53 ideas
19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Slippery slope arguments are not intended as demonstrative arguments, but rather as a challenge to show where a boundary is, and to show that the boundary is not arbitrary. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.3.3) | |
A reaction: [extracted from details of its context] You could respond by saying that a slippery slope levels off, rather than hitting a wall or plunging to perdition. |
19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Deontic modality can be divided into sentence-modifying 'ought-to-be' modals, and predicate-modifying 'ought-to-do' modals. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.9.2) | |
A reaction: [She cites Brennan 1993] These two seem to correspond to what is 'good' (ought to be), and what is 'right' (ought to do). Since I like that distinction, I also like this one. |
19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Wedgwood (2007:220) argues that S5 is undesirable because it excludes that necessary truths may have contingent grounds. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4 n5) | |
A reaction: Cameron defends the possibility of necessity grounded in contingency, against Blackburn's denial of it. It's interesting that we choose the logic on the basis of the metaphysics. Shouldn't there be internal reasons for a logic's correctness? |
19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Subscribers to the Barcan formula must either be committed to the existence of mere possibilia (such as possible unicorns), or deny many unactualised possibilities of existence. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the implications of the Barcan formula are ridiculous. Williamson is its champion, but I'm blowed if I can see why. What could a possible unicorn be like? Without them, must we say unicorns are impossible? |
19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
Full Idea: We can think of the world as a 'whole' that has everything as its parts, like raisins in a cake, or we can think of the world as a 'container', which is disjoint from everything there is, like a bottle containing water. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Space and time seem to have a special role here, and it is hard to think of any other candidates for being the 'container'. I think I will apply my 'what's it made of' test to ontology, and opt for the world as a 'whole'. |
19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
Full Idea: 'Relational' grounding is between entities, best expressed by the two-place predicate 'x grounds y'. 'Operational' grounding is between sentences, best expressed by the two-place sentence operator read as 'because of' or 'in virtue of'. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) |
19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Humean supervenience excludes modality - the whole modal package - from the supervenience base. The Humean world is, at root, thoroughly non-modal. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
A reaction: This sums up my problem with David Lewis with perfect clarity. He is just excessively empirical. Hume himself also excluded modality from the basic impressions. Locke allows powerful essences (even if they are well hidden). |
16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Causality is a clue to what properties are real. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 9.3) | |
A reaction: An interesting variant on the Shoemaker proposal that properties actually are causal. I'm not sure that there is anything more to causality that the expression in action of properties, which I take to be powers. Structures are not properties. |
19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The crucial feature of the determinates / determinables relation is that to possess the determinable property, an object must possess exactly one of the determinate properties. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.2) | |
A reaction: This sounds like a determinable being a function, and the determinate being its output. If 'scarlet' is a determinate of the determinables 'red' or 'coloured', it is not obvious that there is only one possible shade of scarlet. This schema oversimplifies. |
19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
Full Idea: I do not have the ability to play the violin. Nor does my desk. Unlike my desk, however, I possess the ability to learn to play the violin - the ability, that is, to acquire the ability to play the violin. I have an 'iterated ability' to play the violin. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
A reaction: An important idea, though the examples are more likely to come from human behaviour than from the non-human physical world. |
19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
Full Idea: We should think in terms of dispositions in terms of the manifestation alone - not as a disposition to ...if..., but as a disposition to ..., full stop. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.7) | |
A reaction: This way of individuating dispositions seems plausible. Some dispositions only have one trigger, but others have many. All sorts of things are inclined to trigger a human smile, but we are just disposed to smile. Some people smile at disasters. |
19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Nomological dispositions such as electric charge seem different from ordinary dispositions. A particle's being electrically charged is not just a possibility of exerting a certain force. Rather, the particle has to exert a force in certain circumstances. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 2.7) | |
A reaction: I can only pull when there is something to pull, but a magnet seems to have a 'field' of attraction which is pullish in character. Does it detect something to pull (like a monad)? Can there be a force which has no object? |
19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Spatiotemporal relations are a prime example of properties that are difficult to understand in dispositional terms. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) | |
A reaction: [Vetter refers to A.Bird 2007 Ch.8 for an attempt] One approach would be to question whether they are 'properties'. I don't think of relations as properties, even if they are predicates. Is space a property of something? |
