84 ideas
| 18730 | The history of philosophy only matters if the subject is a choice between rival theories [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If philosophy were a matter of choice between rival theories, then it would be sound to teach it historically. But if it is not, then it is a fault to teach it historically, because it is quite unnecessary; we can tackle the subject direct. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V A) | |
| A reaction: Wittgenstein was a bit notorious for not knowing the history of the subject terribly well, and this explains why. Presumably our tackling the subject direct will not have the dreadful consequence of producing yet another theory. |
| 18704 | Philosophy tries to be rid of certain intellectual puzzles, irrelevant to daily life [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is the attempt to be rid of a particular kind of puzzlement. This 'philosophical' puzzlement is one of the intellect and not of instinct. Philosophical puzzles are irrelevant to our every-day life. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.1) | |
| A reaction: All enquiry begins with puzzles, and they are cured by explanations, which result in understanding. In that sense he is right. I entirely disagree that the puzzles are irrelevant to daily life. |
| 18710 | Philosophers express puzzlement, but don't clearly state the puzzle [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers as 'Why?' and 'What?' without knowing clearly what their questions are. They are expressing a feeling of mental uneasiness. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.1) | |
| A reaction: He suggests it is childish to express puzzlement, instead of asking for precise information. How odd. All enquiries start with vague puzzlement, which gradually comes into focus, or else is abandoned. |
| 18732 | We don't need a theory of truth, because we use the word perfectly well [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is nonsense to try to find a theory of truth, because we can see that in everyday life we use the word quite clearly and definitely in various different senses. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
| A reaction: This was a year before Tarski published his famous theory of truth for formal languages. Prior to that, most philosophers were giving up on truth. Would he say the same about 'gravity' or 'inflation'? |
| 18714 | We already know what we want to know, and analysis gives us no new facts [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In philosophy we know already all that we want to know; philosophical analysis does not give us any new facts. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B V.1) |
| 18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: 'Blue' and 'brown' are of the same kind, for the substitution of one for the other, though it may falsify the proposition, does not make nonsense of it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
| A reaction: He chooses an easy example, because they are determinates of the determinable 'coloured'. What if I say 'the sky is blue', and then substitute 'frightening' for 'blue'? |
| 18735 | Talking nonsense is not following the rules [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Talking nonsense is not following the rules. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C X) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't seem to distinguish between syntax and semantics, and makes it sound as if all nonsense is syntactic, which it isn't. |
| 18719 | Grammar says that saying 'sound is red' is not false, but nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If grammar says that you cannot say that a sound is red, it means not that it is false to say so but that it is nonsense - i.e. not a language at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B IX.6) | |
| A reaction: I am baffled as to why he thinks 'grammar' is what prohibits such a statement. Surely the world, the nature of sound and colour, is what makes the application of the predicate wrong. Sounds aren't coloured, so they can't be red. False, not nonsense. |
| 18731 | There is no theory of truth, because it isn't a concept [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: It is wrong to say that there is any one theory of truth, for truth is not a concept. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V B) | |
| A reaction: This makes you wonder how he understood the word 'concept'. In most modern discussions truth seems to be a concept, and in Frege it can be an unsaturated predicate which is satisfied by sentences or thoughts. |
| 18707 | All thought has the logical form of reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Thought must have the logical form of reality if it is to be thought at all. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A V.1) | |
| A reaction: This links nicely the idea that true thoughts somehow share the structure of what they refer to, with the idea of logical form in logic. But maybe logical form is a fiction we offer in order to obtain a spurious map of reality. |
| 18724 | In logic nothing is hidden [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: In logic nothing is hidden. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.3) | |
| A reaction: If so, then the essence of logic must be there for all to see. The rules of natural deduction are a good shot at showing this. |
| 18709 | Laws of logic are like laws of chess - if you change them, it's just a different game [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: I might as well question the laws of logic as the laws of chess. If I change the rules it is a different game and there is an end of it. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A XI.3) | |
| A reaction: No, that isn't the end of it, because there are meta-criteria for preferring one game to another. Why don't we just give up classical logic? It would be such fun to have a wild wacky logic. We can start with 'tonk'. |
| 18736 | Contradiction is between two rules, not between rule and reality [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Contradiction is between one rule and another, not between rule and reality. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
| A reaction: If I say 'he is sitting' and 'he is standing', it seems to be reality which produces the contradiction. What 'rule' could possibly do it? The rule which says sitting and standing are incompatible? But what makes that so? |
| 18723 | We may correctly use 'not' without making the rule explicit [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Correct use does not imply the ability to make the rules explicit. Understanding 'not' is like understanding a move in chess. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XII.1) |
