87 ideas
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It was in the seventeenth and eighteenth century that morality came generally to be understood as offering a solution to the problems posed by human egoism and that the content of morality came to be largely equated with altruism. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: It was the elevation of altruism that caused Nietzsche's rebellion. The sixteenth century certainly looks striking cynical to modern eyes. The development was an attempt to secularise Jesus. Altruism has a paradox: it needs victims. |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Twentieth century social life turns out in key part to be the concrete and dramatic re-enactment of eighteenth-century philosophy. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This suggest a two hundred year lag between the philosophy and its impact on the culture. One might note the Victorian insistence on 'duty' (e.g. in George Eliot), alongside Mill's view that the Kantian account of it didn't work (Idea 3768). |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The failure, in the Enlightenment, of philosophy to provide what religion could no longer furnish was an important cause of philosophy losing its central cultural role and becoming a marginal, narrowly academic subject. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: A strange way of presenting the situation. Philosophy has never aspired to furnish beliefs for the masses. Plato offered them myths. The refutation of religion was difficult and complex. There is no returning from there to a new folk simplicity. |
| 16841 | Good inference has mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility and background fit [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Among the inferential virtues commonly cited are mechanism, precision, scope, simplicity, fertility or fruitfulness, and fit with background beliefs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel, Kuhn, Quine, and Newton-Smith] I take the over-arching term 'coherence' to cover much of this, though a bolder hypothesis offers more than mere coherence. |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Arguments in philosophy rarely take the form of proofs; and the most successful arguments on topics central to philosophy never do. (The ideal of proof is a relatively barren one in philosophy). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.18) | |
| A reaction: He seems proud of this, but he must settle for something which is less than proof, which has to be vindicated to the mathematicians and scientists. I agree, though. Plato is the model, and the best philosophy builds a broad persuasive picture. |
| 16854 | Contrary pairs entail contradictions; one member entails negation of the other [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: All pairs of contraries entail a pair of contradictories, since one member of such a pair always entails the negation of the other. P&Q and not-P are contraries, but the first entails P, which is contradictory of not-P. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') |
| 10528 | Definitions concern how we should speak, not how things are [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Our concern in giving a definition is not to say how things are by to say how we wish to speak | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like an acceptable piece of wisdom which arises out of analytical and linguistic philosophy. It puts a damper on the Socratic dream of using definition of reveal the nature of reality. |
| 10529 | If Hume's Principle can define numbers, we needn't worry about its truth [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Neo-Fregeans have thought that Hume's Principle, and the like, might be definitive of number and therefore not subject to the usual epistemological worries over its truth. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.310) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the underlying dream of logicism - that arithmetic is actually brought into existence by definitions, rather than by truths derived from elsewhere. But we must be able to count physical objects, as well as just counting numbers. |
| 10530 | Hume's Principle is either adequate for number but fails to define properly, or vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The fundamental difficulty facing the neo-Fregean is to either adopt the predicative reading of Hume's Principle, defining numbers, but inadequate, or the impredicative reading, which is adequate, but not really a definition. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.312) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but the general drift is the difficulty of building a system which has been brought into existence just by definition. |
| 16814 | Understanding is not mysterious - it is just more knowledge, of causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the causal model of explanation, understanding is unmysterious and objective; it is not some sort of super-knowledge, but simply more knowledge; knowledge of causes. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There seems to be some distinction between revealing some causes, and revealing a cause which 'makes the light dawn'. |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There is something extraordinary in the coexistence of empiricism and natural science in the same culture, for they represent radically different and incompatible ways of approaching the world. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 7) | |
| A reaction: I would say that science is commitment to an ontology, and empiricism is a commitment to epistemology. It is a very nice point, given the usual assumption that science is an empirical activity. See Idea 7621. Strict empiricism distorts science. |
| 16825 | How do we distinguish negative from irrelevant evidence, if both match the hypothesis? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: How can Best Explanation distinguish negative evidence from irrelevant evidence, when the evidence is logically consistent with the hypothesis? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: There seems no answer to this other than to assess batches of evidence by their coherence, rather than one at a time. Anomalies can be conclusive, or pure chance. |
