68 ideas
| 10468 | A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them) [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysical theory hs two parts: ontology and ideology. The ontology consists of the entities which the theory says exist; the ideology consists of the ideas which are expressed within the theory using predicates. Ideology sorts into categories. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02.1) | |
| A reaction: Say 'what there is', and 'what we can say about it'. The modern notion remains controversial (see Ladyman and Ross, for example), so it is as well to start crystalising what metaphysics is. I am enthusiastic, but nervous about what is being said. |
| 4588 | There is no such thing as 'science'; there are just many different sciences [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is no such thing as science; there are only sciences: physics, chemistry, meteorology, geology, biology, psychology, sociology. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A simple but nice point. It suggests that maybe each science has an entirely different method, and style of reasoning, experiment and explanation. Some have strict laws, others have 'ceteris paribus' laws. |
| 10471 | Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One might give Ockham's Razor a bit more content by advising belief in only those entities which are causally efficacious. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: He cites Armstrong as taking this line, but I immediately think of Shoemaker's account of properties. It seems to me to be the only account which will separate properties from predicates, and bring them under common sense control. |
| 10749 | Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The definition of truth-makers entails that a truth-maker for a given necessary truth is equally a truth-maker for every other necessary truth. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: Maybe we could accept this. Necessary truths concern the way things have to be, so all realities will embody them. Are we to say that nothing makes a necessary truth true? |
| 10750 | Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Slingshot Argument: if truth-makers work for equivalent sentences and co-referring substitute sentences, then if 'the numbers + S1 = the numbers' has a truth-maker, then 'the numbers + S2 = the numbers' will have the same truth-maker. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Hence every sentence has the same truth-maker! Truth-maker fans must challenge one of the premises. |
| 9390 | Logic guides thinking, but it isn't a substitute for it [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Logic is part of a normative theory of thinking, not a substitute for thinking. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.13) | |
| A reaction: There is some sort of logicians' dream, going back to Leibniz, of a reasoning engine, which accepts propositions and outputs inferences. I agree with this idea. People who excel at logic are often, it seems to me, modest at philosophy. |
| 4616 | A higher level is 'supervenient' if it is determined by lower levels, but has its own natural laws [Heil] |
| Full Idea: 'Supervenience' means lower-level objects and properties suffice for the higher level ones, but the higher level is distinct from its ground, which is reflected in the higher level being governed by distinct laws of nature. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of Davidson's idea. It feels wrong to me. Can I create some 'new laws of nature' by combining things novelly in a laboratory so that a supervenient state emerges. Sounds silly to me. Must we invoke God to achieve this? |
| 10747 | Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The route to the existence of properties via ontological commitment provides little information about what properties are like. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: NIce point, and rather important, I would say. I could hardly be committed to something for the sole reason that I had expressed a statement which contained an ontological commitment. Start from the reason for making the statement. |
| 10748 | Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: For a predicate to have a referential function is one way, but not the only way, to harbour ontological commitment. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the main idea is that the predicate makes some important contribution to a sentence which is held to be true. Maybe reference is achieved by the whole sentence, rather than by one bit of it. |
| 10719 | There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Four adequacy conditions for particulars and properties: asymmetry of instantiation; different particulars can have the same property; particulars can have many properties; two properties can be instantiated by the same particulars. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: The distinction between particulars and universals has been challenged (e.g. by Ramsey and MacBride). There are difficulties in the notion of 'instantiation', and in the notion of two properties being 'the same'. |
| 10721 | If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If properties are sui generis entities, one must decide whether they are abstract or concrete. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: A nice basic question! I take the real properties to be concrete, but we abstract from them, especially from their similarities, and then become deeply confused about the ontology, because our language doesn't mark the distinctions clearly. |
| 10716 | There are just as many properties as the laws require [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One conception of properties says there are only as many properties as are needed to be constituents of laws. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: I take this view to the be precise opposite of the real situation. The properties are what lead to the laws. Properties are internal to nature, and laws are imposed from outside, which is ridiculous unless you think there is an active deity. |
| 10720 | We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Both properties and particulars can be taken as either sui generis or as constructions, so we have four options: both sui generis, or both constructions, or one of each. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: I think I favour both being sui generis. God didn't make the objects, then add their properties, or make the properties then create some instantiations. There can't be objects without properties, or objectless properties (except in thought). |
| 4603 | Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists in Fodor's camp usually say that a genuine property is one that figures in some causal laws. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: The problem is that anything which can't figure in a causal law will therefore be undetectable, so we could only speculate about the existence of such properties, never know them. |
