185 ideas
13773 | For the truth you need Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, not his one-drachma course [Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates: If I'd attended Prodicus's fifty-drachma course, I could tell you the truth about names straightway, but as I've only heard the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it. | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 384b |
7421 | A philosopher is one who cares about what other people care about [Socrates, by Foucault] |
Full Idea: Socrates asks people 'Are you caring for yourself?' He is the man who cares about the care of others; this is the particular position of the philosopher. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michel Foucault - Ethics of the Concern for Self as Freedom p.287 | |
A reaction: Priests, politicians and psychiatrists also care quite intensely about the concerns of other people. Someone who was intensely self-absorbed with the critical task of getting their own beliefs right would count for me as a philosopher. |
15209 | Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Just as the tiniest error in navigation may lead to a landfall even on the wrong continent, so the acceptance of apparently innocuous principles can lead to doctrines which, if accepted, would render intellectual life impossible. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: If one lived life by an axiom system, and one of the axioms was a bit off kilter, then this idea would be a powerful one. Note that it is only 'intellectual' life that is screwed up, but even there a plurality of ideas keep correcting one another. |
1649 | Socrates opened philosophy to all, but Plato confined moral enquiry to a tiny elite [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: To confine, as Plato does in 'Republic' IV-VII, moral inquiry to a tiny elite, is to obliterate the Socratic vision which opens up the philosophic life to all. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.18 | |
A reaction: This doesn't mean that Plato is necessarily 'elitist'. It isn't elitist to point out that an activity is very difficult. |
16227 | Philosophers are good at denying the obvious [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Philosophers are skilled at resisting even the most inviting thoughts. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5) | |
A reaction: Not exactly 'despair', but it does show how far philosophers are able to stray from common sense. Monads, real possible worlds, real sets… Thomas Reid, the philosopher of common sense, might be the antidote. |
15215 | Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In our view the task of a philosopher is to devise and critically assess conceptual schemes in the service of some overall vision of the world. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
A reaction: This makes theology just as genuinely a branch of philosophy as their scientific essentialism. Is there any sort of philosophy, then, which is not 'in the service' of some independent worldview? Interesting. Note 'devise', as well as 'assess'. |
5842 | Philosophical discussion involves dividing subject-matter into categories [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: Self-discipline and avoidance of pleasure makes people most capable of philosophical discussion, which is called 'discussion' (dialegesthai - sort out) because people divide their subject-matter into categories. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.5.12 | |
A reaction: This could be the original slogan for analytical philosophy, as far as I am concerned. I don't think philosophy aims at complete and successful analysis (cf. Idea 2958), but at revealing the structure and interconnection of ideas. This is wisdom. |
648 | Socrates began the quest for something universal with his definitions, but he didn't make them separate [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Socrates began the quest for something universal in addition to the radical flux of perceptible particulars, with his definitions. But he rightly understood that universals cannot be separated from particulars. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1086b |
15212 | Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Adequate accounts of those concepts which are neither purely formal nor simply psychological can be achieved by attention to ....the content of our knowledge, content which goes beyond the reports of immediate experience. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I like this one. Most proponents of analysis are either bogged down in trying to reduce all of our talk to formal logic, or else they think that they are just analysing how we think. It's neither, because the concepts arise from the world. |
15210 | Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean view has led philosophers to suppose that their task is to provide an analysis of key concepts and relations wholly in terms drawn from formal logic, since relations of necessity are, in their view, fundamentally logical relations | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: A very sharp observation about why logic has become central to contemporary philosophy. As far as I can see, logic steadily increases its dominance, to the point where ordinary metaphysical thought is being squeezed out. |
15236 | Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Positivism is the doctrine that the content of scientific propositions is exhausted by what can be immediately experienced. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.I) | |
A reaction: The simple thing missing from positivism is inference to the best explanation. Also, if you actually rule out other propositions as 'meaningless', you rule out speculation, which would certainly cripple science. |
164 | It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate [Socrates] |
Full Idea: It is legitimate to play the devil's advocate. | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Phaedrus 272c |
1647 | In Socratic dialogue you must say what you believe, so unasserted premises are not debated [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates' rule of "say only what you believe"….excluded debate on unasserted premises, thereby distinguishing Socratic from Zenonian and earlier dialectics. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.14 |
115 | Socrates was pleased if his mistakes were proved wrong [Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates: I'm happy to have a mistaken idea of mine proved wrong. | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 458a |
22099 | The method of Socrates shows the student is discovering the truth within himself [Socrates, by Carlisle] |
Full Idea: Socrates tended to prefer the method of questioning, for this made it clear that the student was discovering the truth within himself. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Clare Carlisle - Kierkegaard: a guide for the perplexed 7 | |
A reaction: Sounds like it will only facilitate conceptual analysis, and excludes empirical knowledge. Can you say to Socrates 'I'll just google that'? |
5844 | Socrates always proceeded in argument by general agreement at each stage [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: When Socrates was setting out a detailed argument, he used to proceed by such stages as were generally agreed, because he thought that this was the infallible method of argument. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.16 | |
A reaction: This sounds right, and shows how strongly Socrates perceived philosophy to be a group activity, of which I approve. It seems to me that philosophy is clearly a spoken subject before it is a written one. The lonely speculator comes much later. |
15227 | Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: From a logical point of view all definitions look exactly alike, that is, they contain a logical subject and a set of predicates which are attributed of necessity to that subject. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) |
11389 | Socrates sought essences, which are the basis of formal logic [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: It is not surprising that Socrates sought essences. His project was to establish formal reasoning, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b22 | |
A reaction: This seems to reinforce the definitional view of essences, since definitions seem to be at the centre of most of Socrates's quests. |
639 | Socrates developed definitions as the basis of syllogisms, and also inductive arguments [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Socrates aimed to establish formal logic, of whose syllogisms essences are the foundations. He developed inductive arguments and also general definitions. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b |
16216 | Part of the sense of a proper name is a criterion of the thing's identity [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A Fregean dictum is that part of the sense of proper name is a criterion of identity for the thing in question. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.8) | |
A reaction: [She quotes Dummett 1981:545] We are asked to choose between this and the Kripke rigid/dubbing/causal account, with effectively no content. |
15273 | Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Points can be 'dense' by indefinitely prolonged division. To be 'continuous' is more stringent; the points must be cut into two sets, and meet the condition laid down by Boscovich and Dedekind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This idea goes with Idea 15274, which lays down the specification of the Dedekind Cut, which is the criterion for the real (and continuous) numbers. Harré and Madden are interested in whether time can support continuity of objects. |
15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Divide points into left and right set. They're 'continuous' if that point is either last member of left set, and greatest lower bound of right (so no least member), or least upper bound of left set (so no last member) and first member of right set. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: The best attempt I have yet encountered to explain a Dedekind Cut for the layperson. I gather modern mathematicians no longer rely on this way of defining the real numbers. |
