41 ideas
| 12105 | Our knowledge starts in theology, passes through metaphysics, and ends in positivism [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Our principal conceptions, each branch of our knowledge, passes in succession through three different theoretical states: the theological or fictitious state, the metaphysical or abstract state, and the scientific or positive state. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 5077 for the abstraction step. The idea that there is a 'law' here, as Comte thinks, is daft, but something of what he describes is undeniable. I suspect, though, that science rests on abstractions, so the last part is wrong. |
| 12104 | All ideas must be understood historically [Comte] |
| Full Idea: No idea can be properly understood apart from its history. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is somewhat dubious. Comte is preparing the ground for asserting positivism by rejecting out-of-date theology and metaphysics. The history is revealing, but can be misleading, when a meaning shifts. Try 'object' in logic. |
| 12112 | Metaphysics is just the oversubtle qualification of abstract names for phenomena [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The development of positivism was caused by the concept of metaphysical agents gradually becoming so empty through oversubtle qualification that all right-minded persons considered them to be only the abstract names of the phenomena in question. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I have quite a lot of sympathy with this thesis, but not couched in this negative way. I take abstraction to be essential to scientific thought, and wisdom to occur amongst the higher reaches of the abstractions. |
| 12106 | Positivism gives up absolute truth, and seeks phenomenal laws, by reason and observation [Comte] |
| Full Idea: In the positive state, the human mind, recognizing the impossibility of obtaining absolute truth, gives up the search for hidden and final causes. It endeavours to discover, by well-combined reasoning and observation, the actual laws of phenomena. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Positivism attempted to turn the Humean regularity view of laws into a semi-religion. It is striking how pessimistic Comte was (as was Hume) about the chances of science revealing deep explanations. He would be astoundeds. |
| 12111 | Positivism is the final state of human intelligence [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The positive philosophy represents the true final state of human intelligence. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of remark which made Comte notorious, and it looks a bit extravagant now, but the debate about his view is still ongoing. I am certainly sympathetic to his general drift. |
| 12114 | Science can drown in detail, so we need broad scientists (to keep out the metaphysicians) [Comte] |
| Full Idea: Getting lost in a mass of detail is the weak side of positivism, where partisans of theology and metaphysics may attack with some hope of success. ...We must train scientists who will consider all the different branches of positive science. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This would be Comte's answer now to those who claim there is still a role for metaphysics within the scientific world view. I would say that metaphysics not only takes an overview, but also deals with higher generalisations than Comte's general scientist. |
| 12116 | Only positivist philosophy can terminate modern social crises [Comte] |
| Full Idea: We may look upon the positive philosophy as constituting the only solid basis for the social reorganisation that must terminate the crisis in which the most civilized nations have found themselves for so long. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: He is proposing not only to use positivist methods to solve social problems (he coined the word 'sociology'), but is also proposing that positivism itself should act as the unifying belief-system for future society. Science will be our religion. |
| 6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Eventually set theory will have to be either naturalised or rejected, if a thoroughgoing physicalism is to be maintained. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I regard Platonism as a form of naturalism (though a rather bold and dramatic one). The central issue seems to be the ability of the human main/brain to form 'abstract' notions about the physical world in which it lives. |
| 6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
| 6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
| 6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
| 6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |
| 16978 | If conceivability is a priori coherence, that implies possibility [Tahko] |
| Full Idea: Maybe conceivability could be understood as a priori coherence, which implies possibility. | |
| From: Tuomas E. Tahko (The Epistemology of Essence (draft) [2013], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: I'm not quite sure why 'a priori' has to be there. Assessing conceivability just is assessing coherence. That couches it as a rational activity, rather than as a purely imaginary one. Trying to conceive a square circle isn't just daydreaming. |
| 6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air? |
| 12108 | All real knowledge rests on observed facts [Comte] |
| Full Idea: All competent thinkers agree with Bacon that there can be no real knowledge except that which rests upon observed facts. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Are there any unobservable facts? If so, can we know them? The only plausible route is to add 'best explanation' to the positivist armoury. With positivism, empiricism became - for a while - a quasi-religion. |
| 12109 | We must observe in order to form theories, but connected observations need prior theories [Comte] |
