display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
8 ideas
| 3990 | The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The whole truth supervenes on the physical truth. | |
| From: David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.412) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me the central truth about brains, and we should not be lured into abandoning it. We should not, however, exclude the possibility that there is a non-physical reality. |
| 8607 | Supervenience is reduction without existence denials, ontological priorities, or translatability [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is a stripped down form of reductionism, unencumbered by dubious denials of existence, claims of ontological priority, or claims of translatability. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. It implies that the honest reductionist (i.e. me) should begin by asserting supervience, and only at a second stage go on to deny a bit of existence, loudly affirm priorities, and offer translations. Honest toil. |
| 9650 | Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The idea of supervenience is when there could be no difference of one sort without difference of another sort. ..Clearly this 'could' indicates modality, and without modality we have nothing of interest. | |
| From: David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might explain why philosophers are going to be more at home with the concept than neuroscientists would be. |
| 3991 | Where pixels make up a picture, supervenience is reduction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: In the case of millions of pixels making up a picture on a computer screen, the supervenience is reduction. | |
| From: David Lewis (Lewis: reduction of mind (on himself) [1994], p.414) | |
| A reaction: Since 'supervenience' seems a suspect relationship about which no one is clear, this is a point very much worth making. |
| 8606 | A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A supervenience thesis is a denial of independent variation. | |
| From: David Lewis (New work for a theory of universals [1983], 'Dup,Sup,Div') | |
| A reaction: Not everyone agrees on this. This says if either A or B change, the change is reflected in the other one. But the other view is of one-way dependence. A only changes if B changes, but B can also make changes that don't affect A. |
| 16210 | Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience says the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. We have a geometry of external relations of spatio-temporal distance between points, and local qualities at points. …In short: we have an arrangement of qualities. | |
| From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986], p.ix-x) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is the key fundamental tenet of David Lewis's philosophy. He names it after Hume because it contains no necessary connections. It is 'supervenient' because all worldly truths reduce to and depend on the mosaic. His thesis is contingent. |
| 15501 | We have no idea of a third sort of thing, that isn't an individual, a class, or their mixture [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: As yet we have no idea of any third sort of thing that is neither individual nor class nor mixture of the two. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: You can see that Lewis was a pupil of Quine. I quote this to show how little impression 'stuff' makes on the modern radar. His defence is that stuff may not be a 'thing', but then he seems to think that 'things' exhaust reality (top p.8 and 9). |
| 15504 | Atomless gunk is an individual whose parts all have further proper parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A blob can represent atomless gunk: an individual whose parts all have further proper parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Parts of Classes [1991], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is not the same as 'stuff', since gunk is a precise fusion of all those parts, whereas there is no such precision about stuff. Stuff is neutral as to whether it has atoms, or is endlessly divisible. My love of stuff grows. Laycock is a hero. |