20 ideas
8439 | Maybe each event has only one possible causal history [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Perhaps it is impossible that an event should have had a causal history different from the one that it actually had. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.220) | |
A reaction: [He cites van Inwagen for this] The idea is analagous to baptismal accounts of reference. Individuate an event by its history. It might depend (as Davidson implies) on how you describe the event. |
8440 | Maybe an event's time of occurrence is essential to it [Bennett] |
Full Idea: It has been argued that an event's time of occurrence is essential to it. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.221) | |
A reaction: [He cites Lawrence Lombard] This sound initially implausible, particularly if a rival event happened, say, .1 of a second later than the actual event. It might depend on one's view about determinism. Interesting. |
8978 | Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1 | |
A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right. |
6230 | If the soul were a tabula rasa, with no innate ideas, there could be no moral goodness or justice [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: The soul is not a mere rasa tabula, a naked and passive thing, with no innate furniture of its own, nor any thing in it, but what was impressed upon it without; for then there could not possibly be any such thing as moral good and evil, just and unjust. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Bk IV Ch 6.4) | |
A reaction: He goes on to quote Hobbes saying there is no good in objects themselves. I don't see why we must have an innate moral capacity, provided that we have a capacity to make judgements. |
6228 | Senses cannot judge one another, so what judges senses cannot be a sense, but must be superior [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: The sight cannot judge of sounds, nor the hearing of light and colours; wherefore that which judges of all the senses and their several objects, cannot be itself any sense, but something of a superior nature. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.II.VI.1) | |
A reaction: How nice to find a seventeenth century English writer rebelling against empiricism! |
3061 | Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing [Anaxarchus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Anaxarchus said that he was not even sure that he knew nothing. | |
From: report of Anaxarchus (fragments/reports [c.340 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.10.1 |
6229 | Sense is fixed in the material form, and so can't grasp abstract universals [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: Sense which lies flat and grovelling in the individuals, and is stupidly fixed in the material form, is not able to rise up or ascend to an abstract universal notion. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.III.III.2) | |
A reaction: This still strikes me as being one of the biggest problems with reductive physicalism, that a lump of meat in your head can grasp abstractions (whatever they are) and universal concepts. Personally I am a physicalist, but it is weird. |
6227 | Keeping promises and contracts is an obligation of natural justice [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: To keep faith and perform covenants is that which natural justice obligeth to absolutely. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.II.4) | |
A reaction: A nice example of an absolute moral intuition, but one which can clearly be challenged. Covenants (contracts) wouldn't work unless everyone showed intense commitment to keeping them, even beyond the grave, and we all benefit from good contracts. |
6231 | There is a self-determing power in each person, which makes them what they are [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: This hegemonicon (self-power) always determines the passive capability of men's nature one way or other, either for better or for worse; and has a self-forming and self-framing power by which every man is self-made into what he is. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (Treatise of Freewill [1688], §X) | |
A reaction: The idea that we can somehow create our own selves seems to me the core of existentialism, and the opposite of the Aristotelian belief in a fairly fixed human nature. See Stephen Pinker's 'The Blank Slate' for a revival of the old view. |
6225 | Obligation to obey all positive laws is older than all laws [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: Obligation to obey all positive laws is older than all laws. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.II.3) | |
A reaction: Clearly villains can pass wicked laws, so there can't be an obligation to obey all laws (even if they are 'positive', which seems to beg the question). Nevertheless this is a good reason why laws cannot be the grounding of morality. |
8441 | Delaying a fire doesn't cause it, but hastening it might [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Although you cannot cause a fire by delaying something's burning, you can cause a fire by hastening something's burning. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.223) | |
A reaction: A very nice observation which brings out all sorts of problems about identifying causes. Bennett is criticising the counterfactual account. It is part of the problem of pre-emption, where causes are queueing up to produce a given effect. |
