77 ideas
16604 | Philosophy consists of choosing between Plato, Aristotle and Democritus [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The history of philosophy consists in a series of choices between three primordial rivals: Plato, Aristotle and Democritus. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau's point is that the importance of Democritus is not usually appreciated. As far as I can see, Democritus may have been the greatest of all philosophers, but most of his works are lost. His fragments are the best fragments. |
16606 | Original philosophers invariably seek inspiration from past thinkers [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Philosophers almost never strike out on wholly new ground, without the historical inspiration of some figure or other. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
16586 | The commentaries of Averroes were the leading guide to Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The commentaries of Averroes on virtually the whole Aristotelian corpus became by far the most important scholastic guide to the interpretation of Aristotle. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.1) |
16568 | Modernity begins in the late 12th century, with Averroes's commentaries on Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: I tend to think of modernity as coming in the late twelfth century, with Averroes's magisterial commentaries on Aristotle. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 1.1) | |
A reaction: A rather quirky use of 'modernity', but this seems to be a huge landmark. Note that it comes from the Islamic Arab world, not from Europe. |
16653 | Once accidents were seen as real, 'Categories' became the major text for ontology [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Originally you count substances for ontology. Once there is the doctrine of real accidents (in the 14th cent) the list of ten categories begins to look like an inventory of the kinds of things there are, and 'Categories' looks like the fundamental text. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 12.1) | |
A reaction: Prior to this development, 'Categories' was treated as a mere beginner's text, once the major corpus of Aristotle had been rediscovered in the 13th century. The result of this development is sortal essentialism, which I don't like. |
16704 | In 1347, the Church effectively stopped philosophy for the next 300 years [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The year 1347 is a great milestone in the history of philosophy, because then the route to modern philosophy was blocked by Church authorities, and effectively put on hold for almost 300 years. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 19.3) | |
A reaction: It is interesting that it was 100 years after the Reformation before philosophy got going again, and then only thanks to one man. Islam stopped philosophy earlier. |
16605 | After c.1450 all of Plato was available. Before that, only the first half of 'Timaeus' was known [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: From the mid-fifteenth century forward, for the first time, the whole Platonic corpus was available in Ficino's Latin translation. Before then, only the first half of the 'Timaeus' had widely circulated in Latin. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.1) |
16607 | Renaissance Platonism is peripheral [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The fabled phenomenon of Renaissance Platonism is peripheral. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.3) | |
A reaction: The point is that only a few Italians pursued the Platonic line. Pasnau suggests Cartesian dualism as a possible influence from Plato. |
16715 | Plato only made an impact locally in 15th century Italy [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In certain limited circles in Italy, Plato made an impact in the fifteenth century, but his influence never came close to challenging Aristotle's. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 20.2) |
16610 | Philosophy could easily have died in 17th century, if it weren't for Descartes [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: As scholasticism collapsed in the 17th century, it might easily have happened is that philosophy simply died. That this did not happen is due in large part to René Descartes. …It is remarkable that this brilliant man insisted on still doing philosophy. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.5) | |
A reaction: The alternative view is, of course, that you just can't stop people from thinking philosophically (except by totalitarian education). Are there philosophers in North Korea, or among the Taliban? |
16781 | The 17th century is a metaphysical train wreck [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The seventeenth century is a metaphysical train wreck. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.6) | |
A reaction: This is, roughly, because the corpuscularian philosophy lacked the resources to answer all the problems dealt with by substantial forms. |
6575 | Philosophy may never find foundations, and may undermine our lives in the process [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Not only is traditional philosophy incapable of discovering the foundations it seeks, but the philosophical enterprise may itself dislodge the contingent, de facto supports that our daily life depends upon. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: In the end Fogelin is not so pessimistic, but he is worried by the concern of philosophers with paradox and contradiction. I don't remotely consider this a reason to reject philosophy, but it might be a reason to keep it sealed off from daily life. |
6585 | Rationality is threatened by fear of inconsistency, illusions of absolutes or relativism, and doubt [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The three main threats to our rational lives are fear of inconsistency, illusions (of absolutism and relativism) and doubt. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This is a very nice analysis of the forces that can destroy the philosopher's aspiration to the rational life. Personally I still suffer from a few illusions about the possibility of absolutes, but I may grow out of it. The other three don't bother me. |
6557 | Humans may never be able to attain a world view which is both rich and consistent [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: It might be wholly unreasonable to suppose that human beings will ever be able to attain a view of the world that is both suitably rich and completely consistent. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: Fogelin's lectures develop this view very persuasively. I think all philosophers must believe that the gods could attain a 'rich and consistent' view. Our problem is that we are a badly organised team, whose members keep dying. |
