96 ideas
| 21634 | Metaphysics is (supposedly) first the ontology, then in general what things are like [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics can be divided into two parts: first ontology, which is supposed to tell us what there is in general. The second part is the rest of metaphysics, which is supposed to tell us what these things are like, in various general ways. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber is a fairly sceptical guide to metaphysics, but this has been the standard view for the last decade. Before that, Quine had set an agenda of mere ontology. |
| 16415 | Esoteric metaphysics aims to be top science, investigating ultimate reality [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Esoteric metaphysics appeals to those, I conjecture, who deep down hold that philosophy is the queen of sciences after all, since it investigates what the world is REALLY like. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: He mentions Kit Fine and Jonathan Schaffer as esoteric metaphysicians. I see a pyramid of increasing generality and abstraction, with metaphysics at the top. This doesn't make it 'queen', though, because uncertainties multiply higher up. |
| 16413 | Science has discovered properties of things, so there are properties - so who needs metaphysics? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Material science has found that some features of metals make them more susceptible to corrosion but more resistant to fracture. Thus this immediately implies that there are features, i.e. properties. What is left for metaphysics to do? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Presumably economists have discovered 'features' of economies that cause unemployment, and literary critics have discovered 'features' of novels that make them good. |
| 21666 | 'Fundamentality' is either a superficial idea, or much too obscure [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The dilemma of neo-Aristotelian metaphysics is that on an ordinary reading of prioriy, 'fundamentality' won't give the intended results, and on a metaphysical reading it turns into esoteric metaphysics. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.2) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber is hostile to 'esoteric' metaphysics, but sympathetic to 'egalitarian' metaphysics, which anyone can understand (with a bit of effort). |
| 21640 | 'It's true that Fido is a dog' conjures up a contrast class, of 'it's false' or 'it's unlikely' [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'It's true that Fido is a dog' gives rise to a contrastive focus on 'true', with the contrast class probably depending on members like 'it's false that...' or 'it's unlikely that...'. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.6.3) | |
| A reaction: If we introduce (from linguistics) the idea of a 'contrast class', then Ramsey's famous example begins to sound meaningful. It might occur in a discussion of 'did Antony actually say 'Friends, Romans. countrymen'?' |
| 17990 | Instances of minimal truth miss out propositions inexpressible in current English [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A standard objection to minimalist truth is the 'incompleteness objection'. Since there are propositions inexpressible in present English the concept of truth isn't captured by all the instances of the Tarski biconditional. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Sounds like a good objection. |
| 21657 | Since properties can have properties, some theorists rank them in 'types' [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Since properties themselves can have properties there is a well-known division in the theory of properties between those who take a typed and those who take a type-free approach. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: I take this idea to be about linguistic predicates, and about semantics which draws on model theory. To see it as about actual 'properties' in the physical world makes no sense. |
| 21653 | Maybe not even names are referential, but are just by used by speakers to refer [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A more radical alternative which takes names not to be referring even in the broader sense, but only takes speakers to refer with uses of names. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: Given that you can make up nicknames and silly nonce names for people, this seems plausible. I may say a name in a crowded room and three people look up. |
| 10001 | An adjective contributes semantically to a noun phrase [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The semantic value of a determiner (an adjective) is a function from semantic values to nouns to semantic values of full noun phrases. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: This kind of states the obvious (assuming one has a compositional view of sentences), but his point is that you can't just eliminate adjectival uses of numbers by analysing them away, as if they didn't do anything. |
| 21636 | 'Singular terms' are not found in modern linguistics, and are not the same as noun phrases [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Being a 'singular term' is not a category in contemporary syntactic theory and it doesn't correspond to any of the notions employed there like that of a singular noun phrase or the like. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber has researched such things. This is an important objection to the reliance of modern Fregeans on the ontological commitments of singular terms (as proof that there are 'mathematical objects'). |
| 21637 | If two processes are said to be identical, that doesn't make their terms refer to entities [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Identity between objects occurs in 'How Mary makes a chocolate cake is identical to how my grandfather used to make it', but does this show that 'how Mary makes a chocolate cake' aims to pick out an entity? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a counterexample to the Fregean thought that the criterion for the existence of the referent of a singular term is its capacity to participate in an identity relation. Defenders of the Fregean view are aware of such examples. |
| 16416 | The quantifier in logic is not like the ordinary English one (which has empty names, non-denoting terms etc) [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The inferential role of the existential quantifier in first order logic does not carry over to the existential quantifier in English (we have empty names, singular terms that are not even in the business of denoting, and so on). | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ambitious, yet modest, Metaphysics [2009], 2) |