| 4617 | A stone does not possess the property of being a stone; its other properties make it a stone [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A predicate that does not designate a property could nevertheless hold true of an object in virtue of that object's properties. An object is a stone not in virtue of holding the property of being a stone, but because it possesses certain other properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Sounds simple but important, especially in relation to the mind. We are left with the problem of how to individuate a property, and the possibility of 'basic' properties. |
| 4612 | Complex properties are just arrangements of simple properties; they do not "emerge" as separate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Complex properties do not "emerge"; they are nothing "over and above" the properties of the simple constituents duly arranged. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I am glad to see someone challenging the concept of 'emergence', which strikes me as incoherent. Small properties add up to macro-properties (like 'steep', or 'square'). |
| 4615 | Complex properties are not new properties, they are merely new combinations of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: New combinations of properties are just that: new combinations, not new properties. (This is not to reject complex properties, but only to reaffirm that complex properties are nothing over and above their constituents suitably arranged). | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I wish I could be so confidence, but no one seems quite sure what a property is. Are they defined causally, or as 'qualities'? If the latter, what is a quality? Are there basic properties? Can properties merge to form a new one? |
| 10714 | The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The types of expressions which have properties as their meanings may vary, the chief candidates being predicates, such as '...is wise', and abstract singular terms, such as 'wisdom'. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be important, because there is too much emphasis on predicates. If this idea is correct, we need some account of what 'abstract' means, which is notoriously tricky. |
| 10715 | There are five main semantic theories for properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties in semantic theory: functions from worlds to extensions ('Californian'), reference, as opposed to sense, of predicates (Frege), reference to universals (Russell), reference to situations (Barwise/Perry), and composition from context (Lewis). | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02 n12) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; 'Californian' refers to Carnap and Montague; the Lewis view is p,67 of Oliver]. Frege misses out singular terms, or tries to paraphrase them away. Barwise and Perry sound promising to me. Situations involve powers. |
| 4587 | From the property predicates P and Q, we can get 'P or Q', but it doesn't have to designate another property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If P and Q are predicates denoting properties, we can construct a disjunctive predicate ('P or Q'). But it is not clear that this gives us any right whatever to suppose that 'P or Q' designates a property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, needed to disentangle our ontology from our language, and realise that they are separate. Properties are natural; predicates are conventional. |
| 10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Some trope theorists give accounts of particulars. Sets of tropes will not do because they are always abstract, but we might say that particulars are (concrete) mereological wholes of the tropes which they instantiate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: Looks like a non-starter to me. How can abstract entities add up to a mereological whole which is concrete? |
| 10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I rule that tropes are not properties, because it is not true that one and the same trope of redness is instantiated by two books. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but has very far-reaching implications, because it means there are no properties, and no two things have the same properties, so there can be no generalisations about properties, let alone laws. ..But they have equivalence sets. |
| 10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: It is usual to hold an aristotelian conception of tropes, according to which tropes are present in their particular instances, and which does not allow for uninstantiated tropes. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: What are you discussing when you ask what colour the wall should be painted? Presumably we can imagine non-existent tropes. If I vividly imagine my wall looking yellow, have I brought anything into existence? |
| 10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Using the predicate '...is exactly similar to...' we can sort tropes into equivalence sets, these sets serving as properties and relations. For example, the property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of redness. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: You have somehow to get from scarlet and vermilion, which have exact similarity within their sets, to redness, which doesn't. |
| 10742 | Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: More than one trope can occupy the same place at the same time, and a trope occupies a place without having parts which occupy parts of the place. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This is the general question of the size of a spatial trope, or 'how many red tropes in a tin of red paint?' |
| 4611 | The supporters of 'tropes' treat objects as bundles of tropes, when I think objects 'possess' properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I resist the term 'trope' as it has become common for the proponents of tropes to regard objects as "bundles" of tropes. This turns tropes into something too much resembling parts of objects for my taste. .I think an object is a possessor of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply a belief in 'substance', which is an intrinsically dodgy concept, but something has to exist. Keep ontology and epistemology separate! We can only know bundles of properties. |
| 10472 | 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The 'structural universals' methane and butane are each made up of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §07) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lewis 1986, who is criticising Armstrong. If you insist on having universals, they might (in this case) best be described as 'patterns', which would be useful for structuralism in mathematics. They reduce to relations. |
| 10730 | If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If universals are to ground similarities, it is hard to see why one should admit universals which only happen to be instantiated once. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: He is criticising Armstrong, who holds that universals must be instantiated. This is a good point about any metaphysics which makes resemblance basic. |