| Full Idea: There is a difficulty: the human mind had to observe in order to form real theories; and yet it had to form theories of some sort before it could apply itself to a connected series of observations. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Comte's view is that we get started by forming a silly theory (religion), and then refine the theory once the observations get going. Note that Comte has sort of anticipated the Quine-Duhem thesis. |
| 12107 | Positivism explains facts by connecting particular phenomena with general facts [Comte] |
| Full Idea: In positivism the explanation of facts consists only in the connection established between different particular phenomena and some general facts, the number of which the progress of science tends more and more to diminish. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the ancestor of Hempel's more precisely formulated 'covering law' account, which became very fashionably, and now seems fairly discredited. It is just a fancy version of Humeanism about laws. |
| 16975 | Essences are used to explain natural kinds, modality, and causal powers [Tahko] |
| Full Idea: Essences are supposed to do a lot of explanatory work: natural kinds can be identified in terms of their essences, metaphysical modality can be reduced to essence, the causal power of objects can be explained with the help of essence. | |
| From: Tuomas E. Tahko (The Epistemology of Essence (draft) [2013], 1) | |
| A reaction: Natural kinds and modality are OK with me, but I'm dubious about the third one. If an essence explains something's causal powers, I have no idea what an essence might be. Essence are largely characterised in terms of causal powers. |
| 6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Intentionality comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree. A footprint is 'about' a foot, in the sense of containing concentrated information about it. Can we, though, envisage a higher degree than human thought? Is there a maximum degree? Everything is 'about' everything, in some respect. |
| 6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The teleological view begins to explain intentionality, and in particular allows brain states and events to have false intentional content; causal and nomological theories of intentionality tend to falter on this last task. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly if you say thought is 'caused' by the world, false thought become puzzling. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this, but it is an intriguing remark about a significant issue… |
| 6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism? |
| 6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: It is just arbitrary to choose a level of nature a priori as the locus of qualia, even though we can agree that high levels (such as behaviourism) and low-levels (such as the subatomic) can be ruled out as totally improbable. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: Very good. People scream 'qualia!' whenever the behaviour level or the atomic level are proposed as the locations of the mind, but the suggestion that they are complex, and are spread across many functional levels in the middle sounds good. |
| 12115 | Introspection is pure illusion; we can obviously observe everything except ourselves [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The pretended direct contemplation of the mind by itself is a pure illusion. ...It is clear that, by an inevitable necessity, the human mind can observe all phenomena directly, except its own. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I recently heard of a university psychology department which was seeking skilled introspectors to help with their researches. I take introspection to be very difficult, but partially possible. Read Proust. |
| 6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
| 6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
| 6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Old joke: two Behaviourists meet in the street, and the first says,"You're fine; how am I?" | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], n1.6) | |
| A reaction: This invites the response that introspection is uniquely authoritative about 'how we are', but this has been challenged quite a lot recently, which pushes us to consider whether these stupid behaviourists might actually have a good point. |
| 6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Analytical functionalists', who hold that meanings of mental terms are determined by the causal roles associated with them by 'folk psychology', deny themselves appeals to lower levels of functional organisation. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: Presumably folk psychology can fit into the kind of empirical methodology favoured by behaviourists, whereas 'lower levels' are going to become rather speculative and unscientific. |
| 6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: The functionalist must find a level of characterisation of mental states that is not so abstract or behaviouristic as to rule out the possibility of inverted spectrum etc., nor so specific and structural as to fall into chauvinism. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: If too specific then animals and aliens won't be able to implement the necessary functions; if the theory becomes very behaviouristic, then it loses interest in the possibility of an inverted spectrum. He is certainly right to hunt for a middle ground. |
| 6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Even the software/hardware distinction as it is literally applied within computer science is philosophically unclear. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: This is true, and very important for functionalist theories of the mind. Even very volatile software is realised in 'hard' physics, and rewritable discs etc blur the distinction between 'programmable' and 'hardwired'. |
