44 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!). |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Any theorist of universals as immanent had better hold a sparse theory; it is preposterous on its face that a thing has as many nonspatiotemporal parts as there are different predicates that it falls under, or different classes that it belongs to. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: I am firmly committed to sparse universal, and view the idea that properties are just predicates as the sort of nonsense that results from approaching philosophy too linguistically. |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is possible, I take it, that there might be simple natural properties different from any that instantiated within our world. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Fine for Lewis, of course, for whom possibilities seem (to me) to be just logical possibilities. Even a scientific essentialist, though, must allow that different stuff might exist, which might have different intrinsic properties. |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are supposed to be particularized properties: nonspatiotemporal parts of their instances which cannot occur repeatedly, but can be exact duplicates. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Russell's objection is that 'duplication' appears to be a non-trope universal. The account seems wrong for very close resemblance, which is accepted by everyone as being the same (e.g. in colour, for football shirts). |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the main job of a theory of universals is to give an account of resemblance. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: This invites the quick reply, popular with some nominalists, of taking resemblance as primitive, and hence beyond explanation. |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To class nominalism we can add a primitive distinction between natural and unnatural classes. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis explores this elsewhere, but this looks like a very complex concept to play the role of a 'primitive'. Human conventions seem to be parts of nature. |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The 'magical' conception of structural universals says 'simple' must be distinguished from 'atomic'. A structural universal is never simple; it involves other, simpler, universals, but it is mereologically atomic. The other universals are not its parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: Hence the 'magic' is for it to be an indissoluble unity, while acknowledging that it has parts. Personally I don't see much problem with this view, since universals already perform the magical feat of being 'instantiated', whatever that means. |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is it about the universal carbon that gets it involved in necessary connections with methane? Why not rubidium instead? The universal 'carbon' has nothing more in common with the universal methane than the universal rubidium has! | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: This is his objection to the 'magical' unity of structural universals. The point is that if methane is an atomic unity, as claimed, it can't have anything 'in common' with its components. |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: On the 'pictorial' conception, a structural universal is isomorphic to its instances. ...It is an individual, a mereological composite, not a set. ...It is composed of simpler universals which are literally parts of it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why Lewis labels this the 'pictorial' view. His other two views of structural universals are 'linguistic' and 'magical'. The linguistic is obviously wrong, and the magical doesn't sound promising. Must I vote for pictorial? |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the pictorial conception is that if the structural universal 'methane' is to be an isomorph of the molecules that are its instances, it must have the universal 'hydrogen' as a part not just once, but four times over. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: The point is that if hydrogen is a universal it must be unique, so there can't be four of them. To me this smacks of the hopeless mess theologians get into, because of bad premisses. Drop universals, and avoid this kind of stuff. |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The stuctural universal 'isobutane' consists of the universal carbon four times over, hydrogen ten times over, and the universal 'bonded' thirteen times over - just like the universal 'butane'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: The point is that isobutane and butane have the same components in different structures. At least this is Lewis facing up to the problem of the 'flatness' of mereological wholes. |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is a necessary connection between the instantiating of a structural universal by the whole and the instantiating of other universals by its parts. We can call the relation 'involvement', a nondescript word. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'What are') | |
| A reaction: In the case of a shape, I suppose the composing 'universals' [dunno what they are] will all be essential to the shape - that is, part of the very nature of the thing, loss of which would destroy the identity. |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can't dispense with structural universals if we cannot be sure that there are any simples which can be involved in them. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis cites this as Armstrong's strongest reason for accepting structural universals (and he takes their requirement for an account of laws of nature as the weakest). I can't comprehend a world that lacks underlying simplicity. |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Not just any operation that makes new things from old is a form of composition! There is no sense in which my parents are part of me, and no sense in which two numbers are parts of their greatest common factor. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: One of those rare moments when David Lewis seems to have approached a really sensible metaphysics. Further on he rejects all forms of composition apart from mereology. |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A whole is an extra item in our ontology only in the minimal sense that it is not identical to any of its proper parts; but it is not distinct from them either, so when we believe in the parts it is no extra burden to believe in the whole. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: A little confusing, to be 'not identical' and yet 'not different'. As Lewis says elsewhere, the whole is one, and the parts are not. A crux. Essentialism implies a sort of holism, that parts with a structure constitute a new thing. |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Different things can be made of the same parts at different times, as when the tinkertoy house is taken apart and put back together as a tinkertoy car. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: More important than it looks! This is Lewis's evasion of the question of the structure of the parts. Times will individuate different structures, but if I take type-identical parts and make a house and a car simultaneously, are they type-identical? |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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'. |
| 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? |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We could say that abstraction is just mereological subtraction of universals. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: This only works, of course, for the theories that complex universals have simpler universals as 'parts'. This is just a passing surmise. I take it that abstraction only works for a thing whose unity survives the abstraction. |
| 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. |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: When mathematicians abstract one thing from others, they take an equivalence class. ....But it is only superficially a one; underneath, a class are still many. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: This is Frege's approach to abstraction, and it is helpful to have it spelled out that this is a mathematical technique, even when applied by Frege to obtaining 'direction' from classes of parallels. Too much philosophy borrows inappropriate techniques. |
| 20594 | Choosers in the 'original position' have been stripped of most human characteristics [Sandel, by Tuckness/Wolf] |
| Full Idea: Sandel argues that people in the 'original position' have been stripped of everything that makes them recognisably human: their conceptions of the good, their nationality, family membership, religion, friendships and past histories. | |
| From: report of Michael J. Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice [1982]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian' | |
| A reaction: This draws attention to what a pure Enlightenment rational project Rawls is pursuing, in the spirit if Kant's ethics. Choosers in the original position become identical, and thus choose a homogeneous society. |
| 21120 | The self is 'unencumbered' if it can abandon its roles and commitments without losing identity [Sandel, by Shorten] |
| Full Idea: Sandel says liberals are committed to the 'unencumbered self', ..when it has no roles, commitments or projects that are 'so essential that turning away from them would call into question the person I am'. | |
| From: report of Michael J. Sandel (Liberalism and the Limits of Justice [1982], p.86) by Andrew Shorten - Contemporary Political Theory 02 | |
| A reaction: This is a very penetrating criticism of liberalism. The liberal self that makes social and legal contracts and exercises basic political rights is not far from being a robot. It has the minimum needed to join a society. Belonging is quite different. |
| 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. |
| 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. |