38 ideas
9764 | Inspiration and social improvement need wisdom, but not professional philosophy [Quine] |
Full Idea: Professional philosophers have no peculiar fitness for inspirational and edifying writing, or helping to get society on an even keel (though we should do what we can). Wisdom may fulfil these crying needs: 'sophia' yes, but 'philosophia' not necessarily. | |
From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.193) | |
A reaction: This rather startlingly says that philosophy is unlikely to lead to wisdom, which is rather odd when it is defined as love of that very thing. Does love of horticulture lead to good gardening. I can't agree. Philosophy is the best hope of 'sophia'. |
9763 | For a good theory of the world, we must focus on our flabby foundational vocabulary [Quine] |
Full Idea: Our traditional introspective notions - of meaning, idea, concept, essence, all undisciplined and undefined - afford a hopelessly flabby and unmanageable foundation for a theory of the world. Control is gained by focusing on words. | |
From: Willard Quine (Has Philosophy Lost Contact with People? [1979], p.192) | |
A reaction: A very nice statement of the aim of modern language-centred philosophy, though the task offered appears to be that of an under-labourer, when the real target, even according to Quine, is supposed to be a 'theory of the world'. |
15879 | The Square of Opposition has two contradictory pairs, one contrary pair, and one sub-contrary pair [Harré] |
Full Idea: Square of Opposition: 'all A are B' and 'no A are B' are contraries; 'some A are B' and 'some A are not B' are sub-contraries; the pairs 'all A are B'/'some A are B' and 'no A are B'/'some A are B' are contradictories. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
A reaction: [the reader may construct his own diagram from this description!] The contraries are at the extremes of contradiction, but the sub-contraries are actual compatible. You could add possible worlds to this picture. |
15891 | Traditional quantifiers combine ordinary language generality and ontology assumptions [Harré] |
Full Idea: The generalising function and the ontological function of discourse are elided in the traditional quantifier. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: This simple point strikes me as helping enormously to disentangle the mess created by over-emphasis on formal logic in ontology, and especially in the Quinean concept of 'ontological commitment'. |
15878 | Some quantifiers, such as 'any', rule out any notion of order within their range [Harré] |
Full Idea: The quantifier 'any' unambiguously rules out any presupposition of order in the members of the range of individuals quantified. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
A reaction: He contrasts this with 'all', 'each' and 'every', which are ambiguous in this respect. |
15874 | Scientific properties are not observed qualities, but the dispositions which create them [Harré] |
Full Idea: The properties of material things with which the sciences deal are not the qualities we observe them to have, but the dispositions of those things to engender the states and qualities we observe. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: I take this to be the correct use of the word 'qualities', so that properties are not qualities (in the way Heil would like). |
15884 | Laws of nature remain the same through any conditions, if the underlying mechanisms are unchanged [Harré] |
Full Idea: A statement is a law of nature if it is true in all those worlds which differ only as to their initial conditions, that is in which the underlying mechanisms of nature are the same. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
A reaction: Harré takes it that laws of nature have to be necessary, by definition. I like this way of expressing natural necessity, in terms of 'mechanisms' rather than of 'laws'. Where do the mechanisms get their necessity? |
15880 | In physical sciences particular observations are ordered, but in biology only the classes are ordered [Harré] |
Full Idea: In the physical sciences the particular observations and experimental results are usually orderable, while in the biological sciences it is the classes of organism which are ordered, not the particular organisms. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
A reaction: Harré is interesting on the role of ordering in science. Functions can be defined by an order. Maths feeds on orderings. Physics, he notes, focuses on things which vary together. |
15869 | Reports of experiments eliminate the experimenter, and present results as the behaviour of nature [Harré] |
Full Idea: In accounts of experiments, by Faraday and others, the role of the guiding hand of the actual experimenter is written out in successive accounts. The effect is to display the phenomenon as a natural occurrence, existing independently of the experiments. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: He records three stages in Faraday's reports. The move from active to passive voice is obviously part of it. The claim of universality is thus implicit rather than explicit. |
15881 | We can save laws from counter-instances by treating the latter as analytic definitions [Harré] |
