27 ideas
5182 | Claims about 'the Absolute' are not even verifiable in principle [Ayer on Bradley] |
Full Idea: Such a metaphysical pseudo-proposition as 'the Absolute enters into, but is itself incapable of, evolution and progress' (F.H.Bradley) is not even in principle verifiable. | |
From: comment on F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.1 | |
A reaction: One may jeer at the Verification Principle for either failing to be precise, or for failing to pass its own test, but Ayer still has a point here. When we drift off into sustained abstractions, we must keeping asking if we are still saying anything real. |
6864 | Metaphysics is finding bad reasons for instinctive beliefs [Bradley] |
Full Idea: Metaphysics is the finding of bad reasons for what we believe upon instinct; but to find these reasons is no less an instinct. | |
From: F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Interview with Baggini and Stangroom p.165 | |
A reaction: A famous and very nice remark. The idea of believing things on instinct sounds more like David Hume than an idealist. Personally I am not so pessimistic about the enterprise. I think metaphysics is capable of changing what we believe. |
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. |
10999 | Names need a means of reidentifying their referents [Bradley, by Read] |
Full Idea: Unless a name has associated with it a means of reidentifying its referent, we cannot use it. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by Stephen Read - Thinking About Logic Ch.4 | |
A reaction: Brilliant! This point is totally undeniable. It is not enough that someone be 'baptised'. We need to hang onto both the name and what it refers to, and how are we going to do that? |
11115 | 'All horses' either picks out the horses, or the things which are horses [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Two ways to see 'all horses are animals' are as picking out all the horses (so that it is a 'horse-quantifier'), ..or as ranging over lots of things in addition to horses, with 'horses' then restricting the things to those that satisfy 'is a horse'. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
A reaction: Jubien says this gives you two different metaphysical views, of a world of horses etc., or a world of things which 'are horses'. I vote for the first one, as the second seems to invoke an implausible categorical property ('being a horse'). Cf Idea 11116. |
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. |
6422 | Internal relations are said to be intrinsic properties of two terms, and of the whole they compose [Bradley, by Russell] |
Full Idea: The doctrine of internal relations held that every relation between two terms expresses, primarily, intrinsic properties of the two terms and, in ultimate analysis, a property of the whole which the two compose. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by Bertrand Russell - My Philosophical Development Ch.5 | |
A reaction: Russell's first big campaign was to reject this view, and his ontology from then on included relations among the catalogue of universals. The coherence theory of truth also gets thrown out at the same time. Russell seems right. |
7966 | Relations must be linked to their qualities, but that implies an infinite regress of relations [Bradley] |
Full Idea: If a relation between qualities is to be something, then clearly we will now require a new connecting relation. The links are united by a link, and this link has two ends, which require a fresh link to connect them to the old. | |
From: F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893], p.28), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.6 | |
A reaction: That is: external relations generates an infinite regress, so relations must be internal. Russell launched his own philosophy with an attack on Bradley's idea. Personally I take how two things 'relate' to one another as one of the deepest of mysteries. |
11116 | Being a physical object is our most fundamental category [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Being a physical object (as opposed to being a horse or a statue) really is our most fundamental category for dealing with the external world. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
A reaction: This raises the interesting question of why any categories should be considered to be more 'fundamental' than others. I can only think that we perceive something to be an object fractionally before we (usually) manage to identify it. |
11117 | Haecceities implausibly have no qualities [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Properties of 'being such and such specific entity' are often called 'haecceities', but this term carries the connotation of non-qualitativeness which I don't favour. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 2) | |
A reaction: The way he defines it makes it sound as if it was a category, but I take it to be more like a bare individual essence. If it has not qualities then it has no causal powers, so there could be no evidence for its existence. |
11119 | De re necessity is just de dicto necessity about object-essences [Jubien] |
Full Idea: I suggest that the de re is to be analyzed in terms of the de dicto. ...We have a case of modality de re when (and only when) the appropriate property in the de dicto formulation is an object-essence. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 5) |
11118 | Modal propositions transcend the concrete, but not the actual [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Where modal propositions may once have seemed to transcend the actual, they now seem only to transcend the concrete. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 4) | |
A reaction: This is because Jubien has defended a form of platonism. Personally I take modal propositions to be perceptible in the concrete world, by recognising the processes involved, not the mere static stuff. |
11108 | Your properties, not some other world, decide your possibilities [Jubien] |
Full Idea: The possibility of your having been a playwright has nothing to do with how people are on other planets, whether in our own or in some other realm. It is only to do with you and the relevant property. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to think that this simple point is conclusive disproof of possible worlds as an explanation of modality (apart from Jubien's other nice points). What we need to understand are modal properties, not other worlds. |
