16 ideas
| 16005 | I recognise knowledge, but it is the truth by which I can live and die that really matters [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: The thing is to find a truth which is true for me - the idea for which I can live and die. I still recognise an imperative of knowledge, but it must be taken up into my life, which I now recognise as the most important thing. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Letter to Peter Wilhelm Lund [1835], J-1A) | |
| A reaction: A quintessentially existential idea. Note that he still considers objective knowledge to be quite important, but how we act and relate to those ideas is what really matters for us human beings. [SY] |
| 16039 | Supervenience: No A-difference without a B-difference [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: The slogan for supervenience might be 'there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference'. …(qualifying as a 'perfect forgery' would be an example). | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The key point about supervenience is that it is one-way. Presumably 'tracking' would be a better single word for it than 'dependence', which implies some sort of causal power. Supervenience describes, but doesn't attempt to explain. |
| 16043 | Supervenience is non-symmetric - sometimes it's symmetric, and sometimes it's one-way [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is neither symmetric nor asymmetric; it is non-symmetric. Sometimes it holds symmetrically. …And sometimes it holds asymmetrically. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.2) | |
| A reaction: I think of supervenience as 'tracking'. Stalkers track victims; married couples track one another. Beauty tracks statues, but statues don't seem to track beauty. I take so-called mind-brain supervenience to be two-way, not one-way. |
| 16047 | Weak supervenience is in one world, strong supervenience in all possible worlds [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Weak supervenience says there is no possible world that contains individuals that are B-indiscernible but A-discernible. Strong supervenience entails the same even if they are in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: In other words (I presume), in simple language, the weak version says they happen supervene, the strong version says they have to supervene. |
| 16040 | Aesthetics, morality and mind supervene on the physical? Modal on non-modal? General on particular? [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: It has been claimed that aesthetic, moral and mental properties supervene upon physical properties, …and that modal truths supervene on non-modal ones, and that general truths supervene on particular ones. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am attracted to the last bit. I am bewildered by people who try to derive particular truths from general ones, such as deriving physical behaviour from laws, or the nature of some creature simply from its species. Only some tigers are man-eaters. |
| 16044 | Some entailments do not involve supervenience, as when brotherhood entails siblinghood [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Some entailments do not suffice for supervenience. Being a brother entails being a sibling, but being a sibling does not supervene on being a brother. Sarah has a sister and Jack in an only child. Sarah, unlike Jack, is a sibling; neither is a brother. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.2) | |
| A reaction: The whole point of supervenience, I take it, is to label a relation of tracking, while offering no explanation of the tracking. Entailment would be a rather powerful explanation, as would a dog's being tied to a cart. |
| 16046 | Reduction requires supervenience, but does supervenience suffice for reduction? [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Everyone agrees that reduction requires supervenience, …but the more interesting issue is whether supervenience suffices for reduction. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: I think we should assume that there is a reason for every genuine case of supervenience (i.e. there are no cases of eternal or ubiquitious coincidence). One-way causation seems to give supervenience without reduction. |
| 16049 | Definitions of physicalism are compatible with a necessary God [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: All definitions of physicalism are compatible with the existence of a necessarily existing God. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: All the definitions seem to depend on all the facts covarying with the physical facts, so anything which is invariant (such as divine or platonic entities) will stand outside the definition. Physicalism is more like a credo about all facts whatever. |
| 16042 | The metaphysically and logically possible worlds are the same, so they are the same strength [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessity is just as strong as logical necessity in that the space of metaphysical possibility is exactly the same as the space of logical possibility: the logically possible worlds = the metaphysically possible worlds. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. To be the 'same strength' there would also have to be the same number of logical as metaphysical truths, and I presume that is not the case. There are far more logical than metaphysical possibilities. |
| 17488 | Empiricist theories are sets of laws, which give explanations and reductions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: In the empiricist tradition theories were understood to be deductive closures of sets of laws, explanations were understood as arguments from covering laws, and reduction was understood as a deductive relationship between laws of different theories. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: A lovely crisp summary of the whole tradition of philosophy of science from Comte through to Hempel. Mechanism and essentialism are the new players in the game. |
| 17493 | Modern mechanism need parts with spatial, temporal and function facts, and diagrams [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Modern champions of mechanisms say models should identify both the parts and their spatial, temporal and functional organisation, ...and the practical importance of diagrams in addition to or in place of linguistic representations of mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Discover') | |
| A reaction: Apparently chemists obtain much more refined models by using mathematics than they did by diagrams or 3D models (let alone verbal descriptions). For that reason, I'm thinking that 'model' might be a better term than 'mechanism'. |
| 17487 | Mechanistic philosophy of science is an alternative to the empiricist law-based tradition [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: To a significant degree, a mechanistic philosophy of science can be seen as an alternative to an earlier logical empiricist tradition in philosophy of science that gave pride of place to laws of nature. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Lovely! Someone who actually spells out what's going on here. Most philosophers are far too coy about explaining what their real game is. Mechanism is fine in chemistry and biology. How about in 'mathematical' physics, or sociology? |
| 17489 | Mechanisms are either systems of parts or sequences of activities [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: There are two sorts of mechanisms: systems consist of collections of parts that interact to produce some behaviour, and processes are sequences of activities which produce some outcome. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The second one is important because it is more generic, and under that account all kinds the features of the world that need to be explained can be subsumed. E.g. hyperinflation in an economy is a 'mechanism'. |
| 17490 | 17th century mechanists explained everything by the kinetic physical fundamentals [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: 17th century mechanists said that interactions governed by chemical, electrical or gravitational forces would have to be explicable in terms of the operation of some atomistic (or corpuscular) kinetic mechanism. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Glennan says science has rejected this, so modern mechanists do not reduce mechanisms to anything in particular. |
| 17491 | Unlike the lawlike approach, mechanistic explanation can allow for exceptions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: One of the advantages of the move from nomological to mechanistic modes of explanation is that the latter allows for explanations involving exception-ridden generalizations. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'regular') | |
| A reaction: The lawlike approach has endless problems with 'ceteris paribus' ('all things being equal') laws, where specifying all the other 'things' seems a bit tricky. |
| 17494 | Since causal events are related by mechanisms, causation can be analysed in that way [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Causation can be analyzed in terms of mechanisms because (except for fundamental causal interactions) causally related events will be connected by intervening mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'causation') | |
| A reaction: This won't give us the metaphysics of causation (which concerns the fundamentals), but this strikes me as a very coherent and interesting proposal. He mentions electron interaction as non-mechanistic causation. |