98 ideas
| 18495 | The best philosophers I know are the best people I know [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers are not invariably the best people, but the best philosophers I know are the best people I know. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], Pref) | |
| A reaction: How very nicely expressed. I have often thought the same about lovers of literature, but been horribly disappointed by some of them. On the whole I have found philosophy-lovers to be slightly superior to literature-lovers! |
| 18494 | Using a technical vocabulary actually prevents discussion of the presuppositions [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Sharing a technical vocabulary is to share a tidy collection of assumptions. Reliance on that vocabulary serves to foreclose discussion of those assumptions. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Love it! I am endlessly frustrated by papers that launch into a discussion using a terminology that is riddled with dubious prior assumptions. And that includes common terms like 'property', as well as obscure neologisms. |
| 18506 | Questions of explanation should not be confused with metaphyics [Heil] |
| Full Idea: There is an unfortunate tendency to conflate epistemological issues bearing on explanation with issues in metaphysics. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: This is where Heil and I part ways. I just don't believe in the utterly pure metaphysics which he thinks we can do. Our drive to explain moulds our vision of reality, say I. |
| 18535 | Without abstraction we couldn't think systematically [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A capacity for abstraction is central to our capacity to think about the universe systematically. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as obvious. We pick out the similarities, and then discuss them, as separate from their bearers. We explain why things have features in common. Some would just say systematic thinking needs universals, but that's less good. |
| 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? |
| 18534 | Truth relates truthbearers to truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a relation between a truthbearer and a truthmaker. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.02) | |
| A reaction: This implies that all truths have truthmakers, which is fairly controversial. Heil himself denies it! |
| 18531 | Philosophers of the past took the truthmaking idea for granted [Heil] |
| Full Idea: For millenia, philosophers operated with an implicit conception of truthmaking, a conception that remained unarticulated only because it was part of the very fabric of philosophy. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it is an advance that we have brought it out into the open, and subjected it to critical study. Does Heil want us to return to it being unquestioned? I like truthmaking, but that can't be right. |
| 18509 | Not all truths need truthmakers - mathematics and logic seem to be just true [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I do not subscribe to the thesis that every truth requires a truthmaker. Mathematical truths and truths of logic are compatible with any way the universe could be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: He makes that sound like a knock-down argument, but I'm not convinced. I see logic and mathematics as growing out of nature, though that is a very unfashionable view. I'm almost ashamed of it. But I'm not giving it up. See Carrie Jenkins. |
| 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. |
| 18518 | Infinite numbers are qualitatively different - they are not just very large numbers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake to think of an infinite number as a very large number. Infinite numbers differ qualitatively from finite numbers. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.5) | |
| A reaction: He cites Dedekind's idea that a proper subset of an infinite number can match one-one with the number. Respectable numbers don't behave in this disgraceful fashion. This should be on the wall of every seminar on philosophy of mathematics. |
| 18500 | How could structures be mathematical truthmakers? Maths is just true, without truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand how structures could serve as truthmakers for mathematical truths, ...Mathematical truths are not true in virtue of any way the universe is. ...Mathematical truths hold, whatever ways the universe is. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.08) | |
| A reaction: I like the idea of enquiring about truthmakers for mathematical truths (and my view is more empirical than Heil's), but I think it may be a misunderstanding to think that structures are intended as truthmakers. Mathematics just IS structures? |
| 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. |
| 18539 | Our categories lack the neat arrangement needed for reduction [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Categories we use to describe and explain our universe do not line up in the neat way reductive schemes require. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 13.2) | |
| A reaction: He takes reduction to be largely a relation between our categories, rather than between entities, so he is bound to get this result. He may be right. |
| 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. |
| 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)? |
| 18505 | Fundamental ontology aims at the preconditions for any true theory [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Fundamental ontology is in the business of telling us what the universe must be like if any theory is true. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Heil is good at stating simple ideas simply. This seems to be a bold claim, but I think I agree with it. |
