24 ideas
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. |
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) |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
3238 | 'Dead person' isn't a contradiction, so 'person' is somewhat vague [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: If we say (in opposition to a physical view of identity) that when Jones dies 'Jones ceases to exist' but 'Jones' body does not cease to exist', this shouldn't be pressed too hard, because it would make 'dead person' a contradiction. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Are Persons Bodies? [1970], p.74) | |
A reaction: A good point, which nicely challenges the distinction between a 'human' and a 'person', but the problem case is much more the one where Jones gets advanced Alzheimer's, rather than dies. A dead body ceases as a mechanism, as well as as a personality. |
3239 | You can only really love a person as a token, not as a type [Williams,B] |
Full Idea: If you love a person as a type instead of as a token (i.e. a "person", instead of a physical body) you might prefer a run-down copy of them to no person at all, but at this point our idea of loving a person begins to crack. | |
From: Bernard Williams (Are Persons Bodies? [1970], p.81) | |
A reaction: Very persuasive. If you love a person you can cope with them getting old. If you own an original watercolour, you can accept that it fades, but you would replace a reproduction of it if that faded. But what, then, is it that you love? |
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'? |
20887 | A rape disregards the status of being a person - but so does all assault [Foa] |
Full Idea: In a rape a person is used without proper regard for her personhood - but this is true of every kind of assault. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
A reaction: This is a good step towards her attempt to pin down what is specifically wrong with rape, which strikes me as an extremely important question, and not merely in order to justify punishments. |
20888 | Rape of children is dreadful, but no one thinks children should have a right of consent [Foa] |
Full Idea: Rape of children is at least as heinous as rape of adults, though few believe that children have or ought to have the same large domain of consent adults (male and female) ought to have. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
A reaction: A powerful point. She is not quite spelling out the crux, which is that no one thinks children should have a right to consent to sexual intercourse, which means that consent is irrelevant in such a case of rape. So it can't be the key to adult rape? |
20889 | If men should lust and women shouldn't, that makes rape the prevalent sexual model [Foa] |
Full Idea: We are taught that sexual desires are desires women ought not to have and men must have. This is the model which makes necessary an eternal battle of the sexes. It explains why rape is the prevalent model of sexuality. | |
From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 3) | |
A reaction: A striking thought. See 'The Origins of Sex' by F.Dabhoiwala, which claims that women used to be seen as the sexual predators, and the balance shifted in the 18thC. Are women obliged to exhibit lust, in order to defuse rapacious desires? |
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. |
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. |