44 ideas
| 13734 | Modern Quinean metaphysics is about what exists, but Aristotelian metaphysics asks about grounding [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: On the now dominant Quinean view, metaphysics is about what there is (such as properties, meanings and numbers). I will argue for the revival of a more traditional Aristotelian view, on which metaphysics is about what grounds what. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I find that an enormously helpful distinction, and support the Aristotelian view. Schaffer's general line is that what exists is fairly uncontroversial and dull, but the interesting truths about the world emerge when we grasp its structure. |
| 13751 | If you tore the metaphysics out of philosophy, the whole enterprise would collapse [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Traditional metaphysics is so tightly woven into the fabric of philosophy that it cannot be torn out without the whole tapestry unravelling. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I often wonder why the opponents of metaphysics still continue to do philosophy. I don't see how you address questions of ethics, or philosophy of mathematics (etc) without coming up against highly general and abstract over-questions. |
| 13743 | We should not multiply basic entities, but we can have as many derivative entities as we like [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Occam's Razor should only be understood to concern substances: do not multiply basic entities without necessity. There is no problem with the multiplication of derivative entities - they are an 'ontological free lunch'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The phrase 'ontological free lunch' comes from Armstrong. This is probably what Occam meant. A few extra specks of dust, or even a few more numbers (thank you, Cantor!) don't seem to challenge the principle. |
| 13741 | If 'there are red roses' implies 'there are roses', then 'there are prime numbers' implies 'there are numbers' [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: We can automatically infer 'there are roses' from 'there are red roses' (with no shift in the meaning of 'roses'). Likewise one can automatically infer 'there are numbers' from 'there are prime numbers'. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: He similarly observes that the atheist's 'God is a fictional character' implies 'there are fictional characters'. Schaffer is not committing to a strong platonism with his claim - merely that the existence of numbers is hardly worth disputing. |
| 13748 | Grounding is unanalysable and primitive, and is the basic structuring concept in metaphysics [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Grounding should be taken as primitive, as per the neo-Aristotelian approach. Grounding is an unanalyzable but needed notion - it is the primitive structuring conception of metaphysics. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [he cites K.Fine 1991] I find that this simple claim clarifies the discussions of Kit Fine, where you are not always quite sure what the game is. I agree fully with it. It makes metaphysics interesting, where cataloguing entities is boring. |
| 13747 | Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is mere modal correlation. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.2) |
| 13744 | The cosmos is the only fundamental entity, from which all else exists by abstraction [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: My preferred view is that there is only one fundamental entity - the whole concrete cosmos - from which all else exists by abstraction. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This looks to me like weak anti-realism - that there are no natural 'joints' in nature - but I don't think Schaffer intends that. I take the joints to be fundamentals, which necessitates that the cosmos has parts. His 'abstraction' is clearly a process. |
| 13739 | Maybe categories are just the different ways that things depend on basic substances [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the categories are determined by the different grounding relations, ..so that categories just are the ways things depend on substances. ...Categories are places in the dependence ordering. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 1.3) |
| 13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata? |
| 13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?' | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place. |
| 13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job. |
| 13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity? |
| 13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously. |
| 13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance? | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence. |
| 13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open. |
| 13742 | There exist heaps with no integral unity, so we should accept arbitrary composites in the same way [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: I am happy to accept universal composition, on the grounds that there are heaps, piles etc with no integral unity, and that arbitrary composites are no less unified than heaps. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1 n11) | |
| A reaction: The metaphysical focus is then placed on what constitutes 'integral unity', which is precisely the question which most interested Aristotle. Clearly if there is nothing more to an entity than its components, scattering them isn't destruction. |
| 13752 | The notion of 'grounding' can explain integrated wholes in a way that mere aggregates can't [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: The notion of grounding my capture a crucial mereological distinction (missing from classical mereology) between an integrated whole with genuine unity, and a mere aggregate. x is an integrated whole if it grounds its proper parts. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: That gives a nice theoretical notion, but if you remove each of the proper parts, does x remain? Is it a bare particular? I take it that it will have to be an abstract principle, the one Aristotle was aiming at with his notion of 'form'. Schaffer agrees. |
| 13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties. |
| 17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates. |
| 13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant). |
| 13749 | Belief in impossible worlds may require dialetheism [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: One motivation for dialetheism is the view that there are impossible worlds. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.3) |
| 13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46) | |
| A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is! |
| 13740 | 'Moorean certainties' are more credible than any sceptical argument [Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: A 'Moorean certainty' is when something is more credible than any philosopher's argument to the contrary. | |
| From: Jonathan Schaffer (On What Grounds What [2009], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: The reference is to G.E. Moore's famous claim that the existence of his hand is more certain than standard sceptical arguments. It sounds empiricist, but they might be parallel rational truths, of basic logic or arithmetic. |
| 13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view. |
| 21181 | Relativity and Quantum theory give very different accounts of forces [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: General Relativity and quantum mechanics are the two great theories in physics today but they give two very different ideas for how forces work. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 01) | |
| A reaction: Relativity says it is space curvature, and quantum theory says it is particle exchange? But is there a Relativity account of the strong nuclear force? |
| 21183 | Thermodynamics introduced work and entropy, to understand steam engine efficiency [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: The Laws of Thermodynamics introduced the concepts of entropy and work; put simply, how much useful energy you can really get out of a steam engine. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 03) | |
