57 ideas
| 17713 | After 1903, Husserl avoids metaphysical commitments [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In Husserl's philosophy after 1903, he is unwilling to commit himself to any specific metaphysical views. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 08.2) |
| 18781 | Inconsistency doesn't prevent us reasoning about some system [Mares] |
| Full Idea: We are able to reason about inconsistent beliefs, stories, and theories in useful and important ways | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) |
| 18789 | Intuitionist logic looks best as natural deduction [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Intuitionist logic appears most attractive in the form of a natural deduction system. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.5) |
| 18790 | Intuitionism as natural deduction has no rule for negation [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In intuitionist logic each connective has one introduction and one elimination rule attached to it, but in the classical system we have to add an extra rule for negation. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: How very intriguing. Mares says there are other ways to achieve classical logic, but they all seem rather cumbersome. |
| 18787 | Three-valued logic is useful for a theory of presupposition [Mares] |
| Full Idea: One reason for wanting a three-valued logic is to act as a basis of a theory of presupposition. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Strawson 1950] The point is that you can get a result when the presupposition does not apply, as in talk of the 'present King of France'. |
| 18793 | Material implication (and classical logic) considers nothing but truth values for implications [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The problem with material implication, and classical logic more generally, is that it considers only the truth value of formulas in deciding whether to make an implication stand between them. It ignores everything else. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: The obvious problem case is conditionals, and relevance is an obvious extra principle that comes to mind. |
| 18784 | In classical logic the connectives can be related elegantly, as in De Morgan's laws [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Among the virtues of classical logic is the fact that the connectives are related to one another in elegant ways that often involved negation. For example, De Morgan's Laws, which involve negation, disjunction and conjunction. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: Mares says these enable us to take disjunction or conjunction as primitive, and then define one in terms of the other, using negation as the tool. |
| 18786 | Excluded middle standardly implies bivalence; attacks use non-contradiction, De M 3, or double negation [Mares] |
| Full Idea: On its standard reading, excluded middle tells us that bivalence holds. To reject excluded middle, we must reject either non-contradiction, or ¬(A∧B) ↔ (¬A∨¬B) [De Morgan 3], or the principle of double negation. All have been tried. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) |
| 18780 | Standard disjunction and negation force us to accept the principle of bivalence [Mares] |
| Full Idea: If we treat disjunction in the standard way and take the negation of a statement A to mean that A is false, accepting excluded middle forces us also to accept the principle of bivalence, which is the dictum that every statement is either true or false. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: Mates's point is to show that passively taking the normal account of negation for granted has important implications. |
| 18782 | The connectives are studied either through model theory or through proof theory [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In studying the logical connectives, philosophers of logic typically adopt the perspective of either model theory (givng truth conditions of various parts of the language), or of proof theory (where use in a proof system gives the connective's meaning). | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The commonest proof theory is natural deduction, giving rules for introduction and elimination. Mates suggests moving between the two views is illuminating. |
| 18783 | Many-valued logics lack a natural deduction system [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Many-valued logics do not have reasonable natural deduction systems. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 1) |
| 18792 | Situation semantics for logics: not possible worlds, but information in situations [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Situation semantics for logics consider not what is true in worlds, but what information is contained in situations. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: Since many theoretical physicists seem to think that 'information' might be the most basic concept of a natural ontology, this proposal is obviously rather appealing. Barwise and Perry are the authors of the theory. |
| 18785 | Consistency is semantic, but non-contradiction is syntactic [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The difference between the principle of consistency and the principle of non-contradiction is that the former must be stated in a semantic metalanguage, whereas the latter is a thesis of logical systems. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 2.2) |
| 13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Archimedes gave a sort of definition of 'straight line' when he said it is the shortest line between two points. | |
| From: report of Archimedes (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Gottfried Leibniz - New Essays on Human Understanding 4.13 | |
| A reaction: Commentators observe that this reduces the purity of the original Euclidean axioms, because it involves distance and measurement, which are absent from the purest geometry. |
