40 ideas
| 21900 | Deleuze relies on Spinoza (immanence), Bergson (duration), and difference (Nietzsche) [May] |
| Full Idea: The three tripods on which the philosophy of Deleuze stands are immanence (Spinoza), duration (Bergson), and the affirmation of difference (Nietzsche). | |
| From: Todd May (Gilles Deleuze [2006], 2.12) | |
| A reaction: [Just to begin sketching how continental philosophy sees its tradition]. |
| 18543 | Do aesthetic reasons count as reasons, if they are rejectable without contradiction? [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The judgement of beauty makes a claim about its object, and can be supported by reasons. But the reasons do not compel the judgement and can be rejected without contradiction. So are they reasons or aren't they? | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that what he is really referring to is evidence rather than reasons. |
| 18542 | Defining truth presupposes that there can be a true definition [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: How can you define truth, without already assuming the distinction between a true definition and a false one? | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: Don't say we have to accept truth as yet another primitive! Philosophers are out of business if all the basic concepts are primitive. The axiomatic approach to truth is an alternative - by specifying how the primitive should be used. |
| 19482 | Current physics says matter and antimatter should have reduced to light at the big bang [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Our best theories of physics imply we shouldn't be here. The big bang ought to have produced equal amounts of matter and antimatter particles, which would have almost immediately annihilated each other, leaving nothing but light. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.05.23) | |
| A reaction: This is not, of course, a rejection of physics, but a puzzle about the current standard model of physics. |
| 19483 | CP violation shows a decay imbalance in matter and antimatter, leading to matter's dominance [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: The phenomenon of charge-parity (CP) violation says that under certain circumstances antiparticles decay at different rates from their matter counterpart. ...This might explain matter's dominance in the universe, but the effect is too small. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.05.23) | |
| A reaction: Physicists are currently studying CP violations, hoping to explain why there is any matter in the universe. This will not, I presume, explain why matter and antimatter arrived in the first place. |
| 19737 | A system can infer the structure of the world by making predictions about it [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: If we can train a system for prediction, it can essentially infer the structure of the world it's looking at by doing this prediction. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.12.12) | |
| A reaction: [AI expert] This seems to be powerful support for the centrality of mathematical laws of nature in achieving understanding of the world. We may downplay the 'mere' ability to predict, but this idea says that the rewards of prediction are very great. |
| 19736 | Neural networks can extract the car-ness of a car, or the chair-ness of a chair [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Early neural nets were really good at recognising general categories, such as a car or a chair. Those networks are good at extracting the 'chair-ness' or the 'car-ness' of the object. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.12.12) | |
| A reaction: [Interview with Yann LeCun, Facebook AI director] Fregean philosophers such as Geach think that extracting features is a ridiculous idea, but if even a machine can do it then I suspect that human beings can (and do) manage it too. |
| 16419 | No one has yet devised a rationality test [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: The financial sector has been clamouring for a rationality test for years. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.10.29) | |
| A reaction: Many aspects of intelligence tests do actually pick out what I would call rationality (which includes 'rational intuition', a new favourite of mine). But they are mixed in with rather mechanical geeky sort of tests. |
| 16418 | People can be highly intelligent, yet very stupid [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: You really can be highly intelligent, and at the same time very stupid. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.10.29) | |
| A reaction: This is closely related to my observation (from a lifetime of study) that a talent for philosophy has a very limited correlation with standard notions of high intelligence. What matters is how conscious reasoning and intuition relate. Greek 'phronesis'. |
| 16417 | About a third of variation in human intelligence is environmental [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Possibly a third of the variation in our intelligence is down to the environment in which we grew up - nutrition and education, for example. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.10.29) | |
| A reaction: This presumably leaves the other two-thirds to derive from genetics. I am a big believer in environment. Swapping babies between extremes of cultural environment would hugely affect intelligence, say I. |
| 19484 | Psychologists measure personality along five dimensions [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Psychologists have long thought that measuring on a scale of just five personality dimensions - agreeableness, extroversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness and openness to new experiences - can capture all human variations in behaviour and attitude. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.06.13) | |
| A reaction: Researchers are considering a sixth - called 'honesty-humility' - which is roughly how devious people are. The five mentioned here seem to be a well entrenched orthodoxy among professional psychologists. Is personality more superficial than character? |
| 18546 | The pleasure taken in beauty also aims at understanding and valuing [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Like the pleasure in friendship, the pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: At least he is trying to pin down the way in which aesthetic pleasure is phenomenologically different from other kinds of pleasure. |
| 18550 | Art gives us imaginary worlds which we can view impartially [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: One aim of art is to present imaginary worlds, towards which we can adopt, as part of the integral aesthetic attitude, a posture of impartial concern. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5) | |