| 6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Highly teleological characterisations, unlike naïve and explicated mental characterisations, have the virtue of shading off fairly smoothly into (more) brutely physical ones. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: Thus the purpose of a car engine, and a spark plug, and the spark, and the temperature, and the vibration of molecules show a fading away of the overt purpose, disappearing into the pointless activity of electrons and quantum levels. |
| 6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am taking mental types to form a small subclass of teleological types occurring for the most part at a high level of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to say that he understand teleology in evolutionary terms. There is always a gap between how you characterise or individuate something, and what it actually is. To say spanners are 'a small subclass of tools' is not enough. |
| 6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: 'Neuron' may be understood as a physiological term or a functional term, so even the Identity Theorist is a Functionalist - one who locates mental entities at a very low level of abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This is a striking observation, and somewhat inclines me to switch from identity theory to functionalism. If you ask what is the correct level of abstraction, Lycan's teleological-homuncular version refers you to all the levels. |
| 6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Teleological functionalism helps us to understand the nature of biological and psychological laws, particularly in the face of Davidsonian scepticism about the latter. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I doubt the existence of psycho-physical laws, but only because of the vast complexity. They would be like the laws of weather. 'Psycho-physical' laws seem to presuppose some sort of dualism. |
| 6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: I am explicating the mental in a reductive way, by reducing mental characterizations to homuncular institutional ones, which are teleological characterizations at various levels of functional abstraction. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the germ of a very good physicalist account of the mind. More is needed than a mere assertion about what the mind reduces to at the very lowest level; this offers a decent account of the descending stages of reduction. |
| 6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: Quite possibly a Martian's humanoid behaviour is prompted by his having sensations somewhat unlike ours, despite his superficial behavioural similarities to us. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I think this firmly refutes the multiple realisability objection to type-type physicalism. Mental events are individuated by their phenomenal features (known only to the user), and by their causal role (publicly available). These are separate. |
| 6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
| 12113 | The search for first or final causes is futile [Comte] |
| Full Idea: We regard the search after what are called causes, whether first or final, as absolutely inaccessible and unmeaning. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This remark lies behind Russell's rejection of the notion of cause in scientific thinking. Personally it seems to me indispensable, even if we accept that the pursuit of 'final' causes is fairly hopeless. We don't know where the quest will lead. |
| 16976 | Scientific essentialists tend to characterise essence in terms of modality (not vice versa) [Tahko] |
| Full Idea: The conception of essence taken for granted in much of the 'scientific essentialist' literature is that essence can be explained in terms of modality (rather than the other way round). | |
| From: Tuomas E. Tahko (The Epistemology of Essence (draft) [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Ellis and Bird] That is, presumably, that they are inclined to say that the essence of gold is a set of necessary properties. Maybe conceptual necessities dictate the properties of gold, and they in turn dictate metaphysical necessities? |
| 16977 | If essence is modal and laws are necessary, essentialist knowledge is found by scientists [Tahko] |
| Full Idea: If essence is conceived in terms of modality and the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, it seems that the laws of nature constitute essentialist knowledge, so the discovery of essences is mostly due to scientists. | |
| From: Tuomas E. Tahko (The Epistemology of Essence (draft) [2013], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems muddled to me. The idea that the laws themselves are essences is way off target. No one thinks all knowledge of necessities is essentialist. Mumford, for example, doesn't even believe in laws. |
| 12110 | We can never know origins, purposes or inner natures [Comte] |
| Full Idea: The inner nature of objects, or the origin and purpose of all phenomena, are the most insoluble questions. | |
| From: Auguste Comte (Intro to Positive Philosophy [1830], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: I take it that this Humean pessimism about science ever penetrating below the surface is precisely what is challenged by modern science, and that 'scientific essentialism' is catching up with what has happened. 'Inner' is knowable, bottom level isn't. |
| 6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
| Full Idea: An object is specifically physical if it figures in explanations and descriptions of features of ordinary non-living matter, as in current physics; it is more generally physical if it is simply located in space-time. | |
| From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: This gives a useful distinction when trying to formulate a 'physicalist' account of the mind, where type-type physicalism says only the 'postulates of physics' can be used, whereas 'naturalism' about the mind uses the more general concept. |