99 ideas
1765 | Diogenes said avoidance of philosophy is the lack of a desire to live properly [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: When a man said that he was not suited to philosophy, Diogenes said to him, 'Why then do you live, if you have no desire to live properly.' | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 | |
A reaction: Meaning philosophy is already more practice than theory. |
7001 | If you begin philosophy with language, you find yourself trapped in it [Heil] |
Full Idea: If you start with language and try to work your way outwards, you will never get outside language. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Pref) | |
A reaction: This voices my pessimism about the linguistic approach to philosophy (and I don't just mean analysis of ordinary language), though I wonder if the career of (say) John Searle is a counterexample. |
224 | When questions are doubtful we should concentrate not on objects but on ideas of the intellect [Plato] |
Full Idea: Doubtful questions should not be discussed in terms of visible objects or in relation to them, but only with reference to ideas conceived by the intellect. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135e) |
232 | Opposites are as unlike as possible [Plato] |
Full Idea: Opposites are as unlike as possible. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159a) |
7037 | Parsimony does not imply the world is simple, but that our theories should try to be [Heil] |
Full Idea: A commitment to parsimony is not a commitment to a conception of the world as simple. The idea, rather, is that we should not complicate our theories about the world unnecessarily. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
A reaction: In other words, Ockham's Razor is about us, not about the world. It would be absurd to make the a priori assumption that the world has to be simple. Are we, though, creating bad theories by insisting that they should be simple? |
7038 | A theory with few fundamental principles might still posit a lot of entities [Heil] |
Full Idea: It could well turn out that a simpler theory - a theory with fewer fundamental principles - posits more entities than a more complex competitor. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.6) | |
A reaction: See also Idea 4036. The point here is that you can't simply translate Ockham as 'keep it simple', as there are different types of simplicity. The best theory will negotiate a balance between entities and principles. |
8937 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic [Hegel on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is the greatest artistic achievement of the ancient dialectic. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Phenomenology of Spirit Pref 71 | |
A reaction: It is a long way from the analytic tradition of philosophy to be singling out a classic text for its 'artistic' achievement. Eventually we may even look back on, say, Kripke's 'Naming and Necessity' and see it in that light. |
7004 | The view that truth making is entailment is misguided and misleading [Heil] |
Full Idea: I argue that the widely held view that truth making is to be understood as entailment is misguided in principle and potentially misleading. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: If reality was just one particle, what would entail the truths about it? Suppose something appears to be self-evident true about reality, but no one can think of any entailments to derive it? Do we assume a priori that they are possible? |
7035 | God does not create the world, and then add the classes [Heil] |
Full Idea: It is hard to see classes as an 'addition of being'; God does not create the world, and then add the classes. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4 n6) | |
A reaction: This seems right. We may be tempted into believing in the reality of classes when considering maths, but it seems utterly implausible when considering trees or cows. |
13986 | Plato found antinomies in ideas, Kant in space and time, and Bradley in relations [Plato, by Ryle] |
Full Idea: Plato (in 'Parmenides') shows that the theory that 'Eide' are substances, and Kant that space and time are substances, and Bradley that relations are substances, all lead to aninomies. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Gilbert Ryle - Are there propositions? 'Objections' |
14150 | Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made [Russell on Plato] |
Full Idea: Plato's 'Parmenides' is perhaps the best collection of antinomies ever made. | |
From: comment on Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Bertrand Russell - The Principles of Mathematics §337 |
16150 | One is, so numbers exist, so endless numbers exist, and each one must partake of being [Plato] |
Full Idea: If one is, there must also necessarily be number - Necessarily - But if there is number, there would be many, and an unlimited multitude of beings. ..So if all partakes of being, each part of number would also partake of it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 144a) | |
A reaction: This seems to commit to numbers having being, then to too many numbers, and hence to too much being - but without backing down and wondering whether numbers had being after all. Aristotle disagreed. |
229 | The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato] |
Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d) | |
A reaction: This seems to be rhetorical, rather a precise theory, given that the One is said to be eternal and unchanging. The One is not just what we call 'reality'. |