| 21643 | The inferential quantifier focuses on truth; the domain quantifier focuses on reality [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: When we ask 'is there a number?' in its inferential role (or internalist) reading, then we ask whether or not there is a true instance of 't is a number'. When we ask in its domain conditions (externalist) reading, we ask if the world contains a number. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber's key distinction. The distinction between making truth prior and making reference prior is intriguing and important. The internalist version is close to substitutional quantification. Only the externalist view needs robust reference. |
| 10007 | Quantifiers for domains and for inference come apart if there are no entities [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Quantifiers have two functions in communication - to range over a domain of entities, and to have an inferential role (e.g. F(t)→'something is F'). In ordinary language these two come apart for singular terms not standing for any entities. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §6.3) | |
| A reaction: This simple observations seems to me to be wonderfully illuminating of a whole raft of problems, the sort which logicians get steamed up about, and ordinary speakers don't. Context is the key to 90% of philosophical difficulties (?). See Idea 10008. |
| 17988 | Quantification can't all be substitutional; some reference is obviously to objects [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The view that all quantification is substitutional is not very plausible in general. Some uses of quantifiers clearly seem to have the function to make a claim about a domain of objects out there, no matter how they relate to the terms in our language. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.1) | |
| A reaction: Robust realists like myself are hardly going to say that quantification is just an internal language game. |
| 10002 | '2 + 2 = 4' can be read as either singular or plural [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: There are two ways to read to read '2 + 2 = 4', as singular ('two and two is four'), and as plural ('two and two are four'). | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber doesn't notice that this phenomenon occurs elsewhere in English. 'The team is playing well', or 'the team are splitting up'; it simply depends whether you are holding the group in though as an entity, or as individuals. Important for numbers. |
| 21644 | Numbers are used as singular terms, as adjectives, and as symbols [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Number words have a singular term use, and adjectival (or determiner) use, and the symbolic use. The main question is how they relate to each other. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: Thus 'the number four is even', 'there are four moons', and '4 comes after 3'. |
| 21646 | The Amazonian Piraha language is said to have no number words [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The now famous Piraha language, of the Amazon region in Brazil, allegedly has no number words. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.6) | |
| A reaction: Two groups can be shown to be of equal cardinality, by one-to-one matching rather than by counting. They could get by using 'equals' (and maybe unequally bigger and unequally smaller), and intuitive feelings for sizes of groups. |
| 9998 | What is the relation of number words as singular-terms, adjectives/determiners, and symbols? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: There are three different uses of the number words: the singular-term use (as in 'the number of moons of Jupiter is four'), the adjectival (or determiner) use (as in 'Jupiter has four moons'), and the symbolic use (as in '4'). How are they related? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §1) | |
| A reaction: A classic philosophy of language approach to the problem - try to give the truth-conditions for all three types. The main problem is that the first one implies that numbers are objects, whereas the others do not. Why did Frege give priority to the first? |
| 21665 | The fundamental theorem of arithmetic is that all numbers are composed uniquely of primes [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The prime numbers are more fundamental than the even numbers, and than the composite non-prime numbers. The result that all numbers uniquely decompose into a product of prime numbers is called the 'Fundamental Theorem of Arithmetic'. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.2) | |
| A reaction: I could have used this example in my thesis, which defended the view that essences are the fundamentals of explanation, even in abstract theoretical realms. |
| 21649 | How can words be used for counting if they are objects? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Number words as singular terms seem to refer to objects; numbers words in determiner or adjectival position are tied to counting. How these objects are related to counting is what the application problem is about. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.3) | |
| A reaction: You can't use stones for counting, so there must be more to numbers than the announcement that they are 'objects'. They seem to have internal relations, which makes them unusual objects. |
| 10003 | Why is arithmetic hard to learn, but then becomes easy? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Why is arithmetic so hard to learn, and why does it seem so easy to us now? For example, subtracting 789 from 26,789. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §4.2) | |
| A reaction: His answer that we find thinking about objects very easy, but as children we have to learn with difficulty the conversion of the determiner/adjectival number words, so that we come to think of them as objects. |
| 10008 | Arithmetic is not about a domain of entities, as the quantifiers are purely inferential [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: I argue for an internalist conception of arithmetic. Arithmetic is not about a domain of entities, not even quantified entities. Quantifiers over natural numbers occur in their inferential-role reading in which they merely generalize over the instances. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §6.3) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber offers the hope that modern semantics can disentangle the confusions in platonist arithmetic. Very interesting. The fear is that after digging into the semantics for twenty years, you find the same old problems re-emerging at a lower level. |