| 18718 | Saying 'and' has meaning is just saying it works in a sentence [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: When we say that the word 'and' has meaning what we mean is that it works in a sentence and is not just a flourish. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII.2) |
| 18727 | A person's name doesn't mean their body; bodies don't sit down, and their existence can be denied [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of the words 'Professor Moore' is not a certain human body, because we do not say that the meaning sits on the sofa, and the words occur in the proposition 'Professor Moore does not exist'. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B Easter) | |
| A reaction: Brilliant. Love it. Kripke ending up denying the existence of 'meanings'. |
| 18738 | We don't get 'nearer' to something by adding decimals to 1.1412... (root-2) [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: We say we get nearer to root-2 by adding further figures after the decimal point: 1.1412.... This suggests there is something we can get nearer to, but the analogy is a false one. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], Notes) |
| 18708 | Infinity is not a number, so doesn't say how many; it is the property of a law [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: 'Infinite' is not an answer to the question 'How many?', since the infinite is not a number. ...Infinity is the property of a law, not of an extension. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A VII.2) |
| 14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A process has a unity to it that comes from being the expression of a collection of causal powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 1) | |
| A reaction: I would be happier with this if I had a clear notion of what counts as a 'collection' of causal powers. We are back with the Leibnizian anguish over what constitutes a 'unity'. Processes need more attention, I'm thinking. |
| 14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Events are to be understood essentially as changes, rather than as property exemplifications. A particular exemplifying a property (as in Kim 1973 and Lewis 1986) would be better understood as a state of affairs. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this. I've never been able to make sense of events as such static relations. It resembles the dubious Russellian view of motion as just being at one place and then at another. |
| 18737 | There are no positive or negative facts; these are just the forms of propositions [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There are no positive or negative facts. 'Positive' and 'negative' refer to the form of propositions, and not to the facts which verify or falsify them. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C XIII) | |
| A reaction: Personally I think if we are going to allow the world to be full of 'facts', then there are negative, conjunctive, disjunctive and hypothetical facts. |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We can say that a phenomenon is 'weakly emergent' when it is unexpected, and 'strongly emergent' when it is not deducible even in principle. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [compression of Chalmers 2006:244] I don't find emergence very interesting, since weak emergence surrounds us all day long, and is the glory of the world, and strong emergence is (I believe) nonsense. |
| 14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars, can all be explained in terms of powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I love powers, but this may be optimistic. I take the concept of causation to be 'more' primitive than powers; how else could you even say what a power is? I presume something must exist to have the power, which gives you particulars. |
| 14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: In respect of explanation the powers view does little better than the laws view. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. Powers are primitive, so they offer no elucidation of nature, but constitute the building blocks for explanations. Essences are, I think, clusters of powers, and the way in which they cluster is where we find the explanations. |
| 14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Powers are not necessarily reducible to forces. ...That new powers can be found when others combine is a regular part of common sense. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: [first bit p.102] Hm. I've always thought of powers as basic components of ontology. This idea implies that a herd of buffalo has a single power to flatten a tented village. An extra buffalo creates a completely new power. An awful lot of vague powers. |
| 14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality can be understood as a sort of selection function - a natural one in this case - and picks out a limited number of outcomes from all the ones that the disposition is for. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.9) | |
| A reaction: Functions should strictly have one output. This sounds wrong. The disposition pushes its powers into the environment, but it is the surrounding contextual powers which do the selecting, in concert. No disposition does any selecting |
| 14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We use the terms 'power' and 'disposition' as equivalent, but some reserve the term 'disposition' for powers that tend to be manifested. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [For the latter they cite Fara 2005] There is some point to the latter distinction, as separating those powers that relate to the actual world from those powers that could never be triggered in actuality. I would say a power produces a disposition. |
| 14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The most obvious inadequacy of the simple conditional account of dispositions is that it fails to accommodate the possibility of prevention. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.10) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Ryle 1949 for the original idea] The point is obviously correct, since the simple analysis assumes that the outcome occurred [∀x(Dx → (Sx → Mx)]. If the outcome was blocked (by finks or antidotes) the disposition would remain. |
