43 ideas
| 19648 | Since Kant we think we can only access 'correlations' between thinking and being [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The central notion of philosophy since Kant is 'correlation' - that we only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, and never to either term considered apart from the other. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux's charge is that philosophy has thereby completely failed to grasp the scientific revolution, which has used mathematics to make objectivity possible. Quine and Putnam would be good examples of what he has in mind. |
| 19674 | The Copernican Revolution decentres the Earth, but also decentres thinking from reality [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The Copernican Revolution is not so much the decentring of observers in the solar system, but (by the mathematizing of nature) the decentring of thought relative to the world within the process of knowledge. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: In other words, I take it, the Copernican Revolution was the discovery of objectivity. That is a very nice addition to my History of Ideas collection. |
| 19657 | In Kant the thing-in-itself is unknowable, but for us it has become unthinkable [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The major shift that has occurred in the conception of thought from Kant's time to ours is from the unknowability of the thing-in-itself to its unthinkability. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux is making the case that philosophy is alienating us more and more from the triumphant realism of the scientific revolution. He says thinking has split from being. He's right. Modern American pragmatists are the worst (not Peirce!). |
| 4465 | Note that "is" can assert existence, or predication, or identity, or classification [PG] |
| Full Idea: There are four uses of the word "is" in English: as existence ('he is at home'), as predication ('he is tall'), as identity ('he is the man I saw'), and as classification ('he is British'). | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: This seems a nice instance of the sort of point made by analytical philosophy, which can lead to horrible confusion in other breeds of philosophy when it is overlooked. |
| 19675 | Since Kant, philosophers have claimed to understand science better than scientists do [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Ever since Kant, to think science as a philosopher has been to claim that science harbours a meaning other than the one delivered by science itself. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: The point is that science discovered objectivity (via the mathematising of nature), and Kant utterly rejected objectivity, by enmeshing the human mind in every possible scientific claim. This makes Meillassoux and I very cross. |
| 19649 | Since Kant, objectivity is defined not by the object, but by the statement's potential universality [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Since Kant, objectivity is no longer defined with reference to the object in itself, but rather with reference to the possible universality of an objective statement. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux disapproves of this, as a betrayal by philosophers of the scientific revolution, which gave us true objectivity (e.g. about how the world was before humanity). |
| 19666 | If we insist on Sufficient Reason the world will always be a mystery to us [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: So long as we continue to believe that there is a reason why things are the way they are rather than some other way, we will construe this world is a mystery, since no such reason will every be vouchsafed to us. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: Giving up sufficient reason sounds like a rather drastic response to this. Put it like this: Will we ever be able to explain absolutely everything? No. So will the world always be a little mysterious to us? Yes, obviously. Is that a problem? No! |
| 19656 | Non-contradiction is unjustified, so it only reveals a fact about thinking, not about reality? [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The principle of non-contradiction itself is without reason, and consequently it can only be the norm for what is thinkable by us, rather than for what is possible in the absolute sense. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is not Meillassoux's view, but describes the modern heresy of 'correlationism', which ties all assessments of how reality is to our capacity to think about it. Personally I take logical non-contradiction to derive from non-contradiction in nature. |
| 4686 | Fallacies are errors in reasoning, 'formal' if a clear rule is breached, and 'informal' if more general [PG] |
| Full Idea: Fallacies are errors in reasoning, labelled as 'formal' if a clear rule has been breached, and 'informal' if some less precise error has been made. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there can be a grey area between the two. |
| 7415 | Question-begging assumes the proposition which is being challenged [PG] |
| Full Idea: To beg the question is to take for granted in your argument that very proposition which is being challenged | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: An undoubted fallacy, and a simple failure to engage in the rational enterprise. I suppose one might give a reason for something, under the mistaken apprehension that it didn't beg the question; analysis of logical form is then needed. |
| 7414 | What is true of a set is also true of its members [PG] |
