display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
3 ideas
| 18520 | Electrons are treated as particles, but they lose their individuality in relations [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Although it is convenient to speak of electrons as particles or elementary substances, when they enter into relations they can 'lose their individuality. Then an electron becomes a kind of 'abstract particular', a way a given system is, a mode. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: Heil rightly warns us against basing our metaphysics on disputed theories of quantum mechanics. |
| 18501 | Maybe the universe is fine-tuned because it had to be, despite plans by God or Nature? [Heil] |
| Full Idea: Maybe the universe is fine-tuned as it is, not because things happened to fall out as they did during and immediately after the Big Bang, or because God so ordained it, but because God or the Big Bang had no choice. | |
| From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.09) | |
| A reaction: You'd be hard put to so why it had to be fine-tuned, so this seems to be a nice speculation. Unverifiable but wholly meaningful. Maybe the stuff fine-tunes itself, by mutual interaction. Or it is the result of natural selection (Lee Smolin). |
| 7036 | The real natural properties are sparse, but there are many complex properties [Heil] |
| Full Idea: I am sympathetic to the idea that the real properties are 'sparse'; ...but if, in counting kinds of property, we include complex properties as well as simple properties, the image of sparseness evaporates. | |
| From: John Heil (From an Ontological Point of View [2003], 13.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right to me, and invites the obvious question of which are the sparse real properties. Presumably we let the physicists tell us that, though Heil wants to include qualities like phenomenal colour, which physicists ignore. |