26 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. |
| 21223 | Phenomenology grounds logic in subjective experience [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: The phenomenological logic grounds logical notions in subjective acts of experience. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929], p.183) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.1 | |
| A reaction: I'll approach this with great caution, but this is a line of thought that appeals to me. The core assumptions of logic do not arise ex nihilo. |
| 21222 | Logicians presuppose a world, and ignore logic/world connections, so their logic is impure [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Husserl maintained that because most logicians have not studied the connection between logic and the world, logic did not achieve its status of purity. Even more, their logic implicitly presupposed a world. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.1 | |
| A reaction: The point here is that the bracketing of phenomenology, to reach an understanding with no presuppositions, is impossible if you don't realise what your are presupposing. I think the logic/world relationship is badly neglected, thanks to Frege. |
| 21224 | Pure mathematics is the relations between all possible objects, and is thus formal ontology [Husserl, by Velarde-Mayol] |
| Full Idea: Pure mathematics is the science of the relations between any object whatever (relation of whole to part, relation of equality, property, unity etc.). In this sense, pure mathematics is seen by Husserl as formal ontology. | |
| From: report of Edmund Husserl (Formal and Transcendental Logic [1929]) by Victor Velarde-Mayol - On Husserl 4.5.2 | |
| A reaction: I would expect most modern analytic philosophers to agree with this. Modern mathematics (e.g. category theory) seems to have moved beyond this stage, but I still like this idea. |
| 22180 | Multiple realisability is said to make reduction impossible [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers have often invoked multiple realisability to explain why psychology cannot be reduced to physics or chemistry, but in principle the explanation works for any higher-level science. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 3) | |
| A reaction: He gives the example of a 'cell' in biology, which can be implemented in all sorts of ways. Presumably that can be reduced to many sorts of physics, but not just to one sort. The high level contains patterns that vanish at the low level. |
| 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'?) |
| 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. |
| 22172 | Not all sciences are experimental; astronomy relies on careful observation [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Not all sciences are experimental - astronomers obviously cannot do experiments on the heavens, but have to content themselves with careful observation instead. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 1) | |
| A reaction: Biology too. Psychology tries hard to be experimental, but I doubt whether the main theories emerge from experiments. |
| 22177 | Randomised Control Trials have a treatment and a control group, chosen at random [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: In the Randomised Controlled Trial for a new drug, patients are divided at random into a treatment group who receive the drug, and a control group who do not. Randomisation is important to eliminate confounding factors. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Devised in the 1930s, and a major breakthrough in methodology for that kind of trial. Psychologists use the method all the time. Some theorists say it is the only reliable method. |
| 22174 | The discoverers of Neptune didn't change their theory because of an anomaly [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Adams and Leverrier began with Newton's theory of gravity, which made an incorrect prediction about the orbit of Uranus. They explained away the conflicting observations by postulating a new planet, Neptune. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 1) | |
| A reaction: The falsificationists can say that the anomalous observation did not falsify the theory, because they didn't know quite what they were observing. It was not in fact an anomaly for Newtonian theory at all. |
| 22175 | Science mostly aims at confirming theories, rather than falsifying them [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: The goal of science is not solely to refute theories, but also to determine which theories are true (or probably true). When a scientist collects data …they are trying to show that their own theory is true. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the aim of 'accommodation' to a wide set of data, rather than prediction or refutation. |
| 22182 | Theories with unobservables are underdetermined by the evidence [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: According to anti-realists, scientific theories which posit unobservable entities are underdetermined by the empirical data - there will always be a number of competing theories which can account for the data equally well. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 4) | |
| A reaction: The fancy version is Putnam's model theoretic argument, explored by Tim Button. The reply, apparently, is that there are other criteria for theory choice, apart from the data. And we don't have to actually observe everything in a theory. |
| 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) |
| 22185 | Two things can't be incompatible if they are incommensurable [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: If two things are incommensurable they cannot be incompatible. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 5) | |
| A reaction: Kuhn had claimed that two rival theories are incompatible, which forces the paradigm shift. He can't stop the slide off into total relativism. The point is there cannot be a conflict if there cannot even be a comparison. |
| 22176 | Induction is inferences from examined to unexamined instances of a given kind [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers use 'inductive' to just mean not deductive, …but we reserve it for inferences from examined to unexamined instances of a given kind. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 2) | |
| A reaction: The instances must at least be comparable. Must you know the kind before you start? Surely you can examine a sequence of things, trying to decide whether or not they are of one kind? Is checking the uniformity of a kind induction? |
| 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. |
| 22178 | If the rules only concern changes of belief, and not the starting point, absurd views can look ratiional [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: If the only objective constraints concern how we should change our credences, but what our initial credences should be is entirely subjective, then individuals with very bizarre opinions about the world will count as perfectly rational. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 2) | |
| A reaction: The important rationality has to be the assessement of a diverse batch of evidence, for which there can never be any rules or mathematics. |
| 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. |
| 22173 | Galileo refuted the Aristotelian theory that heavier objects fall faster [Okasha] |
| Full Idea: Galileo's most enduring contribution lay in mechanics, where he refuted the Aristotelian theory that heavier bodies fall faster than lighter. | |
| From: Samir Okasha (Philosophy of Science: Very Short Intro (2nd ed) [2016], 2) | |
| A reaction: This must the first idea in the theory of mechanics, allowing mathematical treatment and accurate comparisons. |