20 ideas
| 17651 | Without words or other symbols, we have no world [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbols. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Goodman seems to have a particularly extreme version of the commitment to philosophy as linguistic. Non-human animals have no world, it seems. |
| 17652 | Truth is irrelevant if no statements are involved [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Truth pertains solely to what is said ...For nonverbal versions and even for verbal versions without statements, truth is irrelevant. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Goodman is a philosopher of language (like Dummett), but I am a philosopher of thought (like Evans). The test, for me, is whether truth is applicable to the thought of non-human animals. I take it to be obvious that it is applicable. |
| 17656 | Being primitive or prior always depends on a constructional system [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is primitive or derivationally prior to anything apart from a constructional system. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4c) | |
| A reaction: Something may be primitive not just because we can't be bothered to analyse it any further, but because even God couldn't analyse it. Maybe. |
| 17661 | We don't recognise patterns - we invent them [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Recognising patterns is very much a matter of inventing or imposing them. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be false. |
| 17659 | Reality is largely a matter of habit [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Reality in a world, like realism in a picture, is largely a matter of habit. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: I'm a robust realist, me, but I sort of see what he means. We become steeped in unspoken conventions about how we take our world to be, and filter out anything that conflicts with it. |
| 17657 | We build our world, and ignore anything that won't fit [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: We dismiss as illusory or negligible what cannot be fitted into the architecture of the world we are building. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4d) | |
| A reaction: I'm trying to think of an example of this, but can't. Maybe poor people are invisible to the rich? |
| 17654 | A world can be full of variety or not, depending on how we sort it [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: A world may be unmanageably heterogeneous or unbearably monotonous according to how events are sorted into kinds. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4a) | |
| A reaction: We might expect this from the man who invented 'grue', which allows you to classify things that change colour with things that don't. Could you describe a bird as 'might have been a fish', and classify it with fish? ('Projectible'?) |
| 4032 | The problem of universals is how many particulars can all be of the same 'type' [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: The problem of universals is the problem of how numerically different particulars can nevertheless be identical in nature, all be of the same 'type'. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Nominalism and Realism [1978], p.41), quoted by DH Mellor / A Oliver - Introduction to 'Properties' §7 | |
| A reaction: A nice statement of the problem. As usual, the question is whether the 'sameness' is a feature of nature, or a product of human thought |
| 12066 | Aristotelian and Kripkean essentialism are very different theories [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The differences between Aristotelian essentialism and Kripke's essentialism are so fundamental and pervasive that it is a serious distortion of both views to think of essentialism as a single theory. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be very important, because there is a glib assumption that when essentialism is needed for modal logic, that we must immediately have embraced what Aristotle was saying. Aristotle was better than Kripke. |
| 12067 | An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition [Witt] |
| Full Idea: An Aristotelian essence is a nonlinguistic correlate of the definition of the entity in question. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple and necessity corrective to the simplistic idea that Aristotle thought that essences just were definitions. Aristotle believes in real essences, not linguistic essences. |
| 12082 | If unity is a matter of degree, then essence may also be a matter of degree [Witt] |
| Full Idea: By holding that the most unified beings have essences in an unqualified sense, while allowing that other beings have them in a qualified sense - we can think of unity as a matter of degree. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is Witt's somewhat unorthodox view of how we should read Aristotle. I am sympathetic, if essences are really explanatory. That means they are unstable, and would indeed be likely to come in degrees. |
| 12089 | Essences mainly explain the existence of unified substance [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The central function of essence is to explain the actual existence of a unified substance. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 5 n1) | |
| A reaction: She is offering an interpretation of Aristotle. Since existence is an active and not a passive matter, the identity of the entity will include its dispositions etc., I presume. |
| 12102 | Essential properties of origin are too radically individual for an Aristotelian essence [Witt] |
| Full Idea: The radical individuality of essential properties of origin makes them unsuitable for inclusion in an Aristotelian essence. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Nevertheless, Aristotle believes in individual essences, though these seem to be fixed by definitions, which are composed of combinations of universals. The uniqueness is of the whole definition, not of its parts. |
| 17653 | Things can only be judged the 'same' by citing some respect of sameness [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Identification rests upon organization into entities and kinds. The response to the question 'Same or not the same?' must always be 'Same what?'. ...Identity or constancy in a world is identity with respect to what is within that world as organised. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4a) | |
| A reaction: And the gist of his book is that 'organised' is done by us, not by the world. He seems to be committed to the full Geachean relative identity, rather than the mere Wigginsian relative individuation. An unfashionable view! |
| 17660 | Discovery is often just finding a fit, like a jigsaw puzzle [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Discovery often amounts, as when I place a piece in a jigsaw puzzle, not to arrival at a proposition for declaration or defense, but to finding a fit. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: I find Goodman's views here pretty alien, but I like this bit. Coherence really rocks. |
| 17658 | Users of digital thermometers recognise no temperatures in the gaps [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: To use a digital thermometer with readings in tenths of a degree is to recognise no temperature as lying between 90 and 90.1 degrees. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4d) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be nonsense, treating users of digital thermometers as if they were stupid. No one thinks temperatures go up and down in quantum leaps. We all know there is a gap between instrument and world. (Very American, I'm thinking!) |
| 17650 | We lack frames of reference to transform physics, biology and psychology into one another [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: We have no neat frames of reference, no ready rules for transforming physics, biology and psychology into one another. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.2) |
| 17655 | Grue and green won't be in the same world, as that would block induction entirely [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: Grue cannot be a relevant kind for induction in the same world as green, for that would preclude some of the decisions, right or wrong, that constitute inductive inference. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.4b) | |
| A reaction: This may make 'grue' less mad than I thought it was. I always assume we are slicing the world as 'green, blue and grue'. I still say 'green' is a basic predicate of experience, but 'grue' is amenable to analysis. |
| 17649 | If the world is one it has many aspects, and if there are many worlds they will collect into one [Goodman] |
| Full Idea: If there is but one world, it embraces a multiplicity of contrasting aspects; if there are many worlds, the collection of them all is one. One world may be taken as many, or many worlds taken as one; whether one or many depends on the way of taking. | |
| From: Nelson Goodman (Ways of Worldmaking [1978], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites 'The Pluralistic Universe' by William James for this idea. The idea is that the distinction 'evaporates under analysis'. Parmenides seems to have thought that no features could be distinguished in the true One. |
| 12085 | Reality is directional [Witt] |
| Full Idea: Reality is directional. | |
| From: Charlotte Witt (Substance and Essence in Aristotle [1989], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: [Plucked from context! She attributes the view to Aristotle] This slogan beautifully summarises the 'scientific essentialist' view of reality, based not on so-called 'laws', but on the active powers of the stuffs of reality. |