| Full Idea: The fallacy of division is the claim that what is true of a set must therefore be true of its members. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Clearly a fallacy, but if you only accept sets which are rational, then there is always a reason why a particular is a member of a set, and you can infer facts about particulars from the nature of the set |
| 6696 | The Ad Hominem Fallacy criticises the speaker rather than the argument [PG] |
| Full Idea: The Ad Hominem Fallacy is to criticise the person proposing an argument rather than the argument itself, as when you say "You would say that", or "Your behaviour contradicts what you just said". | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche is very keen on ad hominem arguments, and cheerfully insults great philosophers, but then he doesn't believe there is such a thing as 'pure argument', and he is a relativist. |
| 4687 | Minimal theories of truth avoid ontological commitment to such things as 'facts' or 'reality' [PG] |
| Full Idea: Minimalist theories of truth are those which involve minimum ontological commitment, avoiding references to 'reality' or 'facts' or 'what works', preferring to refer to formal relationships within language. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: Personally I am suspicious of minimal theories, which seem to be designed by and for anti-realists. They seem too focused on language, when animals can obviously formulate correct propositions. I'm quite happy with the 'facts', even if that is vague. |
| 19663 | We can allow contradictions in thought, but not inconsistency [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: For contemporary logicians, it is not non-contradiction that provides the criterion for what is thinkable, but rather inconsistency. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
| A reaction: The point is that para-consistent logic might permit isolated contradictions (as true) within a system, but it is only contradiction across the system (inconsistencies) which make the system untenable. |
| 19664 | Paraconsistent logics are to prevent computers crashing when data conflicts [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Paraconsistent logics were only developed in order to prevent computers, such as expert medical systems, from deducing anything whatsoever from contradictory data, because of the principle of 'ex falso quodlibet'. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) |
| 19665 | Paraconsistent logic is about statements, not about contradictions in reality [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Paraconsistent logics are only ever dealing with contradictions inherent in statements about the world, never with the real contradictions in the world. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
| A reaction: Thank goodness for that! I can accept that someone in a doorway is both in the room and not in the room, but not that they are existing in a real state of contradiction. I fear that a few daft people embrace the logic as confirming contradictory reality. |
| 6516 | Monty Hall Dilemma: do you abandon your preference after Monty eliminates one of the rivals? [PG] |
| Full Idea: The Monty Hall Dilemma: Three boxes, one with a big prize; pick one to open. Monty Hall then opens one of the other two, which is empty. You may, if you wish, switch from your box to the other unopened box. Should you? | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: The other two boxes, as a pair, are more likely contain the prize than your box. Monty Hall has eliminated one of them for you, so you should choose the other one. Your intuition that the two remaining boxes are equal is incorrect! |
| 19677 | What is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: We must establish the thesis that what is mathematically conceivable is absolutely possible. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 5) | |
| A reaction: The truth of this thesis would permanently establish mathematics as the only possible language of science. Personally I have no idea how you could prove or assess such a thesis. It is a lovely speculation, though. 'The structure of the possible' (p,127) |
| 19659 | The absolute is the impossibility of there being a necessary existent [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: We maintain that it is absolutely necessary that every entity might not exist. ...The absolute is the absolute impossibility of a necessary being. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is the main thesis of his book. The usual candidates for necessary existence are God, and mathematical objects. I am inclined to agree with Meillassoux. |
| 19662 | It is necessarily contingent that there is one thing rather than another - so something must exist [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that there be something rather than nothing because it is necessarily contingent that there is something rather than something else. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
| A reaction: The great charm of metaphysics is the array of serious answers to the question of why there is something rather than nothing. You'll need to read Meillassoux's book to understand this one. |
| 19654 | We must give up the modern criterion of existence, which is a correlation between thought and being [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: It is incumbent upon us to break with the ontological requisite of the moderns, according to which 'to be is to be a correlate'. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: He blames Kant for this pernicious idea, which has driven philosophy away from realist science, when it should be supporting and joining it. As a realist I agree, and find Meillassoux very illuminating on the subject. |