15211 | There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The assumption that there is an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the psychological is, in our view, an error of enormous consequence. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I agree entirely with this, and am opposed to the Fregean view of the matter. The psychology is the bridge between the physical world and the logic. Frege had to be a platonist, so that the formalism could latch onto something. |
15261 | Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro) | |
A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate. |
15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: On our view, 'event' is to be understood in terms of the ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: It has quite hard to take either objects or events, given that they seem to be amenable to analysis. I am tempted to take essences as primitive. They fix identity, endure change, bear accidental properties (including temporary intrinsics). |
15257 | The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: By a shift from events to things we claim to make the big problem of induction tractable. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
A reaction: [You'll have to read their chapter to get the whole picture] The idea of basing a metaphysics on 'events' gives me the creeps, given the difficulty of individuating an event. Events are not primitive; even animals can analyse their components. |
16211 | A homogeneous rotating disc should be undetectable according to Humean supervenience [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Imagine a perfectly homogeneous non-atomistic disc. A record of all the non-relational information about the world at that moment will not reveal whether the disc is rotating about a vertical axis through. This tells against Humean supervenience. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.2) | |
A reaction: [Armstrong 1980 originated this, and it is famously discussed by Kripke in lectures] There will, of course, be dispositions present because of the rotation, but Lewis excludes any such modal truths. |
15300 | Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Fundamental particulars are incapable of change. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
A reaction: I quote this in order to challenge it. If the proton can decay (which seems to be the case) maybe everything can. The fundamentals of a lawn mower eventually rust away; it may be thus with universe. What evidence could deny this? |
15319 | Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is no metaphysical justification whatever for treating the solid, bounded, material object as the determiner of all thing concepts. Fluids are no less material things than are hard solid blocks. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: We don't tend to talk of a fluid as 'a' thing, and without distinct objects there would be virtually no structure, or interest, in nature, so what gives identity to the blocks must interest the metaphysician. |
15320 | Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The magnetic and the gravitation field can occupy all the same places without merging. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: We can divide stuff into two classes, then, according to whether they usually merge if coextensive in space. Oil and water can be mixed, but eventually separate again. |
15318 | Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The region around a magnetic body, the space between earth and moon, and the vicinity of an electric cable remain obstinately and, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: Ouch, if you are a strict 'materialist'! I call myself a 'naturalist', in a hand-wavy sort of way. On materialism and determinism I remain vague. |
15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A state of affairs consists of structures of particulars that endure (of which physical objects would be one type), the properties and powers of those particulars, and the relations obtaining among them. A common 'event' is a change in state of affairs. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I find 'event' to be so vague, and so dependent on pragmatic interests, that it has hard to find a place for it in an ontological system. Ditto with state of affairs. They overlap. States of affairs can survive change (like a political majority). |
16219 | Non-linguistic things cannot be indeterminate, because they don't have truth-values at all [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Non-linguistic objects, properties, and states of affairs cannot be indeterminate because they cannot have determinate truth-values either. No cloud is indeterminate, just as no cloud is either determinately true or determinately false. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: If vagueness must be linguistic, this means animals can never experience it, which I doubt. Presumably 'this is a cloud' is only made vague by the vagueness of the object, rather than by the vagueness of the sentence? |
16223 | Maybe for the world to be vague, it must be vague in its foundations? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There is a question of whether there must be 'vagueness all the way down' for the world to be vague. One view is that if there is a base level of precisely describably facts, upon which all the others supervene, then the world is not really vague. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.5) | |
A reaction: My understanding of the physics is that it is non-vague all the way down, and then you get to the base level which is hopelessly vague! |
16226 | Epistemic vagueness seems right in the case of persons [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The epistemic account of vagueness is particularly attractive where persons are concerned. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.14) | |
A reaction: You'll have to see her text for details. Interesting that there might be different views of what vagueness is for different cases. Or putting it another way, absolutely everything (said, thought, existing or done) might be vague in some way! |
16208 | Supervaluation refers to one vaguely specified thing, through satisfaction by everything in some range [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Supervaluationists take a present-tense predication as concerning a single, but vaguely specified, moment. …It is indeterminate which of a range of moments enters into the truth conditions, but it is true if satisfied by every member of the range. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.7) | |
A reaction: She is discussing stage theory, but this is a helpful clarification of the idea of supervaluation. Something can be satisfied by a whole bunch of values, even though you are not sure which one. |
16221 | Supervaluationism takes what the truth-value would have been if indecision was resolved [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A supervaluationist approach involves consideration of what the truth value of the utterance would have been if semantic indecision had been resolved in this way or that. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: At last, a lovely account of supervaluation in plain English that anyone can understand! Why don't they all do that? Well, done Katherine Hawley! ['semantic indecision' is uncertainty about what your words mean!] |
16230 | Maybe the only properties are basic ones like charge, mass and spin [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Some philosophers suspect that properties are few and far between, that there are only properties like charge, mass, spin, and so on. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: I think properties are very sparse, and mainly consist of physical powers, but I am not sure what I think of this. It may be 'mere semantics'. Complex properties still seem to be properties. Powers combine to make properties, I suggest. |
15281 | Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The connectivity of ensembles of predicates is characteristic of natural science, while the independence of empirical predicates is the requirement of the Humean position. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: This is yet another excellent reason for getting rid of the hyperempirical Humean view of these things. The best explanation of the world is that its ingredients are clearly not 'independent' of each other. |
15279 | Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of energy was introduced into physics precisely to make possible the application of the 'store of potency' paradigm in cases like the contact of billiard balls, since the moving ball is clearly an agent of change. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I find this to be a hugely revealing little observation. For years the nature of energy has bothered me, and I have been struck by the active character of nature. I am beginning to understand the world! |
15276 | Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Some powerful particulars require to be stimulated before their powers are manifested. Others will manifest their powers whenever the impediments to action, the constraints, are removed. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.V) | |
A reaction: Sounds nice and clear, but if gunpowder explodes at a certain temperature, how can you distinguish temperatures as the 'stimulus' ones and the 'release' ones? We just remove the constraint of low temperature. |
15305 | Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Contrasted with variable powers are those powers which cannot be diminished or augmented without loss of identity for the particular to which they are ascribed. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
A reaction: They give the example of a Deputy Sheriff's powers, as one that cannot vary. I suppose the powers of an electron are in the fixed category. Fair enough. Can a fundamental power be variable (or only 'complex' powers)? |
15218 | Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: For scientists 'copper' refers to something having the properties of malleability, fusibility, ductility, electric conductivity, density 8.92, atomic weight 63.54, and atomic number 19. All but the last of these are dispositional. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: This is important because it is tempting to pick the atomic number as the essence of copper, but it is the only one on the list which is structural rather than dispositional. The deep question is why that substance has those dispositions. |
