have to provide some explanation of the obstinate appearance that the future is very different from the past. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you have to say that it is all there, but only one end of the time spectrum is revealed to us, namely the past. But how do we get this uniquely lopsided view? Being an ominiscient god is more obvious than being a lopsided human. |
| 19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Presentists usually deal with the lack of cross-temporal relations by the construction of a surrogate, by way of paraphrasing the objectionable relation ascriptions. 'I admire Socrates' becomes 'I admire the Socrates properties'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. The cites Markosian 2004:63] Why can't I just say 'I admire Socrates, who no longer exists'? The present includes tensed facts, and memories and evidence-based theories. Admiring is not a direct relation between objects. |
| 2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: In these four things - opinion of ghosts, ignorance of second causes, devotion towards what men fear, and taking of things casual for prognostics, consisteth the natural seed of religion. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.12) |
| 2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge of man's estate after death, and its rewards, is a belief grounded upon other men's sayings that they knew it supernaturally, or they knew those, that knew those, that knew others, that knew it supernaturally. | |
| From: Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651], 1.15) |