11 ideas
| 6402 | In 1927, Russell analysed force and matter in terms of events [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: In his 'Analysis of Matter' (1927), Russell sought to analyse the chief concepts of physics, such as force and matter, in terms of events. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: My immediate reaction is that this is not very promising, simply because we can always ask why a particular event occurred, and this seems to point to a deeper level in the analysis. See Idea 4779, for example. |
| 14732 | A perceived physical object is events grouped around a centre [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The physical object, as inferred from perception, is a group of events arranged about a centre. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927], 23) | |
| A reaction: At least I like the active aspect of this definition. You then have to explain what an event is, without mentioning objects. You'd better no mention properties either, since they will probably depend on the dreaded objects. |
| 14733 | An object produces the same percepts with or without a substance, so that is irrelevant to science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There may be a substance at the centre of an object, but is no reason to think so, since the group of events making up the object will produce exactly the same percepts; so the substance, if there is one, is an abstract possibility irrelevant to science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927], 23) | |
| A reaction: All empiricists (as Russell is in this passage) seem to neglect inference to the best explanation. Things can be indirectly testable, and I would say that there are genuine general entities which are too close to abstraction to ever be testable. |
| 490 | Everything happens by reason and necessity [Leucippus] |
| Full Idea: Nothing happens at random; everything happens out of reason and by necessity. | |
| From: Leucippus (fragments/reports [c.435 BCE], B002), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 14919 | Empiricists deny what is unobservable, and reject objective modality [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: To be an empiricist is to withhold belief in anything that goes beyond the actual, observable phenomena, and to recognise no objective modality in nature. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980], p.202), quoted by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: To only believe in what is actually observable strikes me as ridiculous. It might be, though, that we observe modality, in observing dispositions. If you pull back a bowstring, you feel the possibilities. |
| 6783 | To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but to believe it empirically adequate [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: To 'accept' a theory is not to believe it, but is instead to believe it to be empirically adequate. | |
| From: report of Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The second half of this doesn't avoid the word 'belief'. Nevertheless the suggestion is that we never believe (i.e. commit to truth) ever again. So you avoid an on-coming bus because the threat appears to be 'empirically adequate'. Hm. |
| 6418 | Russell rejected phenomenalism because it couldn't account for causal relations [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Russell reverted to realism when he recognised that the notion of causality is problematic for phenomenalism; things in the world seem to affect one another causally in ways that are difficult to account for properly by mere reports of sense-experiences. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is very interesting, and doesn't seem to have been enough to make A.J. Ayer eschew phenomenalism (Idea 5170). Once your metaphysics becomes realist (like Russell), your account of perception and objects has to change too. |
| 14917 | To accept a scientific theory, we only need to believe that it is empirically adequate [Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empiricially adequate. | |
| From: Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980], p.12), quoted by J Ladyman / D Ross - Every Thing Must Go 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: This won't tell us what to do if there is a tie between two theories, and we will want to know the criteria for 'adequate'. Presumably there are theories which are empirically quite good, but not yet acceptable. Theories commit beyond experience. |
| 6784 | Why should the true explanation be one of the few we have actually thought of? [Fraassen, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Van Fraassen asks why we should think that the actual explanation of the evidence should be found among the theories we are considering, when there must be an infinity of theories which are also potential explanations of the evidence? | |
| From: report of Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: This has become one of the leading modern anti-realist arguments. We must introduce an element of faith here; presumably evolution makes us experts on immediate puzzles, competent on intermediate ones, and hopeful on remote ones. |
| 13066 | An explanation is just descriptive information answering a particular question [Fraassen, by Salmon] |
| Full Idea: On van Fraassen's theory an explanation is simply an answer to a why-question; it is nothing other than descriptive information that, in a given context, answers a particular type of question. | |
| From: report of Bas C. van Fraassen (The Scientific Image [1980]) by Wesley Salmon - Four Decades of Scientific Explanation 4.3 | |
| A reaction: Presumably we would need some sort of criterion for a 'good' explanation, and it seems to me that a very good explanation might be given which was nevertheless beyond the grasp of the questioner. |
| 21706 | At first matter is basic and known by sense-data; later Russell says matter is constructed [Russell, by Linsky,B] |
| Full Idea: In the beginning Russell's ontology included matter as basic, to be known, however, only by inference from sense-data. By the end he wanted to 'contruct' matter from sense-data. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927]) by Bernard Linsky - Russell's Metaphysical Logic 1 | |
| A reaction: [see also p.133] Russell always seems to have been a robust realist about the external world, but the later view seems a lot less realist than the earlier view. |