| 10005 | Arithmetic doesn’t simply depend on objects, since it is true of fictional objects [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: That 'two dogs are more than one' is clearly true, but its truth doesn't depend on the existence of dogs, as is seen if we consider 'two unicorns are more than one', which is true even though there are no unicorns. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §6.2) | |
| A reaction: This is an objection to crude empirical accounts of arithmetic, but the idea would be that there is a generalisation drawn from objects (dogs will do nicely), which then apply to any entities. If unicorns are entities, it will be true of them. |
| 10000 | We might eliminate adjectival numbers by analysing them into blocks of quantifiers [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Determiner uses of number words may disappear on analysis. This is inspired by Russell's elimination of the word 'the'. The number becomes blocks of first-order quantifiers at the level of semantic representation. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The proposal comes from platonists, who argue that numbers cannot be analysed away if they are objects. Hofweber says the analogy with Russell is wrong, as 'the' can't occur in different syntactic positions, the way number words can. |
| 21647 | Logicism makes sense of our ability to know arithmetic just by thought [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Frege's tying the objectivity of arithmetic to the objectivity of logic makes sense of the fact that can find out about arithmetic by thinking alone. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.1) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that logic is entirely a priori. We might compare the geometry of land surfaces with 'pure' geometry. If numbers are independent objects, it is unclear how we could have any a priori knowledge of them. |
| 21648 | Neo-Fregeans are dazzled by a technical result, and ignore practicalities [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: A major flaw of the neo-Fregean program is that it is more impressed by the technical result that Peano Arithmetic can be interpreted by second-order logic plus Hume's Principle, than empirical considerations about how numbers come about. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 06.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound like a problem that would bother Fregeans or neo-Fregeans much. Deriving the Peano Axioms from various beginnings has become a parlour game for modern philosophers of mathematics. |
| 10006 | First-order logic captures the inferential relations of numbers, but not the semantics [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Representing arithmetic formally we do not primarily care about semantic features of number words. We are interested in capturing the inferential relations of arithmetical statements to one another, which can be done elegantly in first-order logic. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §6.3) | |
| A reaction: This begins to pinpoint the difference between the approach of logicists like Frege, and those who are interested in the psychology of numbers, and the empirical roots of numbers in the process of counting. |
| 14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A process has a unity to it that comes from being the expression of a collection of causal powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 1) | |
| A reaction: I would be happier with this if I had a clear notion of what counts as a 'collection' of causal powers. We are back with the Leibnizian anguish over what constitutes a 'unity'. Processes need more attention, I'm thinking. |
| 14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Events are to be understood essentially as changes, rather than as property exemplifications. A particular exemplifying a property (as in Kim 1973 and Lewis 1986) would be better understood as a state of affairs. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: I agree entirely with this. I've never been able to make sense of events as such static relations. It resembles the dubious Russellian view of motion as just being at one place and then at another. |
| 21664 | Supervenience offers little explanation for things which necessarily go together [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The results from the use of supervenience in philosophical theorising are limited. In particular, modal notions can't distinguish between things which necessarily go together. For example, that truths about numbers are grounded in truths about sets. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 21660 | Reality can be seen as the totality of facts, or as the totality of things [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Reality can be seen as everything that is the case - the totality of all facts that obtain - or reality can be seen as everything there is - the totality of all things that exist. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10) | |
| A reaction: Things are a lot easier to specify than facts, but on the whole I prefer facts, just in order to affirm that there is more to reality than the mere 'things' that compose it. Our ontology must capture the dynamic and relational character of reality. |
| 21661 | There are probably ineffable facts, systematically hidden from us [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: We do have reason to think that there are ineffable facts, and that these facts are systematically hidden from us. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10.2.4) | |
| A reaction: [Hofweber's Ch.10 is a lengthy and interesting discussion of ineffable facts] Things which are very very small, or very very remote in space seem obvious candidates. The most obvious candidates are tiny detail about the remote past. |
| 17989 | Since properties have properties, there can be a typed or a type-free theory of them [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Since properties themselves can have properties there is a well-known division in the theory of properties between those who take a typed and those who take a type-free approach. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: A typed approach would imply restrictions on what it can be a property of. 'Green' is a property of surfaces, 'dark' is a property of colours. My first reaction is to opt for type-free. |
