12 ideas
| 18170 | The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if true, it isn't needed [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The Axiom of Reducibility is self-effacing: if it is true, the ramification it is meant to cope with was pointless to begin with. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Introduction to Russell's Theory of Types [1967], p.152), quoted by Penelope Maddy - Naturalism in Mathematics I.1 | |
| A reaction: Maddy says the rejection of Reducibility collapsed the ramified theory of types into the simple theory. |
| 17488 | Empiricist theories are sets of laws, which give explanations and reductions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: In the empiricist tradition theories were understood to be deductive closures of sets of laws, explanations were understood as arguments from covering laws, and reduction was understood as a deductive relationship between laws of different theories. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: A lovely crisp summary of the whole tradition of philosophy of science from Comte through to Hempel. Mechanism and essentialism are the new players in the game. |
| 17493 | Modern mechanism need parts with spatial, temporal and function facts, and diagrams [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Modern champions of mechanisms say models should identify both the parts and their spatial, temporal and functional organisation, ...and the practical importance of diagrams in addition to or in place of linguistic representations of mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Discover') | |
| A reaction: Apparently chemists obtain much more refined models by using mathematics than they did by diagrams or 3D models (let alone verbal descriptions). For that reason, I'm thinking that 'model' might be a better term than 'mechanism'. |
| 17487 | Mechanistic philosophy of science is an alternative to the empiricist law-based tradition [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: To a significant degree, a mechanistic philosophy of science can be seen as an alternative to an earlier logical empiricist tradition in philosophy of science that gave pride of place to laws of nature. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Lovely! Someone who actually spells out what's going on here. Most philosophers are far too coy about explaining what their real game is. Mechanism is fine in chemistry and biology. How about in 'mathematical' physics, or sociology? |
| 17489 | Mechanisms are either systems of parts or sequences of activities [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: There are two sorts of mechanisms: systems consist of collections of parts that interact to produce some behaviour, and processes are sequences of activities which produce some outcome. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The second one is important because it is more generic, and under that account all kinds the features of the world that need to be explained can be subsumed. E.g. hyperinflation in an economy is a 'mechanism'. |
| 17490 | 17th century mechanists explained everything by the kinetic physical fundamentals [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: 17th century mechanists said that interactions governed by chemical, electrical or gravitational forces would have to be explicable in terms of the operation of some atomistic (or corpuscular) kinetic mechanism. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Glennan says science has rejected this, so modern mechanists do not reduce mechanisms to anything in particular. |
| 17491 | Unlike the lawlike approach, mechanistic explanation can allow for exceptions [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: One of the advantages of the move from nomological to mechanistic modes of explanation is that the latter allows for explanations involving exception-ridden generalizations. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'regular') | |
| A reaction: The lawlike approach has endless problems with 'ceteris paribus' ('all things being equal') laws, where specifying all the other 'things' seems a bit tricky. |
| 7260 | If there are intuited moral facts, why should we care about them? [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Critics asked (of intuitionism) why, if moral facts are as the intuitionists say, we should care about them at all. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intuitionism [1991]) | |
| A reaction: It is a good question, as we don't care much about other a priori truths, such as the square root of 169. |
| 7261 | Internalists say that moral intuitions are motivating; externalist say a desire is also needed [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: There is an internalist view of intuitionism, saying that to accept that one's action is wrong is itself to be motivated not to do it. Externalists (like Ross) say that moral judgements need the help of an independent desire to motivate us. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intuitionism [1991]) | |
| A reaction: The internalists would be closer to Kant or Plato (for whom reason or pure ideas motivate), while externalist would favour Hume's belief/desire account of human actions. I like Kant and Plato, but Hume is more plausible. Dancy disagrees (Idea 7262). |
| 7262 | Obviously judging an action as wrong gives us a reason not to do it [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: It is ludicrous to say that we might accept an action is outrageously wrong and still think of this as not in itself giving us good reason to hold back. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intuitionism [1991]) | |
| A reaction: If we think of some dreadful man-made famine in a remote continent, our judgement may well give a reason to act, but apathy usually intervenes. We are discussing a purely theoretical motive on the one hand, and an actual motivator on the other. |
| 7265 | Moral facts are not perceived facts, but perceived reasons for judgements [Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: I intend to suggest that moral facts are best thought of not as facts perceived but as reasons recognised in the exercise of practical moral judgement. | |
| From: Jonathan Dancy (Intuitionism [1991]) | |
| A reaction: I'm not convinced by this modified version. Why should the fact that someone is in pain be, in itself, a reason to prevent it? There are different cultural traditions for response to the pain of others. We are the squeamish tradition. |
| 17494 | Since causal events are related by mechanisms, causation can be analysed in that way [Glennan] |
| Full Idea: Causation can be analyzed in terms of mechanisms because (except for fundamental causal interactions) causally related events will be connected by intervening mechanisms. | |
| From: Stuart Glennan (Mechanisms [2008], 'causation') | |
| A reaction: This won't give us the metaphysics of causation (which concerns the fundamentals), but this strikes me as a very coherent and interesting proposal. He mentions electron interaction as non-mechanistic causation. |