Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Queries to the 'Opticks'', 'Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed)' and 'On the True Doctrine (Against Christians)'

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8 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / C. Ontology of Logic / 4. Logic by Convention

12394	If the result is bad, we change the rule; if we like the rule, we reject the result [Goodman]
	Full Idea: A rule is amended if it yields an inference we are unwilling to accept; an inference is rejected if it violates a rule we are unwilling to amend.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.64)
	A reaction: This is clearly in tune with Quine's assertion that logic is potentially revisable, and the idea is pragmatist in spirit. It is hard to deny that intuitions about what makes a good argument control our logic. I say the world controls our intuitions.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / a. Dispositions

14292	Dispositions seem more ethereal than behaviour; a non-occult account of them would be nice [Goodman]
	Full Idea: Dispositions of a thing are as important to us as overt behaviour, but they strike us by comparison as rather ethereal. So we are moved to enquire whether we can bring them down to earth, and explain disposition terms without reference to occult powers.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], II.3)
	A reaction: Mumford quotes this at the start of his book on dispositions, as his agenda. I suspect that the 'occult' aspect crept in because dispositions were based on powers, and the dominant view was that these were the immediate work of God.

14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem

18749	Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
	Full Idea: Goodman constructed arguments that purported to show that a satisfactory syntactic analysis of the confirmation relation can never be found. In response, philosophers of science tried to model it in probabilistic terms.
	From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R - Mathematical Methods in Philosophy 4
	A reaction: I take this idea to say that Bayesianism was developed in response to the grue problem. This is an interesting light on 'grue', which never bothered me much. The point is it scuppered formal attempts to model induction.

17646	Goodman showed that every sound inductive argument has an unsound one of the same form [Goodman, by Putnam]
	Full Idea: Goodman has shown that no purely formal criterion can distinguish arguments that are intuitively sound inductive arguments for unsound ones: for every sound one there is an unsound one of the same form. The predicates in the argument make the difference.
	From: report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Hilary Putnam - Why there isn't a ready-made world 'Causation'
	A reaction: This is to swallow grue whole. I think a bit more chewing is called for. By this date Putnam strikes me as a crazy relativist who has lost his grip on the world. Note the word 'formal' - but Putnam seems to think the argument is important.

25. Social Practice / F. Life Issues / 6. Animal Rights

1868	The world was made as much for animals as for man [Celsus]
	Full Idea: The world was made as much for the irrational animals as for men.
	From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], §V)
	A reaction: A good remark. It seems to be a classic distortion of European Christianity that the world is made for us, and that animals only exist to fill our sandwiches.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature

16746	Principles of things are not hidden features of forms, but the laws by which they were formed [Newton]
	Full Idea: The (active) principles I consider not as occult qualities, supposed to result from the specific forms of things, but as general laws of nature, by which the things themselves are formed.
	From: Isaac Newton (Queries to the 'Opticks' [1721], q 31), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6
	A reaction: This is the external, 'imposed' view of laws (with the matter passive) at its most persuasive. If laws arise out the stuff (as I prefer to think), what principles went into the formulation of the stuff?

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 3. Laws and Generalities

4794	We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman]
	Full Idea: Rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction.
	From: Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.21), quoted by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §5.4
	A reaction: This smacks of dodgy pragmatism, and sounds deeply wrong. The perception of a law has to be prior to making the prediction. Why do we make the prediction, if we haven't spotted a law. Goodman is mesmerised by language instead of reality.

29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / a. Christianity

1867	Christians presented Jesus as a new kind of logos to oppose that of the philosophers [Celsus]
	Full Idea: Christians put forth this Jesus not only as the son of God, but as the very Logos - not the pure and holy Logos known to the philosophers, but a new kind of Logos.
	From: Celsus (On the True Doctrine (Against Christians) [c.178], III)