| 14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We can say that a phenomenon is 'weakly emergent' when it is unexpected, and 'strongly emergent' when it is not deducible even in principle. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3) | |
| A reaction: [compression of Chalmers 2006:244] I don't find emergence very interesting, since weak emergence surrounds us all day long, and is the glory of the world, and strong emergence is (I believe) nonsense. |
| 14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars, can all be explained in terms of powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: I love powers, but this may be optimistic. I take the concept of causation to be 'more' primitive than powers; how else could you even say what a power is? I presume something must exist to have the power, which gives you particulars. |
| 14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: In respect of explanation the powers view does little better than the laws view. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. Powers are primitive, so they offer no elucidation of nature, but constitute the building blocks for explanations. Essences are, I think, clusters of powers, and the way in which they cluster is where we find the explanations. |
| 14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Powers are not necessarily reducible to forces. ...That new powers can be found when others combine is a regular part of common sense. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: [first bit p.102] Hm. I've always thought of powers as basic components of ontology. This idea implies that a herd of buffalo has a single power to flatten a tented village. An extra buffalo creates a completely new power. An awful lot of vague powers. |
| 14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality can be understood as a sort of selection function - a natural one in this case - and picks out a limited number of outcomes from all the ones that the disposition is for. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.9) | |
| A reaction: Functions should strictly have one output. This sounds wrong. The disposition pushes its powers into the environment, but it is the surrounding contextual powers which do the selecting, in concert. No disposition does any selecting |
| 14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We use the terms 'power' and 'disposition' as equivalent, but some reserve the term 'disposition' for powers that tend to be manifested. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [For the latter they cite Fara 2005] There is some point to the latter distinction, as separating those powers that relate to the actual world from those powers that could never be triggered in actuality. I would say a power produces a disposition. |
| 14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The most obvious inadequacy of the simple conditional account of dispositions is that it fails to accommodate the possibility of prevention. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.10) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Ryle 1949 for the original idea] The point is obviously correct, since the simple analysis assumes that the outcome occurred [∀x(Dx → (Sx → Mx)]. If the outcome was blocked (by finks or antidotes) the disposition would remain. |
| 14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There have been attempts to reduce dispositionality to normativity (by Lowe 1989) and to intentionality (by Molnar 1998). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.8) | |
| A reaction: I don't really believe in something called 'normativity', and I think it is better to explain intentionality in terms of dispositions, rather than Molnar's way round (though intentionality of mind reveals the nature of powers rather well). |
| 21652 | Our perceptual beliefs are about ordinary objects, not about simples arranged chair-wise [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The belief that there are simples arranged chair-wise is not a perceptual belief. Our perceptual beliefs have a content about ordinary objects, not simples arranged chair-wise. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 07.3.1) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber gives ontological priority to 'perceptual beliefs'. I'm inclined to agree, but I hear the critical hordes swarming against the gate. |
| 14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If both the statue and the clay fall on someone and crush them to death, we would not say that the death is overdetermined. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: I don't need many reasons to give up the idea that the statue and the clay are two objects, but this will do nicely as one of them. |
| 14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A pandispositionalist has to defend the view that even a property such as sphericity is in reality a cluster of causal powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Is sphericity even a 'property'? I think 'feature' might be the best word for it. 'Quality' is quite good, but is too suggestive of qualia and secondary qualities. 'Mode' is not bad. Things have 'modes of existence' and 'powers'? Powers create modes. |
| 14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Perdurantism tends to go with the view that it is essentially contingent what follows what, because it is no part of the essence of temporal parts that they be arranged in any particular order. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 1) | |
| A reaction: Nice. There is nothing illogical, then, in elderly me intervening between childish me and middle-aged me. Essentialists like me must clearly oppose this view. Elderly me must be preceded and caused by middle-aged me. |
| 17535 | Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We contend that dispositionality involves a non-alethic, sui generis, irreducible modality. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Dispositional Modality [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is a lovely bold proposal, and seems to be supported by Werner Heisenberg, in Idea 17534. |
