107 ideas
| 2797 | As coherence expands its interrelations become steadily tighter, culminating only in necessary truth [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: As our system grows in coherence, the interrelations between its parts becomes tighter and tighter;… at the limit contingent truth vanishes, leaving only necessary truth. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 14.7) |
| 7001 | If you begin philosophy with language, you find yourself trapped in it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This voices my pessimism about the linguistic approach to philosophy (and I don't just mean analysis of ordinary language), though I wonder if the career of (say) John Searle is a counterexample. |
| 7038 | A theory with few fundamental principles might still posit a lot of entities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It could well turn out that a simpler theory - a theory with fewer fundamental principles - posits more entities than a more complex competitor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 4036. The point here is that you can't simply translate Ockham as 'keep it simple', as there are different types of simplicity. The best theory will negotiate a balance between entities and principles. |
| 7037 | Parsimony does not imply the world is simple, but that our theories should try to be [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A commitment to parsimony is not a commitment to a conception of the world as simple. The idea, rather, is that we should not complicate our theories about the world unnecessarily. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Ockham's Razor is about us, not about the world. It would be absurd to make the a priori assumption that the world has to be simple. Are we, though, creating bad theories by insisting that they should be simple? |
| 7004 | The view that truth making is entailment is misguided and misleading [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I argue that the widely held view that truth making is to be understood as entailment is misguided in principle and potentially misleading. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If reality was just one particle, what would entail the truths about it? Suppose something appears to be self-evident true about reality, but no one can think of any entailments to derive it? Do we assume a priori that they are possible? |
| 2768 | The correspondence theory also has the problem that two sets of propositions might fit the facts equally well [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence theory as well as the coherence theory has the problem of more than one set of truths. Why can't two sets of propositions "fit the facts" equally well? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
| 2765 | Rescher says that if coherence requires mutual entailment, this leads to massive logical redundancy [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Rescher complains that if coherence requires mutual entailment, then what is entailed is logically redundant, and the whole system is infected with mutual redundancy. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.1) |
| 2769 | If one theory is held to be true, all the other theories appear false, because they can't be added to the true one [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: From the point of view of someone with a theory every other theory is false, because it cannot be added to the true theory. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
| 2766 | Even with a tight account of coherence, there is always the possibility of more than one set of coherent propositions [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: No matter how tight our account of coherence we have to admit that there may be more than one set of coherent propositions (as Russell pointed out (1907)). | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) |
| 7035 | God does not create the world, and then add the classes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is hard to see classes as an 'addition of being'; God does not create the world, and then add the classes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4 n6) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. We may be tempted into believing in the reality of classes when considering maths, but it seems utterly implausible when considering trees or cows. |
| 7017 | The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: Fodor, for example, claims that certain causal laws only operate at high levels of reality. I agree with Heil's idea - the notion that there are different realities around here that don't connect properly to one another is philosopher's madness. |
| 7003 | There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: We should accept levels of organisation, levels of complexity, levels of description, and levels of explanation, but not the levels of reality favoured by many anti-reductionists. The world is then ontologically, but not analytically, reductive. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right to me. The crunch questions seem to be whether the boundaries at higher levels of organisation exist lower down, and whether the causal laws of the higher levels can be translated without remainder into lower level laws. |
| 2781 | Realism says that most perceived objects exist, and have some of their perceived properties [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Realism in the theory of perception is that objects we perceive usually do exist, and retain some at least of the properties we perceive them as having. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
| 7045 | Realism says some of our concepts 'cut nature at the joints' [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Realism is sometimes said to involve a commitment to the idea that certain of our concepts, those with respect to which we are realists, 'carve reality at the joints'. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.11) | |
| A reaction: Clearly not all concepts cut nature at the joints (e.g. we have concepts of things we know to be imaginary). Personally I am committed to this view of realism. I try very hard to use concepts that cut accurately; why shouldn't I sometimes succeed? |
| 7065 | Anti-realists who reduce reality to language must explain the existence of language [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Anti-realist philosophers, and those who hope to reduce metaphysics to (or replace it with) the philosophy of language, owe the rest of us an account of the ontology of language. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turning-the-tables question. In all accounts of relativism, x is usually said to be relative to y. You haven't got proper relativism if you haven't relativised both x and y. But relativised them to what? Nietzsche's 'perspectivism' (Idea 4420)? |