| 16851 | The inference to observables and unobservables is almost the same, so why distinguish them? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The inferential path to unobservables is often the same as to unobserved observables. In these two sorts of case, the reason for belief can be equally strong, so the suggestion that we infer truth in one case but not the other seems perverse. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: [Van Fraassen 1980 is the target of this] Van F seems to be in the grip of some sort of verificationism, which I always disliked on the grounds that speculation can be highly meaningful. Why embrace something because it 'could' be observed? |
| 16799 | Inductive inference is not proof, but weighing evidence and probability [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inductive inference is a matter of weighing evidence and judging probability, not of proof. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a plausible fallibilist response to the optimistic view of Aristotle. |
| 16798 | We infer from evidence by working out what would explain that evidence [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations are an important guide to inference, …we work out what to infer from our evidence by thinking about what would explain that evidence. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], Pref 2nd ed) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be inferences about the physical world, rather than of pure logic. The thesis sounds a bit thin, since there is no logical sense of 'infer' here, so all it could mean is 'what caused that?'. |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Just as unpredictability does not entail inexplicability, so predictability does not entail explicability. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: The second half is not quite as obvious as the first. The location of lightning strikes is an example of the first. He gives examples of the second, but they all seem to be very complex cases which might be explained, if only we knew enough. |
| 16856 | It is more impressive that relativity predicted Mercury's orbit than if it had accommodated it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are more impressed by the fact that the special theory of relativity was used to predict the shift in the perihelion of Mercury than we would have been if we knew that the theory was constructed in order to account for that effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 10 'The fudging') | |
| A reaction: Lipton has a nice discussion of the relative merits of predicting data and accommodating it. He invites astrologers to predict events, rather than accommodate past ones. |
| 16857 | Predictions are best for finding explanations, because mere accommodations can be fudged [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Accommodations are often worth less than predictions, because only they have to face the possibility that the best explanation of the fit between the theory and data is that the theoretical system was fudged. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Lipton illuminatingly explores the discovery by Semmelweiss of the cause of childbed fever. He predicted various explanations, and tested them out in a hospital. It clicks when the prediction occurs. |
| 16827 | If we make a hypothesis about data, then a deduction, where does the hypothesis come from? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The cost of the hypothetico-deductive method …is that we are left in the dark about the source of the hypotheses themselves. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: How do we distinguish a wild hypothesis from a plausible one? It can only be from patterns in the data, rather than mere accumulations of data. If water causes cholera, or smoking causes cancer, the hypothesis guides the data search. |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Social sciences have discovered no law-like generalisations whatsoever, ...and for the most part they adopt a very tolerant attitude to counter-examples. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is as much to do with a narrow and rigid view of what 'science' is supposed to be, as a failure of the social sciences. Have such sciences explained anything? I suspect that they have explained a lot, often after the facts. |
| 16804 | Induction is repetition, instances, deduction, probability or causation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Five attempts to describe induction are 'more of the same', the instantial model, the hypothetico-deductive model, the Bayesian approach …and causal inference. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This interesting list totally fails to mention the best answer, which is essentialism! If you observe some instances, you only begin to think that there will be more of the same if you think you have discerned the essence. Ravens are black things! |
| 16823 | Standard induction does not allow for vertical inferences, to some unobservable lower level [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the problems of the extrapolation and instantial models of confirmation is that they do not cover vertical inferences, where we infer from what we observe to something at a different level that is often unobservable. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This is my preferred essentialist view of induction, that we don't just infer that future swans will be white, but also that whiteness is built into the biology of swans. There seems to be predictive induction and explanatory induction. |
| 16800 | An inductive inference is underdetermined, by definition [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If an inference is inductive, then by definition it is underdetermined by the evidence and the rules of deduction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Underd') |
| 16858 | We can argue to support our beliefs, so induction will support induction, for believers in induction [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing illegitimate about giving arguments for beliefs one already holds. …So inductive justification of induction, while impotent against the skeptic, is legitimate for those who already rely on induction. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 11 'Circularity') | |
| A reaction: Not so fast! The first sentence is generally right, but if the 'beliefs one already holds' are beliefs about methods of argument, that is a different case. Compare 'this book is the word of God, because it says so in the book'. Can logic prove logic? |
| 16832 | If something in ravens makes them black, it may be essential (definitive of ravens) [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are considering that there is something in ravens, a gene perhaps, that makes them black, and this cause is part of the essence of ravens. Birds lacking this cause could not interbreed with ravens. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: At last, the essentialist approach to induction! Of course, it is tricky to decide a priori whether there could be albino ravens. It only takes one white (interbreeding) raven to ruin a nice essentialist story. Individuals matter. |