21821 | Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus] |
Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08 | |
A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God. |
7017 | The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality [Heil] |
Full Idea: The reductionist programme dispenses with levels of reality. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
A reaction: Fodor, for example, claims that certain causal laws only operate at high levels of reality. I agree with Heil's idea - the notion that there are different realities around here that don't connect properly to one another is philosopher's madness. |
7003 | There are levels of organisation, complexity, description and explanation, but not of reality [Heil] |
Full Idea: We should accept levels of organisation, levels of complexity, levels of description, and levels of explanation, but not the levels of reality favoured by many anti-reductionists. The world is then ontologically, but not analytically, reductive. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: This sounds right to me. The crunch questions seem to be whether the boundaries at higher levels of organisation exist lower down, and whether the causal laws of the higher levels can be translated without remainder into lower level laws. |
7045 | Realism says some of our concepts 'cut nature at the joints' [Heil] |
Full Idea: Realism is sometimes said to involve a commitment to the idea that certain of our concepts, those with respect to which we are realists, 'carve reality at the joints'. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.11) | |
A reaction: Clearly not all concepts cut nature at the joints (e.g. we have concepts of things we know to be imaginary). Personally I am committed to this view of realism. I try very hard to use concepts that cut accurately; why shouldn't I sometimes succeed? |
221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) | |
A reaction: These seems to thoroughly pre-empt Plato's Theory of Forms a century before he created it. Which shows (as Simone Weil says) that Plato was just part of a long tradition. |
7065 | Anti-realists who reduce reality to language must explain the existence of language [Heil] |
Full Idea: Anti-realist philosophers, and those who hope to reduce metaphysics to (or replace it with) the philosophy of language, owe the rest of us an account of the ontology of language. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
A reaction: A nice turning-the-tables question. In all accounts of relativism, x is usually said to be relative to y. You haven't got proper relativism if you haven't relativised both x and y. But relativised them to what? Nietzsche's 'perspectivism' (Idea 4420)? |
7020 | Concepts don't carve up the world, which has endless overlooked or ignored divisions [Heil] |
Full Idea: Concepts do not 'carve up' the world; the world already contains endless divisions, most of which we remain oblivious to or ignore. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.3) | |
A reaction: Concepts could still carve up the world, without ever aspiring to do a complete job. We carve up the aspects that interest us, but the majority of the carving is in response to natural divisions, not whimsical conventions. |
7007 | I think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative [Heil] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers who accept that properties are intrinsic features of objects regard them as pure powers, pure dispositionalities; I prefer to think of properties as simultaneously dispositional and qualitative. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: I am uneasy about 'qualitative' as a category, and am inclined to reduce it to being a dispositional power to cause primary and secondary qualities in observers. Roughness is only a power, not a quality, if there are no observers. |
7015 | A predicate applies truly if it picks out a real property of objects [Heil] |
Full Idea: When a predicate applies truly to an object, it does so in virtue of designating a property possessed by that object and by every object to which the predicate truly applies (or would apply). | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.3) | |
A reaction: I am sympathetic to Heil's aim of shifting our attention from arbitrary predicates to natural properties, but it won't avoid Fodor's problem (Idea 7014) that all kinds of whimsical predicates will apply 'truly', but fail to pick out anything significant. |
7042 | A theory of universals says similarity is identity of parts; for modes, similarity is primitive [Heil] |
Full Idea: The friend of universals has an account of similarity relations as relations of identity and partial identity; the friend of modes must regard similarity relations as primitive and irreducible. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.5) | |
A reaction: We always seem to be able to ask 'in what respect' a similarity occurs. If similarity is 'primitive and irreducible', we should not be able to analyse and explain a similarity, yet we seem able to. I conclude that Heil is wrong. |
7023 | Powers or dispositions are usually seen as caused by lower-level qualities [Heil] |
Full Idea: The modern default position on dispositionality is that powers or dispositions are higher-level properties objects possess by virtue of those objects' possession of lower-level qualitative (categorical) properties. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.2) | |
A reaction: The new idea which is being floated by Heil, and which I prefer, is that dispositions or powers are basic. A 'quality' is a much more dubious entity than a power. |