| 7020 | Concepts don't carve up the world, which has endless overlooked or ignored divisions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Concepts do not 'carve up' the world; the world already contains endless divisions, most of which we remain oblivious to or ignore. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: Concepts could still carve up the world, without ever aspiring to do a complete job. We carve up the aspects that interest us, but the majority of the carving is in response to natural divisions, not whimsical conventions. |
| 7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
| 7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
| 7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
| A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
| 7023 | Powers or dispositions are usually seen as caused by lower-level qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The modern default position on dispositionality is that powers or dispositions are higher-level properties objects possess by virtue of those objects' possession of lower-level qualitative (categorical) properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: The new idea which is being floated by Heil, and which I prefer, is that dispositions or powers are basic. A 'quality' is a much more dubious entity than a power. |
| 7025 | Are a property's dispositions built in, or contingently added? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is a dispute over whether a property's dispositionality is built into the property or whether it is a contingent add-on. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.4) | |
| A reaction: Put that way, the idea that it is built in seems much more plausible. If it is an add-on, an explanation of why that disposition is added to that particular property seems required. If it is built in, it seems legitimate to accept it as a brute fact. |
| 7034 | Universals explain one-over-many relations, and similar qualities, and similar behaviour [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Universals can explain the one-over-many problem, and easily explain similarity relations between objects, and explain the similar behaviour of similar objects. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.1) | |
| A reaction: A useful summary. If you accept it, you seem to be faced with a choice between Plato (who has universals existing independently of particulars) and Armstrong (who makes them real, but existing only in particulars). |
| 7039 | How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Imagine a pair of worlds, one in which there are the universals and their instances and one in which there are just the instances (a world of modes). How would the absence of universals make itself felt? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.7) | |
| A reaction: A nice question for Plato, very much in the spirit of Aristotle's string of questions. Compare 'suppose the physics remained, but someone removed the laws'. Either chaos ensues, or you realise they were redundant. Same with Forms. |
| 7009 | Similarity among modes will explain everthing universals were for [Heil] |
| Full Idea: My contention is that similarity among modes can do the job universals are conventionally postulated to do. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 4441 for Russell's nice objection to this view. The very process by which we observes similarities (as assess their degrees) needs to be explained by any adequate theory of properties or universals. |
| 7041 | Similar objects have similar properties; properties are directly similar [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects are similar by virtue of possessing similar properties; properties, in contrast, are not similar in virtue of anything. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.2) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure if I can understand the concept of similarity if there is no answer to the question 'In what respect?' I suppose David Hume is happy to take resemblance as given and basic, but it could be defined as 'sharing identical properties'. |
| 7032 | Objects join sets because of properties; the property is not bestowed by set membership [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The set of red objects is the set of objects possessing a property: being red. Objects are members of the set in virtue of possessing this property; they do not possess the property in virtue of belonging to the set. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very effective denial of the claim that universals are sets. However, if 'being a Londoner' counts as a property, you can only have it by joining the London set. Being tall is more fundamental than being a Londoner. |
| 7008 | Trope theorists usually see objects as 'bundles' of tropes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers identifying themselves as trope theorists have, by and large, accepted some form of the 'bundle theory' of objects: an object is a bundle of compresent tropes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This view eliminates anything called 'matter' or 'substance' or a 'bare particular'. I think I agree with Heil that this doesn't give a coherent picture, as properties seem to be 'of' something, and bundles always raise the question of what unites them. |
| 7018 | Objects are substances, which are objects considered as the bearer of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I think of objects as substances, and a substance is an object considered as a bearer of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.2) | |
| A reaction: This is an area of philosophy I always find disconcerting, where an account of how we should see objects seems to have no connection at all to what physicists report about objects. 'Considered as' seems to make substances entirely conventional. |
| 7019 | Maybe there is only one substance, space-time or a quantum field [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It would seem distinctly possible that there is but a single substance: space-time or some all-encompassing quantum field. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.2) | |
| A reaction: This would at least meet my concern that philosophers' 'substances' don't seem to connect to what physicists talk about. I wonder if anyone knows what a 'quantum field' is? The clash between relativity and quantum theory is being alluded to. |
| 7046 | Rather than 'substance' I use 'objects', which have properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I prefer the more colloquial 'object' to the traditional term 'substance'. An object can be regarded as a possessor of properties: as something that is red, spherical and pungent, for instance. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 15.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice move, but it seems to beg the question of 'what is it that has the properties?' Objects and substances do two different jobs in our ontology. Heil is just refusing to discuss what it is that has properties. |
