94 ideas
| 23183 | Different abilities are needed for living in an incomplete and undogmatic system [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is an entirely different strength and mobility to maintaining oneself in an incomplete system, with free, open vistas, than in a dogmatic world. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[025]) | |
| A reaction: This is like Keats's 'negative capability' - the ability to live in a state of uncertainty. I'm a fan of attempts to create a philosophical system, but dogmatism would seem to be the death of such a project. How would you live with your system? Nice. |
| 23188 | Bad writers use shapeless floating splotches of concepts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Bad writers have only shapeless floating splotches of concepts in their heads. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[083]) | |
| A reaction: Under 'conceptual analyis' not because he analyses concepts, but because he recognises their foundation importance in philosophy. I get more irritated by unchallenged concepts than by drifting concepts. Writer must know and challenge their key concepts. |
| 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. |
| 23212 | A text has many interpretations, but no 'correct' one [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The same text allows innumerable interpretations: there is no 'correct' interpretation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[120]) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to defend a 'correct' interpretation, but I think it is obvious to students of literature that some interpretations are very silly, such as reading things allegorically when there was no such intention. |
| 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? |
| 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. |
| 23199 | What is the search for truth if it isn't moral? [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: What is searching for truth, truthfulness, honesty if not something moral? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[05]) | |
| A reaction: Feels right to me. It might be an effect of the virtue of respect. If you respect a person you tell them the truth (assuming they want the truth). Lying to someone is a sort of contempt. |
| 23202 | Like all philosophers, I love truth [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I, too, love truth, like all philosophers. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[02]) | |
| A reaction: Please pay attention to this remark! His perspectivalism is not a denial of truth. It is an epistemological phenomenon, not a metaphysical one. The perspectives are the nearest we can get to truth. Humanity therefore needs teamwork. |
| 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. |
| 23196 | Logic is a fiction, which invents the view that one thought causes another [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The model of a complete fiction is logic. Here a thinking is made up where a thought is posited as the cause of another thought. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |
| A reaction: He could almost be referring to Frege's Third Realm. Most hard core analytic philosophers seem to think that propositions have tight logical relationships which are nothing to do with the people who think them. |
| 23186 | Numbers enable us to manage the world - to the limits of counting [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Numbers are our major means of making the world manageable. We comprehend as far as we can count, i.e. as far as a constancy can be perceived. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[058]) | |
| A reaction: I don't agree with 'major', but it is a nice thought. The intermediate concept is a 'unit', which means identifying something as a 'thing', which is how we seem to grasp the world. So to what extent do we comprehend the infinite. Enter Cantor… |
| 23211 | Events are just interpretations of groups of appearances [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There is no event in itself. What happens is a group of appearances selected and summarised by an interpreting being. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[115]) | |
| A reaction: Since innumerable events are nested within one another, such as the events at a carnival, this is obviously true. A primitive 'Kim event' (an object changes a property) might have objective existence. Carnivals happen, though. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 14193 | 'Substance theorists' take modal properties as primitive, without structure, just falling under a sortal [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Some deep essentialists resist the need to explain the structure under de re modal properties, taking them as primitive. One version (which we can call 'substance theory') takes them to fall under a sortal concept, with no further explanation. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: A very helpful identification of what Wiggins stands for, and why I disagree with him. The whole point of essences is to provide a notion that fits in with sciences, which means they must have an explanatory role, which needs structures. |
| 14195 | If an object's sort determines its properties, we need to ask what determines its sort [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: If the substance essentialist holds that the sort an object belongs to determines its de re modal properties (rather than the other way round), then he needs to give an (ontological, not conceptual) explanation of what determines an object's sort. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14193 for 'substance essentialism'. I find it quite incredible that anyone could think that a thing's sort could determine its properties, rather than the other way round. Even if sortals are conventional, they are not arbitrary. |
