14292
|
Dispositions seem more ethereal than behaviour; a non-occult account of them would be nice [Goodman]
|
|
Full Idea:
Dispositions of a thing are as important to us as overt behaviour, but they strike us by comparison as rather ethereal. So we are moved to enquire whether we can bring them down to earth, and explain disposition terms without reference to occult powers.
|
|
From:
Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], II.3)
|
|
A reaction:
Mumford quotes this at the start of his book on dispositions, as his agenda. I suspect that the 'occult' aspect crept in because dispositions were based on powers, and the dominant view was that these were the immediate work of God.
|
18749
|
Goodman argued that the confirmation relation can never be formalised [Goodman, by Horsten/Pettigrew]
|
|
Full Idea:
Goodman constructed arguments that purported to show that a satisfactory syntactic analysis of the confirmation relation can never be found. In response, philosophers of science tried to model it in probabilistic terms.
|
|
From:
report of Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954]) by Horsten,L/Pettigrew,R - Mathematical Methods in Philosophy 4
|
|
A reaction:
I take this idea to say that Bayesianism was developed in response to the grue problem. This is an interesting light on 'grue', which never bothered me much. The point is it scuppered formal attempts to model induction.
|
7669
|
We cannot attain all the ideals of every culture, so there cannot be a perfect life [Herder, by Berlin]
|
|
Full Idea:
For Herder, we cannot attain to the highest ideals of all the centuries and all the places at once, and since we cannot do that, the whole notion of the perfect life collapses.
|
|
From:
report of Johann Gottfried Herder (works [1784]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3
|
|
A reaction:
Herder seems to be the father of modern cultural relativism. The idea is hard to challenge, but the ideals of some cultures should be ignored, if they diminish rather than enhance the good life for all.
|
7668
|
Herder invented the idea of being rooted in (or cut off from) a home or a group [Herder, by Berlin]
|
|
Full Idea:
The whole notion of being at home, or being cut off from one's natural roots, the whole idea of roots, the whole idea of belonging to a group, a sect, a movement, was largely invented by Herder.
|
|
From:
report of Johann Gottfried Herder (works [1784], Ch.3) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism
|
|
A reaction:
Hm. Broad generalisations are an awful temptation in the history of ideas. As a corrective to this, trying reading the two Anglo-Saxon poems 'The Wanderer' and 'The Seafarer'. Very Germanic, I suppose. Interesting, though. Leads to Hegel's politics.
|
4794
|
We don't use laws to make predictions, we call things laws if we make predictions with them [Goodman]
|
|
Full Idea:
Rather than a sentence being used for prediction because it is a law, it is called a law because it is used for prediction.
|
|
From:
Nelson Goodman (Fact, Fiction and Forecast (4th ed) [1954], p.21), quoted by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §5.4
|
|
A reaction:
This smacks of dodgy pragmatism, and sounds deeply wrong. The perception of a law has to be prior to making the prediction. Why do we make the prediction, if we haven't spotted a law. Goodman is mesmerised by language instead of reality.
|