7025 | Are a property's dispositions built in, or contingently added? [Heil] |
Full Idea: There is a dispute over whether a property's dispositionality is built into the property or whether it is a contingent add-on. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 09.4) | |
A reaction: Put that way, the idea that it is built in seems much more plausible. If it is an add-on, an explanation of why that disposition is added to that particular property seems required. If it is built in, it seems legitimate to accept it as a brute fact. |
227 | You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name [Plato] |
Full Idea: You must always mean the same thing when you utter the same name. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 147d) |
7034 | Universals explain one-over-many relations, and similar qualities, and similar behaviour [Heil] |
Full Idea: Universals can explain the one-over-many problem, and easily explain similarity relations between objects, and explain the similar behaviour of similar objects. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.1) | |
A reaction: A useful summary. If you accept it, you seem to be faced with a choice between Plato (who has universals existing independently of particulars) and Armstrong (who makes them real, but existing only in particulars). |
223 | If you deny that each thing always stays the same, you destroy the possibility of discussion [Plato] |
Full Idea: If a person denies that the idea of each thing is always the same, he will utterly destroy the power of carrying on discussion. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135c) |
210 | It would be absurd to think there were abstract Forms for vile things like hair, mud and dirt [Plato] |
Full Idea: Are there abstract ideas for such things as hair, mud and dirt, which are particularly vile and worthless? That would be quite absurd. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
219 | If absolute ideas existed in us, they would cease to be absolute [Plato] |
Full Idea: None of the absolute ideas exists in us, because then it would no longer be absolute. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133c) |
228 | Greatness and smallness must exist, to be opposed to one another, and come into being in things [Plato] |
Full Idea: These two ideas, greatness and smallness, exist, do they not? For if they did not exist, they could not be opposites of one another, and could not come into being in things. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 149e) |
211 | If admirable things have Forms, maybe everything else does as well [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is troubling that if admirable things have abstract ideas, then perhaps everything else must have ideas as well. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 130d) |
220 | The concept of a master includes the concept of a slave [Plato] |
Full Idea: Mastership in the abstract is mastership of slavery in the abstract. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133e) |
16151 | Plato moves from Forms to a theory of genera and principles in his later work [Plato, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: It seems to me that Plato in the later dialogues, beginning with the second half of 'Parmenides', wants to substitute a theory of genera and theory of principles that constitute these genera for the earlier theory of forms. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
A reaction: My theory is that the later Plato came under the influence of the brilliant young Aristotle, and this idea is a symptom of it. The theory of 'principles' sounds like hylomorphism to me. |
212 | The whole idea of each Form must be found in each thing which participates in it [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole idea of each form (of beauty, justice etc) must be found in each thing which participates in it. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131a) |
213 | Each idea is in all its participants at once, just as daytime is a unity but in many separate places at once [Plato] |
Full Idea: Just as day is in many places at once, but not separated from itself, so each idea might be in all its participants at once. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 131b) |
215 | If things partake of ideas, this implies either that everything thinks, or that everything actually is thought [Plato] |
Full Idea: If all things partake of ideas, must either everything be made of thoughts and everything thinks, or everything is thought, and so can't think? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132c) |
216 | If things are made alike by participating in something, that thing will be the absolute idea [Plato] |
Full Idea: That by participation in which like things are made like, will be the absolute idea, will it not? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132e) |
218 | Participation is not by means of similarity, so we are looking for some other method of participation [Plato] |
Full Idea: Participation is not by means of likeness, so we must seek some other method of participation. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
214 | If absolute greatness and great things are seen as the same, another thing appears which makes them seem great [Plato] |
Full Idea: If you regard the absolute great and the many great things in the same way, will not another appear beyond, by which all these must appear to be great? | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 132a) |