| A reaction: It connects to the pleasure of watching people when they don't know they are being watched (such as watching the street from a restaurant window). Scruton's suggestion makes art resemble examples in philosophy. Cf the Frege-Geach problem in ethics. |
| 18544 | Maybe 'beauty' is too loaded, and we should talk of fittingness or harmony [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we can understand the 'beauty' of a building better if we describe it in another and less loaded way, as a form of fittingness or harmony. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: Almost everyone accepts the word 'beauty' for some things, such as a beautiful face, or goal, or steak. I remember a female interviewer writing that, reluctantly, the only appropriate word she could find for Nureyev's face was 'beautiful'. |
| 18553 | Beauty shows us what we should want in order to achieve human fulfilment [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Beauty speaks to us of human fulfilment: not of things that we want, but of things that we ought to want, because human nature requires them. Such, at least, is my belief. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how this works with a beautiful natural landscape. And what should I see that I ought to desire after viewing a great Rembrandt self-portrait? That I don't want to end up looking as bleak as that? Hm. Lofty words. |
| 18556 | Beauty is rationally founded, inviting meaning, comparison and self-reflection [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Beauty is rationally founded; it challenges us to find meaning in its object, to make critical comparisons, and to examine our own lives and emotions in the light of what we find. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 9) | |
| A reaction: This is the Kantian tradition, and I'm not finding it very persuasive. It seems to place the value of beauty in what we do with it afterwards, and he seems to make beauty a necessary stepping stone to virtue. I see beauty as more sui generis. |
| 18548 | Natural beauty reassures us that the world is where we belong [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The experience of natural beauty is not a sense of 'how nice!' or 'how pleasant!' It contains a reassurance that this world is a right and fitting place to be - a home in which our human powers and prospects find confirmation. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: To call it a 'reassurance' and 'confirmation' sounds like theism, anthropomorphism, or the pathetic fallacy. That said, this is certainly a heart-warming idea, and hence must contain a grain of truth. |
| 18551 | Croce says art makes inarticulate intuitions conscious; rival views say the audience is the main concern [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The Croce model is of an inarticulate inner state (an 'intuition') becoming articulate and conscious through artistic expression. The rival model is fitting thing together so as to create links which resonate in the audience's feelings. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5) | |
| A reaction: The first model tells you nothing about how the artist imagines the audience reacting. The second model tells you nothing about what matters personally to the artist. A good theory must do both! |
| 18541 | Beauty (unlike truth and goodness) is questionable as an ultimate value [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The status of beauty as an ultimate value is questionable, in the way that the status of truth and goodness are not. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: We suspect that a love of beauty may be a bit parochial, where it is hard to conceive of living creatures anywhere in the cosmos who don't value the other two. |
| 21898 | For existentialists the present is empty without the pull of the future and weight of the past [May] |
| Full Idea: For the existential view of lived time, the present would be empty if it were not for the pull of the future and the weight of the past that give it its character. | |
| From: Todd May (Gilles Deleuze [2006], 2.05) | |
| A reaction: Bergson seems to be important in developing this idea, though I suspect that Kierkegaard is a source. |
| 21905 | Liberal theory starts from the governed, not from the governor [May] |
| Full Idea: For liberal theory, it is the individual to be governed, not the governor, who is the starting point. | |
| From: Todd May (Gilles Deleuze [2006], 4.02) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to see this as the single-handed achievement of Thomas Hobbes, who starts from the need of citizens to secure their contracts. Plato's society starts from entrepreneurs, but their need for a ruler seems a priori. |
| 18554 | Prostitution is wrong because it hardens the soul, since soul and body are one [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The condemnation of prostitution was not just puritan bigotry; it was a recognition of a profound truth, that you and your body are not two things but one, and by selling the body you harden your soul. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7) | |
| A reaction: No one, I imagine, who condones or even enthuses about prostitution would hope that their own daughter followed the profession, so there is something wrong with it. But must an enthusiastic and cheerful prostitute necessarily have a hard soul? |
| 19950 | Entropy is the only time-asymmetric law, so time may be linked to entropy [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: All our physical laws are time-symmetric, ...so things can run forwards or backwards. But entropy is an exception, saying that disorder increases over time. Many physicists therefore suspect that the flow of time is linked to entropy. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2017.02.04) |
| 19478 | Light moves at a constant space-time speed, but its direction is in neither space nor time [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: A light ray always moves at one unit of space per unit of time - a constant diagonal on the graph. ...But the direction that light rays travel in is neither space nor time, and is called 'null'. It is on the edge between space and time. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: Don't understand this, but it sounds fun. |
| 19474 | Quantum states are measured by external time, of unknown origin [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: When we measure the evolution of a quantum state, it is to the beat of an external timepiece of unknown provenance. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: It is best not to leap to philosophical conclusions when studying modern physics. Evidently time has a very different status in quantum mechanics and in relativity theory. |