15302 | We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The power of particulars are always made understandable by the natures of those particulars, but finally such explanations come to rest with a power of a particular that has no explanation in the nature of that thing or bit of material. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: I'm glad they faced up to this matter. The question is whether the fundamental powers which are the terminus of explanation are the same sort of thing as the powers which were said to be the target for explanations. Just complex powers? |
15303 | Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: As the most promising candidate for entities which intrinsically qualify as ultimate because their nature is in principle identical with their powers we will offer a physical field. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: An electron comes fairly close to being nothing but a bundle of powers, but fields seem to have a slightly more basic role in physics, so this strikes me as a good suggestion. It meets Ladyman's mocking of the 'microbangings' view. |
15258 | Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: An attribution of a power opens up a certain direction of empirical investigation. It is not an attribution of an occult quality, because it is not a quality-attribution at all. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.II) | |
A reaction: They seem to have a rather behaviouristic view of powers, which I am inclined to think misses how fundamental powers are. I see fundamental powers as the terminus of empirical investigation (which focuses on how powers combine). |
15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: How are we to conceive of a field of potentials when the very point of the notion is that it serves to describe what would happen at various places, and is not a description of what did or is happening? | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: I suppose the answer is induction. If there were no events, the field would be beyond us. We infer the field from observed events, and infer possible events from the patterns of behaviour in the field, and its nature. |
1652 | Socrates did not consider universals or definitions as having separate existence, but Plato made Forms of them [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Socrates did not regard the universals or the objects of definitions as separate existents, while Plato did separate them, and called this sort of entity ideas/forms. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1078b30 |
16232 | An object is 'natural' if its stages are linked by certain non-supervenient relations [Hawley] |
Full Idea: I suggest that our distinction between natural and unnatural (gerrymandered) objects corresponds to a distinction between series of stages which are and are not linked by certain non-supervenient relations. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.5) | |
A reaction: See Idea 16213 for the nature of these 'relations'. I don't understand how an abstraction (as I take it) like a relation can unify a physical object. A trout-turkey is unified by a relation of some sort. Hawley defends Stage Theory. |
15272 | The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In being properly critical about the merits of the concept of substance, ...the Humean finds he has lost the vitally important concept of a thing as well. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This is the whole reason that Aristotle and others started talking about substances in the first place. The big mistake is to think that Aristotle believes in a thing called 'substance'. The notion is a placeholder for whatever holds a thing together. |
15304 | We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The importance of the field concept (as ultimate) is that it allows us to escape from the apparently pervasive concepts of substance and its properties. A field has no substance other than its powers (or its potentials). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII) | |
A reaction: You can't run away from substance by only thinking about what is ultimate. Are they going to ignore separate objects? What gives them identity? Do they have any properties? What has the properties? More work needed here. |
16200 | Are sortals spatially maximal - so no cat part is allowed to be a cat? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Many philosophers believe that sortal predicates are spatially maximal - for example, that no cat can be a proper spatial part of a cat. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This sounds reasonable until you cut the tail off a cat. Presumably what remains is a cat? So presumably that smaller part was always a cat? Only essentialism can make sense of this! You can't just invent rules for sortals. |
16237 | The modal features of statue and lump are disputed; when does it stop being that statue? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is difficult to establish a consensus about the modal features of the statue and the lump. Could that statue be made of a different lump? Could that statue of Goliath have been spherical? Not a realistic statue of Goliath, but still the same statue? | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6) | |
A reaction: The problem is with a wild wacky sculptor, who might say it is a statue of Goliath no matter what shape the lump takes. 'Goliath had a spherical character'. Sometimes we will say (pace Evans) it is 'roughly identical' to the original statue. |
16238 | Perdurantists can adopt counterpart theory, to explain modal differences of identical part-sums [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Perdurance theory claims that lumps and statues differ modally whilst always being made of the same parts. A natural way to make this less mysterious is for perdurantists to adopt counterpart theory, where objects in different worlds are never identical. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
A reaction: This, of course, is exactly the system created by David Lewis. Personally I rather like counterparts, but perdurance seems a tad crazy. |
16220 | Vagueness is either in our knowledge, in our talk, or in reality [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There are three main views of vagueness: the Epistemic view says we talk precisely, but don't know what we talk precisely about; the Semantic view is that it is loose talk, or semantic indecision; the Ontic view says it is part of how the world is. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.1) | |
A reaction: [My summary of two paragraphs] She associates Williamson with the first view, Lewis with the second, and Van Inwagen with the third. |
16222 | Indeterminacy in objects and in properties are not distinct cases [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There is no important distinction to be drawn between cases where indeterminacy is due to the object involved and cases where indeterminacy is due to the property involved. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.2) | |
A reaction: You could always paraphrase the object's situation propertywise, or the property's situation objectwise. 'His baldness is indeterminate'; 'where does the mountainous terrain end?' |
15309 | The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The assumption that shape and solidity are the fundamental mechanical qualities requires an implausible hypothesis of a substance or material filling the space of bodies. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
A reaction: This is 'substance' in the sense of matter, rather than in the sense of an Aristotelian essence. They defend fields (rather than particles) as the fundamentals of the physical world. |
16228 | The constitution theory is endurantism plus more than one object in a place [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Constitution theorists are endurance theorists who believe that there can be more than one object exactly occupying a spatial region at a certain moment. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: I increasingly think that this is a ridiculous view. The constitution of an object isn't a further object. A constitution is a necessary requirement for a physical object. Hylomorphism! Constitutions can't be separate - they must constitute something! |
16229 | Constitution theory needs sortal properties like 'being a sweater' to distinguish it from its thread [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Constitution theorists need to posit sortal properties of 'being a thread' or 'being a sweater', as grounds for the differences betwween the sweater and the thread that constitutes it. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.1) | |
A reaction: This is further grounds for thinking the constitution view ridiculous, because there are no such properties. 'Being a sweater' is a category, which something belongs in if it has all the properties of a sweater. The final property triggers sweaterhood. |
14492 | If the constitution view says thread and sweater are two things, why do we talk of one thing? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The constitution theorists, who claim that the sweater and the thread are different things, should offer some explanation of why we tend to say that there is just one thing there. They must simply claim that we 'do not count by identity'. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 5.8) | |
A reaction: Her example is a sweater knitted from a single piece of thread. Presumably we could count by sortal identity, so there is one thread here, and there is one sweater here. We just can't add the two together. No ontological arithmetic. |
15264 | The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
A reaction: Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'. |
15262 | In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I) | |
A reaction: This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity? |
15297 | We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
A reaction: This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science. |
15266 | We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
A reaction: They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265). |
15220 | To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Talk about particulars remaining the same and yet lacking their usual capacities and powers is at once to assert and deny that a certain object or sample of material has a given nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: They imply that this is a contradiction, and hence impossible. So what do we say about something in which the powers fade? Do they both retain and lose their identity? Or can we separate essence from identity?? Aha! |
