display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
7 ideas
| 8542 | If causality is between events, there must be reference to the properties involved [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Any account of causality as a relation between events should involve, in a central way, reference to the properties of the constituent objects of the events. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is aimed at Davidson, who seems to think you need know no more about an event than the way in which someone chooses to describe it. Metaphysics must dig deeper, even if science can't. |
| 8598 | If things turn red for an hour and then explode, we wouldn't say the redness was the cause [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If we found that things always explode after having been red for an hour, we would never suppose that what causes the explosion is simply a thing's having been red for an hour. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Time Without Change [1969], p.63) | |
| A reaction: Shoemaker points out that even Hume says that cause and effect must be 'contiguous', but it clearly means that a simplistic regularity analysis of causation won't work. |
| 15093 | We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals. |
| 8560 | If causal laws describe causal potentialities, the same laws govern properties in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: To the extent that causal laws can be viewed as propositions describing the causal potentialities of properties, it is impossible that the same properties should be governed by different causal laws in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §08) | |
| A reaction: [He has just asserted that causal potentialities are essential to properties] This is the dramatic basic claim of scientific essentialism, which grows out of Shoemaker's causal account of properties. Note that the laws are just descriptions. |
| 15763 | If properties are causal, then causal necessity is a species of logical necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My theory of properties as causal appears to have the consequence that causal laws are logically necessary, and that causal necessity is just a species of logical necessity. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: Where he writes 'logical' necessity I would claim that he really means 'metaphysical' necessity. The point, I take it, is that given the existence of those properties, certain causal efforts must always follow from them. I agree. |
| 8561 | If a world has different causal laws, it must have different properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If there are worlds in which the causal laws are different from those that prevail in this world, ..then the properties will have to be different as well. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: The next question is whether the same stuff (e.g. gold or water) could have different properties, and I take the the scientific essentialism answer to be 'no'. So the actual stuff (substances?) would have to be different. |
| 8553 | It looks as if the immutability of the powers of a property imply essentiality [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a prima facie case for saying that the immutability of the causal potentialities of a property implies their essentiality. ...If they cannot vary across time, they also cannot vary across possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: This is only the beginning of scientific essentialism, but one of the targets is to save the phenomena. It is also involves unimaginability (of different powers from a given property) implying necessity. |