| 14196 | Substance essentialism says an object is multiple, as falling under various different sortals [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The explanation of material constitution given by substance essentialism is that there are multiple objects. A person is essentially human-shaped (falling under the human sort), while their hunk of tissue is accidentally human-shaped (as tissue). | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §1) | |
| A reaction: At this point sortal essentialism begins to look crazy. Persons are dubious examples (with sneaky dualism involved). A bronze statue is essentially harder to dent than a clay one, because of its bronze. If you remake it of clay, it isn't the same statue. |
| 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. |
| 14198 | Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would allow things with incompatible properties [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Absolutely unrestricted qualitative composition would imply that objects with incompatible properties and objects such as winged pigs or golden mountains were actual. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §5) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is 'qualitative' composition, and not composition of parts. The objection seems to rule out unrestricted qualitative composition, since you could hardly combine squareness with roundness. |
| 14190 | Deep essentialist objects have intrinsic properties that fix their nature; the shallow version makes it contextual [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Essentialism says that objects have their properties essentially. 'Deep' essentialists take the (nontrivial) essential properties of an object to determine its nature. 'Shallow' essentialists substitute context-dependent truths for the independent ones. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: If the deep essence determines a things nature, we should not need to say 'nontrivial'. This is my bete noire, the confusion of essential properties with necessary ones, where necessary properties (or predicates, at least) can indeed be trivial. |
| 14191 | Deep essentialists say essences constrain how things could change; modal profiles fix natures [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: The deep essentialist holds that most objects have essential properties such that there are many ways they could not be, or many changes through which they could not persist. Objects' modal profiles characterize their natures. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I like, especially the last bit. If your modal profile doesn't determine your nature, then what does? Think of how you sum up a person at a funeral. Your modal profile is determined by dispositions and powers. |
| 14192 | Essentialism must deal with charges of arbitrariness, and failure to reduce de re modality [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: Two objections to deep essentialism are that it falters when faced with a skeptical objection concerning arbitrariness, and the need for a reductive account of de re modality. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: An immediate response to the second objection might be to say that modal facts about things are not reducible. The charge of arbitrariness (i.e. total arbitrariness, not just a bit of uncertainty) is the main thing a theory of essences must deal with. |
| 14197 | An object's modal properties don't determine its possibilities [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that an object's de re modal properties determine its relations to possibilia. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], §3) | |
| A reaction: You'll have to read Paul to see why, but I flat disagree with her on this. The whole point of accepting such properties is to determine the modal profile of the thing, and hence see how it can fit into and behave in the world. |
| 14189 | 'Modal realists' believe in many concrete worlds, 'actualists' in just this world, 'ersatzists' in abstract other worlds [Paul,LA] |
| Full Idea: A 'modal realist' believes that there are many concrete worlds, while the 'actualist' believes in only one concrete world, the actual world. The 'ersatzist' is an actualist who takes nonactual possible worlds and their contents to be abstracta. | |
| From: L.A. Paul (In Defense of Essentialism [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: My view is something like that modal realism is wrong, and actualism is right, and possible worlds (if they really are that useful) are convenient abstract fictions, constructed (if we have any sense) out of the real possibilities in the actual world. |
| 23207 | Appearance is the sole reality of things, to which all predicates refer [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Appearance as I understand it is the actual and single reality of things - that which first merits all existing predicates. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[53]) | |
| A reaction: This is the view espoused by John Stuart Mill (a fact which would shock Nietzsche!). Elsewhere he laughs at the concept of the thing-in-itself as a fiction. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 23197 | Memory is essential, and is only possible by means of abbreviation signs [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Experience is only possible with the help of memory; memory is only possible by virtue of an abbreviation of an intellectual event as a sign. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[249]) | |
| A reaction: My memory of a town is not formed as a sign, but as a bunch of miscellaneous fragments about it. I think mental files gives a better account of this than do 'signs'. |