15222 | Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary! |
15296 | A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II) | |
A reaction: If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'. |
16193 | 'Adverbialism' explains change by saying an object has-at-some-time a given property [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Another strategy for the problem of change says that instantiation - the having of properties - is time-indexed, or relative to times, although properties themselves are not. This 'adverbialism' says that object has-at-t some property. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.5) | |
A reaction: [She cites Johnson, Lowe and Haslanger for this] Promising. The question is whether the time index is attached to the object, to the property, or to the instantiation. The middle one is wrong. There aren't two properties - green-at-t1 and green-at-t2. |
16195 | Presentism solves the change problem: the green banana ceases, so can't 'relate' to the yellow one [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Adopting presentism solves the problem of change, since it means that, once the banana is yellow, there just is no green banana, and the question of the relationship between yesterday's green banana and today's yellow one therefore does not arise. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.7) | |
A reaction: Change remains kind of odd, but it is no longer the puzzlement of two things being the same when they are admitted to be different. There is only ever one thing. This is my preferred account, I think. I certainly hope past bananas don't exist. |
16202 | The problem of change arises if there must be 'identity' of a thing over time [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is the insistence on identity between objects wholly present at different times which gives rise to the problem of change. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: My solution is to say things are the 'same', in a slightly loose non-transitive way, rather than formally identical, which is a concept from maths, not from reality. |
15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do? |
16192 | Endurance theory can relate properties to times, or timed instantiations to properties [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Endurance theory might claim a banana stands (atemporally) in different relations to different times (being-green-at to Monday), ..or has different instantiation relations to different properties (instantiates-on-Monday to being green). | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.3) | |
A reaction: She suggests that the first approach is more plausible for endurantists. I think she is right (assuming these are the only two options). Monday awaits a banana, but yellow doesn't. |
16196 | Endurance is a sophisticated theory, covering properties, instantiation and time [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Endurance theory is not just a default 'no-theory' theory, for it must incorporate a sophisticated account of properties and instantiation, and requires a certain view of time if it is even to be formulable. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
A reaction: A bit odd to claim it is a sophisticated theory when it is held (at least in our culture) by absolutely everyone apart from a few philosophers and physicists. The sophistication may come with trying to describe it using current metaphysical vocabulary. |
16197 | How does perdurance theory explain our concern for our own future selves? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A question for perdurance theory is whether it can account for the special concern we feel for our own future selves. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.8) | |
A reaction: That is one of those questions that begins to look very mysterious whatever your theory. I favour endurantism, but me next year looks a very remote person for me to be concerned about, in comparison with the people around me now. |
15271 | If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose. |
16191 | Perdurance needs an atemporal perspective, to say that the object 'has' different temporal parts [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Perdurance relies on our having an 'atemporal' perspective from which we can truly say a banana has both yellow and green parts, where this 'has' is not in the present tense. ..Perdurance theory cannot be expressed straightforwardly in the present tense. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This seems to require the tenseless B-series view of time. It seems to need a tenseless view of the past, but what does it have to say about the future? |
16199 | If an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts, its mass is staggeringly large! [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The mass of an object is the sum of its nonoverlapping parts. Analogy would suggest that a persisting banana has, atemporally speaking, a mass that is the sum of all the masses of the 100g temporal parts, a worryingly large figure. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.1) | |
A reaction: This is an objection to the Perdurance view that an object is the sum of all of its temporal parts. Their duration tends towards instantaneous, so the aggregate mass tends towards infinity. She says they should deny atemporal mass. |
16201 | Perdurance says things are sums of stages; Stage Theory says each stage is the thing [Hawley] |
Full Idea: According to Perdurance Theory, it is long-lived sums of stages which are tennis balls, whereas according to Stage Theory, it is the stages themselves which are tennis balls. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.2) | |
A reaction: These seem to be the two options if you are a four-dimensionalist, though Fine says you could be a weird three-dimensionalist and choose stage theory. |
16240 | If a life is essentially the sum of its temporal parts, it couldn't be shorter or longer than it was? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It seems that perdurance theory should identify Descartes with the sum of his temporal parts, but that means Descartes essentially lived for 54 years, which seems absurd, as he could have lived longer or less long than he in fact did. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.10) | |
A reaction: [She credits Van Inwagen with this] I'm not clear why a counterpart of Descartes could not have a shorter or longer sum of parts, and still be Descartes. If the sum is rigidly designated, that is a problem for endurance too. |
16203 | Stage Theory seems to miss out the link between stages of the same object [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The first worry for Stage Theory is that many present stages are bananas, and many stages tomorrow are bananas, but this seems to omit the important fact that some of those stages are intimately linked, that certain stages are the same banana. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Hawley has a theory to do with external relations, which I didn't find very persuasive. Just to say stages have a 'relation' seems too abstract. Stages of disparate things can also have 'relations', but presumably the wrong sort. |
16204 | Stage Theory says every stage is a distinct object, which gives too many objects [Hawley] |
Full Idea: The second worry for Stage Theory is that there are far too many bananas in the world on this account. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: The point is that each (instantaneous) stage is considered to be a whole banana (as opposed to one sum of all the stages of the banana, in the Perdurance view). A pretty serious problem, which she tries to deal with. |
16212 | An isolated stage can't be a banana (which involves suitable relations to other stages) [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A single isolated stage could not be a banana, because in order to be a banana a stage must be suitably related to other stages with appropriate properties. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.4.1) | |
A reaction: This seems at odds with the claim that each stage is the whole thing (rather than the long temporal 'worm' of perdurance theory). Isolated stages are instantaneous, so can't be anything, really. Her 'relations' seem hand-wavy to me. Connections? |
16213 | Stages of one thing are related by extrinsic counterfactual and causal relations [Hawley] |
Full Idea: I claim that there are relations between the distinct stages of a persisting object which are not determined by the intrinsic properties of those stages. …The later stages depend, counterfactually and causally, upon the earlier stages. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
A reaction: This is the heart of her theory. How can there be a causal link between two stages which is not the result of intrinsic properties of the stages? This begins to sound like Malebranche's Occasionalism. |
16205 | The stages of Stage Theory seem too thin to populate the world, or to be referred to [Hawley] |
Full Idea: A third worry for Stage Theory is that the momentary stages themselves are just too thin to populate the world, and too thin to be the objects of reference. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.3) | |
A reaction: Her three objections to her own theory add up to sufficient to refute it, in my view, though a large chunk of her book is spent trying to refute the objections. |
16206 | Stages must be as fine-grained in length as change itself, so any change is a new stage [Hawley] |
Full Idea: To account for change, stages and temporal parts must be as fine-grained as change: a material thing must have as many stages or parts as it is in incompatible states during its lifetime. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.4) | |
A reaction: There seems to be a dilemma for stages here, of being so fat that they are divisible and change, or so thin that they barely exist. Lose-lose, I'd say. |
15256 | Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II) | |
A reaction: This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together. |
16225 | If two things might be identical, there can't be something true of one and false of the other [Hawley] |
Full Idea: We can call the 'transference principle' the claim that if it is indeterminate whether two objects are identical, then nothing determinately true of one can be determinately false of the other. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 4.9) | |