| 7047 | Statues and bronze lumps have discernible differences, so can't be identical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Applications of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals apparently obliges us to distinguish the statue and the lump of bronze making it up. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.3) | |
| A reaction: In other words, statues and lumps of bronze have different properties. It is a moot point, though, whether there are any discernible differences between that statue at time t and its constituting lump of bronze at time t. |
| 7048 | Do we reduce statues to bronze, or eliminate statues, or allow statues and bronze? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Must we choose between reductionism (the statue is the lump of bronze), eliminativism (there are no statues, only statue-shaped lumps of bronze), and a commitment to coincident objects? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.5) | |
| A reaction: (Heil goes on to offer his own view). Coincident objects sounds the least plausible view. Modern statues are only statues if we see them that way, but a tree is definitely a tree. Trenton Merricks is good on eliminativism. |
| 2745 | A pupil who lacks confidence may clearly know something but not be certain of it [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Why isn't certainty required for knowledge? Because we are often prepared to allow that someone does in fact have knowledge when the person is so uncertain they would not claim knowledge for themselves (the 'diffident schoolboy'). | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.1) |
| 2755 | If senses are fallible, then being open to correction is an epistemological virtue [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: In my view, once we admit that our beliefs about our sensory states are not infallible, incorrigibility would be a vice rather than a virtue. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be axiomatic among modern philosophers, and I certainly agree with it. |
| 5677 | Naïve direct realists hold that objects retain all of their properties when unperceived [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The naïve direct realist holds that unperceived objects are able to retain properties of all the types we perceive them as having, which includes not only a shape and a size, but also a colour, a taste and a smell. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: This I take to be a completely untenable view, if we are including the qualia of red, sweet or pungent among the properties. It seems uncontroversial that objects retain the capacity to cause redness etc. when they are unperceived. |
| 5678 | Scientific direct realism says we know some properties of objects directly [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The scientific direct realist accepts the directness of our perception of the world, but restricts his realism to a special group of properties, ..not including those which are dependent for their existence upon the existence of a perceiver. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: Dancy goes on to say that this distinction is a 'close relative' of Locke's primary/secondary distinction. Am I a direct realist or a representative realist about primary properties? Maybe the distinction dissolves as we unravel the true process. |
| 5681 | Maybe we are forced from direct into indirect realism by the need to explain perceptual error [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Direct realism is unlikely to be able to provide an explanation of perceptual error without collapsing into indirect realism. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: If there is an error, there must be two things which don't match: the perception, and the reality. This seems to me a powerful reason for preferring indirect or representative realism. I like the idea that we make mental 'models' (rather than inferences). |
| 5682 | Internal realism holds that we perceive physical objects via mental objects [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Indirect realism holds that in perception we are indirectly aware of the physical objects around us in virtue of a direct awareness of internal, non-physical objects. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: This may be a slightly prejudicial definition which invites insoluble questions about the ontological status of the internal 'objects'. It seems to me obvious that we create some sort of inner 'models' or constructions in the process of perception. |
| 5683 | Indirect realism depends on introspection, the time-lag, illusions, and neuroscience [Dancy,J, by PG] |
| Full Idea: The four standard reasons for preferring indirect to direct realism are introspection of our mental processes, the time-lag argument, the argument from illusion, and the findings of neuroscience. | |
| From: report of Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: Ultimately one's views about realism depend on one's views of the mind/brain, and it is the last of the four reasons that sways me. We know enough about the complexity of the brain to accept that it represents reality, with no additional ontology. |
| 2778 | Phenomenalism includes possible experiences, but idealism only refers to actual experiences [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Phenomenalism talks about actual and possible experiences, whereas idealism confines itself to the actual experiences. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) |
| 5684 | Eliminative idealists say there are no objects; reductive idealists say objects exist as complex experiences [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The eliminativist idealist holds that there is no such thing as a material object; there is nothing but experience (idea, sensation). The reductive idealist holds that there are material objects, but they are nothing other than complexes of experience. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: Dancy says Berkeley was of the latter type. The distinction doesn't strike me as entirely clear. I can't make much sense of the words 'are' or 'exist' in the second theory. To say it is only experiences translates (to me) as 'doesn't exist'. |
| 2777 | Extreme solipsism only concerns current experience, but it might include past and future [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Extreme solipsism only considers present experiences, but more relaxed solipsism may include past and possible future experiences. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) |
| 2794 | Knowing that a cow is not a horse seems to be a synthetic a priori truth [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The fact that a cow is not a horse is a candidate for a priori synthetic truth. It doesn't seem to be analytic, because you can know what a cow is without knowing what a horse is. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 14.3) |