| 16836 | My shoes are not white because they lack some black essence of ravens [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The reason my shoe is white is not that it lacks some feature essential to ravens that makes them black. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'The Method') | |
| A reaction: Good, but not totally true. If my shoes were made to grow from genes, and then had some raven spliced into them, we might manage it. That is an explanation, but a long way from the best one. Enquiry is explanations, not deductions. |
| 16831 | A theory may explain the blackness of a raven, but say nothing about the whiteness of shoes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations help with the raven paradox since, while the raven hypothesis may provide an explanation for the blackness of a particular raven, neither the original hypothesis nor its contrastive explanation explain why the shoe is white. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: For me, the examination of ravens is a search for the essence of ravenhood, which is why non-ravens don't help. Of course, if you eliminate all culprits except one, you have your culprit, but will your evidence stand up in court? |
| 16833 | We can't turn non-black non-ravens into ravens, to test the theory [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We cannot transform a non-black non-raven into a raven to see whether we get a simultaneous transformation from non-black to black, in the way we can transform a flame without sodium into a flame with sodium. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: A white shoe would be an example of a non-black non-raven. People mesmerised by the raven paradox are too concerned with investigation being a 'logical' process. Lipton makes a nice point. We need to know the nature of ravens. |
| 16834 | To pick a suitable contrast to ravens, we need a hypothesis about their genes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Without something like a hypothesis about the genes of ravens, we simply do not know what would count as a relevantly similar bird for comparison. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 06 'Unsuitable') | |
| A reaction: Lipton is endorsing the view that explanation should be 'contrastive', as well as aiming to discover the inner nature of ravens. He makes a good case for the contrastive approach. |
| 16802 | Bayes seems to rule out prior evidence, since that has a probability of one [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Old evidence seems to provide some confirmation, but Bayesianism does not allow for this, since old evidence will have a prior probability of one, and so have no effect on the posterior probability of the hypothesis. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') |
| 16803 | Bayes is too liberal, since any logical consequence of a hypothesis confirms it [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Since the Bayesian account says a hypothesis is confirmed by any of its logical consequences …it seems to inherit the over-permissiveness of the hypothetico-deductive model. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: This sounds like Hempel's Raven Paradox, where the probability of some logical consequences seems impossible to assess. |
| 16801 | A hypothesis is confirmed if an unlikely prediction comes true [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In English, Bayes's Theorem says that there is a high confirmation when your hypothesis entails an unlikely prediction that turns out to be correct - a very plausible claim. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 01 'Descr') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the simple point is that a likely prediction could have been caused by many things, but an unlikely prediction will probably only be caused by that thing. |
| 16837 | Bayes involves 'prior' probabilities, 'likelihood', 'posterior' probability, and 'conditionalising' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In p(H|E) = p(E|H)p(H)/p(E), the left side is the 'posterior' probability of H given E, p(E|H) is the 'likelihood' of E given H, and the others are the 'priors' of H and E. Moving from right to left is known as 'conditionalization'. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') |
| 16839 | Explanation may be an important part of implementing Bayes's Theorem [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations may play an important role in the actual mechanisms by which inquirers 'realize' Bayesian reasoning. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's strategy for making peace between IBE and Bayesians. Explanations give likeliness. The background question for Bayesians always seems to be how the initial probabilities are assigned. Pure logic won't do that job. |
| 16850 | Explanation may describe induction, but may not show how it justifies, or leads to truth [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanation is a partial answer to the descriptive problem of induction, …but the justificatory problem is recalcitrant, since it may seem particularly implausible that explanatory considerations should be a reliable guide to truth. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: His claim that explanation is a guide to inference is intended to bridge the gap. One might say that a good explanation has to be true, so just make sure your explanation is 'good', according to a few criteria. |
| 16807 | An explanation gives the reason the phenomenon occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the reason model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is to give a reason to believe that the phenomenon occurs. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Hempel 1965] Put like that, it doesn't sound very promising. Personally I believe things occur if my wife tells me they do, because I trust her. Lipton says knowing that it occurs is not understanding why it occurs. |
| 16808 | An explanation is what makes the unfamiliar familiar to us [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: On the 'familiarity' model of explanation, unfamiliar phenomena call for explanation, and good explanations somehow make them familiar. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: Lipton notes that his encourages explanation by analogy, but that may not add to understanding. A better version is that an explanation makes a phenomenon less surprising (but that sounds rather relative and subjective). |
