78 ideas
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Any good philosophy will need to offer wisdom about who we are as well as about how we ought to be. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This sop should be accepted gratefully by fans of bioethics, who seem inclined to think that describing 'how we are' is all that needs to be said. Maybe the key wisdom lies in the relationship between the 'is' and the 'ought' of human nature. |
| 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. |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The inability of science to provide ethical wisdom is partly responsible for our resistance to the scientific image. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. A.J. Ayer, for example, declared "I believe in science", and his account of ethics was vacuously nihilistic. A description of the mechanisms of moral life is not the same as ethical wisdom. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 3536 | Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Each supervenient property necessarily has a coextensive property in the base family. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Concepts of supervenience [1984], §5) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the minimum requirement for a situation of supervenience. How do you decide which property is the 'base' property? Do we just mean that the base causes the other, but not vice versa? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 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. |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Explanation does not entail prediction. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 73n) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the inverse of this is also true, as we might be able to predict through pure induction, without knowing why something happened. We predict that smoking is likely to cause cancer. Complex things might be explicable but unpredictable. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century the dominant idea that causation is collisionlike made mental causation almost impossible to envision. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.136) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This makes Descartes' interaction theory look rather bold, and Leibniz's and Malebranche's rejection of it understandable. Personally I still think of causation as collisionlike, except that the collisions are of very very tiny objects. |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to explain why certain brain events are uniquely experienced by you subjectively: only you are properly hooked up to your own nervous system to have your own experiences. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Nagel's oft quoted claim that mind can only be understood as "what it is like to be" that mind. I agree with Flanagan, and it is nice illustration of how philosophers can confuse themselves with high-sounding questions. |
| 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. |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: We only have a sense of our self as continuous, but not as exactly the same. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.178) | |
| A reaction: Russell said this too, and it seems to me to be right. Personal identity is far too imprecise for me to assert that I remember my ten-year-old self as being identical to me now. Only physical objects like teddy bears can pass that test. |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The self is an abstraction from the story of a person's life that isolates and magnifies the experiences, traits and aspirations that are assigned importance. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.240) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to see personal identity as the central controller of brain activity, the aspect of the biological machine which keeps all the mental events focused on what matters, which is health, safety and happiness. |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is a bad mistake to think we are born with a self; the self develops, and acquiring it requires living in the world. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.260) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. He is mistaking a complex cultural concept of the self as the subject for autobiography etc. for the basic biological self which even small animals must have if their brains are to serve any useful purpose in their lives. |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: According to Buddhism, the idea of a permanent, constant self is an illusion, and a morally dangerous one. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.161) | |
| A reaction: We are familiar with the idea that it might be an illusion, but I am unconvinced by 'morally dangerous'. If you drop both free will and personal identity, I can't see any sort of focus for moral life left, but I am willing to be convinced. |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The standard view of free will is that I have something like complete control over what I do. A stronger view (not widely held) is that I also have complete control over what I think and what I feel. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 60n) | |
| A reaction: To claim free control of feelings looks optimistic, but it does look as if we can decide to think about something, such as a philosophical problem. Deciding what to say comes somewhere between thought and action. |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Free will is said to give us self-control, self-expression, individuality, reasons-sensitivity, rational deliberation, rational accountability, moral accountability, the capacity to do otherwise, unpredictability, and political freedom. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.104) | |
| A reaction: Nice list. His obvious challenge is to either say we can live happily without some of these things, or else show how we can have them without 'free will'. Personally I agree with Flanagan that we meet the challenge. |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Most people believe we have free will, and that this consists in the ability to circumvent natural law. The trouble is that the only device ever philosophically invented that can do this sort of job is an incorporeal soul or mind. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. We currently have a western world full of people who have rejected dualism, but still cling on to free will, because they think morality depends on it. I think morality depends on personal identity, but not on free will. |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is unimaginable to me that, despite the feeling that we control what we do, such a strong conception of ourselves as unmoved movers would have been added to our self-image unless we had first conceived of God along these lines. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.107) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right, though there are signs in fifth century Greece of contradictory evidence. The 'unmoved mover' seems unformulated before Plato's 'Laws' (idea 1423), but there is an implied belief in free will a hundred years earlier. |
| 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? |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: I would say that that my consciousness doesn't seem either physical or non-physical, ..but the belief that the mind is non-physical partly took hold because that fits well with thinking of human agents as free. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.102) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right. I personally think there is no such thing as free will, and that belief in it has been the single greatest delusion amongst philosophers (and others) for the last two thousand years. Dualism has now gone, and free will is next. |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism was notorious in its heyday for having nothing to say about mental causation. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.141) | |
| A reaction: This is a bit unfair, as Ryle (idea 2622, following Spinoza, 4862) was one of the first to point out the paradox of 'double causation'. You have to be a mentalist to worry about mental causation, and eliminativists aren't bothered. |
| 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. |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Although everyone thinks cars and bodies obey the principles of causation, no one thinks it a deficiency that we don't know strict laws of automechanics or anatomy. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 65) | |
| A reaction: This attacks Davidson's claim that there are no strict psycho-physical laws, and I agree with Flanagan. Huge dreams of free will and human dignity are being pinned on the flimsy point that we have no strict laws here. But brains are very complicated. |
| 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. |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One may be committed to the truth of physicalism without being committed to the claim that the essence of an experience is captured fully by a description of its neural realiser. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 90) | |
| A reaction: This is a reply to the Leibniz Mill question (idea 2109) about what is missing from a materialist view. Flanagan's point is that just as the essence of a panorama is the view from the hill, so the essence of consciousness requires you to be that brain. |
| 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. |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One can question the idea that emotions are non-rational, fickle and flighty; on the contrary, emotions normally seem to be very apt. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 16) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern view of emotion which is emerging from neuroscience, which is greatly superior to traditional views, apart from Aristotle, who felt that wisdom and virtue arose precisely when emotions were apt for the situation. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: There are two main pictures of the good person: there is the 'good character', and there is the 'principled actor'. ..The first picture is non-intellectualist, and the second is intellectualist. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.145) | |
| A reaction: The second ideal elevates the principle itself above the actor who carries it out. Presumably consistency is a virtue, so a good character will at least pay some attention to principles. A good magistrate comes out the same in both views. |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.301n) | |
| A reaction: I take cognitivism to be (strictly) the view that morals are knowable in principle. Our intellects might not be up to the task (and so we might have to ask the gods what is right). There is also the possibility that morals might be known by intuition. |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Ethics is the normative science that studies the objective conditions that lead to flourishing of persons. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice slogan for the virtue theory account of the nature of ethics. I think it is the view with which I agree. I am intrigued that he has smuggled the word 'science' in, which is a nice challenge to conventional views of science. |
| 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. |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of a cycle of rebirths and reincarnations that are normally required before one achieve nirvana was only proposed in the eighth century CE, and then spread like wildfire among Hindus and, to a lesser extent, among Buddhists. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.166n) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Plato had proposed it in the fourth century BCE. Presumably Hindus had always been dualists, and then suddenly saw and exciting possibility that followed from it. The doctrine strikes me as (to put it mildly) implausible. |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the soul could be easily trashed if science does not countenance essences, but science does countenance essences in the form of what are known as 'natural kinds' (such as water, salt and gold). | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.181) | |
| A reaction: The existence of any essences at all does indeed make the existence of a soul naturally possible, but scientific natural kinds are usually postulated on a basis of chemical stability. Animals, for example, are no longer usually classified that way. |