| 14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We think dispositionality is the core modality from which the other two standard modal operators draw their sense as being limiting cases on a spectrum. ...This gives a very this-worldly account of possibility and necessity. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm strongly in favour of this-worldly accounts of modal truths, so I like this. They take dispositions to hover somewhere between what is barely possible and what is absolutely necessary. But is modality actually part of the physical world? |
| 14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Dispositionality could be what gives us the idea of there being modality in the first place: that what is might not be, and what is not could be. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: Compare Williamson's suggestion that counterfactual thinking is the source of such things, which is a similar thought. I take it to be exactly correct. |
| 14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when they are understood by scientists to be related in fact by generative mechanisms, whose structures constitute the essential nature of things. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the view I espouse. It doesn't follow that those mechanisms have necessary existence. Given those mechanisms, they can only behave in that way, because behaving in some way is precisely what they are. |
| 14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Possibility could be just logical possibility (as involving no formal contradictions), or recombinations of all the existing elements (Armstrong), or truth in other concrete worlds (Lewis). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 8.4) | |
| A reaction: All wrong, I would say. Well, avoiding contradiction is obviously a sense of 'possible'. Armstrong is wrong. It rules out new 'elements' being possible, and implies impossible combinations of the current ones. As for Lewis... |
| 21663 | Counterfactuals are essential for planning, and learning from mistakes [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Counterfactuals are important for reasoning about the past and to plan for the future. If we want to learn from our mistakes, it is important to think about what would have happened if I had done things differently. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 13.4.1) | |
| A reaction: A thought also found in Tim Williamson, but not the sort of thing you hear from Lewis or Stalnaker. It is a nice example of how highly abstract and theoretical problems need to be slotted into human psychology. |
| 14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Some truthmaker theorists are truthmaker necessitarians, believing that the way facts in the world make certain propositions true is by necessitating them. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: [The cite Armstrong 2007:5-6] I don't believe in this sort of proposition (which turns out, on close inspection, to be just another way of referring to 'the facts'). Propositions are our attempts to express facts, so they can't be necessitated. |
| 14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The myth of the fivefold division of the sense needs to be overturned. In the experience of causation the senses of balance and proprioception are more important. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 9.1) | |
| A reaction: Thinking is a sensual experience too, especially in its emotional dimension. David Hume always based his empiricism on 'experience', not on the mere five external senses. |
| 14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Smoking disposes towards cancer, and has its way in many instances. The existence of some smokers without cancer, however, does nothing to falsify this dispositional claim. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: Indeed, falsification by one instance will only work against absolute and universal claims, and nature contains hardly any of those. |
| 14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If there were necessity to be found in causation, then the problem of induction would seem to be dissolved. The future would indeed proceed like the past if it were for all time necessitated what caused what. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.14) | |
| A reaction: My working hypothesis is that the essences of nature necessitate their interactions, and that the problem of induction is solved in that way. We can allow causation to be a process in this action, the transmitter of necessities. Or it could drop out. |
| 14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There is indeed natural uniformity in the negative charge of electrons, but the reason for this is that it is an essential property of being an electron that something be negatively charged. It would not be an electron otherwise. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 14570 for the first part of this thought. This doesn't feel right. The behaviour of gravity according to the inverse square law, or General Relativity, seems to be a uniformity that extends beyond the essences of the ingredients. |
| 14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The uniformity of nature principle, if it means absolute regularity, is simply false; not everyone who smokes gets cancer, not all bread nourishes. Nature is not strictly uniform, even if some things tend to be the case. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.6) | |
| A reaction: Something wrong here. The examples are high-level and complex. When someone survives smoking, or bread fails to nourish, we don't infer a disruption of uniform nature, we infer some other uniformity that has intervened. Are there natural kinds? |
| 14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: It is tempting to think that entailment is the only adequate kind of explanation because of the idea that if A does not entail B, it must have fallen short of (fully) explaining it. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: Yes. One might dream of saying 'this, and only this, necessitates what happened', but it is doubtful whether causes necessitate effects. It is a quirky view to think that every car accident is necessitated. Nuclear explosions block most events. |
| 14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Knowing the structure that something has does not in itself causally explain that thing's behaviour unless we also know what sorts of behaviour a thing of that structure can cause. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: I agree with this. If you focus on the lowest possible levels of causal explanation, I can see only powers. Whatever you come up with, it had better be something active. Geometry never started any bonfires. |