6568 | A game can be played, despite having inconsistent rules [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The presence of an inconsistency in the rules that govern a game need not destroy the game. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: He only defends this thesis if the inconsistency is away from the main centre of the action. You can't have an inconsistent definition of scoring a goal or a touchdown. |
6560 | The law of noncontradiction is traditionally the most basic principle of rationality [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Traditionally many philosophers (Aristotle among them) have considered the law of noncontradiction to be the deepest, most fundamental principle of rationality. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: For Aristotle, see Idea 1601 (and 'Metaphysics' 1005b28). The only denier of the basic character of the law that I know of is Nietzsche (Idea 4531). Fogelin, despite many qualifications, endorses the law, and so do I. |
6565 | The law of noncontradiction makes the distinction between asserting something and denying it [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: People who reject the law of noncontradiction obliterate any significant difference between asserting something and denying it; …this will not move anyone who genuinely opts either for silence or for madness. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: This seems a sufficiently firm and clear assertion of the basic nature of this law. The only rival view seems to be that of Nietzsche (Idea 4531), but then you wonder how Nietzsche is in a position to assert the relativity of the law. |
16677 | Anti-Razor: if you can't account for a truth, keep positing things until you can [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The Anti-Razor says 'whenever an affirmative proposition is truly stated, if one thing does not suffice to account for its truth, then one must posit things, and if two do not suffice then three, and so on to infinity'. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.3) | |
A reaction: This is quoted from an anonymous logic text of 1325. Apparently Ockham himself articulated the idea more than once. |
6574 | Legal reasoning is analogical, not deductive [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: There is almost universal agreement that legal reasoning is fundamentally analogical, not deductive, in character. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: This raises the question of whether analogy can be considered as 'reasoning' in itself. How do you compare the examples? Could you compare two examples if you lacked language, or rules, or a scale of values? |
8923 | Numbers are identified by their main properties and relations, involving the successor function [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The mathematically significant properties and relations of natural numbers arise from the successor function that orders them; the natural numbers are identified simply as the objects that answer to this basic function. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §1) | |
A reaction: So Julius Caesar would be a number if he was the successor of Pompey the Great? I would have thought that counting should be mentioned - cardinality as well as ordinality. Presumably Peano's Axioms are being referred to. |
8926 | For mathematical objects to be positions, positions themselves must exist first [MacBride] |
Full Idea: The identification of mathematical objects with positions in structures rests upon the prior credibility of the thesis that positions are objects in their own right. | |
From: Fraser MacBride (Structuralism Reconsidered [2007], §3) | |
A reaction: Sounds devastating, but something has to get the whole thing off the ground. This is why Resnik's word 'patterns' is so appealing. Patterns stare you in the face, and they don't change if all the objects making it up are replaced by others. |
16598 | Priority was a major topic of dispute for scholastics [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: For a scholastic author, hardly anything was so likely to precipitate a lengthy disputatio as talk of priority, in its various kinds. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.3) |
16727 | In mixtures, the four elements ceased to exist, replaced by a mixed body with a form [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The standard view was that in a mixture there is only the mixed body and its substantial form (gold). There are no further substantial forms of the elements, because the elements do not actually exist within the body. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 22.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to me to be the key idea that was overthrown in the seventeenth century, so that corpuscular matter kept aspects of its ingredients, which science could then investigate. With the substantial form, investigation seemed impossible. |
16732 | 17th C qualities are either microphysical, or phenomenal, or powers [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The seventeenth century is often said to have bequeathed us three ways of thinking about sensible qualities: either in reductive microphysical terms, or as internal phenomenal states, or else as powers or dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau goes on to claim that no one in the 17th century believed the third one. I take it to be a very new, and totally wonderful and correct, view. |
16733 | 17th century authors only recognised categorical properties, never dispositions [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, my claim is that authors during the period recognise only categorical properties, and never dispositional properties. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.1) |
16662 | The biggest question for scholastics is whether properties are real, or modes of substances [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Among scholastics the primary agreement is that what primarily exist are substances. The primary disagreement concerns the nature of their changeable properties. Are they real accidents, or mere modes of substance? | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 13.1) |
16767 | There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2) | |
A reaction: This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'. |