| 2780 | Perception is either direct realism, indirect realism, or phenomenalism [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: There are three main families of theories of perception: direct realism, indirect realism, and phenomenalism. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
| 7030 | Properties don't possess ways they are, because that just is the property [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Objects possess properties, but I am sceptical of the idea that properties possess properties; just as a property is a way some object is, a property of a property would be a way a property is, but that is just the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.1) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a good defence of the idea that properties are qualities as well as dispositions. However, if we make the qualities of properties into secondary qualities, and the dispositions into primary qualities, the absurdity melts away. |
| 7028 | If properties were qualities without dispositions, they would be undetectable [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A pure quality, a property altogether lacking in dispositionality, would be undetectable and would, in one obvious sense, make no difference to its possessor. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very forceful and simple reason why we cannot view properties simply as qualities of things. Heil wants properties to be dispositions and qualities; personally I would vote for them just being dispositions or powers. |
| 7029 | Can we distinguish the way a property is from the property? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is not clear to me that we easily distinguish ways a property is from the property itself. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: To defend properties as qualities, he is confusing ontology and epistemology. Presumably he means by 'ways a property is' what I would prefer to call 'ways a property seems to be'. I don't believe a smell is simply what it seems to be. |
| 7051 | Objects only have secondary qualities because they have primary qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are not distinct from primary qualities: an object's possession of a given secondary quality is a matter of its possession of certain complex primary qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.3) | |
| A reaction: The bottom line here is that, if essentialism is right, colours are not properties at all (see Idea 5456). Heil wants to subsume secondary properties within primary properties. I think we should sharply distinguish them. |
| 7044 | Secondary qualities are just primary qualities considered in the light of their effect on us [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Secondary qualities are just ordinary properties - roughly, Locke's primary qualities - considered in the light of their effects on us. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.10) | |
| A reaction: Unconvincing. If they only acquire their ontological status as primary qualities if they have to be considered in relation to something (us), then that is not a primary quality. |
| 7052 | Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that take colours to be properties of the surfaces of objects have difficulty accounting for a host of phenomena including coloured light emitted by radiant sources and so-called film colours (the colour of the sky, for instance). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I never thought that colours might be actual properties of surfaces, but it is nice to have spelled out a couple of instances that make it very implausible. Neon and sodium lights I take to be examples of the first case. |
| 5680 | For direct realists the secondary and primary qualities seem equally direct [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: For a direct realist our awareness of colour and heat can hardly be of a different order from our awareness of shape and size. Both sorts of properties are presented with equal directness. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a good objection to 'direct scientific realism', which claims direct apprehension of primary qualities alongside a totally relative view of secondary qualities. The best response seems to be to move to a representative view of primary properties. |
| 7053 | Treating colour as light radiation has the implausible result that tomatoes are not red [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Theories that tie colours to features of light radiation deal with radiant and diffused colours, but yield implausible results for objects; tomatoes are not red, on such a view, but merely reflect red light. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
| A reaction: I see absolutely no problem with the philosophical denial that tomatoes are actually red, while continuing to use 'red' of tomatoes in the normal way. When we analyse our processes of knowledge acquisition, we must give up 'common sense'. |
| 5679 | We can't grasp the separation of quality types, or what a primary-quality world would be like [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: There is doubt about whether our experience of the world is such that we can conceive of the sort of separation of primary and secondary qualities which the scientific view calls for, and can understand what the world is like with no secondary qualities. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: Dancy attributes these doubts to Berkeley (e.g. Idea 3837). I think what is claimed here is false. Obviously we spend our whole lives immersed in secondary qualities, but separating the different aspects is precisely what scientists (and philosophers) do. |
| 2782 | We can be looking at distant stars which no longer actually exist [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: An object such as a distant star can have ceased to exist by the moment at which we are directly aware of it. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 10.2) |
| 2775 | It is not clear from the nature of sense data whether we should accept them as facts [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The question whether something which appears as datum should remain as accepted fact is one which is not even partially determined by its origin as datum. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.5) |
| 2784 | Appearances don't guarantee reality, unless the appearance is actually caused by the reality [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: If I stare at a white wall with my brain wired to a virtual reality computer, and it generates a white wall, we wouldn't say I am seeing reality. It seems that the wall itself must in some way cause my perception of it. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.4) | |