19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting. |
19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us. |
19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Necessity and possibility had a revival with the development of modal logic, treating them as special cases of the existential and universal quantifiers, ranging over an infinity of possible worlds. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
A reaction: The problem seems to be that possible worlds offer a very useful and interesting 'model' of modality, but say nothing at all about its nature. Any more than a weather map will show you what weather is. |
19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Necessities mark the limits of the potentialities that objects have. More precisely, it is necessary that p just in case nothing has, or had, or will have a potentiality to be such that not-p. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
A reaction: [See Vetter's other ideas for her potentiality account of modality] If we wish to build a naturalistic account of modality (and if you don't want that then your untethered metaphysics will drift away in logical space) then this is the way to go. |
19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
Full Idea: When we speak of possibility, we speak of potentiality in abstraction from its possessor; a possibility is a potentiality somewhere or other in the world, no matter where. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.1) | |
A reaction: I note that, as so often, this is psychological abstraction, which is usually sneered at by modern philosophers (e.g. Geach), and yet is employed all the time. This is Vetter's key thesis, which I like. |
19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Potentiality is, metaphorically speaking, possibility anchored in individual objects; I claim that all possibility is thus anchored in some individual object(s) or other. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
A reaction: This will be fine for specific physical possibilities, but may become tricky for possibilities that are increasingly abstract, or universal, or idealised. I agree with the general approach. Anchor modality in reality (which is physical!). |
19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
Full Idea: We should think of possibility as potentiality in abstraction from its bearer. So 'it is possible that p' is defined as 'something has an iterated potentiality for it to be the case that p'. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.4) | |
A reaction: If possibilities are abstractions from potentialities, I am inclined the treat potentialities as abstractions from dispositions, and dispositions (and properties) as abstractions from powers. Powers are not abstractions - they are the reality. |
23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
Full Idea: Although not all potentialities are dispositions, Vetter claims that all dispositions are potentialities which are had to a sufficiently high degree. | |
From: report of Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015]) by Friend/Kimpton-Nye - Dispositions and Powers 2.4.2 | |
A reaction: This sounds plausible. A potentiality could be faint or negligible, but once it is a serious possibility it becomes a 'disposition'. ...I suppose. But if the meteor is probably going to hit my house, it doesn't mean it has a disposition to do so. |
19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
Full Idea: This book is a plea for recognising potentiality as an explanans in the metaphysics of modality, rather than as something in need of explanation or reduction. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Something has to do the explaining, and it is obviously much better to have some aspect of the real world do the job, rather than remote abstractions such as laws, possible worlds or Forms. Personally I like the potentiality of 'powers'. |
19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The logic for potentiality corresponds to modal system T, the minimum for metaphysics. The S4 axiom ◊◊φ → ◊φ says iterated potentialities collapse, and the S5 ◊φ → □◊φ says potentialities can't be lost. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.9) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This seems persuasive. I nice example of modern analytic metaphysics, that you have to find a logic that suits your theory. N.Salmon defends system T for all of metaphysics, though most people favour S5. |
19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Potentialities may get exercised despite having a degree that is too low for them to qualify as dispositions. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.4) | |
A reaction: The key reason why her book is called 'Potentialities', rather than 'Dispositions'. She still wants to offer a naturalistic picture which ties potentialities to individual objects, but I am wondering whether potentialities are too abstract for the job. |
19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Water has no potentiality to break. But water has a potentiality to be frozen and turn into ice, which does have a potentiality to break. So water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
A reaction: Thus potentially has an 'iterated' character to it, and an appropriate modal logic for it will have to allow for those iterations. She suggests a version of System T modal logic. |
19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Potentialities are 'potentialities to ....', while possibilities are 'possibilities that ....'. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4) | |
A reaction: This feels a bit like a stipulation, rather than a precise description of normal usage. That said, it is quite a nice distinction. It sounds as if an event follows a potentiality, and a state of affairs follows a possibility. Active and passive? |
19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Potentiality can now be recognised as the common genus of dispositions and such related properties as abilities. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.1) | |
A reaction: This is the reason why Vetter defends a metaphysics of modality based on potentialities, rather than on narrower concepts such as dispositions, powers or essences. She can evade the problems which those narrower concepts raise. |
