27 ideas
15053 | If metaphysics can't be settled, it hardly matters whether it makes sense [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: If there is no way of settling metaphysical questions, then who cares whether or not they make sense? | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4 n20) | |
A reaction: This footnote is aimed at logical positivists, who seemed to worry about whether metaphysics made sense, and also dismissed its prospects even if it did make sense. |
15054 | 'Quietist' says abandon metaphysics because answers are unattainable (as in Kant's noumenon) [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The 'quietist' view of metaphysics says that realist metaphysics should be abandoned, not because its questions cannot be framed, but because their answers cannot be found. The real world of metaphysics is akin to Kant's noumenal world. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 4) | |
A reaction: [He cites Blackburn, Dworkin, A.Fine, and Putnam-1987 as quietists] Fine aims to clarify the concepts of factuality and of ground, in order to show that metaphysics is possible. |
14775 | Numbers are just names devised for counting [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Numbers are merely a system of names devised by men for the purpose of counting. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: This seems a perfectly plausible view prior to the advent of Cantor, set theory and modern mathematical logic. I suppose the modern reply to this is that Peirce may be right about origin, but that men thereby stumbled on an Aladdin's Cave of riches. |
14776 | That two two-eyed people must have four eyes is a statement about numbers, not a fact [Peirce] |
Full Idea: To say that 'if' there are two persons and each person has two eyes there 'will be' four eyes is not a statement of fact, but a statement about the system of numbers which is our own creation. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: One eye for each arm of the people is certainly a fact. Frege uses this equivalence to build numbers. I think Peirce is wrong. If it is not a fact that these people have four eyes, I don't know what 'four' means. It's being two pairs is also a fact. |
15007 | If you make 'grounding' fundamental, you have to mention some non-fundamental notions [Sider on Fine,K] |
Full Idea: My main objection to Fine's notion of grounding as fundamental is that it violates 'purity' - that fundamental truths should involve only fundamental notions. | |
From: comment on Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.2 | |
A reaction: [p.106 of Sider for 'purity'] The point here is that to define a grounding relation you have to mention the 'higher' levels of the relationship (as in a 'city' being grounded in physical stuff), which doesn't seem fundamental enough. |
15006 | Something is grounded when it holds, and is explained, and necessitated by something else [Fine,K, by Sider] |
Full Idea: When p 'grounds' q then q holds in virtue of p's holding; q's holding is nothing beyond p's holding; the truth of p explains the truth of q in a particularly tight sense (explanation of q by p in this sense requires that p necessitates q). | |
From: report of Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 15-16) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 08.1 | |
A reaction: This proposal has become a hot topic in current metaphysics, as attempts are made to employ 'grounding' in various logical, epistemological and ontological contexts. I'm a fan - it is at the heart of metaphysics as structure of reality. |
15055 | Grounding relations are best expressed as relations between sentences [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: I recommend that a statement of ground be cast in the following 'canonical' form: Its being the case that S consists in nothing more than its being the case that T, U... (where S, T, U... are particular sentences). | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
A reaction: The point here is that grounding is to be undestood in terms of sentences (and 'its being the case that...'), rather than in terms of objects, properties or relations. Fine thus makes grounding a human activity, rather than a natural activity. |
15050 | Reduction might be producing a sentence which gets closer to the logical form [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: One line of reduction is logical analysis. To say one sentence reduces to another is to say that they express the same proposition (or fact), but the grammatical form of the second is closer to the logical form than the grammatical form of the first. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
A reaction: Fine objects that S-and-T reduces to S and T, which is two propositions. He also objects that this approach misses the de re ingredient in reduction (that it is about the things themselves, not the sentences). It also overemphasises logical form. |
15051 | Reduction might be semantic, where a reduced sentence is understood through its reduction [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: A second line of reduction is semantic, and holds in virtue of the meaning of the sentences. It should then be possible to acquire an understanding of the reduced sentence on the basis of understanding the sentences to which it reduces. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
A reaction: Fine says this avoids the first objection to the grammatical approach (see Reaction to Idea 15050), but still can't handle the de re aspect of reduction. Fine also doubts whether this understanding qualifies as 'reduction'. |
15052 | Reduction is modal, if the reductions necessarily entail the truth of the target sentence [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The third, more recent, approach to reduction is a modal matter. A class of propositions will reduce to - or supervene upon - another if, necessarily, any truth from the one is entailed by truths from the other. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 3) | |
A reaction: [He cites Armstrong, Chalmers and Jackson for this approach] Fine notes that some people reject supervenience as a sort of reduction. He objects that this reduction doesn't necessarily lead to something more basic. |
15056 | The notion of reduction (unlike that of 'ground') implies the unreality of what is reduced [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The notion of ground should be distinguished from the strict notion of reduction. A statement of reduction implies the unreality of what is reduced, but a statement of ground does not. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
A reaction: That seems like a bit of a caricature of reduction. If you see a grey cloud and it reduces to a swarm of mosquitoes, you do not say that the cloud was 'unreal'. Fine is setting up a stall for 'ground' in the metaphysical market. We all seek structure. |
15047 | What is real can only be settled in terms of 'ground' [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: Questions of what is real are to be settled upon the basis of considerations of ground. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
A reaction: This looks like being one of Fine's most important ideas, which is shifting the whole basis of contemporary metaphysics. Only Parmenides and Heidegger thought Being was the target. Aristotle aims at identity. What grounds what is a third alternative. |
15048 | In metaphysics, reality is regarded as either 'factual', or as 'fundamental' [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The first main approach says metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'objective' or 'factual'. ...According to the second conception, metaphysical reality is to be identified with what is 'irreducible' or 'fundamental'. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 1) | |
