46 ideas
| 5333 | Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Any good philosophy will need to offer wisdom about who we are as well as about how we ought to be. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This sop should be accepted gratefully by fans of bioethics, who seem inclined to think that describing 'how we are' is all that needs to be said. Maybe the key wisdom lies in the relationship between the 'is' and the 'ought' of human nature. |
| 5334 | We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The inability of science to provide ethical wisdom is partly responsible for our resistance to the scientific image. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 14) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. A.J. Ayer, for example, declared "I believe in science", and his account of ethics was vacuously nihilistic. A description of the mechanisms of moral life is not the same as ethical wisdom. |
| 13258 | The 'aggregative' objections says mereology gets existence and location of objects wrong [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'aggregative' objection to classical extensional mereology is that it assigns simply the wrong, set-like conditions of existence and spatio-temporal location to ordinary material objects. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: [She attributes this to Kit Fine] The point is that there is more to a whole than just some parts, otherwise you could scatter the parts across the globe (or even across time) and claim that the object still existed. It's obvious really. |
| 13288 | Consequence is truth-preserving, either despite substitutions, or in all interpretations [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Two conceptions of logical consequence: a substitutional account, where no substitution of non-logical terms for others (of the right syntactic category) produce true premises and false conclusions; and model theory, where no interpretation can do it. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 9.3.2 n8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 14506 | 'Roses are red; therefore, roses are colored' seems truth-preserving, but not valid in a system [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: 'Roses are red; therefore, roses are colored' may be necessarily truth-preserving, but it would not be classified as logically valid by standard systems of logic. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 9.3.2) |
| 14505 | Some questions concern mathematical entities, rather than whole structures [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Those who hold that not all mathematical questions can be concerned with structural matters can point to 'why are π or e transcendental?' or 'how are the prime numbers distributed?' as questions about particular features in the domain. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 9.3.1 n6) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Mac Lane on this] The reply would have to be that we only have those particular notions because we have abstracted them from structures, as in deriving π for circles. |
| 13289 | Structures have positions, constituent types and number, and some invariable parts [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Structures make available positions or places for objects, and place restraints on the type of constituent, and on their configuration. ...These lead to restrictions on the number of objects, and on which parts of the structure are invariable. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 9.6) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] That's a pretty good first shot at saying what a structure is, which I have so far not discovered any other writer willing to do. I take this to be an exploration of what Aristotle meant by 'form'. |
| 14501 | 'Categorical' properties exist in the actual world, and 'hypothetical' properties in other worlds [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The 'categorical' properties are roughly those that concern what goes on in the actual world; the properties excluded from that family are the 'hypothetical' ones, which concern what goes on in other worlds. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 3.2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: The awkward guest at this little party is the 'dispositional' properties, which are held to exist in the actual world, but have implications for other worlds. I'm a fan of them. |
| 14495 | I aim to put the notion of structure or form back into the concepts of part, whole and object [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: My project is to put the notion of structure or form squarely back at the center of any adequate account of the notion of part, whole and object. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Excellent. It is the fault of logicians, who presumably can't cope with such elusive and complex concepts, that we have ended up with objects as lists of things or properties, or quantifications over them. |
| 13264 | If a whole is just a structure, a dinner party wouldn't need the guests to turn up [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: If a whole is just a structure, we wonder how the guests could really be part of the dinner party seating structure, when the complex whole is fully exhausted by the structure that specifies the slots. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 4.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This cuts both ways. A dinner party may necessarily require guests, but the seating plan can be specified in the absence of any guests, who may never turn up. A seating plan is not a dinner party. Perhaps we have two objects here. |
| 14497 | The clay is just a part of the statue (its matter); the rest consists of its form or structure [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: That objects are compounds of matter and form yields a solution to the Problem of Constitution: the clay is merely a proper part of the statue (viz. its matter); the 'remainder' of the statue is its formal or structural components which distinguish it. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], Info) | |
| A reaction: Thus philosophers have thought that it might consist of two objects because they have failed to grasp what an 'object' is. I would add that we need to mention 'essence', so that the statue can survive minor modifications. This is the solution! |
