45 ideas
| 21584 | A sense of timelessness is essential to wisdom [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Both in thought and in feeling, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 6) | |
| A reaction: A very rationalist and un-Heraclitean view of wisdom. This picture may give wisdom a bad name, if wise people are (at a minimum) at least expected to give good advice about real life. |
| 21572 | Philosophical disputes are mostly hopeless, because philosophers don't understand each other [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Explicit controversy is almost always fruitless in philosophy, owing to the fact that no two philosophers ever understand one another. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 1) | |
| A reaction: Contemporaries don't even seem to read one another very much, especially these days, when there are thousands of professional philosophers. (If you are a professional, have you read all the works written by your colleagues and friends?) |
| 21571 | Philosophical systems are interesting, but we now need a more objective scientific philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The great systems of the past serve a very useful purpose, and are abundantly worthy of study. But something different is required if philosophy is to become a science, and to aim at results independent of the tastes of the philosophers who advocate them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], Pref) | |
| A reaction: An interesting product of this move in philosophy is (about sixty years later) the work of David Lewis, who set out to be precise and scientific, and ended up creating a very personal system. Why not a collaborative system? |
| 21574 | Hegel's confusions over 'is' show how vast systems can be built on simple errors [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Hegel's confusion of the 'is' of predication with the 'is' of identity ...is an example of how, for want of care at the start, vast and imposing systems of philosophy are built upon stupid and trivial confusions. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2 n1) | |
| A reaction: [He explains the confusion in more detail in the note] Russell cites an English translation, and I am wondering how this occurs in the German. Plato has been accused of similar elementary blunders about properties. Russell treats Berkeley similarly. |
| 21587 | Philosophers sometimes neglect truth and distort facts to attain a nice system [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The desire for unadulterated truth is often obscured, in professional philosophers, by love of system: the one little fact which will not come inside the philosophical edifice has to be pushed and tortured until it seems to consent. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 8) | |
| A reaction: Bit of hypocrisy here. Russell was continually trying to find a system, grounded in physics and logic. Presumably his shifting views are indications of integrity, because he changes the system rather than the facts. |
| 20349 | Metaphysics aims at the essence of things, and a system to show how this explains other truths [Richardson] |
| Full Idea: The core of metaphysics is an account of the 'essence' or 'being' of things. ...And metaphysics needs system, to show how these primary truths reach out into all the other truths, to help us see that, and how, they are true. | |
| From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I like the phrase 'the essential nature' of things, because it doesn't invoke rather dodgy entities called 'essences', but everyone understands the idea of focusing on what is essential, and on things having a distinct 'nature'. |
| 20351 | Metaphysics needs systems, because analysis just obsesses over details [Richardson] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics makes system a virtue, contrary to the tendency of analysis, which breaks a problem into ever finer parts and then absorbs itself in these. | |
| From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I disagree, because it seems to rule out analytic metaphysics. I prefer Bertrand Russell's view. Admittedly analysis oftens gets stuck in the bog, especially if it hopes for salvation in logic, only to discover its certainties endlessly receding. |
| 20350 | Metaphysics generalises the data, to get at the ontology [Richardson] |
| Full Idea: The evidence lies at the periphery of the [metaphysical] system and runs in from there, through decreasingly specific accounts of the data, to the central ontology. | |
| From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is the study of high level generalisations, IMHO. Studying them means studying the reasons for asserting them. Richardson puts it very nicely. |
| 21582 | Physicists accept particles, points and instants, while pretending they don't do metaphysics [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Physicists, ignorant and contemptuous of philosophy, have been content to assume their particles, points and instants in practice, while contending, with ironical politeness, that their concepts laid no claim to metaphysical validity. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably physicists are allowed to wave their hands and utter the word 'instrumentalism', and then get on with the job. They just have to ensure they never speculate about what is being measured. |
| 21573 | When problems are analysed properly, they are either logical, or not philosophical at all [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: [All Lecture 2 discusses 'logical'] I think Bertie was getting carried away here. In his life's corpus he barely acknowledges the existence of ethics, or political philosophy, or aesthetics. He never even engages with 'objects' the way Aristotle does. |
| 16943 | Philosophy is continuous with science, and has no external vantage point [Quine] |
| Full Idea: I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat. …There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: Philosophy is generalisation. Science holds the upper hand, because it settles the subject-matter to be generalised. |
| 21588 | Logic gives the method of research in philosophy [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Logic gives the method of research in philosophy, just as mathematics gives the method in physics. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 8) | |