Full Idea: When we come upon a counter-instance to a generalisation we can save the putative law, by treating it as potentially analytic and claiming it as a definition. ...Thus magnetism doesn't hold for phosphorus, so we say phosphorus is not a magnetic substance. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
A reaction: He notes this as being particularly true when the laws concern the dispositions of substances, rather than patterns of events. |
15882 | Since there are three different dimensions for generalising laws, no one system of logic can cover them [Harré] |
Full Idea: Since there are three different dimensions of generality into which every law of nature is generalised, there can be no one system of logic which will govern inference to or from every law of every kind. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 3) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at the covering-law approach, which actually aims to output observations as logical inferences from laws. Wrong. |
15888 | The grue problem shows that natural kinds are central to science [Harré] |
Full Idea: The grue problem illustrates the enormous importance that the concept of a natural-kind plays in real science. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: The point is that we took emeralds to be a natural kind, but 'grue' proposes that they aren't, since stability is the hallmark of a natural kind. |
15887 | 'Grue' introduces a new causal hypothesis - that emeralds can change colour [Harré] |
Full Idea: In introducing the predicate 'grue' we also introduce an additional causal hypothesis into our chemistry and physics; namely, that when observed grue emeralds change from blue to green. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: [The 'when observered' is a Harré addition] I hate 'grue'. Only people who think our predicates have very little to do with reality are impressed by it. Grue is a behaviour, not a colour. |
15889 | It is because ravens are birds that their species and their colour might be connected [Harré] |
Full Idea: It is because ravens are birds that it makes sense to contemplate the possibility of a lawful relation between their species and their colour. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: Compare the 'laws' concerning leaf colour in autumn, and the 'laws' concerning packaging colour in supermarkets. Harré's underlying point is that raven colour concerns mechanism. |
15890 | Non-black non-ravens just aren't part of the presuppositions of 'all ravens are black' [Harré] |
Full Idea: Non-black non-ravens have no role to play in assessing the plausibility of 'All ravens are black' because their existence is not among the existential presuppositions of that statement. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: [He cites Strawson for the 'presupposition' approach] |
15885 | The necessity of Newton's First Law derives from the nature of material things, not from a mechanism [Harré] |
Full Idea: The 'must' of Newton's First Law is different. There is no deeper level relative to the processes described to give a mechanism which generates uniform motion. There is no such mechanism. ..It specifies what it is for something to be a material thing. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 4) | |
A reaction: Harré says the law can only exist as part of a network of other ideas. |
15868 | Idealisation idealises all of a thing's properties, but abstraction leaves some of them out [Harré] |
Full Idea: An 'idealisation' preserves all the properties of the source but it possesses these properties in some ideal or perfect form. ...An 'abstraction', on the other hand, lacks certain features of its source. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: Yet another example in contemporary philosophy of a clear understanding of the sort of abstraction which Geach and others have poured scorn on. |
15886 | Science rests on the principle that nature is a hierarchy of natural kinds [Harré] |
Full Idea: The animating principle behind the material and discursive practices of science is the thesis that nature exemplifies multiple hierarchies of natural kinds. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: I agree. I take it to be a brute fact that there seem to be lots of stable natural kinds, which are worth investigating as long as they stay stable. If they are unstable, there needs to be something stable to measure that by - or we give up. |
15864 | Classification is just as important as laws in natural science [Harré] |
Full Idea: Classification systems, or taxonomies, are as important a part of the natural sciences as are the laws of nature. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: This illustrates how our view of science is radically shifted if we give biology equal prominence with physics. |
15865 | Newton's First Law cannot be demonstrated experimentally, as that needs absence of external forces [Harré] |
Full Idea: We can never devise an experimental situation in which there are no external forces to act on a body. It follows that Newton's First Law could never be demonstrated by means of experiment or observation. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: It can't be wholly demonstrated, but certain observations conform to it, such as the movement of low friction bodies, or the movements of planetary bodies. |