217 | Nothing can be like an absolute idea, because a third idea intervenes to make them alike (leading to a regress) [Plato] |
Full Idea: It is impossible for anything to be like an absolute idea, because a third idea will appear to make them alike, and if that is like anything, it will lead to another idea, and so on. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 133a) |
7039 | How could you tell if the universals were missing from a world of instances? [Heil] |
Full Idea: Imagine a pair of worlds, one in which there are the universals and their instances and one in which there are just the instances (a world of modes). How would the absence of universals make itself felt? | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.7) | |
A reaction: A nice question for Plato, very much in the spirit of Aristotle's string of questions. Compare 'suppose the physics remained, but someone removed the laws'. Either chaos ensues, or you realise they were redundant. Same with Forms. |
7009 | Similarity among modes will explain everthing universals were for [Heil] |
Full Idea: My contention is that similarity among modes can do the job universals are conventionally postulated to do. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: See Idea 4441 for Russell's nice objection to this view. The very process by which we observes similarities (as assess their degrees) needs to be explained by any adequate theory of properties or universals. |
7041 | Similar objects have similar properties; properties are directly similar [Heil] |
Full Idea: Objects are similar by virtue of possessing similar properties; properties, in contrast, are not similar in virtue of anything. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.2) | |
A reaction: I am not sure if I can understand the concept of similarity if there is no answer to the question 'In what respect?' I suppose David Hume is happy to take resemblance as given and basic, but it could be defined as 'sharing identical properties'. |
7032 | Objects join sets because of properties; the property is not bestowed by set membership [Heil] |
Full Idea: The set of red objects is the set of objects possessing a property: being red. Objects are members of the set in virtue of possessing this property; they do not possess the property in virtue of belonging to the set. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a very effective denial of the claim that universals are sets. However, if 'being a Londoner' counts as a property, you can only have it by joining the London set. Being tall is more fundamental than being a Londoner. |
7008 | Trope theorists usually see objects as 'bundles' of tropes [Heil] |
Full Idea: Philosophers identifying themselves as trope theorists have, by and large, accepted some form of the 'bundle theory' of objects: an object is a bundle of compresent tropes. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: This view eliminates anything called 'matter' or 'substance' or a 'bare particular'. I think I agree with Heil that this doesn't give a coherent picture, as properties seem to be 'of' something, and bundles always raise the question of what unites them. |
7018 | Objects are substances, which are objects considered as the bearer of properties [Heil] |
Full Idea: I think of objects as substances, and a substance is an object considered as a bearer of properties. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.2) | |
A reaction: This is an area of philosophy I always find disconcerting, where an account of how we should see objects seems to have no connection at all to what physicists report about objects. 'Considered as' seems to make substances entirely conventional. |
15851 | Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato] |
Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d) | |
A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism. |
7019 | Maybe there is only one substance, space-time or a quantum field [Heil] |
Full Idea: It would seem distinctly possible that there is but a single substance: space-time or some all-encompassing quantum field. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 05.2) | |
A reaction: This would at least meet my concern that philosophers' 'substances' don't seem to connect to what physicists talk about. I wonder if anyone knows what a 'quantum field' is? The clash between relativity and quantum theory is being alluded to. |
7046 | Rather than 'substance' I use 'objects', which have properties [Heil] |
Full Idea: I prefer the more colloquial 'object' to the traditional term 'substance'. An object can be regarded as a possessor of properties: as something that is red, spherical and pungent, for instance. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 15.3) | |
A reaction: A nice move, but it seems to beg the question of 'what is it that has the properties?' Objects and substances do two different jobs in our ontology. Heil is just refusing to discuss what it is that has properties. |
7047 | Statues and bronze lumps have discernible differences, so can't be identical [Heil] |
Full Idea: Applications of the principle of the indiscernibility of identicals apparently obliges us to distinguish the statue and the lump of bronze making it up. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.3) | |
A reaction: In other words, statues and lumps of bronze have different properties. It is a moot point, though, whether there are any discernible differences between that statue at time t and its constituting lump of bronze at time t. |
7048 | Do we reduce statues to bronze, or eliminate statues, or allow statues and bronze? [Heil] |