| 16806 | An explanation is what is added to knowledge to yield understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The question about explanation can be put this way: What has to be added to knowledge to yield understanding? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Underst') | |
| A reaction: In the spirit of Aristotle, I take 'understanding' to be the end of all enquiry, even if it's rather open-ended, relative and vague. Presumably there are lots of true explanations which don't deliver understanding, because baffling ingredients are cited. |
| 16822 | Seaching for explanations is a good way to discover the structure of the world [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: One of the points of our obsessive search for explanations is that this is a peculiarly effective way of discovering the structure of the world. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: This remark is a nice corrective to the sceptical view that explanations are entirely subjective, pragmatic, and even conventional. Whether this means that there are 'real' and 'objective' explanations is another matter. |
| 16816 | In 'contrastive' explanation there is a fact and a foil - why that fact, rather than this foil? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: In a 'contrastive' explanation what gets explained is not 'Why this?', but 'Why this rather than that?'. There is a fact and a foil, and one fact may have several foils. Why do leaves turn yellow in November rather than in January? | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: Lipton really likes this, and builds his story around it. Maybe, but it looks to me like an easier step towards a proper explanation. The foils are infinite. Why turn yellow rather than radioactive, insincere, divisible by three, or expensive? |
| 16826 | With too many causes, find a suitable 'foil' for contrast, and the field narrows right down [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The class of possible causes is often too big, …but if we are lucky or clever enough to find or produce a contrast where fact and foil have similar histories, most potential explanations are immediately 'cancelled out', and we have a research programme. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'A case') | |
| A reaction: He has a nice example of a triumph in 19th century German epidemiology. Once you get a good hypothesis, you can set up comparisons, based on a possible fact and a good foil. Genius is spotting hypothesis and foil. Nice. |
| 16811 | An explanation unifies a phenomenon with our account of other phenomena [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'unification' model of explanation, we come to understand a phenomenon when we see how it fit together with other phenomena into unified whole. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Kitcher 1989] This works quite well for a lot of explanation, but a revolutionary explanation might involve a completely new theory. Lipton says it is rather linguistic, and has no room for a regress of causes, or for singular explanations. |
| 16810 | Deduction explanation is too easy; any law at all will imply the facts - together with the facts! [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Deduction models of explanation make it far too easy to explain. You can explain that planets move in an ellipse from the conjunction of the fact that they do, together with any law you please, say a law in economics. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') |
| 16829 | We reject deductive explanations if they don't explain, not if the deduction is bad [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The hypothetico-deductive model does not account for the negative impact of explanatory failure. We reject hypotheses because they fail to explain contrasts, not because they are logically incompatible with them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: The general move in modern accounts of investigation is away from an excessive emphasis on logic that used to be favoured. The underpinning of this is that science concerns mechanisms more than equations. |
| 16809 | Good explanations may involve no laws and no deductions [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Many ordinary explanations include no laws and allow no deduction, yet are not incomplete or mere sketches. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: The simplest sort of explanation simply shows the underlying cause. |
| 16812 | An explanation shows why it was necessary that the effect occurred [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'necessity' model of explanation, an explanation shows that the phenomenon in question had to occur. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 02 'Reason') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Glymour 1980] Lipton objects that the sort of necessity involved is too uncertain, can't account for the 'why-regress', and doesn't fit everyday explanation, like why we abandoned the football match. |
| 16846 | A cause may not be an explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: I take it that we may think about causes without thinking especially about explanations, and so we might judge likeliest cause without considering loveliest explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') |
| 16813 | To explain is to give either the causal history, or the causal mechanism [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to the causal model of explanation, to explain a phenomenon is simply to give information about its causal history, or, where the phenomenon is itself a causal regularity, to give information about the mechanism linking cause and effect. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Lewis's 1986 paper] Simply citing causal regularity seems to me to explain nothing. It happened because it always happens. Mechanism, on the other hand, is just what we are after. |
| 16815 | Mathematical and philosophical explanations are not causal [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical explanations are never causal, and philosophical explanations seldom are. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 03 'Fact') | |
| A reaction: There may still be a 'direction' of explanation in mathematics, as when the nature of the triangle explains the Pythagoras Theorem, but the theorem may not give you the basic nature of triangles. Lipton suggests 'determination' for 'causation'. |