| 23206 | Schematic minds think thoughts are truer if they slot into a scheme [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: There are schematic minds, those who hold a thought-complex to be truer if it can be sketched into previously drafted schemata or categorical tables. There are countless self-deceptions in this area: nearly all the great 'systems' belong here. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 40[09]) | |
| A reaction: Why 'nearly all'? Aristotle might be a candidate for such a person. Leibniz, perhaps. Nietzsche identified with Becoming and Heraclitus, as opposed to Being and Parmenides. |
| 23209 | Each of our personal drives has its own perspective [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: From the standpoint of each of our fundamental drives there is a different perspectival assessment of all events and experiences. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[058]) | |
| A reaction: Revealing. Perspectives are not just each individual person's viewpoint, but something more fine-grained than that. Our understanding and response are ambiguous, because we ourselves are intrinsically ambiguous. Super-relativism! |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 23184 | The mind is a simplifying apparatus [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The intellect and the senses are above all a simplifying apparatus. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[046]) | |
| A reaction: Very plausible, and not an idea I have met elsewhere. There's a PhD here for someone. It fits with my view as universals in language (which is most of language), which capture diverse things by ironing out their differences. |
| 23190 | Consciousness is our awareness of our own mental life [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: We have a double brain: our capacity to will, to feel and to think of our willing, feeling, thinking ourselves is what we summarise with the word 'consciousness'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[087]) | |
| A reaction: Pretty much the modern HOT (higher order thought) theory of consciousness. Higher order thought distinguishes us from the other animals, but I think they too are probably conscious, so I don't agree. Why is level 2 conscious of level 1? |
| 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. |
| 23191 | Minds have an excluding drive to scare things off, and a selecting one to filter facts [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In our conscious intellect there must be an excluding drive that scares things away, a selecting one, which only permits certain facts to present themselves. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: I like this because he is endorsing the idea that philosophy needs faculties, which may not match the views of psychologists and neuroscientists. Quite nice to think of faculties as drives. |
| 23213 | The greatest drive of life is to discharge strength, rather than preservation [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Something that lives wants above all to discharge its strength: 'preservation' is only one of the consequences of this. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[063]) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit a dynamic man like Nietzsche, rather than someone who opts for a quiet and comfortable life. |
| 23210 | That all events are necessary does not mean they are compelled [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The absolute necessity of all events contains nothing of a compulsion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[114]) | |
| A reaction: I like to look for necessity-makers behind necessities. So if the event is not necessary because of its cause, where does it come from? Is it that the whole sequence is a unified necessity? |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| 23189 | Concepts are rough groups of simultaneous sensations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Concepts are more or less definite groups of sensations that arrive together. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[086]) | |
| A reaction: I like this because I favour accounts of concepts which root them in experience, and largely growing unthinking out of communcal experience. Nietzsche is very empirical here. Hume would probably agree. |
| 23192 | Concepts don’t match one thing, but many things a little bit [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A concept is an invention that doesn't correspond entirely to anything; but to many things a little bit. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: This seems to cover some concepts quite well, but others not at all. What else does 'square' correspond to? |
| 23187 | Whatever their origin, concepts survive by being useful [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The most useful concepts have survived: however falsely they may have originated. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[063]) | |
| A reaction: The germ of both pragmatism, and of meaning-as-use, here. The alternative views must be that the concepts are accurate or true, or that they are simply a matter of whim, maintained by authority. |
| 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. |
| 23205 | Thought starts as ambiguity, in need of interpretation and narrowing [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: A thought in the shape in which it comes is an ambiguous sign that needs interpretation, more precisely, needs an arbitrary narrowing-down and limitation, until it finally becomes unambiguous. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 38[01]) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly my view of propositions, as mental events. Introspect your thinking process. Track the progress from the first glimmer of a thought to its formulation in a finished sentence. Language, unlike propositions, can be ambiguous. |
| 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. |