Full Idea: Must we choose between reductionism (the statue is the lump of bronze), eliminativism (there are no statues, only statue-shaped lumps of bronze), and a commitment to coincident objects? | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 16.5) | |
A reaction: (Heil goes on to offer his own view). Coincident objects sounds the least plausible view. Modern statues are only statues if we see them that way, but a tree is definitely a tree. Trenton Merricks is good on eliminativism. |
15846 | In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5 | |
A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something? |
15849 | Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V] |
Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one. | |
From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2 | |
A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships. |
15850 | Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato] |
Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies. |
13259 | It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato] |
Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2 | |
A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts. |
15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |
7028 | If properties were qualities without dispositions, they would be undetectable [Heil] |
Full Idea: A pure quality, a property altogether lacking in dispositionality, would be undetectable and would, in one obvious sense, make no difference to its possessor. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.4) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a very forceful and simple reason why we cannot view properties simply as qualities of things. Heil wants properties to be dispositions and qualities; personally I would vote for them just being dispositions or powers. |
7029 | Can we distinguish the way a property is from the property? [Heil] |
Full Idea: It is not clear to me that we easily distinguish ways a property is from the property itself. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.6) | |
A reaction: To defend properties as qualities, he is confusing ontology and epistemology. Presumably he means by 'ways a property is' what I would prefer to call 'ways a property seems to be'. I don't believe a smell is simply what it seems to be. |
7030 | Properties don't possess ways they are, because that just is the property [Heil] |
Full Idea: Objects possess properties, but I am sceptical of the idea that properties possess properties; just as a property is a way some object is, a property of a property would be a way a property is, but that is just the property itself. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 12.1) | |
A reaction: This is quite a good defence of the idea that properties are qualities as well as dispositions. However, if we make the qualities of properties into secondary qualities, and the dispositions into primary qualities, the absurdity melts away. |
7051 | Objects only have secondary qualities because they have primary qualities [Heil] |
Full Idea: Secondary qualities are not distinct from primary qualities: an object's possession of a given secondary quality is a matter of its possession of certain complex primary qualities. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.3) | |
A reaction: The bottom line here is that, if essentialism is right, colours are not properties at all (see Idea 5456). Heil wants to subsume secondary properties within primary properties. I think we should sharply distinguish them. |
7044 | Secondary qualities are just primary qualities considered in the light of their effect on us [Heil] |
Full Idea: Secondary qualities are just ordinary properties - roughly, Locke's primary qualities - considered in the light of their effects on us. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.10) | |
A reaction: Unconvincing. If they only acquire their ontological status as primary qualities if they have to be considered in relation to something (us), then that is not a primary quality. |
7052 | Colours aren't surface properties, because of radiant sources and the colour of the sky [Heil] |
Full Idea: Theories that take colours to be properties of the surfaces of objects have difficulty accounting for a host of phenomena including coloured light emitted by radiant sources and so-called film colours (the colour of the sky, for instance). | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
A reaction: Personally I never thought that colours might be actual properties of surfaces, but it is nice to have spelled out a couple of instances that make it very implausible. Neon and sodium lights I take to be examples of the first case. |
7053 | Treating colour as light radiation has the implausible result that tomatoes are not red [Heil] |
Full Idea: Theories that tie colours to features of light radiation deal with radiant and diffused colours, but yield implausible results for objects; tomatoes are not red, on such a view, but merely reflect red light. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 17.4) | |
A reaction: I see absolutely no problem with the philosophical denial that tomatoes are actually red, while continuing to use 'red' of tomatoes in the normal way. When we analyse our processes of knowledge acquisition, we must give up 'common sense'. |
1762 | When someone denied motion, Diogenes got up and walked away [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Diogenes replied to one who asserted that there was no such thing as motion by getting up and walking away. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |
