Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Ways of Worldmaking', 'Quodlibeta' and 'Letters to Fichte'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts


19 ideas

1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 5. Linguistic Analysis
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.
3. Truth / A. Truth Problems / 5. Truth Bearers
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.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 4. Ontological Dependence
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.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / d. Humean supervenience
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.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
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.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
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?
7. Existence / E. Categories / 3. Proposed Categories
Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent]
     Full Idea: Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three.
     From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
     A reaction: Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 5. Category Anti-Realism
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'?)
8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
The only reality in the category of Relation is things from another category [Henry of Ghent]
     Full Idea: There is beyond a doubt nothing real in the category of Relation, except what is a thing from another category.
     From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3
     A reaction: This seems to have been the fairly orthodox scholastic view of relations.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 8. Properties as Modes
Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent]
     Full Idea: Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance.
     From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4
     A reaction: This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity
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!
11. Knowledge Aims / C. Knowing Reality / 3. Idealism / b. Transcendental idealism
Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard]
     Full Idea: Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself.
     From: report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04
     A reaction: This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct?
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 5. Coherentism / b. Pro-coherentism
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.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 3. Instrumentalism
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!)
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 5. Commensurability
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)
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
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.
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / g. Contemplation
Life and rationality are pointless if we can only contemplate the freedom of our own ego [Jacobi]
     Full Idea: If the highest upon which I can reflect, what I can contemplate, is my empty and pure, naked and mere ego, with its autonomy and freedom: then rational self-contemplation, then rationality is for me a curse - I deplore my existence.
     From: Friedrich Jacobi (Letters to Fichte [1799], Ch.2), quoted by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro
     A reaction: This is a rebellion against Fichte's interpretation of Kant. It is a lovely cry from the heart on behalf of everyone who resents lines of philosophical thinking that seem to imprison the mind and cut us off from the ordinary world and real life.
23. Ethics / F. Existentialism / 2. Nihilism
Jacobi was the first philosopher to talk of nihilism [Jacobi, by Critchley]
     Full Idea: Jacobi was the first to philosophically employ the concept of nihilism.
     From: report of Friedrich Jacobi (Letters to Fichte [1799]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2
     A reaction: Critchley explains that it was Jacobi's fear that Fichte was drawing nihilist conclusions from Kant's philosophy. This fear may be seen as the beginning of what is loosely called 'continental philosophy'. A worthy subject for thinkers...
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature
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.