73 ideas
| 3600 | Slow and accurate thought makes the greatest progress [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Those who go forward only very slowly can progress much further if they always keep to the right path, than those who run and wander off it. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Like Descartes' 'Method'. This seems to place a low value on 'nous' or intuition. |
| 3601 | Most things in human life seem vain and useless [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Looking at the various activities and enterprises of mankind with the eye of a philosopher, there is hardly one which does not seem to me vain and useless. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: Well, yes. The obvious retort is that everything is vain and useless; or if not, then certainly metaphysics is. Useful for what? Is ornamental gardening useless, or sport? Art? What is the use of cosmology? He's right, of course. |
| 3602 | Almost every daft idea has been expressed by some philosopher [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: There is nothing one can imagine so strange or so unbelievable that has not been said by one or other of the philosophers. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.16) | |
| A reaction: Actually I think that extensive areas of logical possibilities for existence remain totally unexplored. On the other hand, most of the metaphysical beliefs of most of the human race, including the majority of philosophers, strike me as being false. |
| 3603 | Methodical thinking is cautious, analytical, systematic, and panoramic [Descartes, by PG] |
| Full Idea: Descartes' four principles for his method of thinking are: be cautious, analyse the problem, be systematic from simple to complex, and keep an overview of the problem | |
| From: report of René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §2.18) by PG - Db (ideas) |
| 3612 | Clear and distinct conceptions are true because a perfect God exists [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: That the things we grasp very clearly and very distinctly are all true, is assured only because God is or exists, and because he is a perfect Being. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.38) |
| 3610 | Truth is clear and distinct conception - of which it is hard to be sure [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I take it as a general rule that the things we conceive very clearly and very distinctly are all true, but that there is merely some difficulty in properly discerning which are those which we distinctly conceive. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) |
| 14239 | The empty set is usually derived from Separation, but it also seems to need Infinity [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: The empty set is usually derived via Zermelo's axiom of separation. But the axiom of separation is conditional: it requires the existence of a set in order to generate others as subsets of it. The original set has to come from the axiom of infinity. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: They charge that this leads to circularity, as Infinity depends on the empty set. |
| 14240 | The empty set is something, not nothing! [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Some authors need to be told loud and clear: if there is an empty set, it is something, not nothing. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm inclined to think of a null set as a pair of brackets, so maybe that puts it into a metalanguage. |
| 14241 | We don't need the empty set to express non-existence, as there are other ways to do that [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: The empty set is said to be useful to express non-existence, but saying 'there are no Us', or ¬∃xUx are no less concise, and certainly less roundabout. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 1.2) |
| 14242 | Maybe we can treat the empty set symbol as just meaning an empty term [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Suppose we introduce Ω not as a term standing for a supposed empty set, but as a paradigm of an empty term, not standing for anything. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This proposal, which they go on to explore, seems to mean that Ω (i.e. the traditional empty set symbol) is no longer part of set theory but is part of semantics. |
| 14243 | The unit set may be needed to express intersections that leave a single member [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Thomason says with no unit sets we couldn't call {1,2}∩{2,3} a set - but so what? Why shouldn't the intersection be the number 2? However, we then have to distinguish three different cases of intersection (common subset or member, or disjoint). | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 2.2) |
| 14234 | If you only refer to objects one at a time, you need sets in order to refer to a plurality [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: A 'singularist', who refers to objects one at a time, must resort to the language of sets in order to replace plural reference to members ('Henry VIII's wives') by singular reference to a set ('the set of Henry VIII's wives'). | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A simple and illuminating point about the motivation for plural reference. Null sets and singletons give me the creeps, so I would personally prefer to avoid set theory when dealing with ontology. |
| 14237 | We can use plural language to refer to the set theory domain, to avoid calling it a 'set' [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Plurals earn their keep in set theory, to answer Skolem's remark that 'in order to treat of 'sets', we must begin with 'domains' that are constituted in a certain way'. We can speak in the plural of 'the objects', not a 'domain' of objects. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], Intro) | |
| A reaction: [Skolem 1922:291 in van Heijenoort] Zermelo has said that the domain cannot be a set, because every set belongs to it. |
| 14245 | Logical truths are true no matter what exists - but predicate calculus insists that something exists [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Logical truths should be true no matter what exists, so true even if nothing exists. The classical predicate calculus, however, makes it logically true that something exists. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 5.1) |