7066 | If the world is just texts or social constructs, what are texts and social constructs? [Heil] |
Full Idea: For those who regard the world as text or a social construct, are texts and social constructs real entities? If they are, what are they? | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.6) | |
A reaction: A nice turn-the-tables question. The oldest attacks of all on scepticism and relativism consist of showing that the positions themselves rest on knowledge or truth. Nietzsche may be the best model for relativists. E.g. Idea 4420. |
7021 | If the world is theory-dependent, the theories themselves can't be theory-dependent [Heil] |
Full Idea: If the world is somehow theory-dependent, this implies, on pain of a regress, that theories are not theory-dependent. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 06.4) | |
A reaction: I am not sure where this puts the ontology of theories, but this is a nice question, of a type which never seems to occur to your more simple-minded relativist. |
7026 | Science is sometimes said to classify powers, neglecting qualities [Heil] |
Full Idea: The sciences are sometimes said to be in the business of identifying and classifying powers; the mass of an electron, its spin and charge, could be regarded as powers possessed by the electron; science is silent on an electron's qualities. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.2) | |
A reaction: Heil raises the possibility that qualities are real, despite the silence of science; he wants colour to be a real quality. I like the simpler version of science. Qualities are the mental effects of powers; there exist substances, powers and effects. |
7060 | One form of explanation is by decomposition [Heil] |
Full Idea: One form of explanation is by decomposition. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8) | |
A reaction: This is a fancy word for taking it apart, presumably to see how it works, which implies a functional explanation, rather than to see what it is made of, which seeks an ontological explanation. Simply 'decomposing' something wouldn't in itself explain. |
7010 | Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality [Heil] |
Full Idea: Dispositionality provides the grounding for intentionality. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: This is a view with which I am sympathetic, though I am not sure if it explains anything. It would be necessary to identify a disposition of basic matter that could be built up into the disposition of a brain to think about things. |
7054 | Intentionality now has internalist (intrinsic to thinkers) and externalist (environment or community) views [Heil] |
Full Idea: Nowadays philosophers concerned with intentionality divide into two camps. Internalists epitomise a traditional approach to thought, as intrinsic features of thinkers; externalists say it depends on contextual factors (environment or community). | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.2) | |
A reaction: This is basic to understanding modern debates (those that grow out of Putnam's Twin Earth). Externalism is fashionable, but I am reluctant to shake off my quaint internalism. Start by separating strict and literal meaning from speaker's meaning. |
7011 | Qualia are not extra appendages, but intrinsic ingredients of material states and processes [Heil] |
Full Idea: Properties of conscious experience, the so-called qualia, are not dangling appendages to material states and processes but intrinsic ingredients of those states and processes. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: Personally I am inclined to the view that qualia are intrinsic to the processes and NOT to the 'states'. Heil must be right, though. I am sure qualia are not just epiphenomena - they are too useful. |
7061 | Philosophers' zombies aim to show consciousness is over and above the physical world [Heil] |
Full Idea: Philosophers' zombies (invented by Robert Kirk) differ from the zombies of folklore; they are intended to make clear the idea that consciousness is an addition of being, something 'over and above' the physical world. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.1 n1) | |
A reaction: The famous defender of zombies is David Chalmers. You can't believe in zombies if you believe (as I do) that 'the physical entails the mental'. Could there be redness without something that is red? If consciousness is extra, what is conscious? |
7063 | Zombies are based on the idea that consciousness relates contingently to the physical [Heil] |
Full Idea: The possibility of zombies is founded on the idea that consciousness is related contingently to physical states and processes. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.3) | |
A reaction: The question is, how do you decide whether the relationship is contingent or necessary? Hence the interest in whether conceivability entails possibility. Kripke attacks the idea of contingent identity, pointing towards necessity, and away from zombies. |
7064 | Functionalists deny zombies, since identity of functional state means identity of mental state [Heil] |
Full Idea: Functionalists deny that zombies are possible since states of mind (including conscious states) are purely functional states. If two agents are in the same functional state, regardless of qualitative difference, they are in the same mental state. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.5) | |
A reaction: In its 'brief' form this idea begins to smell of tautology. Only the right sort of functional state would entail a mental state, and how else can that functional state be defined, apart from its leading to a mental state? |