| 10004 | Our minds are at their best when reasoning about objects [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Our minds mainly reason about objects. Most cognitive problems we are faced with deal with particular objects, whether they are people or material things. Reasoning about them is what our minds are good at. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Number Determiners, Numbers, Arithmetic [2005], §4.3) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber is suggesting this as an explanation of why we continually reify various concepts, especially numbers. Very plausible. It works for qualities of character, and explains our tendency to talk about universals as objects ('redness'). |
| 14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A problem for strong emergence is that it opens the way for top-down causation if, for instance, our consciousness is causally productive of physical events. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3d) | |
| A reaction: This is what most fans of 'emergent' consciousness would love, presumably because it makes humans really important (nay, godlike!) in the scheme of things. It take it to be based on a hopelessly simplistic view of what is going on around here. |
| 21654 | The "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in a language has a referent [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: The picture of language often called the "Fido"-Fido theory of meaning says every expression in natural languages refers; they simply differ in what they refer to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems obvious that at least there are syncategorematic terms like 'not' and 'or' and 'maybe' that are internal to language. I'm inclining to the opposite view of Paul Pietroski. Hofweber says if all words are names, they can't add up to truth. |
| 21641 | Inferential role semantics is an alternative to semantics that connects to the world [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: An inferential role semantics is generally seen as a large-scale alternative to a semantics based on reference and other language-world relations. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 03.4.5) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the other obvious language-world relation is truth. Being a robust realist, I take it I have to be strongly committed to semantics which connects to the world - or do I? Reality is robust, but our talk about it is evasive? |
| 21638 | Syntactic form concerns the focus of the sentence, as well as the truth-conditions [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Syntactic form is not only related to the truth conditions of a sentence; it is also related to what focus an utterance of a sentence will have. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.5.2) | |
| A reaction: Hofweber has commendably studied some linguistics. The idea of mental and linguistic 'focus' increasingly strikes me as of importance in many areas of philosophy. E.g. in the scope of ethics, on whom should you focus? |
| 21658 | Properties can be expressed in a language despite the absence of a single word for them [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Simply because there is no single word in a certain language for a certain property doesn't mean that it isn't expressible in that language. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Good. For example a shade of blue for which there is no label might be 'the next darkest discriminable shade of blue adjacent to the one we are looking at'. And then the one after that... But 'tastes better than Diet Pepsi' in ancient Greek? |
| 21659 | 'Being taller than this' is a predicate which can express many different properties [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: It is said that not every property can be expressed because there are more properties than there are predicates. ...But the same predicate can be used to express many different properties: 'being taller than this' depends on what 'this' refers to. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: A good example, but being a comparative and relying on a demonstrative indexical makes it a favourable example. 'Being made of iron' doesn't have much scope for expressing many properties. |
| 21655 | Compositonality is a way to build up the truth-conditions of a sentence [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Compositional semantics assigns semantic values to various expressions in order to generate the truth conditions of the sentences in which they can occur correctly, ...thus leading to the truth-conditions of the sentence. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.3) | |
| A reaction: I favour both the compositional and the truth-conditional accounts of semantics, but I am not sure how to fit the pragmatic and contextual ingredient into that picture. You can't leave out psychology. |
| 21656 | Proposition have no content, because they are content [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there propositions then they do not have content, because they are content. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: This sounds right. A rather obvious regress threatens if you say otherwise. |
| 21635 | Without propositions there can be no beliefs or desires [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: If there are no propositions, then there are no contents, and thus there are no beliefs and desires. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 01.4.3) | |
| A reaction: A simple but powerful point. Those who claim that there are only sentences (and no propositions) can hardly claim that you must formulate a sentence every time you have a specific belief or desire. |
| 21662 | Do there exist thoughts which we are incapable of thinking? [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Might there be some thought token that has a different content than any such token we can in principle have? | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 10.3.3) | |
| A reaction: For me the idea that a thought might exist which can never be thought is an absurdity, but people who believe in the external existence of parts of reality called 'propositions' seem committed to it. A baffling view. |