| 16849 | Explanations may be easier to find than causes [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: It is often easier to say what a factor would explain than it is to say what it would cause. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Presumably the presence of some factor might explain something, but the factor itself might have mysterious causal powers. A catalyst, for example. We don't need to understand the factor that explains. |
| 16848 | Causal inferences are clearest when we can manipulate things [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Our most secure basis for causal inference is manipulation, as when flicking the switch causes the light to go on. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Correct, but Woodward elevates this into an entire theory of causation, which does not convince me. |
| 16842 | We want to know not just the cause, but how the cause operated [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We understand a phenomenon better when we know not just what caused it, but how the cause operated. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'the guiding') | |
| A reaction: This is the key point behind the desire for 'mechanism' in explanation. It strikes me as undeniable. |
| 16840 | To maximise probability, don't go beyond your data [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: If all we wanted was to maximise probability, we would never venture beyond our data. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'friends') |
| 16824 | Is Inference to the Best Explanation nothing more than inferring the likeliest cause? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: A suspicion is that Inference to the Best Explanation is nothing more than Inference to the Likeliest Cause in fancy dress, and so fails to account for the symptoms of likeliness. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Attractions') | |
| A reaction: In a lot of cases the cause is the explanation. An explanation might be the absence of a cause (as in 'you forgot to switch it on'). Lipton's 'lovely' explanations go further, and reveal a network of causes. |
| 16817 | Best Explanation as a guide to inference is preferable to best standard explanations [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The core idea of Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. …Inserting one of the standard models of explanation yields disappointing results, because of their backward state. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Inferences tend to come one at a time, but I see best explanations as the formation of coherent pictures. The tricky bit is when to decide the coherence makes it acceptable. Lipton has that problem too, with his inferences. 'Working explanations'. |
| 16818 | The 'likeliest' explanation is the best supported; the 'loveliest' gives the most understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between the explanation best supported by the evidence, and the explanation that would provide the most understanding: in short, between the 'likeliest' and the 'loveliest' explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: A very nice, very real and very illuminating distinction. Presumably truth must play an important role in both likelihood and loveliness. |
| 16819 | IBE is inferring that the best potential explanation is the actual explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: According to Inference to the Best Explanation we do not infer the best actual explanation; rather we infer that the best of the available potential explanations is an actual explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: Clearly to say that you should just accept the best available explanation is asking for trouble, if all the available explanations are absurd. But what are the criteria for saying the best one is the actual one? |
| 16820 | Finding the 'loveliest' potential explanation links truth to understanding [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We should considere Inference to the Loveliest Potential Explanation, …which links the search for truth and the search for understanding in a fundamental way. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') |
| 16828 | IBE is not passive treatment of data, but involves feedback between theory and data search [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The slogan 'Inference to the Best Explanation' may bring to mind an excessively passive picture of scientific enquiry, …but there is the feedback between hypothesis formation and data acquisition that characterises actual enquiry. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 05 'Explanation') | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it should be renamed 'Search for the Best Explanation'. |
| 16844 | A contrasting difference is the cause if it offers the best explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: We are to infer that a difference marks a cause just in case the difference would provide the best explanation of the contrast. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'Improved') | |
| A reaction: Lipton's offers this as his distinctive contribution to Mill's methods of enquiry. His point is that we draw inferences for explanatory reasons. He rests on Mill, and on contrastive explanation. It sounds rightish, but a bit optimistic. |
| 16853 | We select possible explanations for explanatory reasons, as well as choosing among them [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Explanatory considerations can play a role in the generation of potential explanations as well as in the subsequent selection from among them. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'The two-stage') | |
| A reaction: Lipton offers this to meet an obvious objection to Inference to the Best Explanation - that compiling the possible explanations seems to need guidance. Seems a good reply. |
| 16821 | Must we only have one explanation, and must all the data be made relevant? [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Two problems for IBE are that only one explanation can be inferred from any set of data, and that the only data that are relevant to a hypothesis are data the hypothesis explains. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 04 'Spelling') | |
| A reaction: I don't see why the theory prohibits a tie for what is 'best', given that you don't have to commit. The second one is partly to do with what observers should do about anomalies, and it is sometimes right to ignore them. |
| 16838 | Bayesians say best explanations build up an incoherent overall position [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Bayesians object to inference to the best explanation, because someone who favoured powerful ('lovely') explanations would end up with an incoherent distribution of states of belief. They would be persuaded by loss-making wagers (a 'dutch book'). | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 07 'The Bayesian') | |