7027 | Functionalists say objects can be the same in disposition but differ in quality [Heil] |
Full Idea: A central tenet of functionalism is that objects can be dispositionally indiscernible but differ qualitatively as much as you please. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 11.3) | |
A reaction: This refers to the multiple realisability of functions. Presumably we reconcile essentialism with the functionalist view by saying that dispositions result from combinations of qualities. A unique combination of qualities will necessitate a disposition. |
7062 | Functionalism cannot explain consciousness just by functional organisation [Heil] |
Full Idea: Functionalism has been widely criticized on the grounds that it is implausible to think that functional organization alone could suffice for conscious experience. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 20.2) | |
A reaction: He cites Block's 'Chinese Mind' as an example. The obvious reply is that you can't explain consciousness with a lump of meat, or with behaviour, or with an anomalous property, or even with a non-physical substance. |
7059 | The 'explanatory gap' is used to say consciousness is inexplicable, at least with current concepts [Heil] |
Full Idea: The expression 'explanatory gap' was coined by Joseph Levine in 1983. McGinn and Chalmers have invoked it in defence of the view that consciousness is physically inexplicable, and Nagel that it is inexplicable given existing conceptual resources. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 19.8 n14) | |
A reaction: Coining a few concepts isn't going to help, but discovering more about the brain might. With computer simulations we will 'see' more of the physical end of thought. Psychologists may break thought down into physically more manageable components. |
7012 | If a car is a higher-level entity, distinct from its parts, how could it ever do anything? [Heil] |
Full Idea: If we regard a Volvo car as a higher-level entity with its own independent reality, something distinct from its constituents (arranged in particular ways and variously connected to other things), we render mysterious how Volvos could do anything at all. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 02.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to me perhaps the key reason why we have to be reductionists. The so-called 'bridge laws' from mind to brain are not just needed to explain the mind, they are also essential to show how a mind would cause behaviour. |
7043 | Multiple realisability is actually one predicate applying to a diverse range of properties [Heil] |
Full Idea: Cases of multiple realisability are typically cases in which some predicate ('is red', 'is in pain') applies to an object in virtue of that object's possession of any of a diverse range of properties. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 14.8) | |
A reaction: If the properties are diverse, why does one predicate apply to them? I take it that in the case of the pain, the predicate is ambiguous in applying to the behaviour or the phenomenal property. Same behaviour is possible with many qualia. |
7058 | Externalism is causal-historical, or social, or biological [Heil] |
Full Idea: Some externalists focus on causal-historical connections, others emphasise social matters (especially thinkers' linguistic communities), still others focus on biological function. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.5 n6) | |
A reaction: Helpful. The social view strikes me as the one to take most seriously (allowing for contextual views of justification, and for the social role of experts). The problem is to combine the social view with realism and a robust view of truth. |
7057 | Intentionality is based in dispositions, which are intrinsic to agents, suggesting internalism [Heil] |
Full Idea: I suggest that intentionality is grounded in the dispositionalities of agents. Dispositions are intrinsic to agents, so this places me on the side of the internalists and against the externalists. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 18.4) | |
A reaction: I think this is a key idea, and the right view. The key question is whether we see intentionality as active or passive. The externalist view seems to see the brain as a passive organ which the world manipulates. If the brain is active, what is it doing? |
7013 | The Picture Theory claims we can read reality from our ways of speaking about it [Heil] |
Full Idea: The theory of language which I designate the 'Picture Theory' says that language pictures reality in roughly the sense that we can 'read off' features of reality from our ways of speaking about it. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 03.2) | |
A reaction: Heil, quite rightly, attacks this view very strongly. I think of it as the great twentieth century philosophical heresy, that leads to shocking views like relativism and anti-realism. |
7002 | If propositions are states of affairs or sets of possible worlds, these lack truth values [Heil] |
Full Idea: When pressed, philosophers will describe propositions as states of affairs or sets of possible worlds. But wait! Neither sets of possible worlds nor states of affairs - electrons being negatively charged, for instance - have truth values. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure that I see a problem. A pure proposition, expressed as, say "there is a giraffe on the roof" only acquires a truth value at the point where you assert it or believe it. There IS a possible world where there is a giraffe on the roof. |