| A reaction: But suppose the computer generated in my mind an image of the wall which was actually in front of me? And suppose the computer got its image from the identical wall next door, not from mine? And it was only judged identical because the architect said so |
| 2785 | Perceptual beliefs may be directly caused, but generalisations can't be [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: A perceptual belief that p can have as its main cause the fact that p. More general facts (all men are mortal; e=mc2) cannot be the main cause of my belief, even if they do function causally in some way. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.5) | |
| A reaction: Note that the perceptual belief can be the "main" cause; it seems to me that most beliefs are caused by judgements, though I may normally accept beliefs which are directly caused by perception, if I have no reason to challenge them. |
| 2788 | If perception and memory are indirect, then two things stand between mind and reality [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: If perception is indirect as well as memory, this means there are two direct objects of awareness between the remembering mind and the original object. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.2) |
| 2787 | Memories aren't directly about the past, because time-lags and illusions suggest representation [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Direct realism about memory believes the memory is the past. But the time-lag argument and various illusions are powerful here, suggesting indirect realism involving a memory image. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.2) |
| 2791 | Phenomenalism about memory denies the past, or reduces it to present experience [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative phenomenalism about memory holds that there is no such thing as the past, just certain present experiences; reductive phenomenalism holds that there is a past, but it is no more than a complex of those present experiences. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.4) |
| 2790 | I can remember plans about the future, and images aren't essential (2+3=5) [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Memory is not solely concerned with the past, let alone one's own past (I remember that I must be in London next week), and need not involve images (2+2=4). | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 12.3) | |
| A reaction: I can hardly remember the future, so I presume I am remembering my past commitment to go to London, even if I visualise the future with me in London. The non-necessity of images seems right. I can remember the Mona Lisa without a precise image. |
| 2754 | Foundations are justified by non-beliefs, or circularly, or they need no justification [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Foundationalism can get rid of the regress argument with one of three types of belief: those justified by something other than beliefs, those which justify themselves, or those which need no justification. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear trilemma, and none of them will do, which is why foundationalism is false. I vote for Davidson's view, that only a belief can justify another belief. |
| 2749 | For internalists we must actually know that the fact caused the belief [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The internalist would claim that even if the belief is caused by the true fact to which it refers, it is also necessary that the believer believes that this is how their belief arose, and not some other way. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm converted to internalism. If the belief is externally supported in the right way, then it may well be a true belief, but knowledge needs critical faculties, and justifications which can be articulated. |
| 2770 | Internalists tend to favour coherent justification, but not the coherence theory of truth [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Internalists such as Keith Lehrer tend to suggest that we adopt a coherence theory of justification but reject the coherence theory of truth. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Lehrer. Truth just isn't coherence, for all sorts of well known reasons (found in this database!). High coherence can be totally false. For justification, though, it is the best we have. |
| 2752 | Foundationalism requires inferential and non-inferential justification [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The core of any form of foundationalism is the view that there are two forms of justification - inferential and non-inferential - and that non-inferential justification must be possible to avoid a sceptical regress. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: The foundation may be non-inferential, but is it also non-evidential, or devoid of any support at all, apart from its own eloquent self? I can't buy that, I'm afraid. |
| 2771 | Foundationalists must accept not only the basic beliefs, but also rules of inference for further progress [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Foundationalists suppose we need not only basic beliefs, but also principles of inference to move to the more sophisticated superstructure. We may understand what justifies the basic beliefs, but what about the inference principles? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: Very nice question. Of course, you can't justify everything, but each part of a system can be scrutinised in turn by the other parts (with scrutinising principles tested pragmatically). |
| 2756 | If basic beliefs can be false, falsehood in non-basic beliefs might by a symptom [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Falsehood in a non-basic belief would be a reason to doubt the basic beliefs which support it, once we have admitted that basic beliefs can be false. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: The yearning for foundations arises from the yearning for certainty. If one embraces the fallibilist view of knowledge, as I do, then there is little motivation for foundationalism. |
| 2753 | Beliefs can only be infallible by having almost no content [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Infallible beliefs must have vanishingly small content. No belief with enough content to support the superstructure in which we are really interested is going to be infallible. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I see no reason why a foundationalist should not be a fallibilist, rather than insisting on the infallibility of their basic beliefs. I don't, though, see how basic beliefs can count as knowledge. |
| 2773 | Coherentism gives a possible justification of induction, and opposes scepticism [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Coherentists feel that their approach provides a possible justification for induction, and offers a general stance from which the sceptic can be defused, if not rebutted. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: These are two good reasons why I vote for coherentism (about justification, NOT about truth). Coherence is the main tool for leading us to the best explanation. |