A reaction: The point is that Leibniz's Law could immediately be invoked to show there is no possibility of their identity. |
15290 | What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.IV) | |
A reaction: This is a deeply stirring idea, because it suddenly opens up a research project of narrowing the possibilities, with a stunning Holy Grail at the end of it. Sherlock Holmes said this first, of course. |
15291 | There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In addition to absolute necessity ('p is strictly implied by ¬p'), i.e. p strictly implied by any proposition whatever, C.I. Lewis also distinguished relative necessity ('p implied by what is given or known'). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: Once you accept this distinction you find that the 'relative' one comes in all sorts of degrees. You "have to" put more salt in this soup. (Deontic' necessity, someone on Twitter tells me!) |
15230 | Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the logical form of a statement is offered as the grounds for the judgement that it cannot be true we have logical necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a truth about logical necessity, but certainly not a full account of it, because contingent statements also have logical form. I can't think of any other criterion than the finding of a contradiction buried in the logical form. |
15214 | Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity is neither a mere reflection of logical necessity nor a roundabout way of referring to empirical contingency. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B) | |
A reaction: They offer a strong defence of natural necessity, which is basic to their scientific essentialism. The key point is that they, unlike some others, are not defending metaphysical necessity about nature, but finding a different type of necessity. Good. |
15221 | The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The relation between what a thing is and what it is capable of doing and undergoing is naturally necessary. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: Note that this was written in 1975, and in no way rests of Kripkean notions of rigid designation and necessary identities. Needs thought, but I take it to be an appealing proposal. |
15224 | A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is a necessity corresponding to the nature of the actual. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.C) | |
A reaction: A nice slogan for the assertion of a genuine and distinct natural necessity. Hence every possible world will have its own distinctive natural necessity. If the actual contains the possible, then there are possible new natural necessities in the actual! |
15232 | Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the natures of the operative powerful particulars, the constraining or stimulating effect of conditions and so on are offered as the grounds for the judgement that a certain effect cannot but happen (or fail), we have natural necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This is the view I subscribe to, the really right bit of scientific essentialism. Can this view be proved? Hm. I take the opposite view to be the misguided Humean idea that if you can imagine it not happening, then it might not happen. Firey furnace. |
15288 | People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: At the basis of all doubts about the rationality of science lies the idea that there is no rational resting place between logical necessity and absolute contingency. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: I'm struck by the fact that when someone says "I have to go now", they express a necessity. Are there thousands of types of necessity, or one conditional necessity resting on thousands of different foundations? |
15289 | Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when understood by scientists to be related by generative mechanisms, whose structure and components constitute the essential natures of the world. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: Does that mean that the relationship between an actual state and a possible state is metaphysically necessary, rather than naturally necessary? I think we need dispositions to be part of actuality, and hence replace 'co-existing' with 'possible'. |
15231 | Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When the conditions for a rational being having knowledge of the nature of a world are offered as the grounds for the judgement that such a world must have certain characteristics, we have transcendental necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: It seems like a rather hard call to decide whether such characteristics pertain to the world, or to the mind of the rational being. Kant is obviously behind this one. You must read his first Critique at least four times to evaluate it. |
15234 | There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever is logically necessary must be reflected in a corresponding transcendental necessity. But there are a great range of transcendental necessities which are not reflected in any logical necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.C) | |
A reaction: That is, the world would be unknowable if any of the logical necessities failed to apply to it. I hope that doesn't mean that we are supposed to intuitively know all the logical necessities. Nowadays we are famous for being bad at that. |
15260 | Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We understand subjunctive conditionals as statements about possibilities, excluding those actualised. So that form is just right for part of the analysis of a power statement, since to say a thing has a power is to say what behaviour is possible for it. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VII) | |
A reaction: They seem unaware of the famous work of Stalnaker and Lewis on this type of analysis, but as a fan of powers I find this interesting, and it offers a nice extra piece for my big jigsaw. |
15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When a natural necessity is used as the basis for the inclusion or exclusion of the appropriate predicate in the meaning of a concept of a kind of particular, then it is conceptually necessary that that kind of particular has that property or power. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B) | |
A reaction: This is one of the bolder views of Harré and Madden, since many philosophers would say that conceptual necessity rests entirely on convention rather than on nature. We could cut them out by just saying that most of our conventions rest on nature. |
15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Described as a man it is quite contingent that he has a child, but described as a father it is conceptually necessary that he has a child. But that conceptual necessity is a reflection of the natural necessity of the father's role in reproduction. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
A reaction: This is a (good) response to Quine's claim that necessity depends entirely on the mode of description (and his mathematician cyclist example). |
15216 | Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The question about conceptual necessity is whether it is only stipulative and conventional in character or whether it mirrors something about the nature of physical systems. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.A) | |
A reaction: This is the key question, which fans of conventionalism (such as Sidelle) don't seem to face up to. I take it to be important that our concepts are not created by a committee of fools, but by people constantly relating to the world. |
15235 | There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: When discoveries about the nature of a thing or substance explain or justify our holding that certain properties are its nominal essence, then the diachronic process of meaning development creates a genuine conceptual necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.VI) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a pretty good account of one of the bases for conceptual necessity. They seem to think that conceptual necessity rests on a mixture of real and nominal essence (but then some of the nominal features are also real). |
15228 | Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concepts of necessity and contingency are detached from those of the apriori and the a posteriori. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to arise quite independently of Kripke, from the attack by the authors on the Humean view of modality. They also mention the possibility of the apriori contingent. |
15252 | If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Even in cases (such as Goldbach's Conjecture) which, if true, are logically necessary, we may be able to conceive the opposite. We can conceive of there being a number which is not the sum of two primes. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: [attributed to Kneale] Ah, but can we conceive this (as Descartes would say) 'clearly and distinctly'? I can conceive circular squares, as long as I don't concentrate too hard. |
16239 | To decide whether something is a counterpart, we need to specify a relevant sortal concept [Hawley] |
Full Idea: When asked whether a possible object is a counterpart of something, we need to specify which sortal we are interested in. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 6.2) | |
A reaction: The compares this to the 'respect' in which two things are similar. For example, what would count as a counterpart of the current British Prime Minister? De re or de dicto reference? |
15245 | It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: It would be silly to suggest that what is a matter of experience must be justified by reason, and it makes no sense to say that what we are insisting upon as a matter of direct experience must itself be established by experience. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: The first half is now known as the 'Moorean' view (Idea 6349). It does make sense, when faced with a weird experience, to assess and establish it by means of a combination of reason and other experiences. It's called 'coherence'! |
15244 | We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: It seems clear that we are never presented with a quality except of some object. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: I'm not convinced that that 'seems clear'. The idea of sense-data is that while it seems to be of an object, reason suggests that the experience of the quality must precede the object assembled thereby. How do you arbitrate? |