16788 | Instead of adding Aristotelian forms to physical stuff, one could add dispositions [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Someone who wants to enrich a strict corpuscularian account with other metaphysical entities has alternatives other than Aristotelian hylomorphism. One can, for instance, introduce dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 28.2) | |
A reaction: This slightly throws me, because I have been flirting with a dispositional account of hylomorphism. The implication is that the form is abstract and structural, where the disposition is real and physical. But dispositions can do the job of forms. |
16738 | Scholastics reject dispositions, because they are not actual, as forms require [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastics reject anything like bare dispositions, on Aristotelian principles. Powers are forms, and forms actualise their subject, and are causally efficacious. Therefore no powers can be bare dispositions. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
A reaction: The point seems to be that a mere disposition is not actual, as a form is required to be. I would have thought that a power does not have to be operational to be actual. A live electric wire is a real phenomenon. It isn't waiting to be live. |
16649 | Scholastics say there is a genuine thing if it is 'separable' [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Among the scholastics (after Duns Scotus) it would be come to be taken for granted that the crucial test for being a genuine thing - a 'res' - is separability. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 11.2) | |
A reaction: The idea of separability is implicit in Aristotle. In borderline cases, it seems that they are tempted to claim that things like accidental properties are separable, simply because they want them to be genuine things. A criterion for separability? |
16785 | If you reject essences, questions of individuation become extremely difficult [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Given the accepted linkage between a thing's essence and its identity, the rejection of essences makes a complete mess out of questions of individuation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.6) | |
A reaction: I note that he talks of a thing having 'identity', contra the view of identity as a two-place relation. I agree with this, but there is a chicken-egg problem. Do I perceive an identity and surmise an essence, or surmise an essence and deduce identity? |
16680 | Scholastics thought Quantity could be the principle of individuation [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Quantity was a leading scholastic contender for the principle of individuation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.4) |
16628 | Corpuscularianism promised a decent account of substance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: One of the great attractions of corpuscularianism is that it promises to put our acquaintance with substances on a solid foundation. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 07.3) | |
A reaction: This is why the seventeenth century did not abandon 'substance', even though they banished 'substantial form'. |
16617 | Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism say only substances exist [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Corpuscularian critics of scholasticism tend to think that only substances exist. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.2) | |
A reaction: Pasnau treats this as an extreme 17th C reaction which was hopelessly inadequate as metaphysics. We have been struggling with the nature of 'properties' ever since, while losing our grip on the concept of a unified 'substance'. |
16741 | Scholastics wanted to treat Aristotelianism as physics, rather than as metaphysics [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: There is a broad scholastic tendency to understand Aristotelianism not in abstract, metaphysical terms, but as a concrete, physical theory of the world. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 23.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to give a good explanation of why Aristotelianism plummeted to oblivion in the 17th C. Pasnau obviously wants to revive it, by drawing a sharp line between metaphysics and science. I doubt the line. |
16777 | If crowds are things at all, they seem to be Substances, since they bear properties [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Crowds seem to be the bearers of properties, and if they are things at all, then there is no place for them other than in the category of Substance. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
A reaction: It is tempting to say, based on Aristotle, that a substance is whatever 1) bears properties, and 2) endures in spite of change, but a crowd is a nice problem case, because it looks too disunited to be a 'substance'. |
16615 | Scholastics use 'substantia' for thick concrete entities, and for thin metaphysical ones [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastic texts are rife with different senses of 'substantia', using the term to refer, among other things, both to thick concrete entities and to thin metaphysical ones. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau introduces 'thin' and 'thick' substance for this reason. I may adopt this. Without distinctions between thin and thick concepts of things we can get very muddled. I like the word to label something which is an 'entity'. |
16775 | For corpuscularians, a substance is just its integral parts [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: According to strict corpuscularianism the only real constituents of a substance are its integral parts. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 26.1) | |
A reaction: An understandable reaction to the emptiness of Aristotelian substantial forms in science. It seems to leave out the structural principles that distinguish one arrangement of parts from another. See Koslicki on this. |
16769 | If clay survives destruction of the statue, the statue wasn't a substance, but a mere accident [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The unitarian view of substance says it cannot be divided. If the clay can survive the destruction of the statue, then that shows that the statue was not a substance at all, and that its shape (or whatever made it a statue) was merely a passing accident. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.3) | |
A reaction: This seems to give the orthodox Aristotelian/Thomist reading, assuming that a substance only has one form, which unifies it. Since clay must have shape, and statues must have matter, I have never understood how there were two objects here. |