| 13280 | Statue and clay differ in modal and temporal properties, and in constitution [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The statue and the clay appear to differ in modal properties (such as being able to survive squashing), and temporal properties (coming into existence after the lump of clay), and in constitution (only the statue is constituted of the clay). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 7.2.7.2) | |
| A reaction: I think the modal properties are the biggest problem here. You can't say a thing and its constitution are different objects, as they are necessarily connected. Structure comes into existence at t, but the structure isn't the whole object. |
| 14496 | Structure or form are right at the centre of modern rigorous modes of enquiry [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The notion of structure or form, far from being a mysterious and causally inert invention of philosophers, lies at the very center of many scientific and other rigorous endeavours, such as mathematics, logic, linguistics, chemistry and music. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This echoes my own belief exactly, and places Aristotle at the centre of the modern stage. Her list of subjects is intriguing, and will need a bit of thought. |
| 13279 | There are at least six versions of constitution being identity [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The view that constitution is identity has many versions: eliminativism (van Inwagen), identity relative to time (Gallois), identity relativized to sort (Geach), four-dimensionalism (Lewis, Sider), contingent identity (Gibbard), dominant kinds (Burke). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 7.2.7.2 n17) | |
| A reaction: [she offers other names- useful footnote] Eliminativism says there is no identity. Gallois's view is Heraclitus. Geach seems to deny nature, since sorts are partly conventional. 4-D, nah! Gibbard: it could be the thing but lack its identity? Kinds wrong. |
| 14498 | For three-dimensionalist parthood must be a three-place relation, including times [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Parthood (for the three-dimensionalist) must be a three-place relation between pairs of objects and times, not the timeless two-place relation at work in the original Calculus of Individuals. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 2.2) |
| 13283 | The parts may be the same type as the whole, like a building made of buildings [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: A building may be composed of proper parts which are themselves buildings; a particular pattern may be composed of proper parts which are themselves patterns (even the same pattern, on a smaller scale). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 7.2.12) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a rather important observation, if you are (erroneously) trying to establish the identity of a thing simply by categorising its type. |
| 13266 | Wholes in modern mereology are intended to replace sets, so they closely resemble them [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: The modern theory of parts and wholes was intended primarily to replace set theory; in this way, wholes came out looking as much like sets as they possibly could, without set theory's commitment to an infinite hierarchy of abstract objects. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A very nice clarificatory remark, which explains well this rather baffling phenomenon of people who think there is nothing more to a whole than a pile of parts, as if a scrap heap were the same as a fleet of motor cars. |
| 14500 | Wholes are entities distinct from their parts, and have different properties [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: A commitment to wholes is a commitment to entities that are numerically distinct from their parts (by Leibniz's Law, they don't share all of their properties - the parts typically exist, but the whole doesn't, prior to its creation). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably in classical mereology no act of 'creation' is needed, since all the parts in the universe already form all the possible wholes into which they might combine, however bizarrely. |
| 13281 | Wholes are not just their parts; a whole is an entity distinct from the proper parts [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: In my approach (as in that of Plato and Aristotle), wholes are in no way identified with parts; rather, a commitment to wholes is a commitment to entities numerically distinct from their proper parts. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 7.2.11) | |
| A reaction: Calling the whole an 'entity' doesn't seem to capture it. She seems to think there are some extra parts, in addition to the material parts, that make something a whole. I think this might be a category mistake. A structure is an abstraction. |
| 5340 | Explanation does not entail prediction [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Explanation does not entail prediction. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 73n) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the inverse of this is also true, as we might be able to predict through pure induction, without knowing why something happened. We predict that smoking is likely to cause cancer. Complex things might be explicable but unpredictable. |
| 5346 | In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: In the seventeenth century the dominant idea that causation is collisionlike made mental causation almost impossible to envision. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.136) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. This makes Descartes' interaction theory look rather bold, and Leibniz's and Malebranche's rejection of it understandable. Personally I still think of causation as collisionlike, except that the collisions are of very very tiny objects. |
| 5341 | Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is easy to explain why certain brain events are uniquely experienced by you subjectively: only you are properly hooked up to your own nervous system to have your own experiences. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 87) | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Nagel's oft quoted claim that mind can only be understood as "what it is like to be" that mind. I agree with Flanagan, and it is nice illustration of how philosophers can confuse themselves with high-sounding questions. |