15248 | Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: To the objection that one is never aware of inferences in sensation, the unconvincing reply comes that such inferences are automatic, telescoped, non-discursive and unconscious. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: I think the 'unconvincing' reply is a bit more convincing in the light of modern research on the brain, which presents everything it does in a far less conscious light than the traditional view. Even reason seems barely conscious. |
15269 | Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean event, the impression, basic to his epistemology, is, as we have seen, instantaneous in nature, punctiform and elemenentary, and from this characterisation follows its atomicity, its lack of internal connections with anything else. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This simple point about Humean associationism is the key to grasping the whole hideous worldview that has gripped twentieth century philosophy. How many impressions make up an apple? And why do they sum to make something? |
15286 | Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3) | |
A reaction: I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection. |
15283 | Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: [They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms). |
15316 | The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists. |
15298 | We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III) | |
A reaction: If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302. |
15225 | Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The task of natural science is to investigate the nature of a thing or substance, and to test hypotheses as to the constitution of that thing or substance. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This seems to suggest that science is only concerned with the very small, but it would include facts such as the dramatic change of a lump of uranium when it grows bigger. |
15255 | Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: 'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
A reaction: I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I. |
15270 | Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The atomicity of Humean events ensures the sequential independence of properties, ...and this in turn leads to the Humean problem of induction. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as pretty good analysis of what has gone wrong with the Humean account. As far as I can see, the 'problem' of induction just doesn't occur in scientific essentialism. |
15284 | Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation. |
15285 | The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I) | |
A reaction: This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view. |
15287 | The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The generating mechanism that produces black raven-like beings is assumed in the according of potential law status to the statement that all ravens are black. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III) | |
A reaction: This is a very nice succinct statement of what I take to be the scientific essentialist view of induction. It isn't about building up Humean habits of regularity, but of gradually inferring explanatory mechanisms, which might even give necessities. |
15306 | Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Only changes require explanation. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I) | |
A reaction: This points to powers as the fundamentals of all explanations, whereas if stasis also has to be explained then structures and matter have to be explained. Why is there something rather than nothing? No explanations allowed! |
15293 | If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow. |
15294 | Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality. |
15254 | If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I) | |
A reaction: They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct. |
15317 | Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Usually in science the powers/natures formula does lead to the imagining of hypothetical mechanisms which might be discovered to be real. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III) | |
A reaction: The underlying mechanism is what I take Aristotle to have proposed, and it is the instinctive explanation by children (charted by Susan Gelman). |
15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B) | |
A reaction: This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say. |
15219 | Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Capacities just as much as powers, what particulars and substances are liable to undergo as well as what they are able to do, are explained by reference to what the thing is in itself. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C) | |
A reaction: This is an important warning against trying to give the whole account in terms of powers - unless the capacities and structures and categorical properties can also be explained in terms of the basic powers. |
15301 | The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concepts of power, capacity and the nature of a particular involve generalisations and hence already presuppose that there are grounds for extrapolation. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.V) | |
A reaction: I take sortal essentialism to be a serious misundertanding, but the mistake needs to be explained, and this idea is helpful towards that. I think the problem resides in the nature of the language we need to describe particulars. |
1650 | For Socrates our soul, though hard to define, is our self [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: For Socrates our soul is our self - whatever that might turn out to be. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.55 | |
A reaction: The problem with any broad claim like this is that we seem to be able to distinguish between essential and non-essential aspects of the self or of the soul. |
16218 | On any theory of self, it is hard to explain why we should care about our future selves [Hawley] |
Full Idea: It is rather difficult to say why one should care about one's future self, even on an endurance theory account of the self. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.9) | |
A reaction: A nice passing remark, that strikes me forcibly as one of those basic mysteries of experience that philosophers can only gawp at, and have no theory to offer. |
23252 | Socrates first proposed that we are run by mind or reason [Socrates, by Frede,M] |
Full Idea: It would seem that historically the decisive step was taken by Socrates in conceiving of human beings as being run by a mind or reason.. …He postulated an entity whose precision nature and function then was a matter of considerable debate. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Michael Frede - Intro to 'Rationality in Greek Thought' p.19 | |
A reaction: This is, for me, a rather revelatory idea. I am keen on the fact the animals make judgements which are true and false, and also that we exhibit rationality when walking across uneven ground. So pure rationality is a cultural construct! |
15226 | What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A statement which asserts that a substance or thing must manifest certain properties in order to be identified as a thing or substance of that sort can be laid down a priori. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV) | |
A reaction: This observation is encountered in Sidelle, but this is earlier, and seems to be the key to the Twin Earth thing. It is just convention whether we call XYZ water, or whether there are two sorts of jade or one. Science has prestige. |
15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: To attribute necessity to a condition, an outcome or effect, the truth of a statement, or a conclusion, is to indicate within the relevant context that no alternative is possible. In each context there are appropriate grounds for such judgements. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V) | |
A reaction: This anticipipates Kit Fine's account of necessity by 25 years, and seems to be the right way to understand it. In ordinary usage, 'there is no alternative' is obvious a quite different claim in very different contexts. |
195 | No one willingly commits an evil or base act [Socrates] |
Full Idea: I am fairly certain that no wise man believes anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any evil or base act. | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 345e |
1653 | Socrates did not accept the tripartite soul (which permits akrasia) [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Xenophon indirectly indicates that he does not associate Socrates in any way with the tripartite psychology of the 'Republic', for within that theory akrasia would be all too possible. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.102 |
5843 | People do what they think they should do, and only ever do what they think they should do [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: There is no one who knows what they ought to do, but thinks that they ought not to do it, and no one does anything other than what they think they ought to do. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.6.6 | |
A reaction: This is Socrates' well-known rejection of the possibility of weakness of will (akrasia - lit. 'lack of control'). Aristotle disagreed, and so does almost everyone else. Modern smokers seem to exhibit akrasia. I have some sympathy with Socrates. |
5253 | Socrates was shocked by the idea of akrasia, but observation shows that it happens [Aristotle on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates thought it a shocking idea that when a man actually has knowledge in him something else should overmaster it, ..but this is glaringly inconsistent with the observed facts. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Nicomachean Ethics 1145b24 | |
A reaction: Aristotle seems very confident, but it is not at all clear (even to the agent) what is going on when apparent weakness of will occurs (e.g. breaking a diet). What exactly does the agent believe at the moment of weakness? |
199 | The common belief is that people can know the best without acting on it [Socrates] |
Full Idea: Most people think there are many who recognise the best but are unwilling to act on it. | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Protagoras 352d |
