7 ideas
| 16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
| 16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
| 16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
| 16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
| Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
| From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
| A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
| 6040 | There is no universal goal to human life [Aenesidemus, by Photius] |
| Full Idea: Aenesidemus does not allow either happiness or pleasure or prudence or any other goal held by anyone on the basis of philosophical doctrine as the goal of life; rather, he says that there just is no such thing as a goal which is recognised by all people. | |
| From: report of Aenesidemus (Pyrrhonian Arguments (frags) [c.60 BCE], Bk 8) by 'Photius Bibliotheca' - Aenesidimus (frags) 170b | |
| A reaction: This is probably the dominant modern (post-Darwinian, existentialist) view. Personally I am sympathetic to the Aristotelian view that (to some extent) appropriate goals for life can be inferred from a fairly stable human nature. |
| 23405 | Rituals escape natural chaos, and benefit everyone, by reshaping our motivations [Xunzi (Xun Kuang), by Norden] |
| Full Idea: For Xunzi, everyone is better off with rituals …because they allow us to escape the chaotic state of nature. They do not merely set rules for entitlement, though. They are effective because they reshape human motivation. | |
| From: report of Xunzi (Xun Kuang) (The Xunzi [c.250 BCE]) by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 10.2 | |
| A reaction: Rituals are a basic part of Confucianist thinking, and may be puzzling to outsiders. At there worst rituals are brain-washing, but teaching children good manners is a sort of ritual, meant to channel feelings in a healthy direction |
| 23406 | Rituals don't arise from human nature; they are the deliberate creations of a sage [Xunzi (Xun Kuang)] |
| Full Idea: Rituals and standards of righteousness and proper models and measures are produced from the deliberate efforts of the sage; they are not produced from people's nature. | |
| From: Xunzi (Xun Kuang) (The Xunzi [c.250 BCE], 23), quoted by Bryan van Norden - Intro to Classical Chinese Philosophy 10.III | |
| A reaction: This is not to say that the sage is not in tune with nature. Human nature is often seen as a sprouting seed, which needs careful husbandry to bring out its best. |