10 ideas
| 18091 | Infinitesimals are ghosts of departed quantities [Berkeley] |
| Full Idea: The infinitesimals are the ghosts of departed quantities. | |
| From: George Berkeley (The Analyst [1734]), quoted by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.3 | |
| A reaction: [A famous phrase, but as yet no context for it] |
| 9216 | Each area of enquiry, and its source, has its own distinctive type of necessity [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The three sources of necessity - the identity of things, the natural order, and the normative order - have their own peculiar forms of necessity. The three main areas of human enquiry - metaphysics, science and ethics - each has its own necessity. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6) | |
| A reaction: I would treat necessity in ethics with caution, if it is not reducible to natural or metaphysical necessity. Fine's proposal is interesting, but I did not find it convincing, especially in its view that metaphysical necessity doesn't intrude into nature. |
| 7301 | The phenomenalist says that to be is to be perceivable [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: Where the idealist says that to be (i.e. to exist) is to be perceived, the phenomenalist says that to be is to be perceivable. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice phenomenalist slogan to add to Mill's well known one (Idea 3583). Expressed in this form, it looks false to me. What about neutrinoes? They weren't at all perceivable until recently. Maybe some physical stuff can never be perceived. |
| 7302 | Linguistic phenomenalism says we can eliminate talk of physical objects [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: Linguistic phenomenalism argues that it is possible to remove all talk of physical objects from our speech with no loss of meaning. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I find this proposal unappealing. My basic objection is that I cannot understand why anyone would refuse to even contemplate the question of WHY I am having a given group of consistent experiences, of (say) a table kind. |
| 7303 | If we lack enough sense-data, are we to say that parts of reality are 'indeterminate'? [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: The problem with taking sense-data as basic is that some data can appear indeterminate. If we can't discern the colour of someone's eyes, or the number of sides of a complex figure, are we to say that there is no fact about those things? | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I like that. How many electrons are there in the sun? Such things cannot just be reduced to talk of sense-data, as there is obviously a vast gap between the data and the facts. As usual, ontology and epistemology must be kept separate. |
| 7299 | Primary qualities can be described mathematically, unlike secondary qualities [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: All the primary qualities lend themselves readily to mathematical or geometric description. ...but it seems that secondary qualities are less amenable to being represented mathematically. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: As a believer in the primary/secondary distinction, I welcome this point. This is either evidence for the external reality of primary qualities, or an interesting observation about maths. Do we make the primary/secondary distinction because we do maths? |
| 7300 | An object cannot remain an object without its primary qualities [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: An object cannot lack shape, size, position or motion and remain an object. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This points towards the essentialist view (see Idea 5453). This does raise the question of whether an object could lose its colour with impugnity, or the quality of sound that it makes when struck. |
| 7297 | My justifications might be very coherent, but totally unconnected to the world [Cardinal/Hayward/Jones] |
| Full Idea: My beliefs could be well justified in coherentist terms, while not accurately representing the world, and my system of beliefs could be completely free-floating. | |
| From: Cardinal/Hayward/Jones (Epistemology [2004], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This nicely encapsulates to correspondence objection to coherence theory. One thing missing from the coherence account is that beliefs aren't chosen for their coherence, but are mostly unthinkingly triggered by experiences. |
| 9214 | Unsupported testimony may still be believable [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: I may have good reason to believe some testimony, for example, even though the person providing the testimony has no good reason for saying what he does. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 5) | |
| A reaction: Thus small children, madmen and dreamers may occasionally get things right without realising it. I take testimony to be merely one more batch of evidence which has to be assessed in building the most coherent picture possible. |
| 9215 | Causation is easier to disrupt than logic, so metaphysics is part of nature, not vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It would be harder to break P-and-Q implying P than the connection between cause and effect. This difference in strictness means it is more plausible that natural necessities include metaphysical necessities, than vice versa. | |
| From: Kit Fine (The Varieties of Necessity [2002], 6) | |
| A reaction: I cannot see any a priori grounds for the claim that causation is more easily disrupted than logic. It seems to be based on the strategy of inferring possibilities from what can be imagined, which seems to me to lead to wild misunderstandings. |