| 5351 | We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: We only have a sense of our self as continuous, but not as exactly the same. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.178) | |
| A reaction: Russell said this too, and it seems to me to be right. Personal identity is far too imprecise for me to assert that I remember my ten-year-old self as being identical to me now. Only physical objects like teddy bears can pass that test. |
| 5353 | The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The self is an abstraction from the story of a person's life that isolates and magnifies the experiences, traits and aspirations that are assigned importance. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.240) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am inclined to see personal identity as the central controller of brain activity, the aspect of the biological machine which keeps all the mental events focused on what matters, which is health, safety and happiness. |
| 5354 | We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is a bad mistake to think we are born with a self; the self develops, and acquiring it requires living in the world. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.260) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. He is mistaking a complex cultural concept of the self as the subject for autobiography etc. for the basic biological self which even small animals must have if their brains are to serve any useful purpose in their lives. |
| 5349 | For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: According to Buddhism, the idea of a permanent, constant self is an illusion, and a morally dangerous one. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.161) | |
| A reaction: We are familiar with the idea that it might be an illusion, but I am unconvinced by 'morally dangerous'. If you drop both free will and personal identity, I can't see any sort of focus for moral life left, but I am willing to be convinced. |
| 5338 | Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The standard view of free will is that I have something like complete control over what I do. A stronger view (not widely held) is that I also have complete control over what I think and what I feel. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 60n) | |
| A reaction: To claim free control of feelings looks optimistic, but it does look as if we can decide to think about something, such as a philosophical problem. Deciding what to say comes somewhere between thought and action. |
| 5344 | Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Free will is said to give us self-control, self-expression, individuality, reasons-sensitivity, rational deliberation, rational accountability, moral accountability, the capacity to do otherwise, unpredictability, and political freedom. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.104) | |
| A reaction: Nice list. His obvious challenge is to either say we can live happily without some of these things, or else show how we can have them without 'free will'. Personally I agree with Flanagan that we meet the challenge. |
| 5332 | People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Most people believe we have free will, and that this consists in the ability to circumvent natural law. The trouble is that the only device ever philosophically invented that can do this sort of job is an incorporeal soul or mind. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right. We currently have a western world full of people who have rejected dualism, but still cling on to free will, because they think morality depends on it. I think morality depends on personal identity, but not on free will. |
| 5345 | We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: It is unimaginable to me that, despite the feeling that we control what we do, such a strong conception of ourselves as unmoved movers would have been added to our self-image unless we had first conceived of God along these lines. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.107) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right, though there are signs in fifth century Greece of contradictory evidence. The 'unmoved mover' seems unformulated before Plato's 'Laws' (idea 1423), but there is an implied belief in free will a hundred years earlier. |
| 5343 | People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: I would say that that my consciousness doesn't seem either physical or non-physical, ..but the belief that the mind is non-physical partly took hold because that fits well with thinking of human agents as free. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.102) | |
| A reaction: I think this is right. I personally think there is no such thing as free will, and that belief in it has been the single greatest delusion amongst philosophers (and others) for the last two thousand years. Dualism has now gone, and free will is next. |
| 5347 | Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Behaviourism was notorious in its heyday for having nothing to say about mental causation. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.141) | |
| A reaction: This is a bit unfair, as Ryle (idea 2622, following Spinoza, 4862) was one of the first to point out the paradox of 'double causation'. You have to be a mentalist to worry about mental causation, and eliminativists aren't bothered. |
| 5339 | Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Although everyone thinks cars and bodies obey the principles of causation, no one thinks it a deficiency that we don't know strict laws of automechanics or anatomy. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 65) | |
| A reaction: This attacks Davidson's claim that there are no strict psycho-physical laws, and I agree with Flanagan. Huge dreams of free will and human dignity are being pinned on the flimsy point that we have no strict laws here. But brains are very complicated. |
| 5342 | Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One may be committed to the truth of physicalism without being committed to the claim that the essence of an experience is captured fully by a description of its neural realiser. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 90) | |
| A reaction: This is a reply to the Leibniz Mill question (idea 2109) about what is missing from a materialist view. Flanagan's point is that just as the essence of a panorama is the view from the hill, so the essence of consciousness requires you to be that brain. |
