16 ideas
7068 | If infatuation with science leads to bad scientism, its rejection leads to obscurantism [Critchley] |
Full Idea: If what is mistaken in much contemporary philosophy is its infatuation with science, which leads to scientism, then the equally mistaken rejection of science leads to obscurantism. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.1) | |
A reaction: Clearly a balance has to be struck. I take philosophy to be a quite separate discipline from science, but it is crucial that philosophy respects the physical facts, and scientists are the experts there. Scientists are philosophers' most valued servants. |
7075 | To meet the division in our life, try the Subject, Nature, Spirit, Will, Power, Praxis, Unconscious, or Being [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Against the Kantian division of a priori and empirical, Fichte offered activity of the subject, Schelling offered natural force, Hegel offered Spirit, Schopenhauer the Will, Nietzsche power, Marx praxis, Freud the unconscious, and Heidegger offered Being. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001]) | |
A reaction: The whole of Continental Philosophy summarised in a sentence. Fichte and Schopenhauer seem to point to existentialism, Schelling gives evolutionary teleology, Marx abandons philosophy, the others are up the creek. |
7069 | The French keep returning, to Hegel or Nietzsche or Marx [Critchley] |
Full Idea: French philosophy since the 1930s might be described as a series of returns: to Hegel (in Kojève and early Sartre), to Nietzsche (in Foucault and Deleuze), or to Marx (in Althusser). | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], Ch.2) | |
A reaction: An interesting map. The question might be why they return to those three, rather than (say) Hume or Leibniz. If the choice of which one you return to a matter of 'taste' (as Nietzsche would have it)? |
14296 | Dispositions are physical states of mechanism; when known, these replace the old disposition term [Quine] |
Full Idea: Each disposition, in my view, is a physical state or mechanism. ...In some cases nowadays we understand the physical details and set them forth explicitly in terms of the arrangement and interaction of small bodies. This replaces the old disposition. | |
From: Willard Quine (The Roots of Reference [1990], p.11), quoted by Stephen Mumford - Dispositions 01.3 | |
A reaction: A challenge to the dispositions and powers view of nature, one which rests on the 'categorical' structural properties, rather than the 'hypothetical' dispositions. But can we define a mechanism without mentioning its powers? |
20657 | There are 23 core brain functions, with known circuit, transmitters, genes and behaviour [Watson] |
Full Idea: In 2014 the National Institutes of Mental Health published a list of 23 core brain functions and their associated neural circuitry, neurotransmitters and genes, and the behaviour and emotions that go with them. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 16 'Physics') | |
A reaction: They were interested in the functions behind mental health, but I am interested in the functions behind our belief systems, which might produce a different focus. Sub-functions, perhaps. |
20656 | Traditional ideas of the mind were weakened in the 1950s by mind-influencing drugs [Watson] |
Full Idea: One development in particular in the 1950s helped to discredit the traditional concept of the mind. This was medical drugs that influenced the workings of the brain. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 16 'Intro') | |
A reaction: This explains Ryle's 1949 book, and the Australian physicalists emerging in the late 1950s. Philosophers don't grasp how their subject is responsive to other areas of human knowledge. Of course, opium had always done this. |
20655 | Humans have been hunter-gatherers for 99.5% of their existence [Watson] |
Full Idea: Anthropology shows that the hunter-gathering lifestyle has occupied 99.5 per cent of the time humans have been on earth. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 13 'Emergence') | |
A reaction: If you are trying to understand humanity, you ignore this fact at your peril. Even agriculture is only a tiny part of our history, and that only disappeared as a major human activity (in many nations) in the last hundred years. |
7067 | Food first, then ethics [Critchley] |
Full Idea: Food first, then ethics. | |
From: Simon Critchley (Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro [2001], 8857) | |
A reaction: This is not a dismissal of philosophy, but a key fact which ethical philosophers must face up to. See Mr Doolittle's speech in Shaw's 'Pygmalion. It connects to the debate c.1610 about whether one is entitled to grab someone's plank to avoid drowning. |
20650 | The Uncertainty Principle implies that cause and effect can't be measured [Watson] |
Full Idea: The Uncertainty Principle implied that in the subatomic world cause and effect could never be measured. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 05 'Against') | |
A reaction: The fact that it can't be measured does not, presumably, entail that it doesn't exist. Physicists seem to ignore causation, rather than denying it. Can causation be real if it only exists at the macro-level, as an emergent phenomenon? |
20649 | The interference of light through two slits confirmed that it is waves [Watson] |
Full Idea: Thomas Young in 1803 confirmed the idea of Huyghens that light is waves, showing how light passing through two slits produces an interference pattern that resembles water waves sluicing through two slits. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 04 'Conception') | |
A reaction: The great puzzle emerges when it also turns out to be quantised particles. |
20661 | Electrons rotate in hyrogen atoms 10^13 times per second [Watson] |
Full Idea: In the hydrogen atom the electron rotates some 10,000 billion times per second. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 18 'Evolutionary') | |
A reaction: That's an awful lot. Is it at the speed of light? |
20647 | Quantum theory explains why nature is made up of units, such as elements [Watson] |
Full Idea: Planck's quantum idea explained so much, including the observation that the chemical world is made up of discrete units - the elements. Discrete elements implied fundamental units of matter that were themselves discrete (as Dalton had said). | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 4 'Intro') | |
A reaction: The atomic theory was only finally confirmed by Einstein in 1905. This idea implies that the very lowest level of all must have distinct building blocks, but so far we have got down to 'fields', which seem to be a sort of 'foam'. |
20654 | Only four particles are needed for matter: up and down quark, electron, electron-neutrino [Watson] |
Full Idea: We need twelve particles in the master equation of the standard model, but it is necessary to have only four to build a universe (up and down quarks, the electron and the electron neutrino (or lepton). The existence of the others is 'a bit of a mystery'. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 11 'First Three') |
20651 | The shape of molecules is important, as well as the atoms and their bonds [Watson] |
Full Idea: Pauling showed that the architecture - the shape of molecules was relevant (as well as the bonds). This meant that molecules were just as important as atoms in the understanding of matter. Molecules were not just the sum of their parts. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 05 'Three') | |
A reaction: If Aristotle struggled to understand matter, then so should modern philosophers. This involves thermodynamics and chemistry, as well as quantum theory. |
20658 | Information is physical, and living can be seen as replicating and preserving information [Watson] |
Full Idea: In passing information, physical changes take place, and information is thus physical. On this account, the act of living can be seen as replicating and preserving the information that a living body is comprised of. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 17 'Dreams') | |
A reaction: [He emphasises 'the act' of living, rather than a life] |
20652 | In 1828 the animal substance urea was manufactured from inorganic ingredients [Watson] |
Full Idea: In 1828 Wöhler, in an iconic experiment, had manufactured an organic substance, urea, hitherto the product solely of animals, out of inorganic materials, and without any interventions of vital force. | |
From: Peter Watson (Convergence [2016], 06 'Inorganic') | |
A reaction: For reductionists like me, the gradual explanation of life in inorganic terms is the great role model of explanation. I take it for granted that the human mind will go the same way, despite partisan resistance from a lot of philosophers. |