| 14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There have been attempts to reduce dispositionality to normativity (by Lowe 1989) and to intentionality (by Molnar 1998). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: I don't really believe in something called 'normativity', and I think it is better to explain intentionality in terms of dispositions, rather than Molnar's way round (though intentionality of mind reveals the nature of powers rather well). |
| 18715 | Using 'green' is a commitment to future usage of 'green' [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If I say this is green, I must say that other things are green too. I am committed to a future usage. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VI.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to suggest that the eternal verity of a universal concept is just a convention of stability in a language. |
| 14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If both the statue and the clay fall on someone and crush them to death, we would not say that the death is overdetermined. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: I don't need many reasons to give up the idea that the statue and the clay are two objects, but this will do nicely as one of them. |
| 14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A pandispositionalist has to defend the view that even a property such as sphericity is in reality a cluster of causal powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Is sphericity even a 'property'? I think 'feature' might be the best word for it. 'Quality' is quite good, but is too suggestive of qualia and secondary qualities. 'Mode' is not bad. Things have 'modes of existence' and 'powers'? Powers create modes. |
| 14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Perdurantism tends to go with the view that it is essentially contingent what follows what, because it is no part of the essence of temporal parts that they be arranged in any particular order. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. There is nothing illogical, then, in elderly me intervening between childish me and middle-aged me. Essentialists like me must clearly oppose this view. Elderly me must be preceded and caused by middle-aged me. |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We think dispositionality is the core modality from which the other two standard modal operators draw their sense as being limiting cases on a spectrum. ...This gives a very this-worldly account of possibility and necessity. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm strongly in favour of this-worldly accounts of modal truths, so I like this. They take dispositions to hover somewhere between what is barely possible and what is absolutely necessary. But is modality actually part of the physical world? |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality could be what gives us the idea of there being modality in the first place: that what is might not be, and what is not could be. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: Compare Williamson's suggestion that counterfactual thinking is the source of such things, which is a similar thought. I take it to be exactly correct. |
| 14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when they are understood by scientists to be related in fact by generative mechanisms, whose structures constitute the essential nature of things. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I espouse. It doesn't follow that those mechanisms have necessary existence. Given those mechanisms, they can only behave in that way, because behaving in some way is precisely what they are. |
| 14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Possibility could be just logical possibility (as involving no formal contradictions), or recombinations of all the existing elements (Armstrong), or truth in other concrete worlds (Lewis). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: All wrong, I would say. Well, avoiding contradiction is obviously a sense of 'possible'. Armstrong is wrong. It rules out new 'elements' being possible, and implies impossible combinations of the current ones. As for Lewis... |
| 14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Some truthmaker theorists are truthmaker necessitarians, believing that the way facts in the world make certain propositions true is by necessitating them. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Armstrong 2007:5-6] I don't believe in this sort of proposition (which turns out, on close inspection, to be just another way of referring to 'the facts'). Propositions are our attempts to express facts, so they can't be necessitated. |
| 18726 | For each necessity in the world there is an arbitrary rule of language [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: To a necessity in the world there corresponds an arbitrary rule in language. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIV.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be hardcore logical positivism, making all necessities arbitrary. Compare Quine on the number of planets. |
| 18712 | Understanding is translation, into action or into other symbols [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is really translation, whether into other symbols or into action. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.5) | |
| A reaction: The second part of this sounds like pure pragmatism. To do is to understand? I doubt it. Do animals understand anything? |
| 14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The myth of the fivefold division of the sense needs to be overturned. In the experience of causation the senses of balance and proprioception are more important. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 9.1) | |
| A reaction: Thinking is a sensual experience too, especially in its emotional dimension. David Hume always based his empiricism on 'experience', not on the mere five external senses. |
| 18280 | We live in sense-data, but talk about physical objects [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The world we live in is the world of sense-data, but the world we talk about is the world of physical objects. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], p.82), quoted by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 13 'Verif' | |
| A reaction: I really like that one. Even animals, I surmise, think of objects quite differently from the way they immediately experience them. |
| 18729 | Part of what we mean by stating the facts is the way we tend to experience them [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: There is no need of a theory to reconcile what we know about sense data and what we believe about physical objects, because part of what we mean by saying that a penny is round is that we see it as elliptical in such and such conditions. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C III) | |