A reaction: Fine is defending the 'fundamental' approach, via the 'grounding' relation. The whole structure, though, seems to be reality. In particular, a complete story must include the relations which facilitate more than mere fundamentals. |
15060 | Why should what is explanatorily basic be therefore more real? [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: We may grant that some things are explanatorily more basic than others, but why should that make them more real? | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
A reaction: This is the question asked by the 'quietist'. Fine's answer is that our whole conception of Reality, with its intrinsic structure, is what lies at the basis, and this is primitive. |
15046 | Reality is a primitive metaphysical concept, which cannot be understood in other terms [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: I conclude that there is a primitive metaphysical concept of reality, one that cannot be understood in fundamentally different terms. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], Intro) | |
A reaction: Fine offers arguments to support his claim, but it seems hard to disagree with. The only alternative I can see is to understand reality in terms of our experiences, and this is the road to metaphysical hell. |
14770 | Reasoning is based on statistical induction, so it can't achieve certainty or precision [Peirce] |
Full Idea: All positive reasoning is judging the proportion of something in a whole collection by the proportion found in a sample. Hence we can never hope to attain absolute certainty, absolute exactitude, absolute universality. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) | |
A reaction: This is the basis of Peirce's fallibilism - that all 'positive' reasoning (whatever that it?) is based on statistical induction. I'm all in favour of fallibilism, but find Peirce's claim to be a bit too narrow. He was too mesmerised by physical science. |
14774 | Innate truths are very uncertain and full of error, so they certainly have exceptions [Peirce] |
Full Idea: It seems to me there is the most historic proof that innate truths are particularly uncertain and mixed up with error, and therefore a fortiori not without exception. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
15061 | Although colour depends on us, we can describe the world that way if it picks out fundamentals [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: As long as colour terms pick out fundamental physical properties, I would be willing to countenance their use in the description of Reality in itself, ..even if they are based on a peculiar form of sensory awareness. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 8) | |
A reaction: This seems to explain why metaphysicians are so fond of using colour as their example of a property, when it seems rather subjective. There seem to be good reasons for rejecting Fine's view. |
14772 | If we decide an idea is inspired, we still can't be sure we have got the idea right [Peirce] |
Full Idea: Even if we decide that an idea really is inspired, we cannot be sure, or nearly sure, that the statement is true. We know one of the commandments of the Bible was printed without a 'not' in it. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14773 | A truth is hard for us to understand if it rests on nothing but inspiration [Peirce] |
Full Idea: A truth which rests on the authority of inspiration only is of a somewhat incomprehensible nature; and we can never be sure that we rightly comprehend it. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
14771 | Only reason can establish whether some deliverance of revelation really is inspired [Peirce] |
Full Idea: We never can be absolutely certain that any given deliverance [of revelation] really is inspired; for that can only be established by reasoning. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], II) |
7458 | The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking] |
Full Idea: The credibility of a witness is in part a function of the story being reported. When the story claims to have infinite value, the temptation to lie for personal benefit is asymptotically infinite. | |
From: report of Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820], Ch.XI) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8 | |
A reaction: Laplace seems to especially have reports of miracles in mind. This observation certainly dashes any dreams one might have of producing a statistical measure of the reliability of testimony. |
15059 | Grounding is an explanation of truth, and needs all the virtues of good explanations [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: The main sources of evidence for judgments of ground are intuitive and explanatory. The relationship of ground is a form of explanation, ..explaining what makes a proposition true, which needs simplicity, breadth, coherence, non-circularity and strength. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 7) | |
A reaction: My thought is that not only must grounding explain, and therefore be a good explanation, but that the needs of explanation drive our decisions about what are the grounds. It is a bit indeterminate which is tail and which is dog. |
15057 | Ultimate explanations are in 'grounds', which account for other truths, which hold in virtue of the grounding [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: We take ground to be an explanatory relation: if the truth that P is grounded in other truths, then they account for its truth; P's being the case holds in virtue of the other truths' being the case. ...It is the ultimate form of explanation. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 5) | |
A reaction: To be 'ultimate' that which grounds would have to be something which thwarted all further explanation. Popper, for example, got quite angry at the suggestion that we should put a block on further investigation in this way. |
14769 | Only imagination can connect phenomena together in a rational way [Peirce] |
Full Idea: We can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. | |
From: Charles Sanders Peirce (Scientific Attitude and Fallibilism [1899], I) | |
A reaction: The importance of this is its connection between imagination and 'rational' understanding. This is an important corrective to a crude traditional picture of the role of imagination. I would connect imagination with counterfactuals and best explanation. |
3441 | If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace] |
Full Idea: An intelligence knowing at an instant the whole universe could know the movement of the largest bodies and atoms in one formula, provided his intellect were powerful enough to subject all data to analysis. Past and future would be present to his eyes. | |
From: Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820]), quoted by Mark Thornton - Do we have free will? p.70 |
15058 | A proposition ingredient is 'essential' if changing it would change the truth-value [Fine,K] |
Full Idea: A proposition essentially contains a given constituent if its replacement by some other constituent induces a shift in truth value. Thus Socrates is essential to the proposition that Socrates is a philosopher, but not to Socrates is self-identical. | |
From: Kit Fine (The Question of Realism [2001], 6) | |
A reaction: In this view the replacement of 'is' by 'isn't' would make 'is' (or affirmation) part of the essence of most propositions. This is about linguistic essence, rather than real essence. It has the potential to be trivial. Replace 'slightly' by 'fairly'? |