15862 | Laws can come from data, from theory, from imagination and concepts, or from procedures [Harré] |
Full Idea: Boyle's Law generalises a mass of messy data culled from an apparatus; Snell's Law is an experimentally derived law deducible from theory; Newton's First Law derives from concepts and thought experiments; Mendel's Law used an experimental procedure. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: Nice examples, especially since Boyle's and Newton's laws are divided by a huge gulf, and arrived at about the same time. On p.35 Harré says these come down to two: abstraction from experiment, and derivation from deep assumptions. |
15870 | Are laws of nature about events, or types and universals, or dispositions, or all three? [Harré] |
Full Idea: What is Newton's First Law about? Is it about events? Is it about types or universals? Is it about dispositions? Or is it, in some peculiar way, about all three? | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: If laws merely chart regularities, then I suppose they are about events (which exhibit the regular patterns). If laws explain, which would be nice, then they are only about universals if you are a platonist. Hence laws are about dispositions. |
15871 | Are laws about what has or might happen, or do they also cover all the possibilities? [Harré] |
Full Idea: Is Newton's First Law about what has actually happened or is it about what might, or could possibly happen? Is it about the actual events and states of the world, or possible events and states? | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: I presume the first sentence distinguishes between what 'might (well)' happen, and what 'could (just) possibly happen'. I take it for granted that laws predict the actual future. The question is are they true of situations which will never occur? |
15876 | Maybe laws of nature are just relations between properties? [Harré] |
Full Idea: The idea of the Dretske-Armstrong-Tooley view is very simple: the laws of nature relate properties to properties. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: Presumably the relations are necessary ones. I don't see why we need to mention these wretched 'universals' in order to expound this theory. It sounds much more plausible if you just say a property is defined by the way it relates to other properties. |
15860 | We take it that only necessary happenings could be laws [Harré] |
Full Idea: We do not take laws to be recordings of what happens perchance or for the most part, but specifications of what happens necessarily | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a plausible necessary condition for a law, but it may not be a sufficient one. Are trivial necessities laws? On this view if there are no necessities then there are no laws. |
15872 | Must laws of nature be universal, or could they be local? [Harré] |
Full Idea: Is a law of nature about everything in the universe or just about a restricted group of things? | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: I presume the answer is that while a law may only refer to a small group of things, the law would still have to apply if that group moved or spread or enlarged, so it would have to be universals. A laws confined to one time or place? Maybe. |
15867 | Laws describe abstract idealisations, not the actual mess of nature [Harré] |
Full Idea: The laws of nature are not simple descriptions of what can be seen to happen. They are descriptions of abstractions and idealisations from a somewhat messy reality. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 1) | |
A reaction: This view seems to have increasingly gripped modern philosophers, so that the old view of God decreeing a few simple equations to run the world has faded away. |
15892 | Laws of nature state necessary connections of things, events and properties, based on models of mechanisms [Harré] |
Full Idea: A law of nature tells us what kinds of things, events and properties (all else being equal) go along with what. The 'must' of natural necessity has its place here because it is bound up with a model or analogy representing generative mechanisms. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 5) | |
A reaction: This is Harré's final page summary of laws. I agree with it. I would say that the laws are therefore descriptive, of the patterns of behaviour that arise when generative mechanisms meet. Maybe laws concern 'transformations'. |
15875 | In counterfactuals we keep substances constant, and imagine new situations for them [Harré] |
Full Idea: In drawing 'countefactual' conclusions we can be thought imaginatively to vary the conditions under which the substance, set-up etc. is manipulated or stimulated, while maintaining constant our conception of the nature of the being in question. | |
From: Rom Harré (Laws of Nature [1993], 2) | |
A reaction: Presumably you could vary the substance and keep the situation fixed, but then the counterfactual seems to be 'about' something different. Either that or the 'situation' is a actually a set of substances to be tested. |
21243 | An existing thing is even greater if its non-existence is inconceivable [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Something can be thought of as existing, which cannot be thought of as not existing, and this is greater than that which cannot be thought of as not existing. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) | |
