14292
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Dispositions seem more ethereal than behaviour; a non-occult account of them would be nice [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
Dispositions of a thing are as important to us as overt behaviour, but they strike us by comparison as rather ethereal. So we are moved to enquire whether we can bring them down to earth, and explain disposition terms without reference to occult powers.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], II.3)
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A reaction:
Mumford quotes this at the start of his book on dispositions, as his agenda. I suspect that the 'occult' aspect crept in because dispositions were based on powers, and the dominant view was that these were the immediate work of God.
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18749
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Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
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Full Idea:
Goodman constructed arguments that purported to show that a satisfactory syntactic analysis of the confirmation relation can never be found. In response, philosophers of science tried to model it in probabilistic terms.
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From:
report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R - Mathematical Methods in Philosophy 4
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A reaction:
I take this idea to say that Bayesianism was developed in response to the grue problem. This is an interesting light on 'grue', which never bothered me much. The point is it scuppered formal attempts to model induction.
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15998
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Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard]
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Full Idea:
To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections.
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From:
Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158)
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A reaction:
A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY]
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4794
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We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman]
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Full Idea:
Rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction.
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From:
Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.21), quoted by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §5.4
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A reaction:
This smacks of dodgy pragmatism, and sounds deeply wrong. The perception of a law has to be prior to making the prediction. Why do we make the prediction, if we haven't spotted a law. Goodman is mesmerised by language instead of reality.
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