| 18499 | Our quantifications only reveal the truths we accept; the ontology and truthmakers are another matter [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Looking at what you quantify over reveals, at most, truths to which you are committed. What the ontology is, what the truthmakers are for these truths, is another matter, one tackled, if at all, only in the pursuit of fundamental physics. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.08) | |
| A reaction: Exactly right. Nouns don't guarantee objects, verbs don't guarantee processes. If you want to know my ontological commitments, ask me about them! Don't infer them from the sentences I hold true, because they need interpreting. |
| 18512 | Ontology aims to give the fundamental categories of being [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The task of ontology is to spell out the fundamental categories of being. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.5) | |
| A reaction: This is the aspiration of 'pure' metaphysics, which I don't quite believe in. There is too much convention involved, on the one hand, and physics on the other. |
| 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. |
| 18508 | Most philosophers now (absurdly) believe that relations fully exist [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is a measure of how far we have fallen that so few philosophers nowadays see any difficulty at all in the idea that relations have full ontological standing. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: We have 'fallen' because medieval metaphysicians didn't believe it. Russell seems to have started, and the tendency to derive ontology from logic has secured the belief in relations. How else can you be allowed to write aRb? I agree with Heil. |
| 18532 | If causal relations are power manifestations, that makes them internal relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If causal relations are the manifesting of powers, then causal relations would appear to be a species of internal relation. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 07.4) | |
| A reaction: The point being that any relations formed are entirely dependent on the internal powers of the relata. Sounds right. There are also non-causal relations, of course. |
| 18510 | We need properties to explain how the world works [Heil] |
| Full Idea: When a tomato depresses a scale, it does so in virtue of its mass - how it is masswise - and not in virtue of its colour or shape. Were we barred from saying such things, we would be unable to formulate truths about the fundamental things. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: It doesn't follow that we have an ontological commitment to properties, but we certainly need to point out the obvious fact that things being one way rather than another makes a difference to what happens. |
| 18522 | Categorical properties were introduced by philosophers as actual properties, not if-then properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Categorical properties were introduced originally by philosophers bent on distinguishing properties possessed 'categorically', that is, actually, by objects from mere if-then, conditional properties, mere potentialities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites Ryle on dispositions in support. It is questionable whether it is a clear or useful distinction. Heil says the new distinction foreclosed the older more active view of properties. |
| 18513 | Emergent properties will need emergent substances to bear them [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If you are going to have emergent fundamental properties, you are going to need emergent fundamental substances as bearers of those properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.6) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the theory of emergent properties (which I take to be nonsense, in its hardcore form) says that the substance is unchanged, but the property is new. Or else the bundle gives collective birth to a new member. Search me. |
| 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. |
| 18540 | Predicates only match properties at the level of fundamentals [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Only when you get to fundamental physics, do predicates begin to line up with properties. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 13.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice thought. I assume the actual properties of daily reality only connect to our predicates in very sloppy ways. I suppose our fundamental predicates have to converge on the actual properties, because the fog clears. Sort of. |
| 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. |
| 18533 | In Fa, F may not be a property of a, but a determinable, satisfied by some determinate [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It may be that F applies truly to a because F is a determinable predicate satisfied by a's possession of a property answering to a determinate of that determinable predicate. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.01) | |
| A reaction: Heil aims to break the commitment of predicates to the existence of properties. The point is that there is no property 'coloured' to correspond to 'a is coloured'. Red might be the determinate that does the job. Nice. |
| 18511 | Properties have causal roles which sets can't possibly have [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Properties are central to the universe's causal order in a way that sets could not possibly be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: The idea that properties actually are sets is just ridiculous. It may be that you can treat them as sets and get by quite well. The sets can be subsumed into descriptions of causal processes (or something). |
| 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. |
| 18523 | Are all properties powers, or are there also qualities, or do qualities have the powers? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers who embrace properties as powers hold that every property is a power (Bird), or that some properties are qualities and some are powers (Ellis; Molnar). The latter include powers which are 'grounded in' qualities (Mumford). | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 04.4) | |