| 21645 | 'Semantic type coercion' is selecting the reading of a word to make the best sense [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Semantic type coercion' is where an expression of variable type is forced to take a particular type on a particular occasion so that the sentence as a whole in which it occurse is semantically interpretable. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 05.4.4) | |
| A reaction: He compares 'and' in 'John sang and Mary danced' with 'John and Mary danced together', where 'and' can vary in type, and we adopt the reading that makes sense. Hofweber says we do this with number language. He favours 'cognitive need'. |
| 21639 | 'Background deletion' is appropriately omitting background from an answer [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: 'Background deletion' is the pheomenon that what isn't focused in an answer, what is the background, can be left out of the answer, with the resulting sub-sentential answer nonetheless being appropriate. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Ontology and the Ambitions of Metaphysics [2016], 02.6.2) | |
| A reaction: [I'm struck by the verbosity of this sentence, from an over-long book] It is not unreasonable to think that each conversational exchange has an implicit and agreed domain of quantification. Well, 'focus', then. |
| 17991 | Holism says language can't be translated; the expressibility hypothesis says everything can [Hofweber] |
| Full Idea: Holism says that nothing that can be said in one language can be said in another one. The expressibility hypothesis says that everything that can be said in one language can be said in every other one. | |
| From: Thomas Hofweber (Inexpressible Properties and Propositions [2006], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Obviously expressibility would only refer to reasonably comprehensive languages (with basic logical connectives, for example). Personally I vote for the expressibility hypothesis, which Hofweber seems to favour. |
| 22595 | Liberty is the triumph of the individual, over both despotic government and enslaving majorities [Constant] |
| Full Idea: Lliberty is the triumph of the individual, as much over a government which seeks to rule by despotic methods, as over the masses who seek to render the minority the slave of the majority. | |
| From: Benjamin Constant (Principles of Politics [1806]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 4 | |
| A reaction: [No page given] Dunt describes Constant's book as the first really systematic account of liberalism. Very important to have rights against the majority, as well as against government. |
| 22597 | Minority rights are everyone's rights, because we all have turns in the minority [Constant] |
| Full Idea: To defend the rights of minorities is to defend the rights of all. Everyone in turn finds himself in the minority. | |
| From: Benjamin Constant (Principles of Politics [1806]), quoted by Ian Dunt - How to be a Liberal 4 | |
| A reaction: Very conformist people, who are often the most oppressive, are rarely in the minority, and are unlikely to be impressed by this idea. |
| 14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation by absence should be understood in terms of our explanatory practices rather than as a case of genuine causation. There are indeed no powers at work. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, even if from a human point of view some evil person has deliberately desisted from some life-saving action. It is just allowing other causation to happen. A tricky forensic issue, but not an ontological one. |
| 14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is not always transitive. ...The fire started the sprinkler system and the sprinkler system put the fire out; would we want to say that, by transitivity, the fire caused the fire to be extinguished? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 7.6) | |
| A reaction: There wouldn't have been an extinguishing of the fire if there had been no fire. But this is a very nice example, against the Millian view that causation consists of every event prior to the effect. The fire is, though, a precondition. |
| 14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is the passing around of powers. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. This doesn't feel right. Compare 'causation is the passing around of tennis balls'. Can you explain what a power is without mentioning causation? |
| 14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We accept primitivism about causation, for how could there be something even more basic in the world than causation, which might allow us to bring forth a reductive analysis? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], Concl) | |
| A reaction: I think I agree with this view, and for the same reason. I can't imagine how one could cite any 'categorical' or 'structural' properties, or anything else, without invoking causal phenomena in their characterisation. |
| 14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Rather than depicting causation as between two wholly distinct relata, we argue that it should be seen as a single unfolding process that occurs when a number of mutual manifestation partners meet. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], Pref) | |
| A reaction: I am in sympathy with this view, and like the notion of 'process' in metaphysics, but I worry about what a 'process' consists of. Does it have ingredients? It can last a long time, so presumably it can have parts. Mere time slices? |
| 14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: When billiard balls collide they deform, and we have a process rather than a momentary collision. Causation is a matter of simultaneity, and simultaneous does not entail instantaneous. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: This is why they reject the idea that causal relata are abutting events meeting at timeless joints. I think they have got this bit right. It's amazing what a muddle philosophers have got into in just describing what happens in front of their eyes. |
| 14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If causation connects two events, do we need some invisible third element to tie them together? Might there be just two elements so close together that they come as a package deal? Or a single event or process in which one thing turns into another? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Hence you find yourself drawn to 'process' philosophy, but preferably without the mystical crust laid over it by A.N. Whitehead. If we could individuate processes, we could dump all sorts of other stuff from our ontology. |