7813 | Cynicism was open to anyone, and needed neither education nor sophistication [Diogenes of Sin., by Grayling] |
Full Idea: An advantage of Cynicism was that it was open to anyone who could grasp its simple teachings. Understanding it required neither education nor sophistication. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
A reaction: This was the source of the well-known opposition of Diogenes to Plato's Academy, and it makes him a key predecessor of the teachings of Jesus. Personally I think the really good life is difficult, and it needs education and careful rational thought. |
1763 | Diogenes said a plucked chicken fits Plato's definition of man [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Plato defined man as a two-footed featherless animal, so Diogenes plucked a cock and brought it into the school, and said, 'This is Plato's man'. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 | |
A reaction: You have to be very serious about your philosophy to enact your counterexamples, rather than just suggest them. Which university will actually reconstruct the Trolley Problem? |
5071 | The Cynics rejected what is conventional as irrational, and aimed to live by nature [Taylor,R on Diogenes of Sin.] |
Full Idea: The Cynics were convinced of the purely conventional foundation of Athenian values, which meant they had no rational foundation at all. They therefore rejected them in favour of what is correct and worthwhile by nature. | |
From: comment on Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
A reaction: This shows how the Cynics are key players in the progress of the nomos-physis debate, which keeps resurfacing as relativism vs absolutism, cognitivism vs non-cognitivism, and even romanticism vs classicism. The trouble is, convention is natural! |
7812 | For peace of mind, you need self-government, indifference and independence [Diogenes of Sin.] |
Full Idea: There are three essential conditions for peace of mind: autarchy, apathy and freedom. Autarchy is self-government and self-sufficiency; apathy is indifference to what the world can do to you; the freedom is from dependence and possessions. | |
From: Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]), quoted by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.3 | |
A reaction: Quite good advice, but I don't see 'peace of mind' as the highest human ideal. The basic suggestion here is live alone and do nothing. Certainly don't get married, or have children, or try to achieve anything. |
1764 | Diogenes said he was a citizen of the world [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Diogenes said he was a citizen of no country, but of the world. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |
5968 | Diogenes masturbated in public, wishing he could get rid of hunger so easily [Diogenes of Sin., by Plutarch] |
Full Idea: Chrysippus praises Diogenes for saying to bystanders as he masturbated in public, "Would that I could thus rub the hunger too out of my belly". | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Plutarch - 70: Stoic Self-contradictions 1044b | |
A reaction: So it is not quite true that people only need corn and water. Diogenes' remark doesn't explain why he did it in public. Was it to defy local convention (as befits a citizen of the world), or was it to teach? |
1766 | Diogenes said that the most excellent thing among men was freedom of speech [Diogenes of Sin., by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Diogenes said that the most excellent thing among men was freedom of speech. | |
From: report of Diogenes (Sin) (reports [c.360 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 06.Di.6 |
222 | Only a great person can understand the essence of things, and an even greater person can teach it [Plato] |
Full Idea: Only a man of very great natural gifts will be able to understand that everything has a class and absolute essence, and an even more wonderful man can teach this. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 135a) |
225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
7016 | The standard view is that causal sequences are backed by laws, and between particular events [Heil] |
Full Idea: The notion that every causal sequence if backed by a law, like the idea that causation is a relation among particular events, forms a part of philosophy's Humean heritage. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 04.3) | |
A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a view that needs to come under attack. I take the view that there are no 'laws' - other than the regularities in behaviour that result from the interaction of essential dispositional properties. Essences don't need laws. |
7036 | The real natural properties are sparse, but there are many complex properties [Heil] |
Full Idea: I am sympathetic to the idea that the real properties are 'sparse'; ...but if, in counting kinds of property, we include complex properties as well as simple properties, the image of sparseness evaporates. | |
From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4) | |
A reaction: This seems right to me, and invites the obvious question of which are the sparse real properties. Presumably we let the physicists tell us that, though Heil wants to include qualities like phenomenal colour, which physicists ignore. |
234 | We couldn't discuss the non-existence of the One without knowledge of it [Plato] |
Full Idea: There must be knowledge of the one, or else not even the meaning of the words 'if the one does not exist' would be known. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 160d) |