| A reaction: I'm struck by how rarely philosophers actually prove anything. Mostly they just use the language of logic as a tool for disambiguation. Only a tiny handful of philosophers can actually create sustained and novel proofs. |
| 21586 | The logical connectives are not objects, but are formal, and need a context [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Such words as 'or' and 'not' are not names of definite objects, but are words that require a context in order to have a meaning. All of them are formal. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 7) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Wittgenstein's 1922 Tractatus in a footnote - presumably in a later edition than 1914] This is the most famous idea which Russell acquired from Wittgenstein. It was yet another step in his scaling down of ontology. |
| 21585 | The tortoise won't win, because infinite instants don't compose an infinitely long time [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The idea that an infinite number of instants make up an infinitely long time is not true, and therefore the conclusion that Achilles will never overtake the tortoise does not follow. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 6) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle spotted this, but didn't express it as clearly as Russell. |
| 16949 | Klein summarised geometry as grouped together by transformations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Felix Klein's so-called 'Erlangerprogramm' in geometry involved characterizing the various branches of geometry by what transformations were irrelevant to each. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.137) |
| 21684 | Atomic facts may be inferrable from others, but never from non-atomic facts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps one atomic fact may sometimes be capable of being inferred from another, though I do not believe this to be the case; but in any case it cannot be inferred from premises no one of which is an atomic fact. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], p.48) | |
| A reaction: I prefer Russell's caution to Wittgenstein's dogmatism. I presume utterly simple facts give you nothing to work with. Hegel thought that you could infer new concepts from given concepts. |
| 16939 | Mass terms just concern spread, but other terms involve both spread and individuation [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Yellow' and 'water' are mass terms, concerned only with spread; 'apple' and 'square' are terms of divided reference, concerned with both spread and individuation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.124) | |
| A reaction: Would you like some apple? Pass me that water. It is helpful to see that it is a requirement of 'individuation' that is missing from terms for stuff. |
| 22316 | A positive and negative fact have the same constituents; their difference is primitive [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It must not be supposed that a negative fact contains a constituent corresponding to the word 'not'. It contains no more constituents than a positive fact of the correlative positive form. The differenece between the two forms is ultimate and irreducible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], VIII.279), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 41 'Neg' | |
| A reaction: ['Harvard Lectures'] The audience disliked this. How does one fact exclude the other fact? Potter asks whether absence is a fact, and whether an absence can be a truthmaker. |
| 21576 | With asymmetrical relations (before/after) the reduction to properties is impossible [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When we come to asymmetrical relations, such as before and after, greater and less etc., the attempt to reduce them to properties becomes obviously impossible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: The traditional Aristotelian reduction to properties is attributed by Russell to logic based on subject-predicate. As an example he cites being greater than as depending on more than the mere magnitudes of the entities. Direction of the relation. |
| 21575 | When we attribute a common quality to a group, we can forget the quality and just talk of the group [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When a group of objects have the similarity we are inclined to attribute to possession of a common quality, the membership of the group will serve all the purposes of the supposed common quality ...which need not be assumed to exist. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is the earliest account I have found of properties being treated as sets of objects. It more or less coincides with the invention of set theory. I am reminded of Idea 9208. What is the bazzing property? It's what those three things have in common. |
| 16948 | Once we know the mechanism of a disposition, we can eliminate 'similarity' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Once we can legitimize a disposition term by defining the relevant similarity standard, we are apt to know the mechanism of the disposition, and so by-pass the similarity. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.135) | |
| A reaction: I love mechanisms, but can we characterise mechanisms without mentioning powers and dispositions? Quine's dream is to eliminate 'similarity'. |
| 16945 | We judge things to be soluble if they are the same kind as, or similar to, things that do dissolve [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Intuitively, what qualifies a thing as soluble though it never gets into water is that it is of the same kind as the things that actually did or will dissolve; it is similar to them. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.130) | |
| A reaction: If you can judge that the similar things 'will' dissolve, you can cut to the chase and judge that this thing will dissolve. |
| 21580 | Science condemns sense-data and accepts matter, but a logical construction must link them [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Men of science condemn immediate data as 'merely subjective', while maintaining the truths of physics from those data. ...The only justification possible for this must be one which exhibits matter as a logical construction from sense-data. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: Since we blatantly aren't doing logic when we stare out of the window, this aspires to finding something like the 'logical form' of perception. |