| 17715 | The truth of the axioms doesn't matter for pure mathematics, but it does for applied [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The epistemological burden of showing that the axioms are true is removed if we are only studying pure mathematics. If, however, we want to look at applied mathematics, then this burden returns. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 11.4) | |
| A reaction: One of those really simple ideas that hits the spot. Nice. The most advanced applied mathematics must rest on counting and measuring. |
| 17716 | Mathematics is relations between properties we abstract from experience [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelians treat mathematical facts as relations between properties. These properties, moreover, are abstracted from our experience of things. ...This view finds a natural companion in structuralism. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 11.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the view of mathematics that I personally favour. The view that we abstract 'five' from a group of five pebbles is too simplistic, but this is the right general approach. |
| 18788 | For intuitionists there are not numbers and sets, but processes of counting and collecting [Mares] |
| Full Idea: For the intuitionist, talk of mathematical objects is rather misleading. For them, there really isn't anything that we should call the natural numbers, but instead there is counting. What intuitionists study are processes, such as counting and collecting. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: That is the first time I have seen mathematical intuitionism described in a way that made it seem attractive. One might compare it to a metaphysics based on processes. Apparently intuitionists struggle with infinite sets and real numbers. |
| 17703 | Light in straight lines is contingent a priori; stipulated as straight, because they happen to be so [Mares] |
| Full Idea: It seems natural to claim that light rays moving in straight lines is contingent but a priori. Scientists stipulate that they are the standard by which we measure straightness, but their appropriateness for this task is a contingent feature of the world. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 02.9) | |
| A reaction: This resembles the metre rule in Paris. It is contingent that something is a certain way, so we make being that way a conventional truth, which can therefore be known via the convention, rather than via the contingent fact. |
| 13047 | It is knowing 'why' that gives scientific understanding, not knowing 'that' [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge 'that' is descriptive, and knowledge 'why' is explanatory, and it is the latter that provides scientific understanding of our world. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I agree, but of course, knowing 'why' may require a lot of knowing 'that'. People with extensive knowledge 'that' things are so tend to understand why something happens more readily than the rest of us ignoramuses. |
| 13065 | Understanding is an extremely vague concept [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Understanding is an extremely vague concept. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: True, I suppose, but we usually recognise understanding when we encounter it, and everybody has a pretty clear notion of an 'increase' in understanding. I suspect that the concept is perfectly clear, but we lack any scale for measuring it. |
| 17714 | Aristotelians dislike the idea of a priori judgements from pure reason [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelians tend to eschew talk about a special faculty of pure reason that is responsible for all of our a priori judgements. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 08.9) | |
| A reaction: He is invoking Carrie Jenkins's idea that the a priori is knowledge of relations between concepts which have been derived from experience. Nice idea. We thus have an empirical a priori, integrated into the natural world. Abstraction must be involved. |
| 17705 | Empiricists say rationalists mistake imaginative powers for modal insights [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Empiricist critiques of rationalism often accuse rationalists of confusing the limits of their imaginations with real insight into what is necessarily true. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 03.01) | |
| A reaction: See ideas on 'Conceivable as possible' for more on this. You shouldn't just claim to 'see' that something is true, but be willing to offer some sort of reason, truthmaker or grounding. Without that, you may be right, but you are on weak ground. |
| 17700 | The most popular view is that coherent beliefs explain one another [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In what is perhaps the most popular version of coherentism, a system of beliefs is a set of beliefs that explain one another. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: These seems too simple. My first response would be that explanations are what result from coherence sets of beliefs. I may have beliefs that explain nothing, but at least have the virtue of being coherent. |
| 13054 | Correlations can provide predictions, but only causes can give explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Various kinds of correlations exist that provide excellent bases for prediction, but because no suitable causal relations exist (or are known), these correlations do not furnish explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There may be problem cases for the claim that all explanations are causal, but I certainly think that this idea is essentially right. Prediction can come from induction, but inductions may be true and yet baffling. |