| A reaction: I don't like Heil's emphasis on 'qualities', which seems to imply their phenomenal rather than their real aspect. I'm inclined to favour the all-powers view, but can't answer the question 'but what HAS these powers?' Stuff is intrinsically powerful. |
| 18524 | Properties are both qualitative and dispositional - they are powerful qualities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: In my account of properties they are at once qualitative and dispositional: properties are powerful qualities. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: I have never managed to understand what Heil means by 'qualities'. Is he talking about the phenomenal aspects of powers? Does he mean categorical properties. I can't find an ontological space for his things to slot into. |
| 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. |
| 18498 | Abstract objects wouldn't be very popular without the implicit idea of truthmakers [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It would be difficult to understand the popularity of 'abstract entities' - numbers, sets, propositions - in the absence of an implicit acknowledgement of the importance of truthmakers. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I love Idea 18496, because it leads us towards a better account of modality, but dislike this one because it reveals that the truthmaking idea has led us to a very poor theory. Truthmaking is a good question, but not much of an answer? |
| 18507 | Substances bear properties, so must be simple, and not consist of further substances [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Substances, as property bearers, must be simple; substances of necessity lack constituents that are themselves substances. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.3) | |
| A reaction: How can he think that this is a truth of pure metaphysics? A crowd has properties because we think of it as a simple substance, not because it actually is one. Can properties have properties? Are tree and leaf both substances? |
| 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. |
| 18515 | Spatial parts are just regions, but objects depend on and are made up of substantial parts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: An object is not made up of its spatial parts: spatial parts are regions of some object. ...Complex objects, wholes, are made up of, and so depend on, their substantial parts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably objects also 'depend on' their spatial parts, so I am not convinced that we have a sharp distinction here. |
| 18516 | A 'gunky' universe would literally have no parts at all [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Blancmange 'gunky' universes are not just universes with an endless number of parts. Rather a blancmange universe is a universe with no simple parts, no parts themselves lacking parts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Lewis seemed to think it was parts all the way down. Is gunk homogeneous stuff, or what is endlessly subdividable, or an infinite shrinking of parts? We demand clarity. |
| 18514 | Many wholes can survive replacement of their parts [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A whole - or some wholes - might be thought to survive gradual replacement of its parts, perhaps, but not their elimination. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: You can't casually replace the precious golden parts of a statue with cheap lead ones. It depends on whether the parts matter. Nevertheless this is a really important idea in metaphysics. It enables the s=Ship of Theseus to survive some change. |
| 18517 | Dunes depend on sand grains, but line segments depend on the whole line [Heil] |
| Full Idea: A sand dune depends on the individual grains of sand that make it up. In an important sense, however, a line's segments depend on the line rather than it on them. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: The illustrations are not clear cut. As you cut off segments of the line, you reduce its length. Heil is hoping for something neat here, but I don't think he has quite got. The difficulty of trying to do pure metaphysics! |
| 18502 | If basic physics has natures, then why not reality itself? That would then found the deepest necessities [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If electrons and gravitational fields have definite natures, why not reality itself? And if reality has a nature, if this makes sense, then reality grounds the deepest necessities of all. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.09) | |
| A reaction: Nice speculation! Scientists and verificationists seem to cry 'foul!' when philosophers offer such wild speculations, but I say that's exactly what we pay them do. I'm not sure whether I understand reality having its own nature, though! |
| 18496 | If possible worlds are just fictions, they can't be truthmakers for modal judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: If the other possible worlds are merely useful fictions, we are left wondering what the truthmakers for all those modal judgements might be. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I suddenly see that this is the train of thought that led me to believe in real powers and dispositions, and which retrospectively led me to love the truthmaker idea. Even real Lewisian worlds don't seem adequate as truthmakers here. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities [Salmon, by Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: For Salmon mechanisms are composed of processes and interactions. The interactions are identified in terms of transmitted marks and statistical relations, or (more recently) exchanges of conserved quantities. | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causality and Explanation [1998], 3.1) by Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C - Thinking About Mechanisms 3.1 | |
