19 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. |
20350 | Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson] |
Full Idea: The evidence lies at the periphery of the [metaphysical] system and runs in from there, through decreasingly specific accounts of the data, to the central ontology. | |
From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: Philosophy is the study of high level generalisations, IMHO. Studying them means studying the reasons for asserting them. Richardson puts it very nicely. |
20349 | Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson] |
Full Idea: The core of metaphysics is an account of the 'essence' or 'being' of things. ...And metaphysics needs system, to show how these primary truths reach out into all the other truths, to help us see that, and how, they are true. | |
From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I like the phrase 'the essential nature' of things, because it doesn't invoke rather dodgy entities called 'essences', but everyone understands the idea of focusing on what is essential, and on things having a distinct 'nature'. |
20351 | Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson] |
Full Idea: Metaphysics makes system a virtue, contrary to the tendency of analysis, which breaks a problem into ever finer parts and then absorbs itself in these. | |
From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
A reaction: I disagree, because it seems to rule out analytic metaphysics. I prefer Bertrand Russell's view. Admittedly analysis oftens gets stuck in the bog, especially if it hopes for salvation in logic, only to discover its certainties endlessly receding. |
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) |
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. |
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) |
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. |
22363 | You have only begun to do real science when you can express it in numbers [Kelvin] |
Full Idea: When you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be. | |
From: Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Reiss,J/Spreger,J - Scientific Objectivity 4.1 | |
A reaction: [Popular Lectures 1 p.73] Clearly the writer is a physicist! Astronomers discover objects, geologists discover structures, biologists reveal mechanisms. |
20356 | Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson] |
Full Idea: In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth. | |
From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966) | |
A reaction: If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves. |
20366 | A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson] |
Full Idea: An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux, and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect. | |
From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §112) | |
A reaction: Maybe we do see it as a continuum? The racket swings and the ball is propelled, but the contact is a unity, not two separate events. |
20644 | Energy has progressed from a mere formula, to a principle pervading all nature [Kelvin] |
Full Idea: The name 'energy', first used by Thomas Young, has come into use after it was raised from a mere formula of mathematical dynamics to become a principle pervading all nature, and guiding every field of science. | |
From: Lord Kelvin (Wm Thomson) (works [1881]), quoted by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Principle' | |
A reaction: [bit compressed] As far as I can see energy behaves exactly as if it were a substance, like water conserved in rainfalls, and yet it isn't a stuff, and seems to result from a process of abstraction. I take it to be one of the biggest mysteries in physics. |