| A reaction: The point of science by this stage was to introduce measurable and quantifiable concepts |
| 21191 | Photons are B and W° bosons, linked by the Higgs mechanism [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: The photon is actually a mix of two deeper things, the B and the W°, tied together by the Higgs mechanism. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 06) | |
| A reaction: The B (for 'Boson') transmits a force associated with the 'winding symmetry'. (I record this without properly understanding it.) |
| 21199 | Spinning electric charge produces magnetism, so all fermions are magnets [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: The muon, like all fermions, spins - and because a spinning electric charge generates a magnetic field all fermions act like tiny bar magnets. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 11) |
| 21180 | Electrons are fundamental and are not made of anything; they are properties without size [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: As far as we can tell, electrons (and quarks) are fundamental. They are not small lumps of material, because we could always ask what the material is. The electron just ...is. They are collections of properties, with no apparent size. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 01) | |
| A reaction: This idea from physics HAS to be of interest to philosophers! The bundle theory is discredited for normal objects and for minds, and so is the substrate idea for supporting properties. But rigorous physics accepts a bundle theory. |
| 21189 | Electrons may have smaller components, bound by a new force [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Quarks, leptons or bosons may actually be made up of something even smaller, bound together by a conjectural new force. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 05) | |
| A reaction: Electrons are a type of lepton. Compare Idea 21180, from the same book. If electrons are not fundamental, what matters is not some 'stuff' they are made of, but a different force that would bind the ingredients. |
| 21184 | Physics was rewritten to explain stable electron orbits [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Explaining the stable electron orbits would require a complete rewriting of the physics of subatomic particles. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 03) | |
| A reaction: This really looks like a simple and major landmark moment. You can ignore a single anomaly, but not a central feature of your entire theory. |
| 21182 | Quantum mechanics is our only theory, and is very precise, and repeatedly confirmed [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Quantum mechanics is the only working description of the universe that we have. It is amazingly precise, and so far every experimental test has verified its predictions. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 02) | |
| A reaction: I take it from this that quantum mechanics is simply TRUE. Get over it! It will never turn out to be wrong, but may be subsumed within some more fine-grained or extensive theory. |
| 21187 | Virtual particles can't be measured, and can ignore the laws of physics [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: We can never measure these virtual (transitory) particles directly, and it turns out that they don't even have to obey the laws of physics. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 05) | |
| A reaction: These seems to be the real significance of the Uncertainty Principle. Such particles 'borrow' huge amounts of energy for very short times. |
| 21185 | Colour charge is positive or negative, and also has red, green or blue direction [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Colour charge is 'three-dimensional'. As well as the charge having a positive or negative sign, it can also have a direction, and for convenience these three different directions (pointing like a weather vane) are labelled 'red', 'green' and 'blue'. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 04) |
| 21195 | In Supersymmetry the Standard Model simplifies at high energies [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Supersymmetry suggest that the Standard Model becomes much simpler at high energies. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 10) |
| 21197 | Standard Model forces are one- two- and three-dimensional [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: The forces in the Standard Model are built on gauge symmetries, with a one-dimensional charge (like electromagnetism), a two-dimensional charge (the weak force), and a three dimensional charge (the strong force). | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 10) | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 21185. |
| 21194 | The Standard Model omits gravity, because there are no particles involved [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Gravity is not included in the Standard Model because we simply cannot study it using particles. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 09) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that Einstein describes how gravity behaves, but not what it is. |
| 21188 | Quarks and leptons have a weak charge, for the weak force [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: For the weak force there must be a corresponding 'weak charge', and all the fermions, all the quarks and leptons carry it. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 05) | |
| A reaction: So electrons carry a weak charge, as well as an electromagnetic charge. Like owning several passports. |
| 21186 | Quarks rush wildly around in protons, restrained by the gluons [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Inside a proton the quarks are rushing around like caged animals, free to move until they push against the bars to try to escape, when the gluons pull them back in. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 04) |
| 21192 | Neutrinos only interact with the weak force, but decays produce them in huge numbers [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: Neutrinos only interact with the weak force, which means they barely interact at all, but because the weak force is crucial in the decays of so many other particles, neutrinos are still produced in huge numbers. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 08) | |
| A reaction: They only interact with the W and Z bosons. |
| 21196 | To combine the forces, they must all be the same strength at some point [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: If all the forces are to combine, at some point they must all be the same strength, and Supersymmetry (SuSy) makes this happen. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 10) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like an impressive reason for favouring supersymmetry - as long as you have an a priori preference for everything combining. |
| 21190 | 'Space' in physics just means location [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: 'Space' in physics really just means location. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 06) | |
| A reaction: Location can, of course, only be specified relative to something else. Space is really an abstraction, but at least it means there is some sort of background to locate all the fundamental fields. |
| 21193 | The universe is 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, 5% regular matter [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: The most precise surveys of the stars and galaxies tell us that the universe is made up of 68% dark energy, 27% dark matter, and just 5% regular matter (the stuff of the Standard Model of particle physics). | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 09) | |
| A reaction: Regular matter - that's me, that is. |
| 21198 | If a cosmic theory relies a great deal on fine-tuning basic values, it is probably wrong [Hesketh] |
| Full Idea: If a theory has to rely on excessive 'fine-tuning', a series of extremely unlikely events in order to produce the universe we see around us, then it is extremely unlikely that this theory is correct. | |
| From: Gavin Hesketh (The Particle Zoo [2016], 10) | |
| A reaction: He says the Standard Model has 26 parameters which are only known by experiment, rather than by theory. So instead of saying '...so there is a God', we should say '...so our theory isn't very good'. |