| A reaction: They say that Salmon has too little to say about the activities that constitute a mechanism. A 'mark' doesn't sound too promising, but I quite like the exchange of conserved quantities, which gets into the guts of what is going on. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 18525 | Mental abstraction does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Talk of abstraction and 'partial consideration' (Locke) does not make what is abstracted mind-dependent. In abstracting, you attend to what is there to be considered. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 05.7) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. The point is to focus on aspects of reality. Does anyone seriously doubt that reality has 'aspects'? |
| 18504 | Only particulars exist, and generality is our mode of presentation [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Existing things are particular, and generality is a feature of our ways of representing the universe. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: This is right, and expressed with beautiful simplicity. How could anyone disagree with this? But they do! |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 18503 | You can think of tomatoes without grasping what they are [Heil] |
| Full Idea: You can entertain thoughts of things like tomatoes without a grasp of what they are. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.10) | |
| A reaction: Lowe seemed to think that you had to grasp the generic essence of a tomato before you could think about it, but I agree entirely with Heil. |
| 18537 | Linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Thinking - ordinary conscious thinking - is imagistic. This is so for 'linguistic' or 'sentential' thoughts as well as for patently non-linguistic thoughts. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 12.10) | |
| A reaction: This claim (that linguistic thought is just as imagistic as non-linguistic thought) strikes me as an excellent insight. |
| 18538 | Non-conscious thought may be unlike conscious thought [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Non-conscious thought need not resemble conscious thought occurring out of sight. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 12.10) |
| 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. |
| 18536 | The subject-predicate form reflects reality [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I like to think that the subject-predicate form reflects a fundamental division in reality. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, he defends the idea that there are substances, and powerful qualities pertaining to those substances. I sympathise, but this slogan makes it too simple. |
| 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. |
| 18497 | Many reject 'moral realism' because they can't see any truthmakers for normative judgements [Heil] |
| Full Idea: It is the difficulty in imagining what truthmakers for normative judgements might be that leads many philosophers to find 'moral realism' unappealing. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07) | |
| A reaction: I like that a lot. My proposal for metaethics is that it should be built on the concept of a 'value-maker' |
| 18519 | If there were infinite electrons, they could vanish without affecting total mass-energy [Heil] |
| Full Idea: In a universe containing an infinite number of electrons would mass-energy be conserved? ...Electrons could come and go without affecting the total mass-energy. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very persuasive reason for doubting that the universe contains an infinite number of electrons. In fact I suspect that infinite numbers have no bearing on nature at all. (Actually, I suspect them of being fictions). |
| 18526 | We should focus on actual causings, rather than on laws and causal sequences [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I believe our understanding of causation would benefit from a shift of attention from causal sequences and laws, to instances of causation: 'causings'. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: His aim is to get away from generalities, and focus on the actual operation of powers which is involved. He likes the case of two playing cards propped against one another. I'm on his side. Laws come last in the story, and should not come first. |
| 18527 | Probabilistic causation is not a weak type of cause; it is just a probability of there being a cause [Heil] |
| Full Idea: The label 'probabilistic causation' is misleading. What you have is not a weakened or tentative kind of causing, but a probability of there being a cause. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: The idea of 'probabilistic causation' strikes me as an empty philosophers' concoction, so I agree with Heil. |
| 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. |
| 18520 | Electrons are treated as particles, but they lose their individuality in relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Although it is convenient to speak of electrons as particles or elementary substances, when they enter into relations they can 'lose their individuality. Then an electron becomes a kind of 'abstract particular', a way a given system is, a mode. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: Heil rightly warns us against basing our metaphysics on disputed theories of quantum mechanics. |
| 18501 | Maybe the universe is fine-tuned because it had to be, despite plans by God or Nature? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the universe is fine-tuned as it is, not because things happened to fall out as they did during and immediately after the Big Bang, or because God so ordained it, but because God or the Big Bang had no choice. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.09) | |
| A reaction: You'd be hard put to so why it had to be fine-tuned, so this seems to be a nice speculation. Unverifiable but wholly meaningful. Maybe the stuff fine-tunes itself, by mutual interaction. Or it is the result of natural selection (Lee Smolin). |
| 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. |