16602 | Corpuscularianism rejected not only form, but also the dependence of matter on form [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: What marks the rise of the corpuscularian movement is not just the rejection of form, but the rejection of matter as dependent on form. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) | |
A reaction: The point was that matter required form to have any kind of actual existence, but now matter can stand on its own. |
16612 | Hylomorphism may not be a rival to science, but an abstract account of unity and endurance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Hylomorphism admits of an alternative formulation, as an explanatory schema at a different level of analysis, not competing with corpuscular-mechanistic theory, but accounting for abstract features of the world - notably unity and endurance of substances. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau is clearly sympathetic. As a view of why normal objects have unity and persist over time it is almost the only decent theory around. Hawley, for example, struggles to explain how 'stages' of a thing are linked. Classical mereology is silly. |
16613 | Hylomorphism declined because scholastics made it into a testable physical theory [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Scholastics lost their grip on hylomorphism as a metaphysical theory, conceiving of it as a concrete, physical hypothesis about causal forces. Once form and matter were made subject to empirical research, their days were inevitably numbered. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Pasnau seems to make a sharp distinction between science, and a separate realm he labels 'metaphysical'. You can't keep causation out of Aristotelian hylomorphism. The defence is that it is at a higher level of generality than science. |
16747 | Scholastics made forms substantial, in a way unintended by Aristotle [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The conception of form as somehow substantial took on new life among scholastic Aristotelians, and was developed in ways that Aristotle himself never suggested. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: This is music to we modern neo-Aristotelians, because scholasticism was rightly dumped in the 17th C, but we can go back and start again from what The Philosopher actually said. |
16759 | Scholastics began to see substantial form more as Aristotle's 'efficient' cause [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The whole scholastic conception of substantial form came to have more and more in common with an Aristotelian efficient cause. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
A reaction: Aristotle, of course, identified the form with the 'formal cause [aitia]', which is the shape of the statue, rather than the efficient cause, which is the sculptor. |
16748 | Aquinas says a substance has one form; Scotists say it has many forms [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Aquinas subscribes to the unitarian doctrine that a single substance has just a single substantial form, but authors like Scotus subscribe to a plurality of substantial forms. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: The Scotists seem to think that qualities themselve can have forms. I take it that Aristotle would have agreed with Aquinas. |
16671 | Scholastic Quantity either gives a body parts, or spreads them out in a unified way [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: On one version of Quantity realism it is what makes a body have parts; on another version, it is what makes the body's parts be spread out in a continuous and unified way. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 14.1) |
16579 | There may be different types of substrate, or temporary substrates [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The substratum thesis says …perhaps there is a different subject for different kinds of changes, and perhaps what endures through one kind of change will be corrupted by another. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
16596 | A substratum can't be 'bare', because it has a job to do [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: A completely bare substratum seems not just incoherent but also unable to carry out the function for which it is intended - to be a substratum. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.3) |
16584 | If a substrate gives causal support for change, quite a lot of the ingredients must endure [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: When the substratum thesis is grounded on the idea that the ingredients must endure through the change, if they are to play a causal role, then it is natural to suppose that quite a lot of the ingredients must endure. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) | |
A reaction: Aristotle sharply distinguishes alteration from substantial change, but as the substrate gets thinner, the boundary between those two would blur. |
16580 | A substrate may be 'prime matter', which endures through every change [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The 'conservation thesis' about substrates says that there is a single, most basic substrate that endures through every material change, something we call 'prime matter'. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
16749 | Aristotelians deny that all necessary properties are essential [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: For an Aristotelian not all necessary properties are essential; the essential properties are those that define a thing as what it is. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.1) | |
A reaction: I take it as basic that whatever is essential is in some way important, whereas necessities can be trivial. |
16694 | Typical successive things are time and motion [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The standard scholastic examples of 'entia successiva' are time and motion. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 18.1) | |
A reaction: Aristotle's examples of a day and the Games seem clearer, as time and motion do not count so clearly as 'things'. |
16583 | Weak ex nihilo says it all comes from something; strong version says the old must partly endure [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The weak ex nihilo principle says that everything comes from something, and the strong ex nihilo principle says that in everything new, something of the old must endure | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