| 10724 | Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: So-called aristotelian universals have some queer features: one universal can be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two universals can occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: If you want to make a metaphysical doctrine look ridiculous, stating it in very simple language will often do the job. Belief in fairies is more plausible than the first of these two claims. |
| 7963 | Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged, but they would have no spatio-temporal location, so they cannot instantiate Aristotelian universals, there being nowhere for such universals to be. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Maybe. Why can't the second-order properties be in the same location as the first-order ones? If the reply is that they would seem to be in many places at once, that is only restating the original problem of universals at a higher level. |
| 7962 | Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Uninstantiated properties and relations may do some useful philosophical work. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Their value isn't just philosophical; hopes and speculations depend on them. This doesn't make universals mind-independent. I think the secret is a clear understanding of the word 'abstract' (which I don't have). |
| 10727 | Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We may have to accept uninstantiated universals because the properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This is the problem of 'abstract reference'. 'Courage matters more than kindness'; 'Pink is more like red than like yellow'. Not an impressive argument. All you need is second-level abstraction. |
| 10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One view of instantiation is that it is the set-membership predicate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §10) | |
| A reaction: This cuts the Gordian knot rather nicely, but I don't like it, if the view of sets is extensional. We need to account for natural properties, and we need to exclude mere 'categorial' properties. |
| 10744 | Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We can say that 'Harvard-nominalism' is the thesis that there are no abstract objects, 'Oz-nominalism' that there are no universals, and Goodman's nominalism rejects entities, such as sets, which fail to obey a certain principle of composition. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15 n46) | |
| A reaction: Personally I'm a Goodman-Harvard-Oz nominalist. What are you rebelling against? What have you got? We've been mesmerized by the workings of our own minds, which are trying to grapple with a purely physical world. |
| 10726 | Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say it is a mereological fusion of them, but if two universals can be instantiated by more than one particular, then two particulars can have the same universals, and be the same thing. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This and Idea 10725 pretty thoroughly demolish the idea that objects could be just bundles of universals. The problem pushes some philosophers back to the idea of 'substance', or some sort of 'substratum' which has the universals. |
| 10725 | Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say that it is the set of its universals, but this won't work because the thing can be concrete but sets are abstract. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This objection applies just as much to tropes (abstract particulars) as it does to universals. |
| 9389 | Vague membership of sets is possible if the set is defined by its concept, not its members [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: Vagueness in respect of membership is consistency with determinacy of the set's identity, so long as a set's identity is taken to consist, not in its having such-and-such members, but in its being the extension of a concept. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt (The Logic of Boundaryless Concepts [2007], p.5) | |
| A reaction: I find this view of sets much more appealing than the one that identifies a set with its members. The empty set is less of a problem, as well as non-existents. Logicians prefer the extensional view because it is tidy. |
| 4592 | If you can have the boat without its current planks, and the planks with no boat, the planks aren't the boat [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If a boat can continue to exist after the planks that currently make it up have ceased to exist, and if the planks could continue to exist when the boat does not, then a boat cannot be identified with the planks that make it up at a given time. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems obvious, but it opposes Locke's claim that the particles of an object are its identity. Does this mean identities are entirely in our heads, and not a feature of nature? I want to resist that. |
| 10745 | Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Natural science is up to its ears in modal notions because of its use of the concepts of disposition, causation and law. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Quine. It might be possible for an auster physicist to dispense with these concepts, by merely describing patterns of observed behaviour. |
| 4586 | You can't embrace the formal apparatus of possible worlds, but reject the ontology [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We should be suspicious of anyone who embraces the formal apparatus of possible worlds while rejecting the ontology. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: What matters is that good philosophy should not duck the ontological implications of any apparatus. If only embracing the 'ontology of possible worlds' were a simple matter. What makes one world 'close' to another? |
| 4591 | Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Idealism explains appearances by identifying appearances with reality. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: Nicely put. There is a certain intellectual integrity about idealism, but it is still mad. The overall picture seems to me incoherent if we don't assume that appearances are bringing us close to reality (without ever quite getting there). |
| 4610 | Different generations focus on either the quality of mind, or its scientific standing, or the content of thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One generation addresses the qualitative aspect of mentality, the next focuses on its scientific standing, its successor takes up the problem of mental content, then the cycle starts all over again… | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints the three interlinked questions. We seem to be currently obsessed with the quality of experience (the 'Hard Question'), but the biggest questions is how the three aspects fit together. If there are three necessities here, they must coexist. |
