15 ideas
| 2661 | Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Dialectic is speech cast in the form of logical argument. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], I.viii.32) |
| 2673 | There cannot be more than one truth [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be more than one truth. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlviii.147) |
| 2669 | Dialectic assumes that all statements are either true or false, but self-referential paradoxes are a big problem [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: It is a fundamental principle of dialectic that every statement is either true or false. So is this a true proposition or a false one: "If you say that you are lying and say it truly, you lie"? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xxix.95) |
| 2664 | If we have complete healthy senses, what more could the gods give us? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: If human nature were interrogated by some god as to whether it was content with its own senses in a sound and undamaged state or demanded something better, I cannot see what more it could ask for. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.19) |
| 2665 | How can there be a memory of what is false? [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: How can there possibly be a memory of what is false? | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.vii.22) |
| 20800 | Every true presentation can have a false one of the same quality [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: [The sceptical Academics say] what is false cannot be perceived, but every true presentation is such that there can be a false presentation of the same quality. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.40) | |
| A reaction: It was the stoics who focused the discussion on 'presentations'. This claim is purely theoretical; no one has ever experienced a false presentation of talking to a family member that was as vivid as the real thing. |
| 17488 | Empiricist theories are sets of laws, which give explanations and reductions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: In the empiricist tradition theories were understood to be deductive closures of sets of laws, explanations were understood as arguments from covering laws, and reduction was understood as a deductive relationship between laws of different theories. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: A lovely crisp summary of the whole tradition of philosophy of science from Comte through to Hempel. Mechanism and essentialism are the new players in the game. |
| 17493 | Modern mechanism need parts with spatial, temporal and function facts, and diagrams [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Modern champions of mechanisms say models should identify both the parts and their spatial, temporal and functional organisation, ...and the practical importance of diagrams in addition to or in place of linguistic representations of mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Discover') | |
| A reaction: Apparently chemists obtain much more refined models by using mathematics than they did by diagrams or 3D models (let alone verbal descriptions). For that reason, I'm thinking that 'model' might be a better term than 'mechanism'. |
| 17487 | Mechanistic philosophy of science is an alternative to the empiricist law-based tradition [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: To a significant degree, a mechanistic philosophy of science can be seen as an alternative to an earlier logical empiricist tradition in philosophy of science that gave pride of place to laws of nature. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Lovely! Someone who actually spells out what's going on here. Most philosophers are far too coy about explaining what their real game is. Mechanism is fine in chemistry and biology. How about in 'mathematical' physics, or sociology? |
| 17489 | Mechanisms are either systems of parts or sequences of activities [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: There are two sorts of mechanisms: systems consist of collections of parts that interact to produce some behaviour, and processes are sequences of activities which produce some outcome. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The second one is important because it is more generic, and under that account all kinds the features of the world that need to be explained can be subsumed. E.g. hyperinflation in an economy is a 'mechanism'. |
| 17490 | 17th century mechanists explained everything by the kinetic physical fundamentals [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: 17th century mechanists said that interactions governed by chemical, electrical or gravitational forces would have to be explicable in terms of the operation of some atomistic (or corpuscular) kinetic mechanism. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Glennan says science has rejected this, so modern mechanists do not reduce mechanisms to anything in particular. |
| 17491 | Unlike the lawlike approach, mechanistic explanation can allow for exceptions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: One of the advantages of the move from nomological to mechanistic modes of explanation is that the latter allows for explanations involving exception-ridden generalizations. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'regular') | |
| A reaction: The lawlike approach has endless problems with 'ceteris paribus' ('all things being equal') laws, where specifying all the other 'things' seems a bit tricky. |
| 2672 | Virtues must be very detached, to avoid being motivated by pleasure [Cicero] |
| Full Idea: None of the virtues can exist unless they are disinterested, for virtue driven to duty by pleasure as a sort of pay is not virtue at all but a deceptive sham and pretence of virtue. | |
| From: M. Tullius Cicero (Academica [c.45 BCE], II.xlvi.140) |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 17494 | Since causal events are related by mechanisms, causation can be analysed in that way [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Causation can be analyzed in terms of mechanisms because (except for fundamental causal interactions) causally related events will be connected by intervening mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'causation') | |
| A reaction: This won't give us the metaphysics of causation (which concerns the fundamentals), but this strikes me as a very coherent and interesting proposal. He mentions electron interaction as non-mechanistic causation. |