| 16210 | Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience says the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. We have a geometry of external relations of spatio-temporal distance between points, and local qualities at points. …In short: we have an arrangement of qualities. | |
| From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986], p.ix-x) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the key fundamental tenet of David Lewis's philosophy. He names it after Hume because it contains no necessary connections. It is 'supervenient' because all worldly truths reduce to and depend on the mosaic. His thesis is contingent. |
| 19660 | Possible non-being which must be realised is 'precariousness'; absolute contingency might never not-be [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: My term 'precariousness' designates a possibility of not-being which must eventually be realised. By contrast, absolute contingency designates a pure possibility; one which may never be realised. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 3) | |
| A reaction: I thoroughly approve of this distinction, because I have often enountered the assumption that all contingency is precariousness, and I have never seen why that should be so. In Aquinas's Third Way, for example. The 6 on a die may never come up. |
| 24054 | Everything has a probability, something will happen, and probabilities add up [PG] |
| Full Idea: The three Kolgorov axioms of probability: the probability of an event is a non-negative real number; it is certain that one of the 'elementary events' will occur; and the unity of probabilities is the sum of probability of parts ('additivity'). | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: [My attempt to verbalise them; they are normally expressed in terms of set theory]. Got this from a talk handout, and Wikipedia. |
| 19671 | The idea of chance relies on unalterable physical laws [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The very notion of chance is only conceivable on condition that there are unalterable physical laws. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: Laws might be contingent, even though they never alter. Chance in horse racing relies on the stability of whole institution of horse racing. |
| 3875 | If reality is just what we perceive, we would have no need for a sixth sense [PG] |
| Full Idea: Reality must be more than merely what we perceive, because a sixth sense would enhance our current knowledge, and a seventh, and so on. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 19651 | Unlike speculative idealism, transcendental idealism assumes the mind is embodied [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: What distinguishes transcendental idealism from speculative idealism is the fact that the former does not posit the existence of the transcendental subject apart from its bodily individuation. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: These modern French philosophers explain things so much more clearly than the English! The 'speculative' version is seen in Berkeley. On p.17 he says transcendental idealism is 'civilised', and speculative idealism is 'uncouth'. |
| 3876 | If my team is losing 3-1, I have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals for a draw [PG] |
| Full Idea: If my football team is losing 3-1, I seem to have synthetic a priori knowledge that they need two goals to achieve a draw | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 19647 | The aspects of objects that can be mathematical allow it to have objective properties [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: All aspects of the object that can give rise to a mathematical thought rather than to a perception or a sensation can be meaningfully turned into the properties of the thing not only as it is with me, but also as it is without me. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is Meillassoux's spin on the primary/secondary distinction, which he places at the heart of the scientific revolution. Cartesian dualism offers a separate space for the secondary qualities. He is appalled when philosophers reject the distinction. |
| 19652 | How can we mathematically describe a world that lacks humans? [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: How is mathematical discourse able to describe a reality where humanity is absent? | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: He is referring to the prehistoric world. He takes this to be a key question about the laws of nature. We extrapolate mathematically from the experienced world, relying on the stability of the laws. Must they be necessary to be stable? No, it seems. |
| 19668 | Hume's question is whether experimental science will still be valid tomorrow [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Hume's question can be formulated as follows: can we demonstrate that the experimental science which is possible today will still be possible tomorrow? | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: Could there be deep universal changes going on in nature which science could never, even in principle, detect? |
| 19650 | The transcendental subject is not an entity, but a set of conditions making science possible [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The transcendental subject simply cannot be said to exist; which is to say that the subject is not an entity, but rather a set of conditions rendering objective scientific knowledge of entities possible. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 1) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux treats this as part of the Kantian Disaster, which made an accurate account of the scientific revolution impossible for philosophers. Kant's ego seems to have primarily an epistemological role. |