| A reaction: This is an interesting and cunning move to bridge the gap between our representations and reallity. We may surmise how a thing really is, but then be surprised by the sense-data we get from it. |
| 18734 | If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: If you remember wrongly, then there must be some other criterion than your remembering. If you admit another test, then your memory itself is not the test. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C VII) | |
| A reaction: If I fear that I am remembering some private solitary event wrongly, there is no other criterion to turn to, so I'm stuck. Sometimes dubious memories are all we have. |
| 14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Smoking disposes towards cancer, and has its way in many instances. The existence of some smokers without cancer, however, does nothing to falsify this dispositional claim. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, falsification by one instance will only work against absolute and universal claims, and nature contains hardly any of those. |
| 14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If there were necessity to be found in causation, then the problem of induction would seem to be dissolved. The future would indeed proceed like the past if it were for all time necessitated what caused what. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.14) | |
| A reaction: My working hypothesis is that the essences of nature necessitate their interactions, and that the problem of induction is solved in that way. We can allow causation to be a process in this action, the transmitter of necessities. Or it could drop out. |
| 14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There is indeed natural uniformity in the negative charge of electrons, but the reason for this is that it is an essential property of being an electron that something be negatively charged. It would not be an electron otherwise. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14570 for the first part of this thought. This doesn't feel right. The behaviour of gravity according to the inverse square law, or General Relativity, seems to be a uniformity that extends beyond the essences of the ingredients. |
| 14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The uniformity of nature principle, if it means absolute regularity, is simply false; not everyone who smokes gets cancer, not all bread nourishes. Nature is not strictly uniform, even if some things tend to be the case. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Something wrong here. The examples are high-level and complex. When someone survives smoking, or bread fails to nourish, we don't infer a disruption of uniform nature, we infer some other uniformity that has intervened. Are there natural kinds? |
| 18721 | Explanation and understanding are the same [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: For us explanation and understanding are the same, understanding being the correlate of explanation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XI.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced that they are 'the same', but they are almost interdependent ideas. Strevens has a nice paper on this. |
| 18720 | Explanation gives understanding by revealing the full multiplicity of the thing [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: An explanation gives understanding, ...but it cannot teach you understanding, it cannot create understanding. It makes further distinctions i.e. it increases multiplicity. When multiplicity is complete, then there is no further misunderstanding. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B X.3) | |
| A reaction: The thought seems to resemble Aristotle's idea of definition as gradual division of the subject. To understand is the dismantle the parts and lay them out before us. Wittgenstein was very interested in explanation at this time. |
| 14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: It is tempting to think that entailment is the only adequate kind of explanation because of the idea that if A does not entail B, it must have fallen short of (fully) explaining it. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes. One might dream of saying 'this, and only this, necessitates what happened', but it is doubtful whether causes necessitate effects. It is a quirky view to think that every car accident is necessitated. Nuclear explosions block most events. |
| 18716 | A machine strikes us as being a rule of movement [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: We are accustomed to look on a machine as the expression of a rule of movement. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VII.2) | |
| A reaction: What a beautiful definition of a machine! I like this because it connects the two halves of my view of the 'essence' of a thing, as derived from Aristotle, as both a causal mechanism and an underlying principle. Cf Turing machines. |
| 14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Knowing the structure that something has does not in itself causally explain that thing's behaviour unless we also know what sorts of behaviour a thing of that structure can cause. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. If you focus on the lowest possible levels of causal explanation, I can see only powers. Whatever you come up with, it had better be something active. Geometry never started any bonfires. |
| 18713 | If an explanation is good, the symbol is used properly in the future [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The criterion of an explanation is whether the symbol explained is used properly in the future. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B II.4) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a pragmatic criterion for the best explanation. It presumably rests on his doctrine that meaning is use, so good explanation is understanding meanings. |
| 14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A problem for strong emergence is that it opens the way for top-down causation if, for instance, our consciousness is causally productive of physical events. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3d) | |
| A reaction: This is what most fans of 'emergent' consciousness would love, presumably because it makes humans really important (nay, godlike!) in the scheme of things. It take it to be based on a hopelessly simplistic view of what is going on around here. |
