44 ideas
3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Those who go forward only very slowly can progress much further if they always keep to the right path, than those who run and wander off it. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.2) | |
A reaction: Like Descartes' 'Method'. This seems to place a low value on 'nous' or intuition. |
3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Looking at the various activities and enterprises of mankind with the eye of a philosopher, there is hardly one which does not seem to me vain and useless. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.3) | |
A reaction: Well, yes. The obvious retort is that everything is vain and useless; or if not, then certainly metaphysics is. Useful for what? Is ornamental gardening useless, or sport? Art? What is the use of cosmology? He's right, of course. |
3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
Full Idea: There is nothing one can imagine so strange or so unbelievable that has not been said by one or other of the philosophers. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.16) | |
A reaction: Actually I think that extensive areas of logical possibilities for existence remain totally unexplored. On the other hand, most of the metaphysical beliefs of most of the human race, including the majority of philosophers, strike me as being false. |
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. |
3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
Full Idea: Descartes' four principles for his method of thinking are: be cautious, analyse the problem, be systematic from simple to complex, and keep an overview of the problem | |
From: report of René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.18) by PG - Db (ideas) |
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. |
3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
Full Idea: That the things we grasp very clearly and very distinctly are all true, is assured only because God is or exists, and because he is a perfect Being. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.38) |
3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, but that there is merely some difficulty in properly discerning which are those which we distinctly conceive. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) |
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) |
3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The action of thought by which one believes a thing, being different from that by which one knows that one believes it, they often exist the one without the other. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) |
1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
Full Idea: Descartes' procedure for treating values (accepting normal conventions when faced with uncertainty) is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge. | |
From: comment on René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.73 |
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. |
3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
Full Idea: While I decided to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so certain that the most extravagant scepticism could never shake it. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) |
3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I have tried to find in general the principles or first causes of everything which is or which may be in the world, ..without taking them from any other source than from certain seeds of truth which are naturally in our minds. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.64) |
3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Neither our imagination nor our senses could ever assure us of anything, if our understanding did not intervene. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.37) |
19682 | Internalists are much more interested in evidence than externalists are [McGrew] |
Full Idea: The notion of evidence generally plays a much more significant role in internalist epistemologies than it does in various forms of externalism. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
A reaction: I'm guessing that this is because evidence needs a certain amount of interpretation, whereas raw facts (which externalists seem to rely on) may never even enter a mind. |
19687 | Absence of evidence proves nothing, and weird claims need special evidence [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Two well know slogans (popularised by Carl Sagan) are 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', ...and 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Absence') | |
A reaction: [Sagan was a popular science writer and broadcaster] The second one is something like Hume's argument against miracles. The old problem of the 'missing link' for human evolution embodied the first idea. |
19684 | Does spotting a new possibility count as evidence? [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Does the sudden realization of a heretofore unrecognized possibility count as evidence? | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
A reaction: [Nice use of 'heretofore'! Why say 'previously' when you can keep these wonderful old English words alive?] This means that we can imagine new evidence ('maybe the murderer was a snake'!). Wrong. The evidence is what suggests the possibility. |
19688 | Every event is highly unlikely (in detail), but may be perfectly plausible [McGrew] |
Full Idea: At a certain level of detail, almost any claim is unprecedented. How likely is 'Matilda won at Scrabble on Thursday with a score of 438 while drinking mint tea'? But there is nothing particularly unbelievable about the claim. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Extraordinary') | |
A reaction: A striking idea, which rules out the simplistic idea that we can just assess evidence by its isolated likelihood. Context is crucial. How good is 438? What if she smoked opium? What if there is no Scrabble set on her island? |
19686 | Criminal law needs two separate witnesses, but historians will accept one witness [McGrew] |
Full Idea: An ancient rule in law is that a criminal conviction needs evidence of two independent witnesses, but in history it is assumed that a document deserves the benefit of the doubt if it cannot be independently verified. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
A reaction: [compressed; McGrew's full account qualifies it a bit] A nice observation. One might even be suspicious of the two 'independent' witnesses, if there were lots of other reasons to doubt someon's guilt. A single weird document is also dubious. |
19680 | Maybe all evidence consists of beliefs, rather than of facts [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers have been attracted to the view that, strictly speaking, what counts as evidence is not a set of physical objects or even experiences, but rather a set of believed propositions. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
A reaction: This may be right. However, as always, I think animals are a key test. Do animals respond to evidence? Even if they did, they might need to 'make sense' of what they experienced, and even formulate a non-linguistic proposition. |