| A reaction: [compressed; he cites Van Fraassen 1989 Ch.7] Lipton's Ch. 7 tries to address this issue. |
| 16855 | The best theory is boring: compare 'all planets move elliptically' with 'most of them do' [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The best theory is almost always boring. …The claim that all planets move in ellipses is interesting, and the claim that some do not is not interesting. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Is the best') | |
| A reaction: This applies to any extraction of a universal 'law' by induction. The best theory just affirms what has been observed. How could generalising about what you haven't observed be 'better'? Answer: because it goes via the essence. |
| 16852 | Best explanation can't be a guide to truth, because the truth must precede explanation [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: Inference to the best explanation cannot be epistemically effective, since an actual explanation must be true, so one would have to know the truth before one could infer an explanation. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 09 'Voltaire's') | |
| A reaction: Lipton rests on 'contrastive' explanation, so that the one that explains more is more likely to be true. If true, it explains. That seems to me correct, even though it could occasionally go horribly wrong. Approach explanation cautiously. |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: I can only answer the question 'What am I to do?' if I can answer the prior question 'Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?'. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], p.201), quoted by Michael J. Sandel - Justice: What's the right thing to do? 09 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is a great champion of the narrative view of the Self. Does this mean that if you had total amnesia, but retained other faculties, you could make no decisions? Can you start a new story whenever you like? |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: AI machines have four types of unpredictability: they can't predict radical innovation or future maths proofs; they couldn't predict the outcome of their own decisions; their relations with other computers would be a game-theory tangle; and power failure. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: This isn't an assertion that they lack 'free will', just a very accurate observation of how the super new machines would face exactly the same problems that we ourselves face. |
| 10527 | An abstraction principle should not 'inflate', producing more abstractions than objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If an abstraction principle is going to be acceptable, then it should not 'inflate', i.e. it should not result in there being more abstracts than there are objects. By this mark Hume's Principle will be acceptable, but Frege's Law V will not. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Precis of 'Limits of Abstraction' [2005], p.307) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be motivated by my own intuition that abstract concepts had better be rooted in the world, or they are not worth the paper they are written on. The underlying idea this sort of abstraction is that it is 'shared' between objects. |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The good life for man is the life spent in seeking for the good life for man. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: This contains a self-evident paradox - that success would be failure. The proposal suits philosophers more than it would suit the folk. Less seeking and more getting on with it seems good, if the activity is a 'flourishing' one. |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: We possess simulacra of morality, we continue to use many of the key expressions. But we have - very largely, if not entirely - lost our comprehension, both theoretical and practical, of morality. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 1) | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre's famous (or notorious) assault on modern ethics. We obviously can't prove him wrong by spouting moral talk. Are we actually more wicked than our ancestors? There is, I think, a relativism problem in the 20th centurty, but that is different. |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are good reasons for distinguishing between expressions of personal preference and evaluative expressions, as the first depend on who utters them to whom, while the second are not dependent for reason-giving force on the context of utterance. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: The sceptics will simply say that in the second type of expression the speaker tries to adopt a tone of impersonal authority, but it is merely an unjustified attempt to elevate personal preferences. "Blue just IS the best colour". |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moral judgements are linguistic survivals from the practices of classical theism which have lost the context provided by these practices. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: He is sort of right. Richard Taylor is less dramatic and more plausible on this (Ideas 5065, 5066, 5077). Big claims about 'duty' have become rather hollow, but the rights and wrongs of (e.g.) mistreating children don't seem to need theism. |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: A central thesis of this book is that the breakdown of the project (of 1630 to 1850) of an independent rational justification of morality provided the historical background against which the predicaments of our own culture can become intelligible. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 4) | |
| A reaction: Possibly the most important question of our times is whether the Enlightenment failed. MacIntyre's claim is followed by an appeal for a return to Aristotelian/Thomist virtues. Continentals seem to have responded by sliding into relativism. |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: The introduction of the word 'intuition' by a moral philosopher is always a signal that something has gone badly wrong with an argument. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: For the alternative view, see Kripke (Idea 4948). If Kripke is right about logic, I don't see why the same view should have some force in morality. At the bottom of all morality is an intuition that life is worth the struggle. How do you prove that? |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: It is only when man is thought of as an individual prior to and apart from all roles that 'man' ceases to be a functional concept. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 5) | |
