4 ideas
| 15034 | Are genera and species real or conceptual? bodies or incorporeal? in sensibles or separate from them? [Porphyry] |
| Full Idea: I shall beg off talking of a) whether genera and species are real or situated in bare thoughts alone, b) whether as real they are bodies or incorporeals, and c) whether they are separated or in sensibles and have their reality in connection with them. | |
| From: Porphyry (Isagoge ('Introduction') [c.295], (2)) | |
| A reaction: This passage, picking up on Aristotle, seems to be the original source that grew into the medievel debate about universals. It seems to rather neatly lay out the agenda for the universals debate which is still with us. |
| 8212 | Everything that is experienced in consciousness is meaning [Derrida] |
| Full Idea: All experience is the experience of meaning (Sinn). Everything that appears to consciousness, everything that is for consciousness in general, is meaning. | |
| From: Jacques Derrida (Semiology and Grammatology [1968], p.26) | |
| A reaction: This an assertion, from a quite different philosophical tradition, of the centrality of linguistic meaning in philosophy. It links with the centrality of intentionality in our understanding of the mind. |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2) | |
| A reaction: I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns. |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Quantum physics seems to lend strong support to the idea that the basic laws of nature may well be probabilistic. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Groan. Quantum physics should be outlawed from all philosophical discussions. The scientists don't understand it themselves. I'm certainly not going to build my worldview on it. I don't accept that these probabilities could count as 'laws'. |