13 ideas
| 17945 | Forms are not a theory of universals, but an attempt to explain how predication is possible [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: The theory of Forms is not a theory of universals but a first attempt to explain how predication, the application of a single term to many objects - now considered one of the most elementary operations of language - is possible. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xxvii) |
| 17946 | Only Tallness really is tall, and other inferior tall things merely participate in the tallness [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: Only Tallness and nothing else really is tall; everything else merely participates in the Forms and, being excluded from the realm of Being, belongs to the inferior world of Becoming. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xxviii) | |
| A reaction: This is just as weird as the normal view (and puzzle of participation), but at least it makes more sense of 'metachein' (partaking). |
| 17944 | 'Episteme' is better translated as 'understanding' than as 'knowledge' [Nehamas] |
| Full Idea: The Greek 'episteme' is usually translated as 'knowledge' but, I argue, closer to our notion of understanding. | |
| From: Alexander Nehamas (Introduction to 'Virtues of Authenticity' [1999], p.xvi) | |
| A reaction: He agrees with Julia Annas on this. I take it to be crucial. See the first sentence of Aristotle's 'Metaphysics'. It is explanation which leads to understanding. |
| 5662 | Maybe induction could never prove the existence of something unobservable [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Some people hold that no inductive argument can give us any reason to believe in the existence of something which could not even in principle be observed. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I) | |
| A reaction: I see nothing illogical in inferring the existence of a poltergeist from the recurrent flight of objects around my lounge. Only an excessive empiricism (which used to afflict Ayer) could lead to this claim. |
| 5664 | Consciousness must involve a subject, and only bodies identify subjects [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: It may not make sense to talk of states of consciousness except as the experiences of some conscious subject; and it may well be that this conscious subject can not be identified except by reference to his body. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: It strikes me that Ayer deserves more credit as a pioneer of this view. It tracks back to what may turn out to be the key difficulty for Descartes - how do you individuate a mental substance? I may identify me, but how do I identify you? |
| 5668 | People own conscious states because they are causally related to the identifying body [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: I think personal identity depends on the identity of the body, and that a person's ownership of states of consciousness consists in their standing in a special causal relation to the body by which he is identified. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I think with this is right, with the slight reservation that Ayer talks as if there were two things which have a causal relationship, implying that the link is contingent. Better to think of the whole thing as a single causal network. |
| 5661 | We identify experiences by their owners, so we can't define owners by their experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Normally we identify experiences in terms of the persons whose experiences they are; but this will lead to a vicious circle if persons themselves are to be analysed in terms of their experiences. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §I) | |
| A reaction: This (from a leading empiricist) is a nice basic challenge to all empiricist accounts of personal identity. One might respond my saying that the circle is not vicious. There are two interlinked concepts (experience and persons), like day and night. |
| 5665 | Memory is the best proposal as what unites bundles of experiences [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: The most promising suggestion is that the bundles are tied together by means of memory. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting for showing how Locke was essentially trying to meet (in advance) Hume's 'bundle' scepticism. Hume proposed associations as the unifying factor, instead of memories. Ayer proposes concepts as a candidate. |
| 5666 | Not all exerience can be remembered, as this would produce an infinite regress [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: Not every experience can be remembered; otherwise each piece of remembering, which is itself an experience, would have to be remembered, and each remembering of a remembering and so ad infinitum. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 5667. Ayer takes for granted two sorts of consciousness - current awareness, and memory. Ayer brings out a nice difficulty for Locke's proposal, but also draws attention to what may be a very basic misunderstanding about the mind. |
| 5669 | Personal identity can't just be relations of experiences, because the body is needed to identify them [Ayer] |
| Full Idea: A Humean theory, in which a person's identity is made to depend upon relations between experiences ..is not tenable unless the experiences themselves can be identified, and that is only possible through their association with the body. | |
| From: A.J. Ayer (The Concept of a Person [1963], §IV) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me a very fruitful response to difficulties with the 'bundle' view of a person - a better response than the a priori claims of Butler and Reid, or the transcendental argument of Kant. Only a philosopher could ignore the body. |
| 8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: When two processes intersect, and they undergo correlated modifications which persist after the intersection, I shall say that the intersection is a causal interaction. I take this as a fundamental causal concept. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §4) | |
| A reaction: There may be a problem individuating processes, just as there is for events. I like this approach to causation, which is ontologically sparse, and fits in with the scientific worldview. Change of properties sounds precise, but isn't. Stick to processes. |
| 8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: In a typical cause-effect situation (a 'propagation') cause must precede effect, for propagation over a finite time interval is an essential feature. In an 'interaction', an intersection of processes resulting in change, we have simultaneity. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §8) | |
| A reaction: This takes the direction of time as axiomatic, and quite right too. Salmon isn't addressing the real difficulty, though, which is that the resultant laws are usually held to be time-reversible, which is a bit of a puzzle. |
| 8411 | Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I propose to approach causality by taking processes rather than events as basic entities. Events are relatively localised in space and time, while processes have much greater temporal duration, and, in many cases, much greater spatial extent. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §2) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an incredibly promising proposal, not just in our understanding of causation, but for our general metaphysics and understanding of nature. See Idea 4931, for example. Vague events and processes blend into one another. |