| 7734 | Maybe a mollusc's brain events for pain ARE of the same type (broadly) as a human's [PG] |
| Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might say that a molluscs's brain events that register pain ARE of the same type as humans, given that being 'of the same type' is a fairly flexible concept. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: But this reduces 'of the same type' to such vagueness that it may become vacuous. You would be left with token-token identity, where the mental event is just identical to some brain event, with its 'type' being irrelevant. |
| 7735 | Maybe a frog's brain events for fear are functionally like ours, but not phenomenally [PG] |
| Full Idea: To defend type-type identity against the multiple realisability objection, we might (also) say that while a frog's brain events for fear are functionally identical to a human's (it runs away), that doesn't mean they are phenomenally identical. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the key reply to the multiple realisability problem. If a frog flees from a loud noise, it is 'frightened' in a functional sense, but that still leaves the question 'What's it like to be a frightened frog?', which may differ from humans. |
| 3877 | Utilitarianism seems to justify the discreet murder of unhappy people [PG] |
| Full Idea: If I discreetly murdered a gloomy and solitary tramp who was upsetting people in my village, if is hard to see how utilitarianism could demonstrate that I had done something wrong. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 19667 | If the laws of nature are contingent, shouldn't we already have noticed it? [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: The standard objection is that if the laws of nature were actually contingent, we would already have noticed it. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: Meillassoux offers a sustained argument that the laws of nature are necessarily contingent. In Idea 19660 he distinguishes contingencies that must change from those that merely could change. |
| 19670 | Why are contingent laws of nature stable? [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: We must ask how we are to explain the manifest stability of physical laws, given that we take these to be contingent? | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 4) | |
| A reaction: Meissalloux offers a very deep and subtle answer to this question... It is based on the possibilities of chaos being an uncountable infinity... It is a very nice question, which physicists might be able to answer, without help from philosophy. |
| 9426 | The world is just a vast mosaic of little matters of local particular fact [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another. | |
| From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986]) | |
| A reaction: Basing laws on this picture is what Lewis calls 'Humean Supervenience'. |
| 6126 | Life is Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth (MRS NERG) [PG] |
| Full Idea: The biologists' acronym for the necessary conditions of life is MRS NERG: that is, Movement, Respiration, Sensation, Nutrition, Excretion, Reproduction, Growth. | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) | |
| A reaction: How strictly necessary are each of these is a point for discussion. A notorious problem case is fire, which (at a stretch) may pass all seven tests. |
| 3873 | An omniscient being couldn't know it was omniscient, as that requires information from beyond its scope of knowledge [PG] |
| Full Idea: God seems to be in the paradoxical situation that He may be omniscient, but can never know that He is, because that involves knowing that there is nothing outside his scope of knowledge (e.g. another God) | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 3874 | How could God know there wasn't an unknown force controlling his 'free' will? [PG] |
| Full Idea: How could God be certain that he has free will (if He has), if He couldn't be sure that there wasn't an unknown force controlling his will? | |
| From: PG (Db (ideas) [2031]) |
| 19653 | The ontological proof of a necessary God ensures a reality external to the mind [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Since Descartes conceives of God as existing necessarily, whether I exist to think of him or not, Descartes assures me of a possible access to an absolute reality - a Great Outdoors that is not a correlate of my thought. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: His point is that the ontological argument should be seen as part of the scientific revolution, and not an anomaly within it. Interesting. |
| 19658 | Now that the absolute is unthinkable, even atheism is just another religious belief (though nihilist) [Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Once the absolute has become unthinkable, even atheism, which also targets God's inexistence in the manner of an absolute, is reduced to a mere belief, and hence to a religion, albeit of the nihilist kind. | |
| From: Quentin Meillassoux (After Finitude; the necessity of contingency [2006], 2) | |
| A reaction: An interesting claim. Rather hard to agree or disagree, though the idea that atheism must qualify as a religion seems odd. If it is unqualified it does have the grand quality of a religion, but if it is fallibilist it just seems like an attitude. |