19681 | If all evidence is propositional, what is the evidence for the proposition? Do we face a regress? [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Taking evidence as propositional may trade one problem for another. If the bloodstain isn't evidence, but 'this is a bloodstain' is evidence, then what serves as evidence for the belief about the bloodstain? Is there an infinite regress? | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
A reaction: [compressed] I quite like evidence being propositional, but then find this. I'll retreat to my beloved coherence. I do not endorse Sellars's 'only a belief can justify a belief', because raw experience has to be part of what is coherent. |
19689 | Several unreliable witnesses can give good support, if they all say the same thing [McGrew] |
Full Idea: The testimony of a number of independent witnesses, none of them particularly reliable, who give substantially the same account of some event, may provide a strong argument in its favor. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Testimonial') | |
A reaction: A striking point. It obviously works well for panicking people in a crowd during an incident. Does it also apply to independent scientists who are known to cheat? They may not collaborate, but may all want the same result. |
19683 | Narrow evidentialism relies wholly on propositions; the wider form includes other items [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Evidentialism comes in both narrow and wide forms depending on whether evidence is taken to consist only of propositions or of a wider range of items. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
A reaction: [He cites Conee and Feldman for the wide view, which is not restricted to beliefs] You can hardly rely on occurrent beliefs as evidence, so we often have good knowledge with forgotten justification. But such knowledge has been 'weakened'. |
3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
Full Idea: My whole plan had for its aim simply to give me assurance, and the rejection of shifting ground and sand in order to find rock or clay. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.29) | |
A reaction: I take this to be characteristic of an age when religion is being quietly rocked by the revival of ancient scepticism. If he'd settled for fallibilism, our civilization would have gone differently. |
3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Before beginning to rebuild the house in which one lives…. one must also provide oneself with some other accommodation in which to be lodge conveniently while the work is going on. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.22) |
3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I observe almost no individual effect without immediately knowing that it can be deduced in many different ways, ..and I know of no way to resolve this but by experiments such that the results are different according to different explanations. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.65) |
19685 | Falsificationism would be naive if even a slight discrepancy in evidence killed a theory [McGrew] |
Full Idea: Data do not quite speak for themselves, which speaks against a naive form of falsificationism according to which even the slightest mismatch between theory and evidence suffices to overturn a theory. | |
From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
A reaction: [He cites Robert Boyle wisely ignoring some data to get a good fit for his graph] |
3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Animals not only have less reason than men, but they have none at all; for we see that very little of it is required in order to be able to speak. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.58) |
3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I concluded that I was a substance, of which the whole essence or nature consists in thinking, and which, in order to exist, needs no place and depends on no material thing. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) | |
A reaction: To me that sounds like "I concluded that I wasn't a human being", which highlights the bizarre wishful thinking that seems to have gripped the human race for the first few thousand years of its serious thinking. |
3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I could pretend that I had no body, and that there was no world or place that I was in, but I could not, for all that, pretend that I did not exist. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) | |
A reaction: He makes the (in my opinion) appalling blunder of thinking that because he can pretend that he has no body, that therefore he might not have one. I can pretend that gold is an unusual form of cheese. However, "I don't exist" certainly sounds wrong. |
3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
Full Idea: Whereas reason is a universal instrument which can serve on any kind of occasion, the organs of a machine need a disposition for each action; so it is impossible to have enough different organs in a machine to respond to all the occurrences of life. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.57) | |
A reaction: How can Descartes know that reason is 'universal' rather than just 'very extensive'? Is there any information which cannot be encoded in a computer? It doesn't feel as if there any intrinsic restrictions to reason, but note Idea 4688. |
3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
Full Idea: It is not sufficient that the reasonable soul should be lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, unless perhaps to move its limbs, but it needs to be united more closely with the body in order to have sensations and appetites, and so be a true man. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.59) | |
A reaction: The idea that the pineal gland is the link suggests that Descartes has the 'pilot' view, but this idea shows that he believes in very close and complex interaction between mind and body. But how can a mind 'have' appetites if it has no physical needs? |
3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
Full Idea: One may conceive of a machine made so as to emit words, and even emit them in response to a change in its bodily organs, such as being touched, but not to reply to the sense of everything said in its presence, as the most unintelligent men can. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.56) | |
A reaction: A critique of the Turing Test, written in 1637! You have to admire. Because of the advent of the microprocessor, we can 'conceive' more sophisticated, multi-level machines than Descartes could come up with. |
1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
Full Idea: The ancient pagans place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear the most valuable thing in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.8) |
16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
Full Idea: I have noticed certain laws that God has so established in nature, and of which he has implanted such notions in our souls, that …we cannot doubt that they are exactly observed in everything that exists or occurs in the world. | |
From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], pt 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.5 | |
A reaction: This is the view of laws which still seems to be with us (and needs extirpating) - that some outside agency imposes them on nature. I suspect that even Richard Feynman thought of laws like that, because he despised philosophy, and was thus naïve. |