| 4618 | If minds are realised materially, it looks as if the material laws will pre-empt any causal role for mind [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If a mental property is realised by a material property, then it looks as though its material realiser pre-empts any causal contribution on the part of the realised mental property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This has a beautiful simplicity about it. I can see how some very odd phenomena might suddenly appear out of a physical combination, but not how entirely new causal laws can be created. |
| 4621 | Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Whatever exists has qualities, so it is no surprise that states of minds have qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: If only I knew what a 'quality' was. Do combinations have qualities in addition to the qualities of the components? A pair of trees, a pile of sand, a mass of neurons. |
| 4623 | Propositional attitudes are not the only intentional states; there is also mental imagery [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have thought that intentional states are exhausted by propositional attitudes, but what about mental imagery? You may have propositional attitudes to food, but I would wager that most of your thoughts about it are imagistic. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. If I encounter an object by which I am bewildered, I may form no propositions at all about it, but I can still contemplate the object. |
| 4626 | The widespread externalist view says intentionality has content because of causal links of agent to world [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The prevailing 'externalist' line on intentionality regards intentional states of mind as owing their content (what they are of, or about) to causal relations agents bear to the world. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This goes back to Putnam's Twin Earth. 'Meanings aren't in the head'. I may defer to experts about what 'elm' means, but I may also be arrogantly wrong about what 'juniper' means. |
| 4622 | Error must be possible in introspection, because error is possible in all judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Error, like truth, presupposes judgement. Judgements you make about your conscious states are distinct from those states. This leaves room for error. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds very neat. The reply would have to be that a lot of introspection is not judgement, but direct perception of self-evident facts and truths. I agree with Heil. |
| 4590 | If causation is just regularities in events, the interaction of mind and body is not a special problem [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If causal relations boil down to nothing more than regularities (as Hume suggests), then it is a mistake to regard the absence of a mechanism or causal link between mental events and material events as a special problem. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: So critics of Descartes who were baffled by interaction, were actually sniffing Hume's wholesale scepticism about necessary causation. Even so, physical conjunction is more tangible than spiritual conjunction. |
| 4614 | Disposition is a fundamental feature of reality, since basic particles are capable of endless possible interactions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If there are elementary particles, then they are certainly capable of endless interactions beyond those in which they actually engage. Everything points to dispositionality being a fundamental feature of our world. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that my ontology has to include something called a 'disposition'. Dispositions are the consequence of how things are. Are there passive dispositions? |
| 4595 | No mental state entails inevitable behaviour, because other beliefs or desires may intervene [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Any attempt to say what behaviour follows from a given state of mind can be shown to be false by producing an example in which the state of mind is present but, owing to the addition of new beliefs and desires, the behaviour does not follow. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: The objection seems misplaced against eliminative behaviourism, because there are held to be no mental states to correlate with the behavior. There is just behaviour, some times the same, sometimes different. |
| 4599 | Hearts are material, but functionalism says the property of being a heart is not a material property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Although your heart is a material object, the property of being a heart is, if we accept the functionalist picture, not a material property. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably functional properties are not physical because they are multiply realisable. The property of being a heart is more like a theoretical flow diagram than it is like a muscle. That word 'property' again… |
| 4624 | If you are a functionalist, there appears to be no room for qualia [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you are a functionalist, there appears to be no room for qualia. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The problem is not that qualia must be denied, but that there is strong pressure to class them as epiphenomena. However, a raw colour can have a causal role (e.g. in an art gallery). Best to say (with Chalmers?) that functions cause qualia? |
| 4601 | Higher-level sciences cannot be reduced, because their concepts mark boundaries invisible at lower levels [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The categories definitive of a given science mark off boundaries that are largely invisible within science at lower levels. That is why there is, in general, no prospect of reducing a higher-level science to a science at some lower level. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds slick, but I am unconvinced. Molecules only exist at the level of chemistry, but they are built up out of physics, and the 'boundaries' could be explained in physics, if you had the knowledge and patience. |
| 4602 | Higher-level sciences designate real properties of objects, which are not reducible to lower levels [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The categories embedded in a higher-level science (psychology, for instance) designate genuine properties of objects, which are not reducible to properties found in sciences at lower levels. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This isn't an argument against reductionism. It is obviously true that someone with a physics degree won't make a good doctor. It's these wretched 'property' things again. Is 'found repulsive by me' a property terrorists? |
| 4593 | 'Property dualism' says mind and body are not substances, but distinct families of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: 'Property dualism' is the view according to which the mental and the physical are not distinguishable kinds of substance, but distinct families of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2 n) | |
| A reaction: I am struggling to make sense of properties being in distinct families. If it is like smells and colours, it doesn't say much, and if the difference is more profound then it begins to look like old-fashioned dualism in disguise. |