| 2779 | Idealists must be coherentists, but coherentists needn't be idealists [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: An idealist should perhaps be a coherentist, but there seems to be no reason why the coherentist should be an idealist; the link between the two is all one-way. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.5) | |
| A reaction: I don't see why an idealist shouldn't be a rationalist foundationalist, with a private reality full of certainties founded on simple a priori truths. Personally I'm an empiricist coherentist, this week. |
| 2786 | For coherentists justification and truth are not radically different things [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The coherentist idea is that justification and truth are not properties of radically different types. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 11.6) | |
| A reaction: Oh. And I thought I was a coherentist. It take it that keeping coherence for foundations separate from coherence as truth is absolutely basic. The latter is nonsense. |
| 2767 | If it is empirical propositions which have to be coherent, this eliminates coherent fiction [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: If coherence is grounded in, and is trying to make sense of, a set of empirical propositions, this will eliminate some of the more fanciful sets of coherent propositions, such as the complete Sherlock Holmes stories. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, I suspect that embracing the coherence view of justification drives one back to empiricisim (pace Bonjour), because that is the most authoritative part of the pattern of beliefs. |
| 2776 | Externalism could even make belief unnecessary (e.g. in animals) [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: One reading of the externalist approach may lead to a rejection of the belief condition for knowledge (in animals, perhaps). | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 9.3) | |
| A reaction: At this point the concept of 'knowledge' seems to disperse into the mist. This pushes me to a 'setting the bar high' view of knowledge. Otherwise plants will have it, and we don't want that. |
| 2746 | How can a causal theory of justification show that all men die? [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: How can a causal analysis of justification show that I know that all men die? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I presume he means that inductive generalisations can't be purely causal. The claim that men are immortal is absurd because it is 'unconnected' to what actually happens. |
| 2747 | Causal theories don't allow for errors in justification [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Causal accounts of justification do not allow for the possibility that a false belief may still be justified. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 2.4) | |
| A reaction: Good. If you switch to what you only think is the cause of your belief, you have gone internalist and ruined the party. You can't deny that a falsehood can be justified, or justification is vacuous. |
| 2772 | Coherentism moves us towards a more social, shared view of knowledge [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: An advantage of coherentism is that it directs attention away from the individual's struggle to achieve knowledge (the classical conception), and points to knowledge as a social phenomenon, shared, and increased by means of sharing. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the view which I now embrace. Internal coherence is the basis, but that spills out into the community, and into books, and into the relativity of social acceptance. |
| 2743 | What is the point of arguing against knowledge, if being right undermines your own argument? [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: What is the point of arguing that justified belief is impossible, for if you were right there could be no reasons for your conclusion? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 1.3) |
| 7066 | If the world is just texts or social constructs, what are texts and social constructs? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: For those who regard the world as text or a social construct, are texts and social constructs real entities? If they are, what are they? | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
| A reaction: A nice turn-the-tables question. The oldest attacks of all on scepticism and relativism consist of showing that the positions themselves rest on knowledge or truth. Nietzsche may be the best model for relativists. E.g. Idea 4420. |
| 7021 | If the world is theory-dependent, the theories themselves can't be theory-dependent [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If the world is somehow theory-dependent, this implies, on pain of a regress, that theories are not theory-dependent. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: I am not sure where this puts the ontology of theories, but this is a nice question, of a type which never seems to occur to your more simple-minded relativist. |
| 7026 | Science is sometimes said to classify powers, neglecting qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The sciences are sometimes said to be in the business of identifying and classifying powers; the mass of an electron, its spin and charge, could be regarded as powers possessed by the electron; science is silent on an electron's qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil raises the possibility that qualities are real, despite the silence of science; he wants colour to be a real quality. I like the simpler version of science. Qualities are the mental effects of powers; there exist substances, powers and effects. |
| 2751 | Probabilities can only be assessed relative to some evidence [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: In Probability Calculus probability is only assessed relative to some evidence. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 4.1) |
| 7060 | One form of explanation is by decomposition [Heil] |
| Full Idea: One form of explanation is by decomposition. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy word for taking it apart, presumably to see how it works, which implies a functional explanation, rather than to see what it is made of, which seeks an ontological explanation. Simply 'decomposing' something wouldn't in itself explain. |
| 2757 | The argument from analogy rests on one instance alone [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: As an inductive argument Mill's argument from analogy (other people have inputs and outputs like mine, so the intermediate explanation must be the same) is weak because it is based on a single instance. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: The argument may be 'weak' as a piece of pure logic, but when faced with a strange situation, one's own case seems like crucial evidence, like a single eye-witness to a crime. |
