13 ideas
| 16039 | Supervenience: No A-difference without a B-difference [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: The slogan for supervenience might be 'there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference'. …(qualifying as a 'perfect forgery' would be an example). | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: The key point about supervenience is that it is one-way. Presumably 'tracking' would be a better single word for it than 'dependence', which implies some sort of causal power. Supervenience describes, but doesn't attempt to explain. |
| 16043 | Supervenience is non-symmetric - sometimes it's symmetric, and sometimes it's one-way [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience is neither symmetric nor asymmetric; it is non-symmetric. Sometimes it holds symmetrically. …And sometimes it holds asymmetrically. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.2) | |
| A reaction: I think of supervenience as 'tracking'. Stalkers track victims; married couples track one another. Beauty tracks statues, but statues don't seem to track beauty. I take so-called mind-brain supervenience to be two-way, not one-way. |
| 16047 | Weak supervenience is in one world, strong supervenience in all possible worlds [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Weak supervenience says there is no possible world that contains individuals that are B-indiscernible but A-discernible. Strong supervenience entails the same even if they are in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §4.1) | |
| A reaction: In other words (I presume), in simple language, the weak version says they happen supervene, the strong version says they have to supervene. |
| 16040 | Aesthetics, morality and mind supervene on the physical? Modal on non-modal? General on particular? [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: It has been claimed that aesthetic, moral and mental properties supervene upon physical properties, …and that modal truths supervene on non-modal ones, and that general truths supervene on particular ones. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I am attracted to the last bit. I am bewildered by people who try to derive particular truths from general ones, such as deriving physical behaviour from laws, or the nature of some creature simply from its species. Only some tigers are man-eaters. |
| 16044 | Some entailments do not involve supervenience, as when brotherhood entails siblinghood [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Some entailments do not suffice for supervenience. Being a brother entails being a sibling, but being a sibling does not supervene on being a brother. Sarah has a sister and Jack in an only child. Sarah, unlike Jack, is a sibling; neither is a brother. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.2) | |
| A reaction: The whole point of supervenience, I take it, is to label a relation of tracking, while offering no explanation of the tracking. Entailment would be a rather powerful explanation, as would a dog's being tied to a cart. |
| 16046 | Reduction requires supervenience, but does supervenience suffice for reduction? [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Everyone agrees that reduction requires supervenience, …but the more interesting issue is whether supervenience suffices for reduction. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: I think we should assume that there is a reason for every genuine case of supervenience (i.e. there are no cases of eternal or ubiquitious coincidence). One-way causation seems to give supervenience without reduction. |
| 16049 | Definitions of physicalism are compatible with a necessary God [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: All definitions of physicalism are compatible with the existence of a necessarily existing God. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: All the definitions seem to depend on all the facts covarying with the physical facts, so anything which is invariant (such as divine or platonic entities) will stand outside the definition. Physicalism is more like a credo about all facts whatever. |
| 16643 | Accidents always remain suited to a subject [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: An accident's aptitudinal relationship to a subject is essential, and this is never taken away from accidents….for it is true to say that they are suited to a subject. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], IV.12.1.1.1c) | |
| A reaction: This is the compromise view that allows accidents to be separated, for Transubstantiation, while acknowledging that we identify them with their subjects. |
| 16696 | Successive things reduce to permanent things [Bonaventura] |
| Full Idea: Everything successive reduces to something permanent. | |
| From: Bonaventura (Commentary on Sentences [1252], II.2.1.1.3 ad 5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.2 | |
| A reaction: Avicenna first took successive entities seriously, but Bonaventure and Aquinas seem to have rejected them, or given reductive accounts of them. It resembles modern actualists versus modal realists. |
| 16042 | The metaphysically and logically possible worlds are the same, so they are the same strength [Bennett,K] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysical necessity is just as strong as logical necessity in that the space of metaphysical possibility is exactly the same as the space of logical possibility: the logically possible worlds = the metaphysically possible worlds. | |
| From: Karen Bennett (Supervenience [2011], §3.1) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. To be the 'same strength' there would also have to be the same number of logical as metaphysical truths, and I presume that is not the case. There are far more logical than metaphysical possibilities. |
| 20887 | A rape disregards the status of being a person - but so does all assault [Foa] |
| Full Idea: In a rape a person is used without proper regard for her personhood - but this is true of every kind of assault. | |
| From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is a good step towards her attempt to pin down what is specifically wrong with rape, which strikes me as an extremely important question, and not merely in order to justify punishments. |
| 20888 | Rape of children is dreadful, but no one thinks children should have a right of consent [Foa] |
| Full Idea: Rape of children is at least as heinous as rape of adults, though few believe that children have or ought to have the same large domain of consent adults (male and female) ought to have. | |
| From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 1) | |
| A reaction: A powerful point. She is not quite spelling out the crux, which is that no one thinks children should have a right to consent to sexual intercourse, which means that consent is irrelevant in such a case of rape. So it can't be the key to adult rape? |
| 20889 | If men should lust and women shouldn't, that makes rape the prevalent sexual model [Foa] |
| Full Idea: We are taught that sexual desires are desires women ought not to have and men must have. This is the model which makes necessary an eternal battle of the sexes. It explains why rape is the prevalent model of sexuality. | |
| From: Pamela Foa (What's Wrong with Rape? [1977], 3) | |
| A reaction: A striking thought. See 'The Origins of Sex' by F.Dabhoiwala, which claims that women used to be seen as the sexual predators, and the balance shifted in the 18thC. Are women obliged to exhibit lust, in order to defuse rapacious desires? |