| 14246 | If mathematics purely concerned mathematical objects, there would be no applied mathematics [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: If mathematics was purely concerned with mathematical objects, there would be no room for applied mathematics. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Love it! Of course, they are using 'objects' in the rather Fregean sense of genuine abstract entities. I don't see why fictionalism shouldn't allow maths to be wholly 'pure', although we have invented fictions which actually have application. |
| 14247 | Sets might either represent the numbers, or be the numbers, or replace the numbers [Oliver/Smiley] |
| Full Idea: Identifying numbers with sets may mean one of three quite different things: 1) the sets represent the numbers, or ii) they are the numbers, or iii) they replace the numbers. | |
| From: Oliver,A/Smiley,T (What are Sets and What are they For? [2006], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: Option one sounds the most plausible to me. I will take numbers to be patterns embedded in nature, and sets are one way of presenting them in shorthand form, in order to bring out what is repeated. |
| 14334 | Modest realism says there is a reality; the presumptuous view says we can accurately describe it [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The claim of modest realism is that there is a subject-independent reality; the presumptuous claim is that we are capable of describing that reality accurately. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 09.1) | |
| A reaction: And the super-presumptuous claim is that there only exists one ultimate accurate description of reality. I am happy to call myself a Modest Realist on this one. |
| 14306 | Anti-realists deny truth-values to all statements, and say evidence and ontology are inseparable [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The anti-realist declines to permit that all statements have truth-values. ...The essence of the anti-realist position is that evidence and ontology cannot be separated. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: [second half on p.51] The idea that evidence and ontology are 'inseparable' strikes me as an absurd idea. The proposal that you should not speculate about ontology without some sort of evidence is, of course, not unreasonable. |
| 14333 | Dispositions and categorical properties are two modes of presentation of the same thing [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The dispositional and the categorical are correctly understood just as two modes of presentation of the same instantiated properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.6) | |
| A reaction: This is Mumford's own conclusion, after discussing the views of Armstrong. How about 'a disposition is the modal profile' of a categorical property? |
| 14336 | Categorical predicates are those unconnected to functions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A predicate which is conceptually connected to no function ... is a categorical predicate. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: This is an expansion of Mumford's own theory of dispositions, as functional. Does a cork in a wine bottle have a function, but without doing anything? It seems to achieve its function purely through its structure. |
| 14315 | Categorical properties and dispositions appear to explain one another [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Though categorical properties provide explanations for dispositions, categorical properties are also explained by dispositions; hence neither category uniquely explains the other. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: The conclusion doesn't seem to follow. It depends which one is found at the bottom level. It can go up from a basic disposition, to a categorical property, to another disposition - or the other way around. |
| 14332 | There are four reasons for seeing categorical properties as the most fundamental [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Four reasons for reducing everything to the categorical are: categorical predicates have wider scope; dispositions are variably realised by the categorical; categorical is 1st order, dispositions 2nd; categorical properties are explanatorily basic. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: I particularly reject the fourth reason, as I take categorical properties as still in need of explanation. The categorical view is contingent (and Humean), but I take the categorical properties to be necessitated by the underlying powers. |
| 14302 | A lead molecule is not leaden, and macroscopic properties need not be microscopically present [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Though lead is said to be composed of molecules of lead, these molecules are not leaden in the everyday sense of the word. This suggests that a property need not be present at the microscopic level in order to be present at the macroscopic level. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Joske] This strikes me as a key principle to grasp about properties. One H2O molecule is not water, any more than a brick is a house! Nearly all properties (or all?) are 'emergent' (in the sensible, non-mystical use of that word). |
| 14294 | Dispositions are attacked as mere regularities of events, or place-holders for unknown properties [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions are attacked as either just saying how something will behave (logical fictions about regularities of events), or as primitive pre-scientific terms like 'phlogiston', place-holders used when we are ignorant of real properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The first view he calls the Ryle-Wittgenstein view, which seems to track back to Hume. |
| 14310 | Dispositions are classifications of properties by functional role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A dispositional property is the classification of a property according to its functional role....[p.85] What is essential to a disposition - its identity condition - is its functional role. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: This is Mumford's view of dispositions. I am wary of any proposal to define something according to its role, because it must have an intrinsic nature which equips it to have that role. |