5839 | For Socrates, wisdom and prudence were the same thing [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: Socrates did not distinguish wisdom from prudence, but judged that the man who recognises and puts into practice what is truly good, and the man who knows and guards against what is disgraceful, are both wise and prudent. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.3 | |
A reaction: Compare Aristotle, who separates them, claiming that prudence is essential for moral virtue, but wisdom is pursued at a different level, closer to the gods than to society. |
5867 | For Socrates, virtues are forms of knowledge, so knowing justice produces justice [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Socrates thought that the virtues were all forms of knowledge, and therefore once a man knew justice, he would be a just man. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1216b07 | |
A reaction: The clearest possible statement of Socrates' intellectualism. Aristotle rejected the Socrates view, but I find it sympathetic. Smokers who don't want to die seem to be in denial. To see the victims is to condemn the crime. |
5069 | Socrates was the first to base ethics upon reason, and use reason to explain it [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates was the first significant thinker to try basing ethics upon reason, and to try uncovering its natural principles solely by the use of reason. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.7 | |
A reaction: Interesting. It seems to me that Socrates overemphasised reason, presumably because it was a novelty. Hence his view that akrasia is impossible, and that virtue is simply knowledge. Maybe action is not just rational, but moral action is. |
5836 | All human virtues are increased by study and practice [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: If you consider the virtues that are recognised among human beings, you will find that they are all increased by study and practice. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 2.6.41 | |
A reaction: 'Study' is the intellectualist part of this remark; the reference to 'practice' fits with Aristotle view that virtue is largely a matter of good habits. The next question would be how theoretical the studies should be. Philosophy, or newspapers? |
5840 | The wise perform good actions, and people fail to be good without wisdom [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: It is the wise who perform truly good actions, and those who are not wise cannot, and, if they try to, fail. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.9.6 | |
A reaction: The essence of Socrates' intellectualism, with which Aristotle firmly disagreed (when he assert that only practical reason was needed for virtuous actions, rather than wisdom or theory). Personally I side more with Socrates than with Aristotle on this. |
185 | Socrates despised good looks [Socrates, by Plato] |
Full Idea: Socrates despises good looks to an almost inconceivable extent. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Plato - The Symposium 216e |
5070 | Socrates conservatively assumed that Athenian conventions were natural and true [Taylor,R on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates' moral philosophy was essentially conservative. He assumed that the principles the Athenians honoured were true and natural, so there was little possibility of conflict between nature and convention in his thinking. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Richard Taylor - Virtue Ethics: an Introduction Ch.8 | |
A reaction: Taylor contrasts Socrates with Callicles, who claims that conventions oppose nature. This fits with Nietzsche's discontent with Socrates, as the person who endorses conventional good and evil, thus constraining the possibilities of human nature. |
5838 | A well-made dung basket is fine, and a badly-made gold shield is base, because of function [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: A dung-basket is fine, and a golden shield contemptible, if the one is finely and the other badly constructed for carrying out its function. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.6 | |
A reaction: This is the basis of a key idea in Aristotle, that virtue (or excellence) arises directly from function. I think it is the most important idea in virtue theory, and seems to have struck most Greeks as being self-evident. |
5837 | Things are both good and fine by the same standard [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: Things are always both good and fine by the same standard. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 3.8.5 | |
A reaction: This begs many questions, but perhaps it leads to what we call intuitionism, which is an instant ability is perceive a fine action (even in an enemy). This leads to the rather decadent view that the aim of life is the production of beauty. |
3017 | The only good is knowledge, and the only evil is ignorance [Socrates, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: There is only one good, namely knowledge, and there is only one evil, namely ignorance. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.4.14 | |
A reaction: Ignorance of how to commit evil sounds quite good. |
1646 | Socrates was the first to put 'eudaimonia' at the centre of ethics [Socrates, by Vlastos] |
Full Idea: Socrates' true place in the development of Greek thought is that he is the first to establish the eudaimonist foundation of ethical theory, which became the foundation of the schools which sprang up around him. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.10 | |
A reaction: I suspect that he was the first to fully articulate a widely held Greek belief. The only ethical question that they asked was about the nature of a good human life. |
1663 | By 'areté' Socrates means just what we mean by moral virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates uses the word 'areté' to mean precisely what we mean by moral virtue. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.200 |
4323 | Socrates is torn between intellectual virtue, which is united and teachable, and natural virtue, which isn't [PG on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates worries about the unity and teachability of virtue because he is torn between virtue as intellectual (unified and teachable) and virtue as natural (plural and unteachable). | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: Admittedly virtue could be natural but still unified and teachable, but Socrates clearly had a dilemma, and this seems to make sense of it. |
8003 | Socrates agrees that virtue is teachable, but then denies that there are teachers [Socrates, by MacIntyre] |
Full Idea: Socrates' great point of agreement with the sophists is his acceptance of the thesis that areté is teachable. But paradoxically he denies that there are teachers. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.3 | |
A reaction: This is part of Socrates's presentation of himself as 'not worthy'. Virtue would be teachable, if only anyone knew what it was. He's wrong. Lots of people have a pretty good idea of virtue, and could teach it. The problem is in the pupils. |
126 | We should ask what sort of people we want to be [Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates: What sort of person should one be? | |
From: Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Gorgias 487e |
4111 | Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement [Socrates, by Williams,B] |
Full Idea: Socrates believed that basically there is only one virtue, the power of right judgement. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Bernard Williams - Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy Ch.1 | |
A reaction: Which links with Aristotle's high place for 'phronesis' (prudence?). The essence of Socrates' intellectualism. Robots and saints make very different judgements, though. |
7808 | Socrates made the civic values of justice and friendship paramount [Socrates, by Grayling] |
Full Idea: In Socrates' thought, the expressly civic values of justice and friendship became paramount. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by A.C. Grayling - What is Good? Ch.2 | |
A reaction: This is the key move in ancient ethics, away from heroism, and towards the standard Aristotelian social virtues. I say this is the essence of what we call morality, and the only one which can be given a decent foundational justification (social health). |
23907 | Courage is scientific knowledge [Socrates, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Socrates thought that courage is scientific knowledge. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 1230a06 | |
A reaction: Aristotle himself says that reason produces courage, but he also says it arises from natural youthful spirits. I favour the view that there is a strong rational component in true courage. |
7585 | Socrates emphasises that the knower is an existing individual, with existence his main task [Socrates, by Kierkegaard] |
Full Idea: The infinite merit of the Socratic position was precisely to accentuate the fact that the knower is an existing individual, and that the task of existing is his essential task. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Sřren Kierkegaard - Concluding Unscientific Postscript 'Inwardness' | |
A reaction: Always claim Socrates as the first spokesman for your movement! It is true that Socrates is always demanding the views of his interlocutors, and not just abstract theories. See Idea 1647. |
5841 | Obedience to the law gives the best life, and success in war [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: A city in which the people are most obedient to the laws has the best life in time of peace and is irresistible in war. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Memorabilia of Socrates 4.4.15 | |
A reaction: This is a conservative view, with the obvious problem case of bad laws, but in general it seems to me clearly right. This is why it is so vital that nothing should be done to bring the law into disrepute, such as petty legislation or prosecution. |
1661 | Socrates was the first to grasp that a cruelty is not justified by another cruelty [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Socrates was the first Greek to grasp the truth that if someone has done a nasty thing to me, this does not give the slightest moral justification for doing anything nasty to him. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.190 |
