22 ideas
7454 | Gassendi is the first great empiricist philosopher [Hacking] |
Full Idea: Gassendi is the first in the great line of empiricist philosophers that gradually came to dominate European thought. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.5) | |
A reaction: Epicurus, of course, was clearly an empiricist. British readers should note that Gassendi was not British. |
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) |
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. |
7447 | Probability was fully explained between 1654 and 1812 [Hacking] |
Full Idea: There is hardly any history of probability to record before Pascal (1654), and the whole subject is very well understood after Laplace (1812). | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: An interesting little pointer on the question of whether the human race is close to exhausting all the available intellectual problems. What then? |
7448 | Probability is statistical (behaviour of chance devices) or epistemological (belief based on evidence) [Hacking] |
Full Idea: Probability has two aspects: the degree of belief warranted by evidence, and the tendency displayed by some chance device to produce stable relative frequencies. These are the epistemological and statistical aspects of the subject. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: The most basic distinction in the subject. Later (p.124) he suggests that the statistical form (known as 'aleatory' probability) is de re, and the other is de dicto. |
7449 | Epistemological probability based either on logical implications or coherent judgments [Hacking] |
Full Idea: Epistemological probability is torn between Keynes etc saying it depends on the strength of logical implication, and Ramsey etc saying it is personal judgement which is subject to strong rules of internal coherence. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: See Idea 7449 for epistemological probability. My immediate intuition is that the Ramsey approach sounds much more plausible. In real life there are too many fine-grained particulars involved for straight implication to settle a probability. |
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. |
7450 | In the medieval view, only deduction counted as true evidence [Hacking] |
Full Idea: In the medieval view, evidence short of deduction was not really evidence at all. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Hacking says the modern concept of evidence comes with probability in the 17th century. That might make it one of the most important ideas ever thought of, allowing us to abandon certainties and live our lives in a more questioning way. |
7451 | Formerly evidence came from people; the new idea was that things provided evidence [Hacking] |
Full Idea: In the medieval view, people provided the evidence of testimony and of authority. What was lacking was the seventeenth century idea of the evidence provided by things. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: A most intriguing distinction, which seems to imply a huge shift in world-view. The culmination of this is Peirce's pragmatism, in Idea 6948, of which I strongly approve. |
7452 | An experiment is a test, or an adventure, or a diagnosis, or a dissection [Hacking, by PG] |
Full Idea: An experiment is a test (if T, then E implies R, so try E, and if R follows, T seems right), an adventure (no theory, but try things), a diagnosis (reading the signs), or a dissection (taking apart). | |
From: report of Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.4) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: A nice analysis. The Greeks did diagnosis, then the alchemists tried adventures, then Vesalius began dissections, then the followers of Bacon concentrated on the test, setting up controlled conditions. 'If you don't believe it, try it yourself'. |
7459 | Follow maths for necessary truths, and jurisprudence for contingent truths [Hacking] |
Full Idea: Mathematics is the model for reasoning about necessary truths, but jurisprudence must be our model when we deliberate about contingencies. | |
From: Ian Hacking (The Emergence of Probability [1975], Ch.10) | |
A reaction: Interesting. Certainly huge thinking, especially since the Romans, has gone into the law, and creating rules of evidence. Maybe all philosophers should study law and mathematics? |
13965 | Semantics as theory of meaning and semantics as truth-based logical consequence are very different [Soames] |
Full Idea: There are two senses of 'semantic' - as theory of meaning or as truth-based theory of logical consequence, and they are very different. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.78) | |
A reaction: This subtle point is significant in considering the role of logic in philosophy. The logicians' semantics (based on logical consequence) is in danger of ousting the broader and more elusive notion of meaning in natural language. |
13964 | Semantic content is a proposition made of sentence constituents (not some set of circumstances) [Soames] |
Full Idea: The semantic content of a sentence is not the set of circumstances supporting its truth. It is rather the semantic content of a structured proposition the constituents of which are the semantic contents of the constituents of the sentence. | |
From: Scott Soames (Why Propositions Aren't Truth-Supporting Circumstance [2008], p.74) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I get this, but while I like the truth-conditions view, I am suspicious of any proposal that the semantic content of something is some actual physical ingredients of the world. Meanings aren't sticks and stones. |