6582 | Conventions can only work if they are based on something non-conventional [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Convention, to exist at all, must have a basis in something that is not conventional; conventions, to work, need something nonconventional to build upon and shape. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: Fogelin attributes his point to Hume. I agree entirely. No convention could ever possibly catch on in a society unless there were some point to it. If you can't see a point to a convention (like wearing ties) then start looking, because it's there. |
6576 | My view is 'circumspect rationalism' - that only our intellect can comprehend the world [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: My own view might be called 'circumspect rationalism' - the view that our intellectual faculties provide our only means for comprehending the world in which we find oruselves. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: He needs to say more than that to offer a theory, but I like the label, and it fits the modern revival of rationalism, with which I sympathise, and which rests, I think, on Russell's point that self-evidence comes in degrees, not as all-or-nothing truth. |
6589 | Knowledge is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: In general a knowledge claim is legitimate only if all relevant defeaters have been eliminated. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: The problem here is what is 'relevant'. Fogelin's example is 'Are you sure the suspect doesn't have a twin brother?' If virtual reality is relevant, most knowledge is defeated. Certainly, imaginative people feel that they know less than others. |
6596 | For coherentists, circularity is acceptable if the circle is large, rich and coherent [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Coherentists argue that if the circle of justifications is big enough, rich enough, coherent enough, and so on, then there is nothing wrong circularity. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: There must always be something wrong with circularity, and no god would put up with it, but we might have to. Of course, two pieces of evidence might be unconnected, such as an equation and an observation. |
6597 | A rule of justification might be: don't raise the level of scrutiny without a good reason [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: One rule for the justification of knowledge might be: Do not raise the level of scrutiny in the absence of a particular reason that triggers it. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: That won't decide the appropriate level of scrutiny from which to start. One of my maxims is 'don't set the bar too high', but it seems tough that one should have to justify moving it. The early scientists tried raising it, and were amazed by the results. |
6588 | Scepticism is cartesian (sceptical scenarios), or Humean (future), or Pyrrhonian (suspend belief) [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The three forms of scepticism are cartesian, Humean and Pyrrhonian. The first challenges belief by inventing sceptical scenarios; the second doubts the future; the third aims to suspend belief. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: A standard distinction is made between methodological and global scepticism. The former seems to be Cartesian, and the latter Pyrrhonian. The interest here is see Hume placed in a distinctive category, because of his views on induction. |
6590 | Scepticism deals in remote possibilities that are ineliminable and set the standard very high [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Sceptical scenarios deal in wildly remote defeating possibilities, so that the level of scrutiny becomes unrestrictedly high, and they also usually deal with defeators that are in principle ineliminable. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: The question of how high we 'set the bar' seems to me central to epistemology. There is clearly an element of social negotiation involved, centring on what is appropriate. If, though, scepticism is 'ineliminable', we must face up to that. |
6583 | Radical perspectivism replaces Kant's necessary scheme with many different schemes [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: We reach radical perspectivism by replacing Kant's single, necessary categorial scheme with a plurality of competing categorial schemes. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: It certainly looks as if Kant sent us down a slippery slope into the dafter aspects of twentieth century relativism. The best antidote I know of is Davidson's (e.g. Idea 6398). But then it seems unimaginative to say that only one scheme is possible. |
16783 | Essences must explain, so we can infer them causally from the accidents [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Without the explanatory role of essence, the underlying epistemic picture would be jeopardised, because there would no longer be any causal route by which we might get from accidents to essence. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 27.5) | |
A reaction: There is a slight whiff of circularity here. It could be that we are psychologically desperate for essences, and so we invent bogus causal routes from the accidents to get at them. Can we know there are essences awaiting us, on independent grounds? |
6555 | We are also irrational, with a unique ability to believe in bizarre self-created fictions [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: We as human beings are also irrational animals, unique among animals in our capacity to place faith in bizarre fictions of our own construction. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Intro) | |
A reaction: This is glaringly true, and a very nice corrective to the talk of Greeks and others about man as the 'rational animal'. From a distance we might be described by Martians as the 'mad animal'. Is the irrational current too strong to swim against? |
6605 | Critics must be causally entangled with their subject matter [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Critics must become causally entangled with their subject matter. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: This remark is built on Hume's views. You may have a strong view about a singer, but it may be hard to maintain when someone plays you six rival versions of the same piece. I agree entirely with the remark. It means there are aesthetic experts. |
6607 | The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Like the word 'good', the word 'beautiful', when deprived of contextual support, is nearly contentless. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: If I say with, for example, Oscar Wilde that beauty is the highest ideal in life, this doesn't strike me as contentless, but I still sympathise with Fogelin's notion that beauty is rooted in particulars. |