| 18717 | Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Thought is an activity which we perform by the expression of it, and lasts as long as the expression. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B VIII) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be an outmoded view of thought, which modern cognitive science has undermined, by showing how little of our thinking is actually conscious. |
| 18725 | A proposition draws a line around the facts which agree with it [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: A proposition gives reality a degree of freedom; it draws a line round the facts which agree with it, and distinguishes them from those which do not. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B XIII.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the idea of meaning as the range of truth conditions. Propositions as sets of possible worlds extends this into possible facts which agree with the proposition. Most facts neither agree nor disagree with some proposition. |
| 18728 | The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The meaning of a proposition is the mode of its verification (and two propositions cannot have the same verification). | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C I) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that if two sentences have the same mode of verification, then they must be expressing the same proposition? I guess so. |
| 18705 | Words function only in propositions, like levers in a machine [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Words function only in propositions, like the levers in a machine. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], A I.4) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Consider the word 'tree'. Did you manage to do it? Was it just a noise? |
| 18711 | A proposition is any expression which can be significantly negated [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Any affirmation can be negated: if it has sense to say p it also has sense to say ¬p. ...A proposition therefore is any expression which can be significantly negated. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], B I.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'therefore'. I'm thinking you would have to already grasp the proposition in order to apply his negation test. |
| 299 | What is fine is always difficult [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The proverb says 'Anything fine is difficult'. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 304e) | |
| A reaction: attributed (as usual) to Solon |
| 297 | What is fine is the parent of goodness [Plato] |
| Full Idea: Fineness is the father of goodness. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 297b) |
| 298 | While sex is very pleasant, it should be in secret, as it looks contemptible [Plato] |
| Full Idea: As for sex, everyone agrees that, while it is extremely pleasant, it should be indulged in (if at all) in secret, because it is a highly contemptible sight. | |
| From: Plato (Hippias Major [c.392 BCE], 299a) |
| 14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation by absence should be understood in terms of our explanatory practices rather than as a case of genuine causation. There are indeed no powers at work. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, even if from a human point of view some evil person has deliberately desisted from some life-saving action. It is just allowing other causation to happen. A tricky forensic issue, but not an ontological one. |
| 14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is not always transitive. ...The fire started the sprinkler system and the sprinkler system put the fire out; would we want to say that, by transitivity, the fire caused the fire to be extinguished? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: There wouldn't have been an extinguishing of the fire if there had been no fire. But this is a very nice example, against the Millian view that causation consists of every event prior to the effect. The fire is, though, a precondition. |
| 14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is the passing around of powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. This doesn't feel right. Compare 'causation is the passing around of tennis balls'. Can you explain what a power is without mentioning causation? |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We accept primitivism about causation, for how could there be something even more basic in the world than causation, which might allow us to bring forth a reductive analysis? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], Concl) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this view, and for the same reason. I can't imagine how one could cite any 'categorical' or 'structural' properties, or anything else, without invoking causal phenomena in their characterisation. |
| 14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Rather than depicting causation as between two wholly distinct relata, we argue that it should be seen as a single unfolding process that occurs when a number of mutual manifestation partners meet. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I am in sympathy with this view, and like the notion of 'process' in metaphysics, but I worry about what a 'process' consists of. Does it have ingredients? It can last a long time, so presumably it can have parts. Mere time slices? |
| 14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: When billiard balls collide they deform, and we have a process rather than a momentary collision. Causation is a matter of simultaneity, and simultaneous does not entail instantaneous. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is why they reject the idea that causal relata are abutting events meeting at timeless joints. I think they have got this bit right. It's amazing what a muddle philosophers have got into in just describing what happens in front of their eyes. |
| 14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If causation connects two events, do we need some invisible third element to tie them together? Might there be just two elements so close together that they come as a package deal? Or a single event or process in which one thing turns into another? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Hence you find yourself drawn to 'process' philosophy, but preferably without the mystical crust laid over it by A.N. Whitehead. If we could individuate processes, we could dump all sorts of other stuff from our ontology. |
| 14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: It would be counterintuitive to say that we have the cause only when the sugar cube first comes into contact with the water, and the effect only once the whole sugar cube has dissolved. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: The way we end up thinking about causation is largely dictated by the language we use to describe it. The whole point of philosophy is to scrape away the language and see what is really going on. |
