17 ideas
| 7548 | Classes, grouped by a convenient property, are logical constructions [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Classes or series of particulars, collected together on account of some property which makes it convenient to be able to speak of them as wholes, are what I call logical constructions or symbolic fictions. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125) | |
| A reaction: When does a construction become 'logical' instead of arbitrary? What is it about a property that makes it 'convenient'? At this point Russell seems to have built his ontology on classes, and the edifice was crumbling, thanks to Wittgenstein. |
| 7545 | Visible things are physical and external, but only exist when viewed [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I believe that common sense is right in regarding what we see as physical and (in one of several possible senses) outside the mind, but is probably wrong in supposing that it continues to exist when we are no longer looking at it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This remark (in 1915) is a bit startling from a philosopher well known for his robustly realist stance. Just one of his phases! It seems very counterintuitive - that objects really exist externally, but only when viewed. Schrödinger's Cat? |
| 4483 | If abstract terms are sets of tropes, 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' turn out identical [Loux] |
| Full Idea: If trope theorists say abstract singular terms name sets of tropes, what is the referent of 'is a unicorn'? The only candidate is the null set (with no members), but there is just one null set, so 'being a unicorn' and 'being a griffin' will be identical. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.86) | |
| A reaction: Not crucial, I would think, given that a unicorn is just a horse with a horn. Hume explains how we do that, combining ideas which arose from actual tropes. |
| 4481 | Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Austere nominalists insist that the realist's universals lack the requisite independent identifiability. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.60) | |
| A reaction: Plato's view seems to be that we don't identify universals independently. We ascend The Line, or think about the shadows in The Cave, and infer the universals from an array of particulars (by dialectic). |
| 4477 | Universals come in hierarchies of generality [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Universals come in hierarchies of generality. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.24) | |
| A reaction: If it is possible to state facts about universals, this obviously encourages a rather Platonic approach to them, as existent things with properties. But maybe the hierarchies are conventional, not natural. |
| 4482 | Austere nominalism has to take a host of things (like being red, or human) as primitive [Loux] |
| Full Idea: In return for a one-category ontology (with particulars but no universals), the austere nominalist is forced to take a whole host of things (like being red, or triangular, or human) as unanalysable or primitive. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.68) | |
| A reaction: I see that 'red' might have to be primitive, but being human can just be a collection of particulars. It is no ontologically worse to call them 'primitive' than to say they exist. |
| 4478 | Nominalism needs to account for abstract singular terms like 'circularity'. [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists have been very concerned to provide an account of the role of abstract singular terms (such as 'circularity'). | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.34) | |
| A reaction: Whether this is a big problem depends on our view of abstraction. If it only consists of selecting one property of an object and reifying it, then we can give a nominalist account of properties, and the problem is solved. |
| 4480 | Times and places are identified by objects, so cannot be used in a theory of object-identity [Loux] |
| Full Idea: Any account of the identity of material objects which turns on the identity of places and times must face the objection that the identity of places and times depends, in turn, on the identities of the objects located at them. | |
| From: Michael J. Loux (Metaphysics: contemporary introduction [1998], p.56) | |
| A reaction: This may be a benign circle, in which we concede that there are two basic interdependent concepts of objects and space-time. If you want to define identity - in terms of what? |
| 7549 | If my body literally lost its mind, the object seen when I see a flash would still exist [Russell] |
| Full Idea: My meaning may be made plainer by saying that if my body could remain in exactly the same state in which it is, though my mind had ceased to exist, precisely that object which I now see when I see a flash would exist, though I should not see it. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Zombies, 70 years before Robert Kirk! Sense-data are physical. It is interesting to see a philosopher as committed to empiricism, anti-spiritualism and the priority of science as this, still presenting an essentially dualist picture of perception. |
| 7553 | Sense-data are purely physical [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Sense-data are purely physical, and all that is mental in connection with them is our awareness of them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.138) | |
| A reaction: Once this account of sense-data becomes fully clear, it also becomes apparent what a dualist theory it is. The mind is a cinema, I am the audience, and sense-data are the screen. There has to be a big logical gap between viewer and screen. |
| 7546 | A man is a succession of momentary men, bound by continuity and causation [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The real man, I believe, however the police may swear to his identity, is really a series of momentary men, each different one from the other, and bound together, not by a numerical identity, but by continuity and certain instrinsic causal laws. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.124) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be in the tradition of Locke and Parfit, and also follows the temporal-slices idea of physical objects. Personally I take a more physical view of things, and think the police are probably more reliable than Bertrand Russell. |
| 7550 | We could probably, in principle, infer minds from brains, and brains from minds [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It seems not improbable that if we had sufficient knowledge we could infer the state of a man's mind from the state of his brain, or the state of his brain from the state of his mind. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.131) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being a very good summary of the claim that mind is reducible to brain, which is the essence of physicalism. Had he been born a little later, Russell would have taken a harder line with physicalism. |
| 7551 | Matter is a logical construction [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We must regard matter as a logical construction. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.132) | |
| A reaction: A logical construction is a fancy way of saying a best explanation (but with Ockham's Razor hanging over it). A key component missing from Russell's account is that we can directly experience matter, because we are made of it. |
| 7547 | Matter requires a division into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A true theory of matter requires a division of things into time-corpuscles as well as space-corpuscles. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.125) | |
| A reaction: The division of matter in space seems decidable by physicists, but the division in time seems a bit arbitrary (unless it is quanta of time?). Russell focuses on observable qualities, but are there also intrinsic qualities? |
| 7552 | Six dimensions are needed for a particular, three within its own space, and three to locate that space [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The world of particulars is a six-dimensional space, where six co-ordinates will be required to assign the position of any particular, three to assign its position in its own space, and three to assign the position of its space among the other spaces. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Ultimate Constituents of Matter [1915], p.134) | |
| A reaction: Not a proposal that has caught on. One might connect the idea with the notion of 'frames of reference' in Einstein's Special Theory. Inside a frame of reference, three co-ordinates are needed; but where is the frame of reference? |
| 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. |