11111 | Modal truths are facts about parts of this world, not about remote maximal entities [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Typical modal truths are just facts about our world, and generally facts about very small parts of it, not facts about some infinitude of complex, maximal entities. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: I think we should embrace this simple fact immediately, and drop all this nonsense about possible worlds, even if they are useful for the semantics of modal logic. |
11109 | If other worlds exist, then they are scattered parts of the actual world [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Any other realms that happened to exist would just be scattered parts of the actual world, not entire worlds at all. It would just happen that physical reality was fragmented in this remarkable but modally inconsequential way. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: This is aimed explicitly at Lewis's modal realism, and strikes me as correct. Jubien's key point here is that they are irrelevant to modality, just as foreign countries are irrelevant to the modality of this one. |
11106 | If all possible worlds just happened to include stars, their existence would be necessary [Jubien] |
Full Idea: If all of the possible worlds happened to include stars, how plausible is it to think that if this is how things really are, then we've just been wrong to regard the existence of stars as contingent? | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
11112 | Possible worlds just give parallel contingencies, with no explanation at all of necessity [Jubien] |
Full Idea: In the world theory, what passes for 'necessity' is just a bunch of parallel 'contingencies'. The theory provides no basis for understanding why these contingencies repeat unremittingly across the board (while others do not). | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
11113 | Worlds don't explain necessity; we use necessity to decide on possible worlds [Jubien] |
Full Idea: The suspicion is that the necessity doesn't arise from how worlds are, but rather that the worlds are taken to be as they are in order to capture the intuitive necessity. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) | |
A reaction: It has always seemed to me rather glaring that you need a prior notion of 'possible' before you can start to talk about 'possible worlds', but I have always been too timid to disagree with the combination of Saul Kripke and David Lewis. Thank you, Jubien! |
11105 | We have no idea how many 'possible worlds' there might be [Jubien] |
Full Idea: As soon as we start talking about 'possible world', we beg the question of their relevance to our prior notion of possibility. For all we know, there are just two such realms, or twenty-seven, or uncountably many, or even set-many. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
11107 | If there are no other possible worlds, do we then exist necessarily? [Jubien] |
Full Idea: Suppose there happen to be no other concrete realms. Would we happily accept the consequence that we exist necessarily? | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
11110 | We mustn't confuse a similar person with the same person [Jubien] |
Full Idea: If someone similar to Humphrey won the election, that nicely establishes the possibility of someone's winning who is similar to Humphrey. But we mustn't confuse this possibility with the intuitively different possibility of Humphrey himself winning. | |
From: Michael Jubien (Analyzing Modality [2007], 1) |
6404 | British Idealists said reality is a single Mind which experiences itself [Bradley, by Grayling] |
Full Idea: The idealism of Green and Bradley, both of whom were much influenced by the German Idealists, espoused the thesis that the universe ultimately consists of a single Mind which, so to speak, experiences itself. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This looks now like the last (extreme) throw by the religious view of the world, which collapsed in the face of the empirical realism of Russell and Moore. It is all Kant's fault, for cutting us off from his 'noumenon'. |
22299 | Bradley's objective idealism accepts reality (the Absolute), but says we can't fully describe it [Bradley, by Potter] |
Full Idea: Objective idealists such as Bradley (rather than Berkeley's subjective view) accepted the substantial existence of reality (which they called the 'Absolute') but held that thought cannot fully describe it. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 23 'Abs' | |
A reaction: That thought can't 'fully' describe it seems obvious, so I suspect Bradley's view are stronger than that. This sounds like modern strong and weak anti-realists; strong ones deny reality, but weak ones just deny we know where the joints are. |
21343 | Qualities and relations are mere appearance; the Absolute is a single undifferentiated substance [Bradley, by Heil] |
Full Idea: In Bradley's view, qualities and relations belong to the realm of appearance. We are left with a single, undifferentiated substance: the Absolute. | |
From: report of F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893]) by John Heil - Relations 'Internal' | |
A reaction: I've not read Bradley, but I can't distinguish this proposal from Parmenides's belief in The One. Or maybe Spinoza's monist view of God and Nature (but that is 'differentiated'). It doesn't sound like Hegel. |
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. |
6406 | Reality is one, because plurality implies relations, and they assert a superior unity [Bradley] |
Full Idea: Reality is one. It must be simple because plurality, taken as real, contradicts itself. Plurality implies relations, and, through its relations it unwillingly asserts always a superior unity. | |
From: F.H. Bradley (Appearance and Reality [1893], p.519), quoted by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This argument depends on a belief in 'internal' relations, which Russell famously attacked. If an internal feature of every separate item was its relation to other things, then I suppose Bradley would be right. But it isn't, and he isn't. |