| 14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: To speak of 'the' causal explanation privileges some causal powers, but it is implausible that this has a special metaphysical status. Instead, that status should be understood in epistemic or pragmatic terms. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so, but I see a distinction between actions of powers which only explain that one event (striking the match), and actions of powers which explain a whole family of surrounding events (presence of oxygen). |
| 14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There can be constant conjunction without causation (coincidences) and causation without constant conjunction (smoking causes cancer). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be presented as a knock-down argument, but I think Humeans can reply to both of them. If you look at the wider pattern of coincidence, or the deeper pattern of coincidence, both of these counterexamples seem to fail. |
| 14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causes can - perhaps they usually do - make a difference but not always. In cases where they don't (such as overdetermination, or late pre-emption), the corresponding counterfactual will be false. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: The whole idea that we might be able to give a full account of causation in terms of some sort of logical relationship between possible worlds etc. appals me. We need to label something as 'Scientific Logicism', so that we can attack it. |
| 14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There is an obvious Euthyphro question to be asked: is it true that c caused e because e counterfactually depended on c; or did e counterfactually depend on c precisely because c caused e? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: The idea that causes could depend on a logical relationship of counterfactual dependence strikes me as so bizarre that only a philosopher could think of it. |
| 14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We could argue that there can be counterfactual dependence between events without causation, namely, cases of double prevention (an event preventing what would have prevented the second). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: Since the whole idea of causation as counterfactual dependence strikes me as utterly counterintuitive, I don't really need these arguments, but it is nice to know that they can be found. Lewis devoted reams of discussion to such problems. |
| 14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A natural process can be interfered with, and thus a cause never necessitates its effects. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: There is the simple point that the world could cease to exist at the instant between cause and effect. But Mumford and Anjum say these two coexist. Finks and antidotes are not conclusive here. Depends what you mean by 'cause' and 'effect'. |
| 14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We can assert the general claim that smoking causes cancer without endorsing the claim that smoking necessitates cancer. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the simplest demolition of the idea that effects necessarily follow causes. Necessitarians might wriggle out of it by focusing on the word 'causes' more closely here. Maybe this example isn't a 'strict' usage. |
| 14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If causation involves any kind of necessity, it should survive the test of antecedent strengthening. ...It is plausible that for any type of causal process, that some new cause can be added which typically results in the effect no longer being caused. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [Idea expanded p.57] This is their key argument against the idea that causation involves necessity. In simple terms, show me a cause which necessarily leads to some result, and I will show you how you could prevent that result. Sounds good. |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The most persuasive view of a 'ceteris paribus' clause is that the best non-trivially true account that we can give of their meaning is that they indicate that the conditional has dispositional force only. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Lipton 1999] As a general fan of dispositions (as are Mumford and Lill Anjum), this sounds right. If you then add that virtually every event in nature needs a ceteris paribus clause (see N. Cartwright), the whole thing becomes dispositional. |
| 14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is consistent with there being necessitation in the world, but we claim that causation does not itself provide that necessitation. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. One might distinguish between causation being necessary, and causation supplying the necessity. The obvious alternative is that essences supply the necessity. |
| 14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: What we take to be laws are just descriptions of how the powers behave and affect each other. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely my view, which I first gleaned in its boldest from from Mumford 2004. I idea that ontology does not contain any 'laws of nature' I find wonderfully liberating. Weak emergence is just epistemic. |
| 14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Physical laws are typically understood as equations, ...but then factors must vary simultaneously, since if one factor varied before the others, there would be a time when the two sides of the equation didn't equate (so Newton's 2nd Law would be false). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Presumably this thought seems to require action-at-a-distance, which no one could understand. Science oversimplifes the world. See Nancy Cartwright. |
| 18733 | Laws of nature are an aspect of the phenomena, and are just our mode of description [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: The laws of nature are not outside phenomena. They are part of language and of our way of describing things; you cannot discuss them apart from their physical manifestation. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Lectures 1930-32 (student notes) [1931], C V C) | |
| A reaction: I suppose this amounts to a Humean regularity theory - that the descriptions pick out patterns in the manifestations. I like the initial claim that they are not external to phenomena. |