5846 | A lover using force is a villain, but a seducer is much worse, because he corrupts character [Socrates, by Xenophon] |
Full Idea: The fact that a lover uses not force but persuasion makes him more detestable, because a lover who uses force proves himself a villain, but one who uses persuasion ruins the character of the one who consents. | |
From: report of Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Xenophon - Symposium 8.20 | |
A reaction: A footnote says that this distinction was enshrined in Athenian law, where seduction was worse than rape. This is a startling and interest contrast to the modern view, which enshrines rights and freedoms, and says seduction is usually no crime at all. |
15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Natural necessity involves the concept of generative mechanisms and powerful particulars, and these in turn can be the basis of a useful notion of a natural kind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V) | |
A reaction: Not sure about that. Say gold and silver are two kinds that lead to two outcomes. Each is a natural necessity. How do you distinguish them? Only by one being the gold-necessity and the other the silver-necessity. Circular? |
15299 | Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We know from biology that naturally occurring species do not exhibit the constancy required by the concept of natural kind. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV) | |
A reaction: This view has been challenged recently. How much constancy does a natural kind need? Even protons decay eventually, it seems. I think a natural kind just needs a fair degree of stability over a reasonable time-period. Tigers qualify. |
15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics. |
15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different. |
15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient. |
15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A) | |
A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'. |
15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B) | |
A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered. |
15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation. |
16215 | Causation is nothing more than the counterfactuals it grounds? [Hawley] |
Full Idea: Counterfactual accounts of causation say that a causal connection is exhausted by the counterfactuals it appears to ground. | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 3.5) | |
A reaction: I am bewildered as to how this became a respectable view in philosophy. I quite understand that this might exhaust the 'logic' of causal relations. Presumably you can have counterfactuals in mathematics which are not causal? |
15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The original Humean suggestion was that lawlike statements must contain only purely qualitative predicates - that is, predicates which do not require in a statement of their meaning a reference to any particular object or spatio-temporal location. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: Harré and Madden are keen to promote particulars (with powers) as the foundation of scientific theory, and I agree with them. It strikes me as quite elementary that generalisations arise from particulars, so can't fundamentally explain them. |
15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The whole idea of a formal analysis of the concept of lawlikeness has come to seem hopeless; every syntactical criterion proposed has a counter-example. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: They seem unaware of Lewis's work in this area, which may be the most sophisticated attempt at a (Humean) attempt at formal analysis. Personally I see nothing in Lewis that would make them change their minds. |
15223 | Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Given some general theory specifying the fundamental causal powers and thereby laying down the general lineaments of a world, the necessity of certain effects can be inferred. They will be 'hypothetically necessary' (given those powers). | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.B) | |
A reaction: This is a pretty good statement of the core idea of necessity at the heart of scientific essentialism. Are we to call this 'natural' necessity or 'metaphysical' necessity? Presumably it is 'relative' necessity. Big implications for induction! |
15241 | Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Humeans say there can be no element of necessity in the causal relation because the conjunction of a description of a cause with the negation of a description of its usual effect is never self-contradictory. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I) | |
A reaction: We might say there actually is a contradiction, because you assert the existence of something, and then deny that existence by denying that the effect could occur. If the object is inert this is wrong, but if it is defined by its powers it is right. |
15240 | In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The only sure way of distinguishing lawful and accidental universal statements is to point out that in the former cases we see why the regularity must hold, while in the latter case we do not. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: I agree with this, and also take it to be the solution to the problem of induction. That smoking causes cancer will be a true generalisation but not a law, until we see clearly why it happens. |
15239 | We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II) | |
A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome. |
15243 | We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: A moving thing is perceptually distinct from a motionless thing, but takes on no new quality. The perception of its motion is a genuine perception. Its motion is not inferred from observation of its successive occupations of different relative positions. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II) | |
A reaction: This seems to be a response to Russell's reductive 'at-at' account of motion, which always struck me as wrong. It doesn't prove Russell wrong, of course, and they are trying to demonstrate that we perceive causation directly. |
15265 | 'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: In the case of electron/positron/gamma ray annihilation scientists maintain the paradigm of rational explanation by inventing a quasi-substance as the bearer of continuity, and all three are seen in terms of 'energy'. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III) | |
A reaction: What a relief to see energy described as a 'quasi-substance'. I spent all of my physics studies bewildered by the nature of energy (especially when described as 'pure energy'). What does e=mc^2 mean if e is a quasi-substance? |
15280 | 'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The 'store' of kinetic energy is used as a latency concept to explain the power of bringing about changes which is manifested by the moving thing when its motion is arrested. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV) | |
A reaction: These ideas have been most illuminating in connecting for me the general idea of a 'power' to the rather dubious concept of 'energy' in physics. |
15321 | Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Space lacks a place, and does not qualify as an individual, since the ordinary notion of individuals relates to place not space. ...But we can think of space as present in every place through the necessary connection between space and all places. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV) | |
A reaction: I'm not sure I understand it being present in every place, given that it is every place. |
16207 | Time could be discrete (like integers) or dense (rationals) or continuous (reals) [Hawley] |
Full Idea: There seem to be three possible ways for time to be fine-grained. The ordering of instants could be discrete (like the integers), dense (like the rational numbers) or continuous (like the real numbers). | |
From: Katherine Hawley (How Things Persist [2001], 2.5) | |
A reaction: She seems to assume that time must be 'grained', but I would take the continuous view to imply that there is no grain at all (which is bad news for her version of stage theory). |
15259 | Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: The same electronic constitution confers two distinct powers upon chemical atoms: the power of entering only into certain chemical combinations and the power to radiate a particular spectrum. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VI) | |
A reaction: Presumably radioactive elements emit other radiation. Do atoms have passive powers as well as active ones? |
15263 | Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Modern chemistry is not, as chemistry, purely structural. ...Thus CO2 is a different substance from SO2. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II) | |
A reaction: I don't think I ever thought the chemistry was purely structural, but if you go in for the idea that reality is essentially geometrical (inspired by physics, presumably, like Ladyman) then you might make this mistake. |
1657 | Socrates holds that right reason entails virtue, and this must also apply to the gods [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: It is essential to Socrates' rationalist programme in theology to assume that the entailment of virtue by wisdom binds gods no less than men. He would not tolerate one moral standard for me and another for gods. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.164 |
1662 | A new concept of God as unswerving goodness emerges from Socrates' commitment to virtue [Vlastos on Socrates] |
Full Idea: Undeviating beneficent goodness guides Socrates' thought so deeply that he applies it even to the deity; he projects a new concept of god as a being that can cause only good, never evil. | |
From: comment on Socrates (reports of career [c.420 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.197 |
15295 | Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden] |
Full Idea: Theism is supposedly a positive view that renders the world more intelligible than its alternatives, and this professed programme requires the production of results. | |
From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.VI) | |
A reaction: A nice articulation of a view of theism which will make believers wince, because Harré and Madden see it as a scientific theory, intended to explain the world. I'm with them. I see Plato's theory of Forms as a scientific theory. |