| 2758 | You can't separate mind and behaviour, as the analogy argument attempts [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The analogy argument makes the error (as Wittgenstein showed) of assuming that mind is quite separate from behaviour, and yet I can understand what it is for others to have mental states, which is contradictory. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: It has always seemed to me that Wittgenstein is excessively behaviourist, and he always seems to be flirting with eliminative views of mind, so he was never bothered about other minds. Minds aren't separate from behaviour, but they are distinct. |
| 7010 | Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a view with which I am sympathetic, though I am not sure if it explains anything. It would be necessary to identify a disposition of basic matter that could be built up into the disposition of a brain to think about things. |
| 7054 | Intentionality now has internalist (intrinsic to thinkers) and externalist (environment or community) views [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Nowadays philosophers concerned with intentionality divide into two camps. Internalists epitomise a traditional approach to thought, as intrinsic features of thinkers; externalists say it depends on contextual factors (environment or community). | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.2) | |
| A reaction: This is basic to understanding modern debates (those that grow out of Putnam's Twin Earth). Externalism is fashionable, but I am reluctant to shake off my quaint internalism. Start by separating strict and literal meaning from speaker's meaning. |
| 7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties of conscious experience, the so-called qualia, are not dangling appendages to material states and processes but intrinsic ingredients of those states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to the view that qualia are intrinsic to the processes and NOT to the 'states'. Heil must be right, though. I am sure qualia are not just epiphenomena - they are too useful. |
| 7061 | Philosophers' zombies aim to show consciousness is over and above the physical world [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers' zombies (invented by Robert Kirk) differ from the zombies of folklore; they are intended to make clear the idea that consciousness is an addition of being, something 'over and above' the physical world. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.1 n1) | |
| A reaction: The famous defender of zombies is David Chalmers. You can't believe in zombies if you believe (as I do) that 'the physical entails the mental'. Could there be redness without something that is red? If consciousness is extra, what is conscious? |
| 7063 | Zombies are based on the idea that consciousness relates contingently to the physical [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of zombies is founded on the idea that consciousness is related contingently to physical states and processes. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.3) | |
| A reaction: The question is, how do you decide whether the relationship is contingent or necessary? Hence the interest in whether conceivability entails possibility. Kripke attacks the idea of contingent identity, pointing towards necessity, and away from zombies. |
| 7064 | Functionalists deny zombies, since identity of functional state means identity of mental state [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalists deny that zombies are possible since states of mind (including conscious states) are purely functional states. If two agents are in the same functional state, regardless of qualitative difference, they are in the same mental state. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.5) | |
| A reaction: In its 'brief' form this idea begins to smell of tautology. Only the right sort of functional state would entail a mental state, and how else can that functional state be defined, apart from its leading to a mental state? |
| 7027 | Functionalists say objects can be the same in disposition but differ in quality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A central tenet of functionalism is that objects can be dispositionally indiscernible but differ qualitatively as much as you please. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: This refers to the multiple realisability of functions. Presumably we reconcile essentialism with the functionalist view by saying that dispositions result from combinations of qualities. A unique combination of qualities will necessitate a disposition. |
| 7062 | Functionalism cannot explain consciousness just by functional organisation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Functionalism has been widely criticized on the grounds that it is implausible to think that functional organization alone could suffice for conscious experience. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Block's 'Chinese Mind' as an example. The obvious reply is that you can't explain consciousness with a lump of meat, or with behaviour, or with an anomalous property, or even with a non-physical substance. |
| 7059 | The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The expression 'explanatory gap' was coined by Joseph Levine in 1983. McGinn and Chalmers have invoked it in defence of the view that consciousness is physically inexplicable, and Nagel that it is inexplicable given existing conceptual resources. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8 n14) | |
| A reaction: Coining a few concepts isn't going to help, but discovering more about the brain might. With computer simulations we will 'see' more of the physical end of thought. Psychologists may break thought down into physically more manageable components. |
| 5997 | Dicaearchus said soul does not exist, but is just a configuration of the body [Dicaearchus, by Fortenbaugh] |
| Full Idea: Dicaearchus advanced the view that mind and soul do not exist; there is only body configured in a certain way. | |
| From: report of Dicaearchus (On the Soul (frags) [c.320 BCE]) by William W. Fortenbaugh - Dicaearchus | |
| A reaction: Pure eliminativism! It is hard to find even ruthless modern physicalists taking such a bold view. Note that he is a pupil of Aristotle, and this does not sound like a major disagreement with his teacher's views. |
| 7012 | If a car is a higher-level entity, distinct from its parts, how could it ever do anything? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If we regard a Volvo car as a higher-level entity with its own independent reality, something distinct from its constituents (arranged in particular ways and variously connected to other things), we render mysterious how Volvos could do anything at all. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me perhaps the key reason why we have to be reductionists. The so-called 'bridge laws' from mind to brain are not just needed to explain the mind, they are also essential to show how a mind would cause behaviour. |