| 14317 | I say the categorical base causes the disposition manifestation [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The view I promote is one where the categorical base is a cause of the disposition manifestation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.5) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me (I think) that the most basic thing has to be a power, whose nature is intrinsically beyond our grasp, and that categorical properties are the result of these powers. Powers are dispositional in character. |
| 14316 | If dispositions have several categorical realisations, that makes the two separate [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: We might claim that dispositions are variably realized by a number of categorical bases; therefore they must be distinct from those bases. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.4) | |
| A reaction: Cars can be realised by a variety of models, therefore models are not cars? This might work if dispositions are only characterised functionally, as Mumford proposes, but I'm not convinced. |
| 14313 | All properties must be causal powers (since they wouldn't exist otherwise) [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems that every property must be a causal power, since every property must be causally potent (as a necessary condition of its very existence). | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: Mumford cautiously endorses this idea, which seems to rest on the thesis that 'to exist is to have causal powers'. I think I am even keener on it than Mumford is. Powers and properties need to be disentangled, however. |
| 14318 | Intrinsic properties are just causal powers, and identifying a property as causal is then analytic [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Understanding intrinsic properties as being causal powers is likely to be most profitable, and, if true, renders the causal criterion of property existence true analytically. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites E.Fales on this] I'm inclined to think that in the ultimate ontology the notion of a 'property' drops out. There are true causal powers, and then conventional human ways of grouping such powers together and naming them. |
| 14293 | Dispositions are ascribed to at least objects, substances and persons [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions are ascribed to at least three distinguishable classes of things: objects, substances, and persons. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Are dispositions not also ascribed to properties? Magnetism has a disposition to attract iron filings? |
| 14326 | Unlike categorical bases, dispositions necessarily occupy a particular causal role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a disposition occupying a different causal role involves a conceptual confusion, ...but there is no conceptual or logical absurdity in a categorical base occupying a different causal role. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 07.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Mumford's theory of dispositions. I'm beginning to think that dispositions are merely ways we have of describing and labelling functional mechanisms, and so 'dispositions' drop out of the final story. |
| 14298 | Dispositions can be contrasted either with occurrences, or with categorical properties [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: For some the notion of a disposition is contrasted with the notion of an occurrence; for others, it is contrasted with that of a categorical property. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.6) | |
| A reaction: I vote for dispositions over the other two, but I take the categorical properties to be the main rival. |
| 14314 | If dispositions are powers, background conditions makes it hard to say what they do [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The realist says that disposition ascriptions are ascriptions of real powers. This leaves unanswered the question, 'power to do what?' The problem of background conditions means that the realist cannot say what it is that a power is a power to do. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.9) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to say what a disposition will do, under any other account of dispositions. I would take a power to be defined by a 'modal profile', rather than an actual account of what it will lead to. |
| 14325 | Maybe dispositions can replace powers in metaphysics, as what induces property change [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions can regain the metaphysical role traditionally ascribed to real powers: the that-in-virtue-of-which-something-will-G, if F. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.9) | |
| A reaction: The attraction is that dispositions can be specified a little more clearly (especially in Mumford's functional version) whereas there may be no more to say about a power once it has been located and named. |
| 14312 | Orthodoxy says dispositions entail conditionals (rather than being equivalent to them) [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The orthodox realist view has it that what makes an ascription a disposition ascription is not that it is equivalent to a conditional proposition but that it entails one. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: Mumford says that Martin has shown that dispositions need not entail conditionals (when a 'fink' is operating, something which intervenes between disposition and outcome). |
| 14291 | Dispositions are not just possibilities - they are features of actual things [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions should correctly be understood as more than mere possibilities. To say something has a disposition is to say something about how it is actually. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: To me this is a basic axiom of metaphysics. The word 'power' serves well for the actual embodiment of a disposition. A power gives rise to one or more dispositions. Or one or more powers give rise to a disposition? |
| 14299 | There could be dispositions that are never manifested [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems plausible that a disposition could be possessed though no manifestation events occur. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.6) | |