| A reaction: This is the one key idea at the heart of the revival of virtue ethics in modern times. It pinpoints what may be the single biggest disaster in intellectual history - the isolation of the individual. Yet it led to freedom, rights, and lots of good things. |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: In reply to the question of what kinds of approval are expressed by the feelings or attitudes of moral judgments, every version of emotivism either remains silent, or becomes viciously circular by identifying it as moral approval. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be an underlying assumption that moral judgements are sharply separated from other judgements, of which I am not convinced. I approve of creating a beautiful mural for an old folks home free of charge, but it must be beautiful. |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Expression of feeling is not a function of the meaning of sentences, but of their use, as when a teacher shouts at a pupil "7 x 7 = 49!", where the expression of feeling or attitude has nothing whatsoever to do with its meaning. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This point is what underlies the Frege-Geach problem for emotivism, and is a very telling point. Apart from in metaethics, no one has ever put forward a theory of meaning that says it is just emotion. ...Unless it concerns speakers' intentions? |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Analytical moral philosophers resist emotivism because moral reasoning does occur, but there can be logical linkages between various moral judgements of a kind that emotivism could not allow for ('therefore' and 'if...then' express no moral feelings). | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the 'Frege-Geach Problem', nicely expressed, and is the key reason why emotivism seems unacceptable - it is a theory about language, but it just doesn't explain moral discourse sufficiently. |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: To a large degree people now think, talk and act as if emotivism was true, no matter what their avowed theoretical standpoint may be. Emotivism has become embodied in our culture. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that it is moderately educated people who have swallowed emotivism, in the same way that they have swallowed relativism; it provides an excuse for neglectly the pursuit of beauty, goodness and truth, in favour of pleasure. |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we need to attend to the virtues first in the first place in order to understand the function and authority of rules. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 9) | |
| A reaction: I think MacIntyre's project is exactly right. Morality is about how humans should live their lives. A bunch of robots could implement a set of moral rules, or make contracts, or maximise one another's benefits. The idea of a human community comes first. |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| Full Idea: MacIntyre argues that the concept of virtue is secondary to that of a role-figure, where the latter is always defined by some particular tradition and culture. | |
| From: report of Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981]) by Daniel Statman - Introduction to Virtue Ethics §3 | |
| A reaction: MacIntyre is much more of a relativist than Aristotle. There must be some attempt to deal with the problem of a rotten culture which throws up a corrupt role-model. We need a concept of a good culture and of individual flourishing. |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 3) | |
| A reaction: This may be presenting character in an excessively moral way. Being lively, for example, is a very distinctive trait of character, but hardly moral. This tells us why philosophers are interested in character, but not why other people are. |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing to judgements of virtue and vice except the expression of feelings of approval and disapproval, there can be no criteria external to those feelings by appeal to which we may pass judgement upon them. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch.16) | |
| A reaction: The idea that there can be right and wrong feelings may be the key idea in virtue theory. See Idea 5217. A good person would be ashamed to have a bad feeling. Some emotional responses are intrinsically wicked, apart from actions. |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Moore takes it that to call an action right is simply to say that of the available alternative actions it is the one which does or did as a matter of fact produce the most good. Moore is thus a utilitarian. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 2) | |
| A reaction: Far be it from me to disagree with MacIntyre on this, but I would have thought that this made him a consequentialist, rather than a utilitarian. Moore doesn't remotely think that pure pleasure or happiness is the good. He's closer to Rashdall (Idea 6673). |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is one with belief in witches and in unicorns. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 6) | |
| A reaction: His point is that the notion of 'rights' only arises out of a community. However, while you might criticise an individual for absurdly asserting all sorts of dubious rights, no one could criticise them if they asserted the right to defend their own life. |
| 16847 | Counterfactual causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient [Lipton] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual conception of causation makes causes necessary but not sufficient conditions for their effects. | |
| From: Peter Lipton (Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) [2004], 08 'From cause') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Then causes would be necessary, but would not necessitate. So what makes a cause sufficient? |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Omniscience excludes the making of decisions. If God knows everything that will occur, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions. | |
| From: Alasdair MacIntyre (After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory [1981], Ch. 8) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Aquinas on this] I find it very difficult to see how anyone could read the Bible (see Idea 8008) while keeping this point continually in mind, without seeing the whole book as a piece of blatant anthropomorphism. |