| 21583 | When sense-data change, there must be indistinguishable sense-data in the process [Russell] |
| Full Idea: In all cases of sense-data capable of gradual change, we may find one sense-datum indistinguishable from another, and that indistinguishable from a third, while yet the first and third are quite easily distinguishable. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 5) | |
| A reaction: This point is key to the sense-data theory, because it gives them independent existence, standing between reality and subjective experience. It is also the reason why they look increasingly implausible, if they may not be experienced. |
| 21577 | Empirical truths are particular, so general truths need an a priori input of generality [Russell] |
| Full Idea: All empirical evidence is of particular truths. Hence, if there is any knowledge of general truths at all, there must be some knowledge of general truths which is independent of empirical evidence. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 2) | |
| A reaction: Humean empiricists respond by being a sceptical of general truths. At this stage of his career Russell looks like a thoroughgoing rationalist, and he believes in the reality of universals, relations and propositions. He became more empirical later. |
| 21579 | Objects are treated as real when they connect with other experiences in a normal way [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Objects of sense are called 'real' when they have the kind of connection with other objects of sense which experience has led us to regard as normal; when they fail this, they are called 'illusions'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) | |
| A reaction: This rests rather too much on the concept of 'normal', but offers an attractive coherence account of perception. Direct perceptions are often invoked by anti-coherentists, but I think coherence is just as much needed in that realm. |
| 21578 | Global scepticism is irrefutable, but can't replace our other beliefs, and just makes us hesitate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Universal scepticism, though logically irrefutable, is practically barren; it can only, therefore, give a certain flavour of hesitancy to our beliefs, and cannot be used to substitute other beliefs for them. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) | |
| A reaction: Spot on. There is no positive evidence for scepticism, so must just register it as the faintest of possibilities, like the existence of secretive fairies. |
| 16944 | Science is common sense, with a sophisticated method [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Sciences differ from common sense only in the degree of methodological sophistication. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.129) | |
| A reaction: Science is normal thinking about the world, but it is teamwork, with the bar set very high. |
| 16940 | Induction is just more of the same: animal expectations [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction is essentially only more of the same: animal expectation or habit formation. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: My working definition of induction is 'learning from experience', but that doesn't disagree with Quine. Lipton has a richer account of different types of induction. Quine's point is that it rests on resemblance. |
| 16941 | Induction relies on similar effects following from each cause [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Induction expresses our hopes that similar causes will have similar effects. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.125) | |
| A reaction: Some top philosophers are also top teachers, and Quine was one of them, in his writings. He boils it down for the layman. Once again, he is pointing to the fundamental role of the similarity relation. |
| 16933 | Grue is a puzzle because the notions of similarity and kind are dubious in science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: What makes Goodman's example a puzzle is the dubious scientific standing of a general notion of similarity, or of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. It might be best expressed as revealing a problem with sortal terms, as employed by Geach, or by Wiggins. Grue is a bit silly, but sortals are subject to convention and culture. 'Natural' properties seem needed. |
| 6416 | Other minds seem to exist, because their testimony supports realism about the world [Russell, by Grayling] |
| Full Idea: Russell gives an argument that other minds exist, because if one is entitled to believe this, then one can rely on the testimony of others, which, jointly with one's own experience, will give powerful support to the view that there a real spatial world. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 3) by A.C. Grayling - Russell Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: I rather like this argument. It is quite close to Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument, which also seems to refute scepticism about other minds. I think Russell's line, using testimony, knowledge and realism, may be better than Wittgenstein's. |
| 16934 | General terms depend on similarities among things [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The usual general term, whether a common noun or a verb or an adjective, owes its generality to some resemblance among the things referred to. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.116) | |
| A reaction: Quine has a nice analysis of the basic role of similarity in a huge amount of supposedly strict scientific thought. |
| 16938 | To learn yellow by observation, must we be told to look at the colour? [Quine] |
| Full Idea: According to the 'respects' view, our learning of yellow by ostension would have depended on our first having been told or somehow apprised that it was going to be a question of color. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.122) | |
| A reaction: Quine suggests there is just one notion of similarity, and respects can be 'abstracted' afterwards. Even the ontologically ruthless Quine admits psychological abstraction! |
| 8486 | Standards of similarity are innate, and the spacing of qualities such as colours can be mapped [Quine] |