| A reaction: It is more than 'plausible' - it is screamingly obvious to everybody, apart from a few philosophers. "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest" (Gray's Elegy). |
| 14323 | If every event has a cause, it is easy to invent a power to explain each case [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Given any event, and the assumption that every event has a cause, then some power can always be invented as the cause of that event. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a useful warning, and probably explains why 'powers' fell out of fashion in scientifice theorising. They seem to make a return, though, as an appropriate term for the bottom level of each of our explanations. |
| 14328 | Traditional powers initiate change, but are mysterious between those changes [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: In the old-fashioned sense, 'powers' are real potentialities that initiate changes but seem to have a mysterious existence in between those changes. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 07.10) | |
| A reaction: What is a person when they are asleep? What is a dishwasher when it isn't running? What is gunpowder when it doesn't explode? We all understand latent powers. To see them as a 'mystery' is to want to know too much. |
| 14331 | Categorical eliminativists say there are no dispositions, just categorical states or mechanisms [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The categorical eliminativist claims that there are no dispositional properties. All properties must be conceived of as categorical states or mechanisms, in the spirit of Boyle's explanation of powers. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.3A) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between a structure and a mechanism? How do we distinguish an active from an inactive mechanism? Without powers or dispositions, nature is dead junk. |
| 14295 | Many artefacts have dispositional essences, which make them what they are [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Thermostats, thermometers, axes, spoons, and batteries have dispositional essences, which make them what they are. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.2 iv) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that we could extend this proposal well beyond artefacts, but it certainly seems particularly clear in artefacts, where a human intention seems to be inescapably involved. |
| 14309 | Truth-functional conditionals can't distinguish whether they are causal or accidental [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If a conditional remains truth-functional it is incapable of expressing the fact that the connection between antecedent and consequent in the conditional is a causal one rather than merely accidental | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the first step towards an account of conditionals which will work in real life rather than merely in classical logic. |
| 14311 | Dispositions are not equivalent to stronger-than-material conditionals [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The conclusion that disposition ascriptions are not equivalent to stronger-than-material conditionals is largely to be accepted. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: [he attributes the view to C.B.Martin 1994] It is hard to see how to describe a disposition in anything other than conditional terms. Mumford's 'functional role' probably has to be described conditionally. It is how the conditional cashes out. |
| 3605 | We can believe a thing without knowing we believe it [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The action of thought by which one believes a thing, being different from that by which one knows that one believes it, they often exist the one without the other. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) |
| 1583 | In morals Descartes accepts the conventional, but rejects it in epistemology [Roochnik on Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Descartes' procedure for treating values (accepting normal conventions when faced with uncertainty) is the exact antithesis of that used to attain knowledge. | |
| From: comment on René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.23) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.73 |
| 3607 | In thinking everything else false, my own existence remains totally certain [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: While I decided to think that everything was false, it followed necessarily that I who thought thus must be something; the truth 'I think therefore I am' was so certain that the most extravagant scepticism could never shake it. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) |
| 3617 | I aim to find the principles and causes of everything, using the seeds within my mind [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have tried to find in general the principles or first causes of everything which is or which may be in the world, ..without taking them from any other source than from certain seeds of truth which are naturally in our minds. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.64) |
| 3611 | Understanding, rather than imagination or senses, gives knowledge [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Neither our imagination nor our senses could ever assure us of anything, if our understanding did not intervene. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.37) |
| 3606 | I was searching for reliable rock under the shifting sand [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: My whole plan had for its aim simply to give me assurance, and the rejection of shifting ground and sand in order to find rock or clay. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.29) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be characteristic of an age when religion is being quietly rocked by the revival of ancient scepticism. If he'd settled for fallibilism, our civilization would have gone differently. |
| 3604 | When rebuilding a house, one needs alternative lodgings [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Before beginning to rebuild the house in which one lives…. one must also provide oneself with some other accommodation in which to be lodge conveniently while the work is going on. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §3.22) |
