14 ideas
| 20728 | Metaphysics is hopeless with its present epistemology; common-sense realism is needed [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: Despair over metaphysics will not change until it has shaken off the incubus of a perverted epistemology, which has left thought in a hopeless tangle - until common-sense critical realism is made the starting point for investigating reality. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.144) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that this is what has happened to analytic metaphysics since Kripke. Careful discussions about the nature of an object, or a category, or a property, are relying on unquestioned robust realism. Quite right too. |
| 17783 | A number is not a multitude, but a unified ratio between quantities [Newton] |
| Full Idea: By a Number we understand not so much a Multitude of Unities, as the abstracted Ratio of any Quantity to another Quantity of the same Kind, which we take for unity. | |
| From: Isaac Newton (Universal Arithmetick [1669]), quoted by John Mayberry - What Required for Foundation for Maths? p.407-2 | |
| A reaction: This needs a metaphysics of 'kinds' (since lines can't have ratios with solids). Presumably Newton wants the real numbers to be more basic than the natural numbers. This is the transition from Greek to modern. |
| 20726 | We can only distinguish self from non-self if there is an inflexible external reality [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: Were there no inflexible reality outside of the individual, opposing and limiting it, knowledge of the self and the non-self would never develop. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.140) | |
| A reaction: Presumably opponents would have to say that such 'knowledge' is an illusion. This is in no way a conclusive argument, but I approach the problem of realism in quest of the best explanation, and this idea is important evidence. |
| 20727 | Common-sense realism rests on our interests and practical life [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: It is the determination of the external world from the practical standpoint, from the standpoint of interest, that may be defined as the common-sense view of reality. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.141) | |
| A reaction: Probably more appropriately named the 'pragmatic' view of reality. Relying on what is 'practical' seems to offer some objectivity, but relying on 'interest' rather less so. Can I be an anti-realist when life goes badly, and a realist when it goes well? |
| 20729 | Arguments that objects are unknowable or non-existent assume the knower's existence [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: Arguments for the absolute unknowability or non-existence of an external object only works by assuming that another external object, an individual, is known completely in so far as that individual expresses a judgement about an external object. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.145) | |
| A reaction: Anti-realism is a decay that eats into everything. You can't doubt all the externals without doubting all the internals as well. |
| 20730 | If objects are doubted because their appearances change, that presupposes one object [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: If objects are doubted because the same object appears differently at different times and circumstances, in order that this judgement shall have weight it must be assumed that the object under question is the same in its different presentations. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.145) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Scepticism could eat into the underlying object as well. Is the underlying object a 'substrate'? If so, what's that? Is the object just a bundle of a properties? If so, there is no underlying object. |
| 20731 | The idea that everything is relations is contradictory; relations are part of the concept of things [Colvin] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine [that all we can know is the relations between subject and object] is in its essence self-contradictory, since our very idea of thing implies that it is something in relation either actually or potentially. | |
| From: Stephen S. Colvin (The Common-Sense View of Reality [1902], p.150) | |
| A reaction: Ladyman and Ross try to defend an account of reality based entirely on relations. I'm with Colvin on this one. All accounts of reality based either on pure relations or pure functions have a huge hole in their theory. |
| 21833 | Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The emerging consensus is that we probably overrate the power of conscious experience in our lives. Freud, of course, said the same thing for different reasons. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Pockett, Banks and Gallagher 2006]. Freud was concerned with big deep secrets, but the modern view concerns ordinary decisions and perceptions. An important idea, which should incline us all to become Nietzscheans. |
| 21834 | Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: There is still some hope for something like identity theory for sensations. But almost no one believes that strict identity theory will work for more complex mental states. Strict identity is stronger than type neurophysicalism. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Ontology') | |
| A reaction: It is so hard to express the problem. What needs to be explained? How can one bunch of neurons represent many different things? It's not like computing. That just transfers the data to brains, where the puzzling stuff happens. |
| 21837 | Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Morality is 'normative' in the sense that it consists of the extraction of ''good' or 'excellent' practices from common practices. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Naturalism') |
| 21830 | For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Two explanations came forward in the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Altruism is either 1) person-based reciprocal altruism, or 2) gene-based kin altruism. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Darwin') | |
| A reaction: Flanagan obviously thinks there is also 'genuine psychological atruism'. Presumably we don't explain mathematics or music or the desire to travel as either contracts or genetics, so we have other explanations available. |
| 21835 | We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative') | |
| A reaction: Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing. |
| 21831 | Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: What Marx called 'alienation' is the widespread condition of not being able to discover what one wants, or not being remotely positioned to achieve. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 2 'Expanding') | |
| A reaction: I took alienation to concern people's relationship to the means of production in their trade. On Flanagan's definition I would expect almost everyone aged under 20 to count as alienated. |
| 21832 | Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Buddhism rejected the idea of a creator God, and the unchanging self [atman]. They accept the appearance-reality distinction, reward for virtue [karma], suffering defining our predicament, and that liberation [nirvana] is possible through wisdom. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 3 'Buddhism') | |
| A reaction: [Compressed] Flanagan is an analytic philosopher and a practising Buddhist. Looking at a happiness map today which shows Europeans largely happy, and Africans largely miserable, I can see why they thought suffering was basic. |