19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
Full Idea: If possible worlds are sets of propositions, we need some way to distinguish those sets of propositions that do from those that do not correspond to genuine possibilities. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
A reaction: The idea of a 'genuine' possibility does not seem to play a role in the conceptual scheme of those who treat possibility entirely in terms of possible worlds. If possibility is primitive, or is a set of worlds, there can be no criterion for 'genuine'. |
19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Is it not possible that there be objects with (natural) properties that no actual thing ever had the potentiality to have, to produce, or constitute? (Call such properties 'super-alien properties'). | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
A reaction: This is a problem for her potentiality account of possibility. Her solution is (roughly) to either deny the super-aliens, or have chains of iterated possibility which take this case back to actuality. That sounds OK to me. |
16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: In explaining a phenomenon one can cite the causes of that phenomenon; or one can set the phenomenon in a general theoretical framework. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 4.1) | |
A reaction: The thing is, you need to root an explanation in something taken as basic, and theoretical frameworks need further explanation, whereas causes seem to be basic. |
19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Patterns of behaviour may be explained by circumstances external to the individual, but dispositional explanations, based on the instrinsic make-up of individuals are typically more reliable and stable. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 3.5) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is very nice support for the view I have been defending. She doesn't deal in essences, and prefers 'potentialities' (as broader) to 'dispositions'. The point is to explain events by the natures of the ingredients. |
19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Grounding is a kind of explanation - and specifically, the kind of metaphysical explanation that metaphysicians are after. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.5) | |
A reaction: Depending on how you interpret 'grounding', it is plausible that it is the sort of explanation that physicists and economists are after as well. If the aim is to understand the structure of everything, the target is to know what grounds what. |
16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: To explain a phenomenon is to find a model that fits it into the basic framework of the theory and that thus allows us to derive analogues for the messy and complicated phenomenological laws that are true of it. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 8.3) | |
A reaction: This summarises the core of her view in this book. She is after models rather than laws, and the models are based on causes. |
16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: The covering-law account supposes that there is, in principle, one 'right' explanation for each phenomenon. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: Presumably the law is held to be 'right', but there must be a bit of flexibility in describing the initial conditions, and the explanandum itself. |
16167 | Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: We explain by ceteris paribus laws, by composition of causes, and by approximations that improve on what the fundamental laws dictate. In all of these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: It is rather headline-grabbing to say in this case that laws do not get the facts right. If they were actually 'wrong' and 'lied', there wouldn't be much point in building explanations on them. |
16169 | Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: When different kinds of causes compose, we want to explain what happens in the intersection of different domains. But the laws we use are designed only to tell truly what happens in each domain separately. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: Since presumably the laws are discovered through experiments which try to separate out a single domain, in those circumstances they actually are true, so they don't 'lie'. |
16176 | Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Much criticism of the original covering-law model objects that it lets in too much. It seems we can explain Henry's failure to get pregnant by his taking birth control pills, and we can explain the storm by the falling barometer. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.0) | |
A reaction: I take these examples to show that true explanations must be largely causal in character. The physicality of causation is what matters, not 'laws'. I'd say the same of attempts to account for causation through counterfactuals. |
16177 | I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Covering-law theorists tend to think that nature is well-regulated; in the extreme, that there is a law to cover every case. I do not. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.2) | |
A reaction: The problem of coincidence is somewhere at the back of this thought. Innumerable events have their own explanations, but it is hard to explain their coincidence (see Aristotle's case of bumping into a friend in the market). |
16180 | You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: 'Why does that quail in the garden bob its head up and down in that funny way whenever it walks?' …'Because they all do'. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.5) | |
A reaction: She cites this as an old complaint against the covering-law model of explanation. It captures beautifully the basic error of the approach. We want to know 'why', rather than just have a description of the pattern. 'They all do' is useful information. |
16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: There are a huge number of cases in the history of science where we now know our best explanations were false. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 5.3) | |