| 3618 | Only experiments can settle disagreements between rival explanations [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I observe almost no individual effect without immediately knowing that it can be deduced in many different ways, ..and I know of no way to resolve this but by experiments such that the results are different according to different explanations. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §6.65) |
| 14319 | Nomothetic explanations cite laws, and structural explanations cite mechanisms [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A nomothetic explanation appeals to laws where the explanandum is shown to be an instance of a general law. ...The alternative is a structural explanation, which postulates a mechanism, opening up a hidden world. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites E.McMullin 1978] I am very much in favour of structural explanations, and opposed to nomothetic ones. That is, nomothetic accounts are only the first step towards an explanation - perhaps a mere identification of the explanandum. |
| 14342 | General laws depend upon the capacities of particulars, not the other way around [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws, qua true generalities, if they exist at all, are ontologically parasitic upon the capacities of particulars, rather than the other way round. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. And hence trying to explain a particular behaviour by saying that it falls under a law is absurdly circular and vacuous. |
| 14322 | If fragile just means 'breaks when dropped', it won't explain a breakage [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If fragile means nothing more than 'breaks when dropped', then it is no explanation of why something breaks when dropped. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: His point is that you have to unpack the notion of fragile, which presumably cites underlying mechanisms. This is the 'virtus dormitiva' problem - but that explanation of opium's dormitive powers is not entirely stupid. |
| 14337 | Maybe dispositions can replace the 'laws of nature' as the basis of explanation [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: I will consider the case for an ontology of real dispositions replacing the so-called laws of nature as the basic building blocks of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: This precisely summarises the view I am exploring, with a particular focus on real essences. I certainly think the 'laws of nature' must go. See Mumford's second book on this. |
| 14343 | To avoid a regress in explanations, ungrounded dispositions will always have to be posited [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The nature of explanation is such that ungrounded dispositions will always have to be posited in order to avoid a regress of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be right, but leaves it open to mock the proposals as 'virtus dormitiva' - empty place-holders that ground explanations but do no explanatory work. What else can be done, though? |
| 14320 | Subatomic particles may terminate explanation, if they lack structure [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The behaviour of subatomic particles cannot be further analysed into structures and this may tempt us to regard these as instances of 'brute' ungrounded dispositions which end any possible regress of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, if it is 'structural' explanations we are after (as I think we are) which look for mechanisms. An electron seems to be just three dispositions and no structure, so there is nothing more to say. Ladyman scorns this account. |
| 14324 | Ontology is unrelated to explanation, which concerns modes of presentation and states of knowledge [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Nothing about ontology is at stake in questions of explanation, for explanatory success is contingent upon the modes of presentation of explanans and explananda, and relative states of knowledge and ignorance. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.8) | |
| A reaction: There are real facts about the immediate and unusual causes which immediately precede an event, and these might be candidates for a real explanation. There are also real mechanisms and powers which dictate a things behaviour. |
| 3615 | Little reason is needed to speak, so animals have no reason at all [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Animals not only have less reason than men, but they have none at all; for we see that very little of it is required in order to be able to speak. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.58) |
| 3609 | I am a thinking substance, which doesn't need a place or material support [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I concluded that I was a substance, of which the whole essence or nature consists in thinking, and which, in order to exist, needs no place and depends on no material thing. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.33) | |
| A reaction: To me that sounds like "I concluded that I wasn't a human being", which highlights the bizarre wishful thinking that seems to have gripped the human race for the first few thousand years of its serious thinking. |
| 3608 | I can deny my body and the world, but not my own existence [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I could pretend that I had no body, and that there was no world or place that I was in, but I could not, for all that, pretend that I did not exist. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §4.32) | |
| A reaction: He makes the (in my opinion) appalling blunder of thinking that because he can pretend that he has no body, that therefore he might not have one. I can pretend that gold is an unusual form of cheese. However, "I don't exist" certainly sounds wrong. |
| 3613 | Reason is universal in its responses, but a physical machine is constrained by its organs [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: Whereas reason is a universal instrument which can serve on any kind of occasion, the organs of a machine need a disposition for each action; so it is impossible to have enough different organs in a machine to respond to all the occurrences of life. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.57) | |
| A reaction: How can Descartes know that reason is 'universal' rather than just 'very extensive'? Is there any information which cannot be encoded in a computer? It doesn't feel as if there any intrinsic restrictions to reason, but note Idea 4688. |