| 4597 | Early identity theory talked of mind and brain 'processes', but now the focus is properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The early identity theorists talked of identifying mental processes with brain processes, but I am now proposing it as a theory about properties. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: Since a process is presumably composed of more basic ontological ingredients, this is presumably a good move, but there is still a vagueness about the whole concept of a 'property'. |
| 4609 | It seems contradictory to be asked to believe that we can be eliminativist about beliefs [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some have argued that eliminativism about propositional attitudes is self-refuting. If no one believes anything, then how could we believe the eliminativist thesis? | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Sounds slick, but it doesn't strike me as a big problem. Presumably you don't 'believe' eliminativism. You treat some of your brain processes as if they fell into the fictional category of 'belief'. |
| 4596 | The appeal of the identity theory is its simplicity, and its solution to the mental causation problem [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The identity theory is preferable to dualism since 1) if mental events are neurological, it is easy to explain causal relations between them, and 2) if we can account for mental phenomena by reference to brains and their properties, we don't need minds. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: One might add that it fits into the overall scientific world, and permits the possible closure of physics. The challenge is that identity theory must 'save the phenomena'. |
| 4598 | Functionalists emphasise that mental processes are not to be reduced to what realises them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The functionalists' point is that higher-level properties like being in pain or computing the sum of 7 and 5 are not to be identified with ("reduced to") or mistaken for their realisers. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I take it that functionalist minds can't be reduced because they are abstractions rather than physical entities. Nevertheless, the implied ontology seems to be entirely physical, and hence in some sense reductionist. |
| 4619 | 'Multiple realisability' needs to clearly distinguish low-level realisers from what is realised [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Proponents of multiple realisability regard it as vital to distinguish realised, higher-level properties from their lower-level realisers. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: So that the very idea of 'multiple realisability' begs the question. Minds are private, so it is never clear what has been realised, especially in non-linguistic brains. |
| 4620 | Multiple realisability is not a relation among properties, but an application of predicates to resembling things [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Multiple realisability is not a relation among properties; it is the phenomenon of predicates applying to objects in virtue of distinct, though pertinently similar, properties possessed by those objects. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: The analogies for multiple realisability usually involve functions rather than properties or predicates (different types of corkscrew). Pain or belief in danger are not just 'predicates'. |
| 4594 | A scientist could know everything about the physiology of headaches, but never have had one [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a neuroscientist who is intimately familiar with the physiology of headaches, but who has never actually experienced a headache. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: A more realistic version of Frank Jackson's 'Mary'. Doctors need to know that headaches are unpleasant; what they actually feel like seems irrelevant (epiphenomenal). What's it like to only have two pairs of shoes? |
| 4625 | Is mental imagery pictorial, or is it propositional? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A fierce debate has raged between proponents of 'pictorial' conceptions of imagery (Kosslyn) and those who take imagery to be propositional (Pylyshyn). | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: This may not be a simple dilemma. Pure pictorial imagery seem possible (abstract patterns) and pure propositions are okay (maths), but in most thought they are inextricable. The image is the proposition (a nuclear cloud). |
| 4607 | Folk psychology and neuroscience are no more competitors than cartography and geology are [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Folk psychology and neuroscience are not competitors, any more than cartography and geology are competitors. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems true enough, unless someone like Fodor claims that the correct way to do neuroscience is to try to explicate folk psychology categories in terms of brain function. Folk psychology is fine for folk. |
| 10746 | Conceptual priority is barely intelligible [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I find the notion of conceptual priority barely intelligible. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §19 n48) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree, though there is a lot of vagueness and intuition involved, and not a lot of hard argument. Can you derive A from B, but not B from A? Is A inconceivable without B, but B conceivable without A? |
| 4605 | Truth-conditions correspond to the idea of 'literal meaning' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I intend the notion of truth-conditions to correspond to what I have called 'literal meaning'. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes. If I identify myself to you by saying "the spam is in the fridge", that always has a literal meaning (which we assemble from the words), as well as connotation in this particular context. |
| 4606 | To understand 'birds warble' and 'tigers growl', you must also understand 'tigers warble' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is something puzzling about the notion that someone could understand the sentences "birds warble" and "tigers growl", yet have no idea what the sentence "tigers warble" meant. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: True enough, but this need not imply the full thesis of linguistic holism. Words are assembled like bricks. I know tigers might warble, but stones don't. Might fish warble? Or volcanoes? I must know that 'birds warble' is not a tautology. |
| 4604 | If propositions are abstract entities, how do human beings interact with them? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who takes propositions to be abstract entities owes the rest of us an account of how human beings could interact with such things. | |
| From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes this sound impossible, but that would mean that all abstraction is impossible, and there are no such things as ideas and concepts. In the end something has to be miraculous, so let it be our ability to think about abstractions. |