A reaction: This is a necessary addition, to single out the concept of God as special. But you really must give reasons for saying God's non-existence is inconceivable. Atheists seem to manage. |
21244 | Conceiving a greater being than God leads to absurdity [Anselm] |
Full Idea: If some mind could think of something better than thou, the creature would rise above the Creator and judge its Creator; but this is altogether absurd. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) | |
A reaction: An error, revealing a certain desperation. If a greafer being could be conceived than the being so far imagined as God (a necessarily existing being), that being would BE God, by his own argument (and not some arrogant 'creature'). |
21241 | Even the fool can hold 'a being than which none greater exists' in his understanding [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Even the fool must be convinced that a being than which none greater can be thought exists at least in his understanding, since when he hears this he understands it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) | |
A reaction: Psalm 14.1: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God'. But how does the fool interpret the words, if he has limited imagination? He might get no further than an attractive film star. He would need prompting to think of a spiritual being. |
21242 | If that than which a greater cannot be thought actually exists, that is greater than the mere idea [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Clearly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the understanding alone. For it it is actually in the understanding alone, it can be thought of as existing also in reality, and this is greater. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) | |
A reaction: The suppressed premise is 'something actually existing is greater than the mere conception of it'. As it stands this is wrong. I can imagine a supreme evil. But see Idea 21243. |
1421 | A perfection must be independent and unlimited, and the necessary existence of Anselm's second proof gives this [Malcolm on Anselm] |
Full Idea: Anselm's second proof works, because he sees that necessary existence (or the impossibility of non-existence) really is a perfection. This is because a perfection requires no dependence or limit or impediment. | |
From: comment on Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) by Norman Malcolm - Anselm's Argument Sect II | |
A reaction: I have the usual problem, that it doesn't seem to follow that the perfect existence of something bestows a perfection. It may be necessary that 'for every large animal there exists a disease'. Satan may exist necessarily. |
21245 | The word 'God' can be denied, but understanding shows God must exist [Anselm] |
Full Idea: We think of a thing when we say the world, and in another way when we think of the very thing itself. In the second sense God cannot be thought of as nonexistent. No one who understands can think God does not exist. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 4) | |
A reaction: It seems open to the atheist to claim the exact opposite - that you can commit to God's existence if it is just a word, but understanding shows that God is impossible (perhaps because of contradictions). How to arbitrate? |
21246 | Guanilo says a supremely fertile island must exist, just because we can conceive it [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Guanilo supposes that we imagine an island surpassing all lands in its fertility. We might then say that we cannot doubt that it truly exists is reality, because anyone can conceive it from a verbal description. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Reply 3) | |
A reaction: Guanilo was a very naughty monk, who must have had sleepless nights over this. One could further ask whether an island might have necessary existence. Anselm needs 'a being' to be a special category of thing. |
21247 | Nonexistence is impossible for the greatest thinkable thing, which has no beginning or end [Anselm] |
Full Idea: If anyone does think of something a greater than which cannot be thought, then he thinks of something which cannot be thought of as nonexistent, ...for then it could be thought of as having a beginning and an end. And this is impossible. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Reply 3) | |
A reaction: A nice idea, but it has a flip side. If the atheist denies God's existence, then it follows that (because no beginning is possible for such a being) the existence of God is impossible. Anselm adds that contingent existents have parts (unlike God). |
1420 | Anselm's first proof fails because existence isn't a real predicate, so it can't be a perfection [Malcolm on Anselm] |
Full Idea: Anselm's first proof fails, because he treats existence as being a perfection, which it isn't, because that would make it a real predicate. | |
From: comment on Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) by Norman Malcolm - Anselm's Argument Sect I | |
A reaction: Not everyone accepts Kant's claim that existence cannot be a predicate. They all seem to know what a perfection is. Can the Mona Lisa (an object) not be a perfection? Must it be broken down into perfect predicates? |