| 13067 | For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There is a centuries-old philosophical tradition, sometimes referred to by the name of 'instrumentalism', that has denied the claim that science has explanatory power. For the instrumentalists there are no scientific explanations. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Coffa] Presumably it is just a matter of matching the world to the readings on the instruments, aiming at van Fraassen's 'empirical adequacy'. If there are no scientific explanations, does that mean that there are no explanations at all? Daft! |
| 17704 | Operationalism defines concepts by our ways of measuring them [Mares] |
| Full Idea: The central claim of Percy Bridgman's theory of operational definitions (1920s), is that definitions of certain scientific concepts are given by the ways that we have to measure them. For example, a straight line is 'the path of a light ray'. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 02.9) | |
| A reaction: It is often observed that this captures the spirit of Special Relativity. |
| 13055 | Good induction needs 'total evidence' - the absence at the time of any undermining evidence [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Inductive logicians have a 'requirement of total evidence': induction is strong if 1) it has true premises, 2) it has correct inductive form, and 3) no additional evidence that would change the degree of support is available at the time. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.4.2) | |
| A reaction: The evidence might be very close at hand, but not quite 'available' to the person doing the induction. |
| 13046 | Scientific explanation is not reducing the unfamiliar to the familiar [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I reject the view that scientific explanation involves reduction of the unfamiliar to the familiar. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle sometimes seems to imply this account of explanation, and I would have to agree with Salmon's view of it. Aristotle is also, though, aware of real explanations, definitions and essences. People are 'familiar' with some peculiar things. |
| 13058 | Why-questions can seek evidence as well as explanation [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are evidence-seeking why-questions, as well as explanation-seeking why-questions. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: Surely we would all prefer an explanation to mere evidence? It seems to me that they are all explanation-seeking, but that we are grateful for some evidence when no full explanation is available. Explanation renders evidence otiose. |
| 14366 | An explanation is a table of statistical information [Salmon, by Strevens] |
| Full Idea: On Salmon's statistical relevance view, an explanation is a table of statistical information. | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Statistical Explanation [1970]) by Michael Strevens - No Understanding without Explanation 1 | |
| A reaction: [He cites W.Salmon 1970] When put like that the view sounds incredibly implausible, but maybe a reading of Salmon would improve the case for it. |
| 13064 | The three basic conceptions of scientific explanation are modal, epistemic, and ontic [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: There are three basic conceptions of scientific explanation - modal, epistemic, and ontic - which can be discerned in Aristotle, and that have persisted down the ages. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) |
| 13050 | The 'inferential' conception is that all scientific explanations are arguments [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The 'inferential' conception of scientific explanation is the thesis that all legitimate scientific explanations are arguments of one sort or another. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to imply that someone has to be persuaded of something, and hence seems a rather too pragmatic view. I presume an explanation might be no more than dumbly pointing at conclusive evidence of a cause. Man with smoking gun. |
| 13059 | Ontic explanations can be facts, or reports of facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Proponents of the ontic conception of explanation can say that explanations exist in the world as facts, or that they are reports of such facts (as opposed to the view of explanations as arguments, or as speech acts). | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I am strongly drawn to the ontic approach, but not sure whether we want facts, or reports of them. The facts are the causal nexus, but which parts of the nexus provide the main aspect of explanation? I'll vote for reports, for now. |
| 13049 | We must distinguish true laws because they (unlike accidental generalizations) explain things [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The problem is to distinguish between laws and accidental generalizations, for laws have explanatory force while accidental generalizations, even if they are true, do not. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [He is discussing Hempel and Oppenheim 1948] This seems obviously right, but I can only make sense of the explanatory power if we have identified the mechanism which requires the generalisation to continue in future cases. |
| 13051 | Deductive-nomological explanations will predict, and their predictions will explain [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The deductive-nomological view has an explanation/prediction symmetry thesis - that a correct explanation could be a scientific prediction, and that any deductive prediction could serve as a deductive-nomological explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Of course, not all predictions will explain, or vice versa. Weird regularities become predictable but remain baffling. Good explanations may be of unrepeatable events. It is the 'law' in the account that ties the two ends together. |
