12 ideas
| 16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
| 16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
| 16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
| 16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
| A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
| 19419 | Not all of perception is accompanied by consciousness [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: I do not think that the Cartesians have ever proved or can prove that every perception is accompanied by consciousness. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.195) | |
| A reaction: This idea is very important in Leibniz, because non-conscious or barely conscious thoughts and perceptions explain a huge amount about behaviour, reality and morality. |
| 19421 | Souls act as if there were no bodies, and bodies act as if there were no souls [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Everything takes place in souls as if there were no body, and everything takes place in bodies as if there were no souls. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.198) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I have ever encountered a modern thinker who accepts this view. Leibniz rejected Occasionalism, but his account depends entirely on the role of God, to set up the pre-established harmony. Why would God do that? |
| 19420 | Death and generation are just transformations of an animal, augmented or diminished [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Death, like generation, is only the transformation of the same animal, which is sometimes augmented and sometimes diminished. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.195) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz has a very unusual view of death, since neither minds nor their bodies can ever be wholly destroyed. Death is a kind of shrinking. I suspect that he was wrong about that. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 19416 | Not all of matter is animated, any more than a pond full of living fish is animated [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It must not be said that each portion of matter is animated, just as we do not say that a pond full of fishes is an animated body, although a fish is. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.190) | |
| A reaction: This is a particularly clear picture of the role of monads in matter. Monads are attached to bodies, which are entirely inanimate, but monads suffuse matter and give it its properties, like particularly bubbly champagne. Cf Idea 19422. |
| 19422 | Every particle of matter contains organic bodies [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: There is no particle of matter which does not contain organic bodies. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.198) | |
| A reaction: Cf Idea 19416. There seems to be an interaction problem here (solved, presumably, by pre-established harmony). The organic bodies are there to explain the active behaviour of matter, but the related matter seems intrinsically inert. |
| 19418 | Mechanics shows that all motion originates in other motion, so there is a Prime Mover [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The maxim that there is no motion which has not its origin in another motion, according to the laws of mechanics, leads us again to the Prime Mover. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.194) | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's endorsement (uncredited) to Aquinas's First Way. It is hard to see how the laws of mechanics could have anything to say about the origin of movement. And doesn't the law say that the motions of God need a mover? |
| 19417 | All substances are in harmony, even though separate, so they must have one divine cause [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: My system of Pre-established Harmony furnishes a new proof of God's existence, since it is manifest that the agreement of so many substances, of which the one has no influence upon the other, could only come from a general cause on which they all depend. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Principle of Life and Plastic Natures [1705], p.192) | |
| A reaction: Adjacent harmony seems self-explanatory, but remote harmony is interesting evidence for God. Hence modern quantum non-locality should make us all wonder whether there is a deeper explanation. |