| Full Idea: A standard of similarity is in some sense innate. The spacing of qualities (such as red, pink and blue) can be explored and mapped in the laboratory by experiments. They are needed for all learning. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.123) | |
| A reaction: This reasserts Hume's original point in more scientific terms. It is one of the undeniable facts about our perceptions of qualities and properties, no matter how platonist your view of universals may be. |
| 16947 | Similarity is just interchangeability in the cosmic machine [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Things are similar to the extent that they are interchangeable parts of the cosmic machine. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.134) | |
| A reaction: This is a major idea for Quine, because it is a means to gradually eliminate the fuzzy ideas of 'resemblance' or 'similarity' or 'natural kind' from science. I love it! Two tigers are same insofar as they are substitutable. |
| 16932 | Projectible predicates can be universalised about the kind to which they refer [Quine] |
| Full Idea: 'Projectible' predicates are predicates F and G whose shared instances all do count, for whatever reason, towards confirmation of 'All F are G'. ….A projectible predicate is one that is true of all and only the things of a kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.115-6) | |
| A reaction: Both Quine and Goodman are infuriatingly brief about the introduction of this concept. 'Red' is true of all ripe tomatoes, but not 'only' of them. Hardly any predicates are true only of one kind. Is that a scholastic 'proprium'? |
| 20356 | Humans dominate because, unlike other animals, they have a synthesis of conflicting drives [Richardson] |
| Full Idea: In contrast to the other animals, man has cultivated an abundance of contrary drives and impulses within himself: thanks to this synthesis, he is master of the earth. | |
| From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §966) | |
| A reaction: If this is true, it presents the fundamental challenge of politicial philosophy - to visual a successful social system for a creature which does not have a clear and focused nature. For Nietzsche, this 'synthesis' continually evolves. |
| 7375 | Quine probably regrets natural kinds now being treated as essences [Quine, by Dennett] |
| Full Idea: The concept of natural kinds was reintroduced by Quine, who may now regret the way it has become a stand-in for the dubious but covertly popular concept of essences. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969]) by Daniel C. Dennett - Consciousness Explained 12.2 n2 | |
| A reaction: He is right that Quine would regret it, and he is right that we can't assume that there are necessary essences just because there seem to be stable natural kinds, but personally I am an essentialist, so I'm not that bothered. |
| 16935 | If similarity has no degrees, kinds cannot be contained within one another [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If similarity has no degrees there is no containing of kinds within broader kinds. If colored things are a kind, they are similar, but red things are too narrow for a kind. If red things are a kind, colored things are not similar, and it's too broad. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.118) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I'm on Quine's side with this. We glibly talk of 'kinds', but the criteria for sorting things into kinds seems to be a mess. Quine goes on to offer a better account than the (diadic, yes-no) one rejected here. |
| 16936 | Comparative similarity allows the kind 'colored' to contain the kind 'red' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: With the triadic relation of comparative similarity, kinds can contain one another, as well as overlapping. Red and colored things can both count as kinds. Colored things all resemble one another, even though less than red things do. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.119) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Quine claims that comparative similarity is necessary for kinds - that there be some 'foil' in a similarity - that A is more like C than B is. |
| 16937 | You can't base kinds just on resemblance, because chains of resemblance are a muddle [Quine] |
| Full Idea: If kinds are based on similarity, this has the Imperfect Community problem. Red round, red wooden and round wooden things all resemble one another somehow. There may be nothing outside the set resembling them, so it meets the definition of kind. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.120) | |
| A reaction: [ref. to Goodman 'Structure' 2nd 163- , which attacks Carnap on this] This suggests an invocation of Wittgenstein's family resemblance, which won't be much help for natural kinds. |
| 20366 | A mind that could see cause and effect as a continuum would deny cause and effect [Richardson] |
| Full Idea: An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux, and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect. | |
| From: John Richardson (Nietzsche's System [2002], §112) | |
| A reaction: Maybe we do see it as a continuum? The racket swings and the ball is propelled, but the contact is a unity, not two separate events. |
| 16942 | It is hard to see how regularities could be explained [Quine] |
| Full Idea: Why there have been regularities is an obscure question, for it is hard to see what would count as an answer. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Natural Kinds [1969], p.126) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard pessimism of the 20th century Humeans, but it strikes me as comparable to the pessimism about science found in Locke and Hume. Regularities are explained all the time by scientists, though the lowest level may be hopeless. |
| 21581 | We never experience times, but only succession of events [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason in experience to suppose that there are times as opposed to events: the events, ordered by the relations of simultaneity and succession, are all that experience provides. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Our Knowledge of the External World [1914], 4) | |
| A reaction: We experience events, but also have quite an accurate sense of how much time has passed during the occurrence of events. If asked how much time has lapsed, why don't we say '32 events'? How do we distinguish long events from short ones? |