8436 | Either cause and effect are subsumed under a conditional because of properties, or it is counterfactual [Bennett] |
Full Idea: We must choose between subsumption and counterfactual analyses of causal statements. The former means that cause and effect have some properties that enables them to be subsumed under a conditional. The latter is just 'if no-c then no-e'. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.217) | |
A reaction: I have an immediate preference for the former account, which seems to potentially connect it with physics and features of the world which make one thing lead to another. The counterfactual account seems very thin, and is more like mere semantics. |
8435 | Causes are between events ('the explosion') or between facts/states of affairs ('a bomb dropped') [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Theories of causation are split between event and fact/state of affairs theories. The first have the form 'the explosion caused the fire' (perfect nominals) and the second have the form 'the fire started because a bomb dropped' (sentential clauses). | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987]) | |
A reaction: Surely events must have priority? The form which uses facts is drifting off into explanation, and is much more likely to involve subjective human elements and interpretations. Events are closer to the physics, and the mechanics of what happens. |
10364 | Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.22), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1 | |
A reaction: Compare 10361. Good argument, but maybe 'fact' is ambiguous. See Idea 10365. Events are said to be more concrete, and so can do the job, but their individuation also seems to depend on a description (as Davidson has pointed out). |
8437 | The full counterfactual story asserts a series of events, because counterfactuals are not transitive [Bennett] |
Full Idea: The refinement of a simple counterfactual analysis is to say that cause and effect depend on a series of events. This must be asserted because counterfactual conditionals are well known not to be transitive. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987]) | |
A reaction: This fills out the theory, but offers another target for critics. If the glue that binds the series is not in the counterfactuals, is it just in the mind of the speaker? How do you decide what's in the series? Cf. deciding offside in football (soccer!). |
8438 | A counterfactual about an event implies something about the event's essence [Bennett] |
Full Idea: Any counterfactual about a particular event implies or presupposes something about the event's essence. | |
From: Jonathan Bennett (Event Causation: counterfactual analysis [1987], p.219) | |
A reaction: This is where the counterfactual theory suddenly becomes more interesting, instead of just being a rather bare account of the logical structure of causation. (Bennett offers some discussion of possible essential implications). |
8592 | Empty space is measurable in ways in which empty time necessarily is not [Bennett, by Shoemaker] |
Full Idea: Because of the multidimensionality of space and unidimensionality of time, empty space is measurable in ways in which empty time necessarily is not. | |
From: report of Jonathan Bennett (Kant's Analytic [1966], p.175) by Sydney Shoemaker - Time Without Change p.49 n4 | |
A reaction: An interesting observation, which could have been used by Samuel Clarke in his attempts to prove absolute space to Leibniz. The point does not prove absolute space, of course, but it seems to make a difference. |
6224 | An omnipotent will cannot make two things equal or alike if they aren't [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: Omnipotent will cannot make things like or equal one to another, without the natures of likeness and equality. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.II.I) | |
A reaction: This is one of the many classic 'paradoxes of omnipotence'. The best strategy is to define omnipotence as 'being able to do everything which it is possible to do'. Anything beyond that is inviting paradoxical disaster. |
6223 | If the will and pleasure of God controls justice, then anything wicked or unjust would become good if God commanded it [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: If the arbitrary will and pleasure of God is the first and only rule of good and justice, it follows that nothing can be so grossly wicked or unjust but if it were commanded by this omnipotent Deity, it must forthwith become holy, just and righteous. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.I.I.5) | |
A reaction: This is the strong (Platonic) answer to the Euthyphro Question (Idea 336). One answer is that God would not command in such a way - but why not? We may say that God and goodness merge into one, but we are interested in ultimate authority. |
6226 | The requirement that God must be obeyed must precede any authority of God's commands [Cudworth] |
Full Idea: If it were not morally good and just in its own nature before any positive command of God, that God should be obeyed by his creatures, the bare will of God himself could not beget any obligation upon anyone. | |
From: Ralph Cudworth (On Eternal and Immutable Morality [1688], Ch.II.3) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a self-evident truth, and a big problem for anyone who wants to make God the source of morality. You don't have to accept anyone's authority just because they are powerful or clever (though they do bestow a certain natural authority!). |