| 13053 | A law is not enough for explanation - we need information about what makes a difference [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: To provide an adequate explanation of any given fact, we need to provide information that is relevant to the occurrence of that fact - information that makes a difference to its occurrence. It is not enough to subsume it under a general law. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Bromberger for this idea] Salmon is identifying this idea as the beginnings of trouble for the covering-law account of explanation, and it sounds exactly right. |
| 13061 | Flagpoles explain shadows, and not vice versa, because of temporal ordering [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: The height of the flagpole explains the length of the shadow because the interaction between the sunlight and the flagpole occurs before the interaction between the sunlight and the ground. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: [Bromberger produced the flagpole example] This seems to be correct, and would apply to all physical cases, but there may still be cases of explanation which are not causal (in mathematics, for example). |
| 17093 | Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Causal processes, causal interactions, and causal laws provide the mechanisms by which the world works; to understand why certain things happen, we need to see how they are produced by these mechanisms. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World [1984]), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 7 | |
| A reaction: I don't think I've ever found a better quotation on explanation. That strikes me as correct, and (basically) there is nothing more to be said. I'm not sure about the 'laws'. This is later Wesley Salmon. |
| 17492 | Salmon's interaction mechanisms needn't be regular, or involving any systems [Glennan on Salmon] |
| Full Idea: While Salmon's mechanisms are processes involving interactions, the interactions are not necessarily regular, and they do not involve the operation of systems. | |
| From: comment on Wesley Salmon (Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World [1984]) by Stuart Glennan - Mechanisms 'hierarchical' | |
| A reaction: This is why modern mechanistic philosophy only began in 2000, despite Wesley Salmon's championing of the roughly mechanistic approach. |
| 13045 | Explanation at the quantum level will probably be by entirely new mechanisms [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: My basic feeling about explanation in the quantum realm is that it will involve mechanisms, but mechanisms that are quite different from those that seem to work in the macrocosm. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], Pref) | |
| A reaction: Since I take most explanation to be by mechanisms (or some abstraction analogous to mechanisms), then I think this is probably right (rather than being by new 'laws'). |
| 13062 | Does an item have a function the first time it occurs? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: In functional explanation, there is a disagreement over whether an item has a function the first time it occurs. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: This question arises particularly in evolutionary contexts, and would obviously not generally arise in the case of human artefacts. |
| 13063 | Explanations reveal the mechanisms which produce the facts [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I favour an ontic conception of explanation, that explanations reveal the mechanisms, causal or other, that produce the facts we are trying to explain. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: [He also cites Coffa and Peter Railton] A structure may explain, and only be supported by causal powers, but it doesn't seem to be the causal powers that do the explaining. Is a peg fitting a hole explained causally? |
| 16557 | Salmon's mechanisms are processes and interactions, involving marks, or conserved quantities [Salmon, by Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: For Salmon mechanisms are composed of processes and interactions. The interactions are identified in terms of transmitted marks and statistical relations, or (more recently) exchanges of conserved quantities. | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causality and Explanation [1998], 3.1) by Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C - Thinking About Mechanisms 3.1 | |
| A reaction: They say that Salmon has too little to say about the activities that constitute a mechanism. A 'mark' doesn't sound too promising, but I quite like the exchange of conserved quantities, which gets into the guts of what is going on. |
| 13060 | Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Can events whose probabilities are low be explained? | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be one of the reasons why explanation must ultimately reside at the level of individual objects and events, rather than residing with generalisations and laws. |
| 13056 | Statistical explanation needs relevance, not high probability [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Statistical relevance, not high probability, is the key desideratum in statistical explanation. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is because the explanation will not ultimately be probabilistic at all, but mechanical and causal. Hence the link is what counts, which is the relevance. He notes that relevance needs two values instead of one high value. |
| 13057 | Think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps we should think of probabilities in terms of propensities rather than frequencies. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Four Decades of Scientific Explanation [1989], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Coffa 1974 for this] I find this suggestion very appealing, as it connects up with dispositions and powers, which I take to be the building blocks of all explanation. It is, of course, easier to render frequencies numerically. |