| 23198 | Aesthetics can be more basic than morality, in our pleasure in certain patterns of experience [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Some of the aesthetic valuations are more fundamental than the moral ones e.g. the pleasure in what is ordered, surveyable, limited, in repetition. The logical, arithmetical and geometrical good feelings form the ground floor of aesthetic valuations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[02]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche's originality is so striking because his novel suggestions are always plausible. Lots of modern philosophers (especially, I fear, in the continental tradition) throw out startling ideas which then fail on closer inspection. |
| 23208 | Caesar and Napoleon point to the future, when they pursue their task regardless of human sacrifice [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In nature's such as Caesar and Napoleon we intuit something of a 'disinterested' laboring on one's marble, regardless of any sacrifice of human beings. The future of the highest humans lies on this path: to bear responsibility and not collapse under it. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 1[056]) | |
| A reaction: Hideous. Nietzsche at his absolute worst. You would think there was some wonderful higher good to which they were leading the human race, when they just strike me as people who liked fighting, and adored winning. |
| 23193 | Napoleon was very focused, and rightly ignored compassion [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: With Napoleon only the essential instincts of humanity came into consideration during his calculations, and he had a right not to take notice of the exceptional ones e.g. of compassion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[131]) | |
| A reaction: Napoleon was notoriously indifferent to casualties, and I find it depressing that Nietzsche supports him. Napoleon brought misery to Europe for nearly twenties, mainly because he loved winning battles. Nothing über about that. |
| 23214 | For the strongest people, nihilism gives you wings! [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In the hands of the strongest every kind of pessimism and nihilism becomes only one more hammer and tool with which one mounts a new pair of wings on oneself. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 2[101]) | |
| A reaction: Not sure how this works. Why is great strength needed? Strength implies forceful overcoming. The wings come from rejecting nihilism, but why does that need strength? Aren't there people with wings who never even thought of nihilism? |
| 23203 | The great question is approaching, of how to govern the earth as a whole [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: It is approaching, irrefutably, hesitatingly, terrible as fate, the great task and fate: how should the earth as a whole be governed? | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[08]) | |
| A reaction: Two issues have accelerated the question, though we have yet to properly face it. One is the incredible increase in military destructiveness, and other is the damage to the planet caused by the relentless pursuit of wealth. |
| 23200 | The controlling morality of aristocracy is the desire to resemble their ancestors [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The foundation of all aristocracies …is to resemble the ancestors as much as possible, which serves as the controlling morality: mourning at the thought of change and variation. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[22]) | |
| A reaction: This makes sense of the permanent residence of the family, full of portraits and family trees. Aristocrats preserve records of their predecessors, in a way that most of us don't, going back before grandparents. |
| 23194 | People feel united as a nation by one language, but then want a common ancestry and history [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: People who speak one language and read the same newspapers today call themselves 'nations', and also want much too eagerly to be of common ancestry and history. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[203]) | |
| A reaction: This sort of nationalism is still with us, as white supremacy, and as history as mythology. But we can't just shake off a sense of which gene pools we come from, and which lines of history are our personal inheritance. |
| 23204 | To be someone you need property, and wanting more is healthy [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Property owners are to a man of one belief: 'you have to own something to be something'. But this is the oldest and healthiest of all instincts: I would add 'you have to want more than you have in order to become more'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 37[11]) | |
| A reaction: An odd idea from someone who spent his later years living in one room in a guest house. The context of this is a rejection of socialism. The love of and need for property and possessions must be taken into account in any politics. |
| 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. |
| 23195 | Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships… | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[247]) | |
| A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view. |
| 23185 | In chemistry every substance pushes, and thus creates new substances [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: In chemistry is revealed that every substance pushes its force as far as it can, then a third something emerges. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[51]) | |
| A reaction: This is the ontology of powers as the basis of science, of which I am a fan. It is Nietzsche's Will to Power in action, which is often mistakenly taken to only refer to human affairs. |
| 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. |