A reaction: [She cites Laudan 1981 for this] The Ptolemaic system and aether are the standard example cited for this. I believe strongly in the importance of best explanation. Only a fool would just accept the best explanation available. Coherence is needed. |
16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: A cause ought to increase the frequency of the effect, but this fact may not show up in the probabilities if other causes are at work. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 1.1) | |
A reaction: [She cites Patrick Suppes for this one] Presumably in experimental situations you can weed out the interference, but that threatens to eliminate mere 'probability' entirely. |
6781 | There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird] |
Full Idea: Nancy Cartwright distinguishes between 'fundamental explanatory laws', which we should not believe, and 'phenomenological laws', which are regularities established on the basis of observation. | |
From: report of Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
A reaction: The distinction is helpful, so that we can be clearer about what everyone is claiming. We can probably all agree on the phenomenological laws, which are epistemological. Personally I claim truth for the best fundamental explanatory laws. |
16166 | Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Philosophers distinguish phenomenological from theoretical laws. Phenomenological laws are about appearances; theoretical ones are about the reality behind the appearances. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: I'm suspecting that Humeans only really believe in the phenomenological kind. I'm only interested in the theoretical kind, and I take inference to the best explanation to be the bridge between the two. Cartwright rejects the theoretical laws. |
16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: There is no reason to think that the principles that best organise will be true, nor that the principles that are true will organise much. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.5) | |
A reaction: This is aimed at the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account of laws, as axiomatisations of the observed patterns in nature. |
19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The Armstrong/Tooley/Dretske view, which takes laws to be substantial but grounded in a relation of nomic necessitation external to the properties themselves, is not an attractive option for the dispositionalist. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
A reaction: The point is that the dispositionalist sees laws as grounded in the properties. I prefer her other option, of dispositionalism plus a 'shallow' view of laws (which she attributes to Mumford). The laws are as Lewis says, but powers explain them. |
19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Even on the dispositional essentialist view the world might have been governed by different laws, if those laws involved different properties. What is excluded is the possibility of different laws involving the same properties as our actual laws. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
A reaction: Important. Critics of dispositional essentialism accuse it of promoting the idea that the laws of nature are necessary, a claim for which we obviously have no evidence. I prefer to say they are necessary given that 'stuff', rather than those properties. |
16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: Where theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.3) | |
A reaction: There are attempts at so-called 'bridge laws', to get from complex theories to simple ones, but her point is well made about theories on the same 'level'. |
16170 | To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: To get from a detailed factual knowledge of a situation to an equation, we must prepare the description of the situation to meet the mathematical needs of the theory. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
A reaction: She is clearly on to something here, as Galileo is blatantly wrong in his claim that the book of nature is written in mathematics. Mathematics is the best we can manage in getting a grip on the chaos. |
16181 | Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N] |
Full Idea: For explanation simple laws must have the same form when they act together as when they act singly. ..But then what the law states cannot literally be true, for the consequences that occur if it acts alone are not what occurs when they act in combination. | |
From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.6) | |
A reaction: This is Cartwright's basic thesis. Her point is that the laws 'lie', because they claim to predict a particular outcome which never ever actually occurs. She says we could know all the laws, and still not be able to explain anything. |
19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Any defender of the symmetry of time will have to provide some explanation of the obstinate appearance that the future is very different from the past. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.8) | |
A reaction: Presumably you have to say that it is all there, but only one end of the time spectrum is revealed to us, namely the past. But how do we get this uniquely lopsided view? Being an ominiscient god is more obvious than being a lopsided human. |
19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Presentists usually deal with the lack of cross-temporal relations by the construction of a surrogate, by way of paraphrasing the objectionable relation ascriptions. 'I admire Socrates' becomes 'I admire the Socrates properties'. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
A reaction: [compressed. The cites Markosian 2004:63] Why can't I just say 'I admire Socrates, who no longer exists'? The present includes tensed facts, and memories and evidence-based theories. Admiring is not a direct relation between objects. |
16713 | Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian] |
Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics. | |
From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2 |
6610 | I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian] |
Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est'). | |
From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2 | |
A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though. |