| 17710 | Aristotelian justification uses concepts abstracted from experience [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian justification is the process of reasoning using concepts that are abstracted from experience (rather than, say, concepts that are innate or those that we associate with the meanings of words). | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: See Carrie Jenkins for a full theory along these lines (though she doesn't mention Aristotle). This is definitely my preferred view of concepts. |
| 17706 | The essence of a concept is either its definition or its conceptual relations? [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In the 'classical theory' a concept includes in it those concepts that define it. ...In the 'theory theory' view the content of a concept is determined by its relationship to other concepts. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 03.10) | |
| A reaction: Neither of these seem to give an intrinsic account of a concept, or any account of how the whole business gets off the ground. |
| 18791 | In 'situation semantics' our main concepts are abstracted from situations [Mares] |
| Full Idea: In 'situation semantics' individuals, properties, facts, and events are treated as abstractions from situations. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (Negation [2014], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: [Barwise and Perry 1983 are cited] Since I take the process of abstraction to be basic to thought, I am delighted to learn that someone has developed a formal theory based on it. I am immediately sympathetic to situation semantics. |
| 17701 | Possible worlds semantics has a nice compositional account of modal statements [Mares] |
| Full Idea: Possible worlds semantics is appealing because it gives a compositional analysis of the truth conditions of statements about necessity and possibility. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 02.2) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I get this. Is the meaning composed by the gradual addition of worlds? If not, how is meaning composed in the normal way, from component words and phrases? |
| 17702 | Unstructured propositions are sets of possible worlds; structured ones have components [Mares] |
| Full Idea: An unstructured proposition is a set of possible worlds. ....Structured propositions contain entities that correspond to various parts of the sentences or thoughts that express them. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: I am definitely in favour of structured propositions. It strikes me as so obvious as to be not worth discussion - so I am obviously missing something here. Mares says structured propositions are 'more convenient'. |
| 8412 | A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: When two processes intersect, and they undergo correlated modifications which persist after the intersection, I shall say that the intersection is a causal interaction. I take this as a fundamental causal concept. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §4) | |
| A reaction: There may be a problem individuating processes, just as there is for events. I like this approach to causation, which is ontologically sparse, and fits in with the scientific worldview. Change of properties sounds precise, but isn't. Stick to processes. |
| 8413 | Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: In a typical cause-effect situation (a 'propagation') cause must precede effect, for propagation over a finite time interval is an essential feature. In an 'interaction', an intersection of processes resulting in change, we have simultaneity. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §8) | |
| A reaction: This takes the direction of time as axiomatic, and quite right too. Salmon isn't addressing the real difficulty, though, which is that the resultant laws are usually held to be time-reversible, which is a bit of a puzzle. |
| 8411 | Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: I propose to approach causality by taking processes rather than events as basic entities. Events are relatively localised in space and time, while processes have much greater temporal duration, and, in many cases, much greater spatial extent. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §2) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an incredibly promising proposal, not just in our understanding of causation, but for our general metaphysics and understanding of nature. See Idea 4931, for example. Vague events and processes blend into one another. |
| 4784 | Salmon says processes rather than events should be basic in a theory of physical causation [Salmon, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Salmon argues that processes rather than events should be the basic entities in a theory of physical causation. | |
| From: report of Wesley Salmon (Causal Connections [1984]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.2 | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the concept of a 'process' ought to be ontologically basic. Edelman says the mind is a process. An 'event' is too loose, and a 'fact' too vague, and heaven knows what Hume meant by an 'object'. |
| 8409 | Probabilistic causal concepts are widely used in everyday life and in science [Salmon] |
| Full Idea: Probabilistic causal concepts are used in innumerable contexts of everyday life and science. ...In causes of cancer, road accidents, or food poisoning, for example. | |
| From: Wesley Salmon (Probabilistic Causality [1980], p.137) | |
| A reaction: [Second half compresses his examples] This strikes me as rather a weak point. No one ever thought that a particular road accident was actually caused by the high probability of it at a particular location. Causes are in the mechanisms. |
| 17708 | Maybe space has points, but processes always need regions with a size [Mares] |
| Full Idea: One theory is that space is made up of dimensionless points, but physical processes cannot take place in regions of less than a certain size. | |
| From: Edwin D. Mares (A Priori [2011], 06.7) | |
| A reaction: Thinkers in sympathy with verificationism presumably won't like this, and may prefer Feynman's view. |