| 7043 | Multiple realisability is actually one predicate applying to a diverse range of properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Cases of multiple realisability are typically cases in which some predicate ('is red', 'is in pain') applies to an object in virtue of that object's possession of any of a diverse range of properties. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.8) | |
| A reaction: If the properties are diverse, why does one predicate apply to them? I take it that in the case of the pain, the predicate is ambiguous in applying to the behaviour or the phenomenal property. Same behaviour is possible with many qualia. |
| 7058 | Externalism is causal-historical, or social, or biological [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some externalists focus on causal-historical connections, others emphasise social matters (especially thinkers' linguistic communities), still others focus on biological function. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.5 n6) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. The social view strikes me as the one to take most seriously (allowing for contextual views of justification, and for the social role of experts). The problem is to combine the social view with realism and a robust view of truth. |
| 7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that intentionality is grounded in the dispositionalities of agents. Dispositions are intrinsic to agents, so this places me on the side of the internalists and against the externalists. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a key idea, and the right view. The key question is whether we see intentionality as active or passive. The externalist view seems to see the brain as a passive organ which the world manipulates. If the brain is active, what is it doing? |
| 7013 | The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2) | |
| A reaction: Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism. |
| 2744 | Verificationism (the 'verification principle') is an earlier form of anti-realism [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Verificationism (the 'verification principle') is an earlier form of anti-realism. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 1.note) | |
| A reaction: If the one true God announced that there is a real world out there, I might take that as a verification of the fact. |
| 2760 | Logical positivism implies foundationalism, by dividing weak from strong verifications [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: The foundationalist claim that there are inferential and non-inferential justifications is mirrored by the claim of logical empiricism (the verification principle) that all significant statements are either strongly or weakly verifiable. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: I take it to be characteristic of both to divide the support for something into two types, one of which is basic, and the other built up on the basics. The first step is to decide what is basic. |
| 2761 | If the meanings of sentences depend on other sentences, how did we learn language? [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: It is clearly possible to learn a language from scratch, because we have all done it, but if holism is true and the meaning of each sentence depends on the meanings of others, how did we do it? | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.2) | |
| A reaction: The question of 'how did it ever get started?' actually seems to block almost every explanation of everything that ever happens. How do I begin to move my hand? |
| 7002 | If propositions are states of affairs or sets of possible worlds, these lack truth values [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When pressed, philosophers will describe propositions as states of affairs or sets of possible worlds. But wait! Neither sets of possible worlds nor states of affairs - electrons being negatively charged, for instance - have truth values. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that I see a problem. A pure proposition, expressed as, say "there is a giraffe on the roof" only acquires a truth value at the point where you assert it or believe it. There IS a possible world where there is a giraffe on the roof. |
| 2763 | There is an indeterminacy in juggling apparent meanings against probable beliefs [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Indeterminacy stems from an interplay between belief and meaning, as with a man who tells you he keeps two rhinoceri in the fridge and squeezes the juice of one for a drink each morning. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: I don't understand why an 'interplay' is called an 'indeterminacy'. Typical philosophers. Close examination will usually show whether the change is just in belief, or just in meaning, or in both. |
| 2762 | Charity makes native beliefs largely true, and Humanity makes them similar to ours [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: One criterion for successful translation is that it show native beliefs to be largely true (Principle of Charity), and another is that it imputes to natives beliefs we can make sense of them having (Principle of Humanity). | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intro to Contemporary Epistemology [1985], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: The trouble with such guidelines is that they always have to be 'all things being equal'. Sometimes the natives are really idiotic, and sometimes their attitudes seem quite inhuman. |
| 7016 | The standard view is that causal sequences are backed by laws, and between particular events [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The notion that every causal sequence if backed by a law, like the idea that causation is a relation among particular events, forms a part of philosophy's Humean heritage. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a view that needs to come under attack. I take the view that there are no 'laws' - other than the regularities in behaviour that result from the interaction of essential dispositional properties. Essences don't need laws. |
| 7036 | The real natural properties are sparse, but there are many complex properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I am sympathetic to the idea that the real properties are 'sparse'; ...but if, in counting kinds of property, we include complex properties as well as simple properties, the image of sparseness evaporates. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right to me, and invites the obvious question of which are the sparse real properties. Presumably we let the physicists tell us that, though Heil wants to include qualities like phenomenal colour, which physicists ignore. |