| 14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: It would be counterintuitive to say that we have the cause only when the sugar cube first comes into contact with the water, and the effect only once the whole sugar cube has dissolved. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.6) | |
| A reaction: The way we end up thinking about causation is largely dictated by the language we use to describe it. The whole point of philosophy is to scrape away the language and see what is really going on. |
| 14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: To speak of 'the' causal explanation privileges some causal powers, but it is implausible that this has a special metaphysical status. Instead, that status should be understood in epistemic or pragmatic terms. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: I suppose so, but I see a distinction between actions of powers which only explain that one event (striking the match), and actions of powers which explain a whole family of surrounding events (presence of oxygen). |
| 14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There can be constant conjunction without causation (coincidences) and causation without constant conjunction (smoking causes cancer). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be presented as a knock-down argument, but I think Humeans can reply to both of them. If you look at the wider pattern of coincidence, or the deeper pattern of coincidence, both of these counterexamples seem to fail. |
| 14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causes can - perhaps they usually do - make a difference but not always. In cases where they don't (such as overdetermination, or late pre-emption), the corresponding counterfactual will be false. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: The whole idea that we might be able to give a full account of causation in terms of some sort of logical relationship between possible worlds etc. appals me. We need to label something as 'Scientific Logicism', so that we can attack it. |
| 14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: There is an obvious Euthyphro question to be asked: is it true that c caused e because e counterfactually depended on c; or did e counterfactually depend on c precisely because c caused e? | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: The idea that causes could depend on a logical relationship of counterfactual dependence strikes me as so bizarre that only a philosopher could think of it. |
| 14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We could argue that there can be counterfactual dependence between events without causation, namely, cases of double prevention (an event preventing what would have prevented the second). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: Since the whole idea of causation as counterfactual dependence strikes me as utterly counterintuitive, I don't really need these arguments, but it is nice to know that they can be found. Lewis devoted reams of discussion to such problems. |
| 14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: A natural process can be interfered with, and thus a cause never necessitates its effects. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: There is the simple point that the world could cease to exist at the instant between cause and effect. But Mumford and Anjum say these two coexist. Finks and antidotes are not conclusive here. Depends what you mean by 'cause' and 'effect'. |
| 14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: We can assert the general claim that smoking causes cancer without endorsing the claim that smoking necessitates cancer. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.11) | |
| A reaction: This is the simplest demolition of the idea that effects necessarily follow causes. Necessitarians might wriggle out of it by focusing on the word 'causes' more closely here. Maybe this example isn't a 'strict' usage. |
| 14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: If causation involves any kind of necessity, it should survive the test of antecedent strengthening. ...It is plausible that for any type of causal process, that some new cause can be added which typically results in the effect no longer being caused. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [Idea expanded p.57] This is their key argument against the idea that causation involves necessity. In simple terms, show me a cause which necessarily leads to some result, and I will show you how you could prevent that result. Sounds good. |
| 14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: The most persuasive view of a 'ceteris paribus' clause is that the best non-trivially true account that we can give of their meaning is that they indicate that the conditional has dispositional force only. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 6.8) | |
| A reaction: [They cite Lipton 1999] As a general fan of dispositions (as are Mumford and Lill Anjum), this sounds right. If you then add that virtually every event in nature needs a ceteris paribus clause (see N. Cartwright), the whole thing becomes dispositional. |
| 14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Causation is consistent with there being necessitation in the world, but we claim that causation does not itself provide that necessitation. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 3.8) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. One might distinguish between causation being necessary, and causation supplying the necessity. The obvious alternative is that essences supply the necessity. |
| 14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: What we take to be laws are just descriptions of how the powers behave and affect each other. | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely my view, which I first gleaned in its boldest from from Mumford 2004. I idea that ontology does not contain any 'laws of nature' I find wonderfully liberating. Weak emergence is just epistemic. |
| 14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Physical laws are typically understood as equations, ...but then factors must vary simultaneously, since if one factor varied before the others, there would be a time when the two sides of the equation didn't equate (so Newton's 2nd Law would be false). | |
| From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: Nice. Presumably this thought seems to require action-at-a-distance, which no one could understand. Science oversimplifes the world. See Nancy Cartwright. |