| 3616 | The soul must unite with the body to have appetites and sensations [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: It is not sufficient that the reasonable soul should be lodged in the body like a pilot in a ship, unless perhaps to move its limbs, but it needs to be united more closely with the body in order to have sensations and appetites, and so be a true man. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.59) | |
| A reaction: The idea that the pineal gland is the link suggests that Descartes has the 'pilot' view, but this idea shows that he believes in very close and complex interaction between mind and body. But how can a mind 'have' appetites if it has no physical needs? |
| 3614 | A machine could speak in response to physical stimulus, but not hold a conversation [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: One may conceive of a machine made so as to emit words, and even emit them in response to a change in its bodily organs, such as being touched, but not to reply to the sense of everything said in its presence, as the most unintelligent men can. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §5.56) | |
| A reaction: A critique of the Turing Test, written in 1637! You have to admire. Because of the advent of the microprocessor, we can 'conceive' more sophisticated, multi-level machines than Descartes could come up with. |
| 1581 | Greeks elevate virtues enormously, but never explain them [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: The ancient pagans place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear the most valuable thing in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], §1.8) |
| 14344 | Natural kinds, such as electrons, all behave the same way because we divide them by dispositions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Regularities exist because we classify kinds on the basis of their dispositions, not on pre-established divisions of kinds. The dispositions are the basis for the division into kinds, which is why all electrons behave in the same way. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being so obvious that it is hardly worth saying, and yet an enormous number of philosophers seem to have been led up the garden path by the notion of a 'kind', probably under the influence of Kripke, Putnam and Wiggins. |
| 14338 | In the 'laws' view events are basic, and properties are categorical, only existing when manifested [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: In the 'laws' world view, events are the basic ontological unit and properties are parasitic upon them. Properties exist only in virtue of their instantiation in events. Properties are categorical, because they are only manifested in the present. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: Mumford rejects this view, and I am with him all the way. The first requirement is that properties be active, and not inert. See Leibniz on this. |
| 14339 | Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how, without general laws, can the dispositionalist explain why generalities in behaviour are true of kinds. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: And the answer is to make kinds depend on individuals, and not vice versa, and then point to the necessary patterns that arise from conjunctions of individual dispositions, given their identity in many individuals. |
| 14341 | Dretske and Armstrong base laws on regularities between individual properties, not between events [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The improved Dretske/Armstrong regularity view of laws dispenses with the empiricist articulation of them in terms of events, and construes them as singular statements of fact that describe relations between properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: They then seem to go a bit mystical, by insisting that the properties are 'universals' (even if they have to be instantiated). Universals explain nothing. |
| 14340 | It is a regularity that whenever a person sneezes, someone (somewhere) promptly coughs [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It is no doubt a true regularity that every time I sneeze, someone, somewhere in the world, immediately coughs. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: Not a huge problem for the regularity theory of laws, but the first challenge that it must meet. |
| 16686 | God has established laws throughout nature, and implanted ideas of them within us [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: I have noticed certain laws that God has so established in nature, and of which he has implanted such notions in our souls, that …we cannot doubt that they are exactly observed in everything that exists or occurs in the world. | |
| From: René Descartes (A Discourse on Method [1637], pt 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the view of laws which still seems to be with us (and needs extirpating) - that some outside agency imposes them on nature. I suspect that even Richard Feynman thought of laws like that, because he despised philosophy, and was thus naïve. |
| 14345 | The necessity of an electron being an electron is conceptual, and won't ground necessary laws [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The logical necessity of physical laws is not required by dispositional essentialism. An electron would not be an electron if its behaviour were different from the behaviour it has in the actual world, but this necessity is purely conceptual. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.8) | |
| A reaction: [He is particularly aiming this at Ellis and Lierse 1994] This may be missing the point. Given those electron dispositions, the electrons necessitate law-like happenings. Whether a variable entity is called an 'electron' is trivial. |
| 14307 | Some dispositions are so far unknown, until we learn how to manifest them [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems reasonable to assume that there are some dispositions of some things of which we are not aware because we have not yet discovered the way to get these dispositions to manifest. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty good description of what scientists are currently doing when, for example, they build a new particle accelerator. |