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15264
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The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II)
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A reaction:
Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'.
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15262
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In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I)
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A reaction:
This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity?
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15297
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We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III)
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A reaction:
This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science.
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15266
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We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III)
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A reaction:
They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265).
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15222
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Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
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A reaction:
Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary!
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15296
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A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II)
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A reaction:
If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'.
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15275
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'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
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A reaction:
This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do?
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15271
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If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
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A reaction:
The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose.
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15256
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Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II)
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A reaction:
This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together.
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