| 19473 | The Schrödinger equation describes the evolution of an object's wave function in Hilbert space [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: A quantum object's state is described by a wave function living in Hilbert space, encompassing all of its possible states. We see how the wave function evolves in time, moving from one state to another, using the Schrödinger equation. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: [These idea are basic explanations for non-scientific philosophers - please forgive anything that makes you wince] |
| 19476 | String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: String theory needs at least 10 space-time dimensions to be mathematically consistent. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: Apparently because of 'Ads/CFT', it may be possible to swap this situation for a more tractable 4-dimensional version. |
| 19953 | In string theory space-time has a grainy indivisible substructure [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: String theory suggests that space-time has a grainy substructure - you can't keep chopping it indefinitely into smaller and smaller pieces. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.11.07) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the proposal is that strings are the true 'atoms'. |
| 19954 | It is impossible for find a model of actuality among the innumerable models in string theory [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: String theory has more than 10-to-the-500th solutions, each describing a different sort of universe, so it is nigh-on impossible to find the one solution that corresponds to our geometrically flat, expanding space-time full of particles. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.11.07) |
| 19947 | Hilbert Space is an abstraction representing all possible states of a quantum system [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: The elements of the abstract mathematical entity called Hilbert Space represent all the possible states of a quantum system | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 1017.02.04) |
| 19955 | Space-time may be a geometrical manifestation of quantum entanglement [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: A promising theory (based on the 'Maldacena duality' - that string equations for gravity are the same as quantum equations for surface area) is that space-time is really just geometrical manifestations of quantum entanglement. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.11.07) | |
| A reaction: This is a speculation which might unite the incompatible quantum and general relativity theories. |
| 19948 | Einstein's merging of time with space has left us confused about the nature of time [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Our hunt for the most basic ingredients of reality has left us muddled about the status of time. One culprit for this was Einstein, whose theory of general relativity merged time with space. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2017.02.04) |
| 19475 | Relativity makes time and space jointly basic; quantum theory splits them, and prioritises time [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Relativity says space and time are on the same footing - together they are the fabric of reality. Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, treats time and space differently, with time occasionally seeming more fundamental. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. When talking about time, people glibly cite relativistic space-time to tell you that time is just another dimension. Now I can reply 'Aaah, but what about time in quantum mechanics? Eh? Eh?'. Excellent. |
| 19949 | Quantum theory relies on a clock outside the system - but where is it located? [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: After general relativity, quantum mechanics reinstated our familiar notion of time. The buzzing of the quantum world plays out according to the authoritative tick of a clock outside the described system, ...but where is this clock doing its ticking? | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2017.02.04) |
| 19951 | Entropy is puzzling, so we may need to build new laws which include time directionality [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Smolin observes that if entropy increases, the early universe must have been highly ordered, which we cannot explain. Maybe we need to build time directionality into the laws, instead of making time depend on entropy. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2017.02.04) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 19477 | General relativity predicts black holes, as former massive stars, and as galaxy centres [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Black holes are predicted by general relativity, and are thought to exist where massive stars once lived, as well as at the heart of every galaxy. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.06.15) | |
| A reaction: Since black holes now seem to be a certainty, that is one hell of an impressive prediction. |
| 19952 | Black holes have entropy, but general relativity says they are unstructured, and lack entropy [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Black holes have a temperature, and hence entropy. ...But if a black hole are just an extreme scrunching of smooth space-time, it should have no substructure, and thus no entropy. This is probably the most obvious incompleteness of general relativity. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2015.11.07) |
| 16420 | 84.5 percent of the universe is made of dark matter [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Dark matter makes up 84.5 percent of the universe's matter. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2013.10.29) |
| 17604 | We are halfway to synthesising any molecule we want [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Ei-ichi Negishi (Nobel chemist of 2010) says 'the ultimate goal is to be able to synthesise any molecule we want. We are probably about halfway there'. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2010.10.16) |
| 17603 | Chemistry just needs the periodic table, and protons, electrons and neutrinos [New Sci.] |
| Full Idea: Ei-ichi Negishi (Nobel chemist of 2010) says 'I work with the periodic table in front of me at all times, and approach all challenges in terms of three particles, positively charged protons, negatively charged electrons, and neutral neutrinos'. | |
| From: New Scientist writers (New Scientist articles [2013], 2010.10.16) |