| 5335 | Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: One can question the idea that emotions are non-rational, fickle and flighty; on the contrary, emotions normally seem to be very apt. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 16) | |
| A reaction: This is the modern view of emotion which is emerging from neuroscience, which is greatly superior to traditional views, apart from Aristotle, who felt that wisdom and virtue arose precisely when emotions were apt for the situation. |
| 5348 | Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: There are two main pictures of the good person: there is the 'good character', and there is the 'principled actor'. ..The first picture is non-intellectualist, and the second is intellectualist. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.145) | |
| A reaction: The second ideal elevates the principle itself above the actor who carries it out. Presumably consistency is a virtue, so a good character will at least pay some attention to principles. A good magistrate comes out the same in both views. |
| 5355 | Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.301n) | |
| A reaction: I take cognitivism to be (strictly) the view that morals are knowable in principle. Our intellects might not be up to the task (and so we might have to ask the gods what is right). There is also the possibility that morals might be known by intuition. |
| 5336 | Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: Ethics is the normative science that studies the objective conditions that lead to flourishing of persons. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p. 17) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice slogan for the virtue theory account of the nature of ethics. I think it is the view with which I agree. I am intrigued that he has smuggled the word 'science' in, which is a nice challenge to conventional views of science. |
| 14504 | The Kripke/Putnam approach to natural kind terms seems to give them excessive stability [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Theoretical terms such as 'mass', 'force', 'motion', 'species' and 'phlogiston' seem to indicate that the Kripke/Putnam approach to natural kind terms is committed to an excessive amount of stability in the meaning and reference of such expressions. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.6.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right to me. The notion of 'rigid' designation gives a nice framework for modal logic, but it doesn't seem to fit the shifting patterns of scientific thought. |
| 13285 | Natural kinds support inductive inferences, from previous samples to the next one [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are said to stand out from other classifications because they support legitimate inductive inferences ...as when we observe that past samples of copper conduct electricity and infer that the next sample will too. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.3.1) | |
| A reaction: A slightly more precise version of the Upanishad definition of natural kinds which I favour (Idea 8153). If you can't predict the next one from the previous one, it isn't a natural kind. You can't quite predict the next tiger from the previous one. |
| 13287 | Concepts for species are either intrinsic structure, or relations like breeding or ancestry [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Candidate species concepts can be intrinsic: morphological, physiological or genetic similarity; or relational: biology such as interbreeding and reproductive isolation, ecology, such as mate recognition in a niche, or phylogenetics (ancestor relations). | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.4.1) | |
| A reaction: She says the relational ones are more popular, but I gather they all hit problems. See John Dupré on the hopelessness of the whole task. |
| 13284 | Should vernacular classifications ever be counted as natural kind terms? [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: It is controversial whether classificatory expressions from the vernacular should ever really be counted as genuine natural kind terms. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a similar confrontation between the folk and the scientific specialist as we find in folk psychology. There are good defences of folk psychology, and it looks plausible to defend the folk classifications as having priority. |
| 13286 | There are apparently no scientific laws concerning biological species [Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: It has been observed that there are apparently no scientific laws concerning biological species. | |
| From: Kathrin Koslicki (The Structure of Objects [2008], 8.4.1) | |
| A reaction: The central concept of biology I take to be a 'mechanism'. and I suspect that this view of science is actually applicable in physics and chemistry, with so-called 'laws' being a merely superficial description of what is going on. |
| 16712 | Atheism is an atrocious and intolerable crime in any country [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Atheism is the most atrocious crime, and should be tolerated in no republic, however free. | |
| From: René Descartes (Letters to Voetius [1640], VIIIB:174), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
| 5350 | The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The doctrine of a cycle of rebirths and reincarnations that are normally required before one achieve nirvana was only proposed in the eighth century CE, and then spread like wildfire among Hindus and, to a lesser extent, among Buddhists. | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.166n) | |
| A reaction: Intriguing. Plato had proposed it in the fourth century BCE. Presumably Hindus had always been dualists, and then suddenly saw and exciting possibility that followed from it. The doctrine strikes me as (to put it mildly) implausible. |
| 5352 | The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds' [Flanagan] |
| Full Idea: The idea of the soul could be easily trashed if science does not countenance essences, but science does countenance essences in the form of what are known as 'natural kinds' (such as water, salt and gold). | |
| From: Owen Flanagan (The Problem of the Soul [2002], p.181) | |
| A reaction: The existence of any essences at all does indeed make the existence of a soul naturally possible, but scientific natural kinds are usually postulated on a basis of chemical stability. Animals, for example, are no longer usually classified that way. |