6604 | Saying 'It's all a matter to taste' ignores the properties of the object discussed [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: "It is all a matter of taste" may be an all-purpose stopper of discussions of aesthetic values, but it also completely severs the connection with the actual properties of the object under consideration. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.6) | |
A reaction: This remark grows out of his discussion of Hume. I like this remark, which ties in with Particularism in morality, and with the central role of experiments in science. The world forces beliefs on us. |
6586 | Cynics are committed to morality, but disappointed or disgusted by human failings [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: Cynics are usually unswerving in their commitment to a moral ideal, but disappointed or disgusted by humanity's failure to meet it. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: I felt quite suicidal the other day when I saw someone park diagonally across two parking spaces. They can't seem to grasp the elementary Kantian slogan 'What if everybody did that?' It's all hopeless. I wonder if I am becoming a bit of a Cynic? |
6572 | Deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation and retribution can come into conflict in punishments [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: The purposes of punishment include deterrence, prevention, rehabilitation, and retribution, but they don't always sit well together. Deterrence is best served by making prisons miserable places, but this may run counter to rehabilitation. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: It seems to most educated people that retribution should be pushed far down the list if we are to be civilised (see Idea 1659), and yet personal revenge for a small act of aggression seems basic, normal and acceptable. We dream of rehabilitation. |
6573 | Retributivists say a crime can be 'paid for'; deterrentists still worry about potential victims [Fogelin] |
Full Idea: A strict retributivist is likely to say that once a crime is paid for, that's that; a deterrence theorist is likely to say that the protection of potential victims overrides the released convict's right to a free and fresh start. | |
From: Robert Fogelin (Walking the Tightrope of Reason [2003], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: Interesting since the retributivist here has the more liberal attitude. Reformists will also have a dilemma when years in prison have failed to reform the convict. Virtue theorists like balance, and sensitively consider our relations with the criminals. |
16609 | Atomists say causation is mechanical collisions, and all true qualities are microscopic [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: The atomist view is that causation is limited to collisions among corpuscles (which is 'mechanism'), and the only bodily qualities are those found at the microcorpuscular level; sensible qualities are in fact sensations. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 05.4) | |
A reaction: [Part of a full summary of atomism by Pasnau] |
16603 | In the 17th C matter became body, and was then studied by science [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In the seventeenth century, matter becomes body, and body becomes the object of natural science. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 04.5) |
16592 | Atomism is the commonest version of corpuscularianism, but isn't required by it [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Atomism is the most common version of corpuscular prime matter, but it is not the only option. Indeed, atomism neither entails nor is entailed by the combination of corpuscularianism and the substratum thesis. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 03.2) | |
A reaction: The point is that the corpuscles may be endlessly divisible (which Lewis called 'gunk'). |
16750 | If there are just arrangements of corpuscles, where are the boundaries between substances? [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: If all there are corpuscles of various shapes and sizes, variously arranged, it is not easy to see how we might draw the boundary lines, at any given moment, between one substance and another. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.2) | |
A reaction: We still have precisely that problem, and it leads to the nihilism about ordinary objects found in Unger, Van Inwagen and Merricks. I have so far found modern defences of ordinary objects unpersuasive. |
16722 | Scholastic causation is by changes in the primary qualities of hot, cold, wet, dry [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: There is a scholastic theory of causation. Of Aristotle's Four Causes, the main one is the 'formal' cause, and that consists of changes in the primary, elemental qualities, which are hot, cold, wet and dry. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 21.2) | |
A reaction: [my summary] It is probably right to call this 'scholastic' rather than 'Aristotelian', as I take Aristotelian essence to run deeper than this, and involve principles as well as qualities. |
16760 | Substantial forms were a step towards scientific essentialism [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Substantial forms might well be viewed as an early step in the development of scientific essentialism. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 24.4) | |
A reaction: This is the scholastic view of substantial forms, which is much more physical and causal, rather than Aristotle's more abstract view. The rejection of substantial forms led to the 'Humean' view of laws of nature. |
16581 | Scholastic authors agree that matter was created by God, out of nothing [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Authors from 1274 to 1671 unanimously endorse the Christian doctrine that matter was created by God, before which time there was no material world at all. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 02.5) |
16642 | Transubstantion says accidents of bread and wine don't inhere in the substance [Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Transubstantiation maintains that the accidents of the bread and wine endure after consecration without inhering in the substance. | |
From: Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 10.3) | |
A reaction: It's a big puzzle to outsiders why softness and nice taste should have theological significance. If it is the body and blood of Christ, presumably a miracle has occurred, so normal theories don't apply. It is the key difficulty for scholastic metaphysics. |