40 ideas
23770 | Reductive analysis makes a concept clearer, by giving an alternative simpler set [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: A reductive analysis is one that provides an alternative set of concepts by which some target concept can be understood. It must be non-circular, and given in terms of concepts that are themselves better understood. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
A reaction: There seem to be two aims of analysis: this one emphasises understanding, but the other one concerns ontology - by demonstrating that some concept or thing can be understood fully by what happens at a lower level. |
23769 | Promoting an ontology by its implied good metaphysic is an 'argument-by-display' [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: The form of argument which sells an ontology on the basis a metaphysic is known as an 'argument-by-display'. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
A reaction: [Attributed to John Bigelow 1999] New to me, but I'm quite a fan of this. For example, my rejection of platonism is not based on specific arguments, but on looking at the whole platonic picture of reality. |
5515 | Imaginary cases are good for revealing our beliefs, rather than the truth [Parfit] |
Full Idea: I believe it is worth considering imaginary cases (such as Teletransportation), as we can use them to discover, not what the truth is, but what we believe. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.293) | |
A reaction: The trouble is that we might say that IF I were suddenly turned into a pig, then I would come to believe in dualism, but that will not and cannot happen, because dualism is false. It seems essential to accept the natural possibility of the case. |
23783 | Change exists, it is causal, and it needs an explanation [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: There is a phenomenon of change. I am starting with the assumptions that it is a causal phenomenon, and that it requires explanation. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
A reaction: That is, I take it, that we need a theory which explains change, rather than just describing it. Well said. Williams says, roughly, that each stage causes the next stage. |
23784 | Processes don't begin or end; they just change direction unexpectedly [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: No process every really starts or ends. …A process we see as derailed is really just an expected sequence that continues in an unexpected direction. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.3) | |
A reaction: Obviously if you cannot individuate processes, then the concept of a process is not much use in ontology. Williams rejects processes, and I think he is probably right. He breaks processes down into smaller units. |
23790 | Processes are either strings of short unchanging states, or continuous and unreducible events [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Processes can be modelled in two ways. They are drawn out events encompassing many changes, but dissectible into short-lived states, none including change. Or they are continuous and impenetrable, and to split them is impossible. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 09.3) | |
A reaction: Obviously a process has temporal moments in it, so the unsplittability is conceptual. I find the concept of changeless parts baffling. But if processes are drawn out, they can't be basic to ontology. |
5516 | Reduction can be by identity, or constitution, or elimination [Parfit, by PG] |
Full Idea: We can distinguish Identifying Reductionism (as in 'persons are bodies'), or Constitutive Reductionism (as in 'persons are distinct, but consist of thoughts etc.'), or Eliminative Reductionism (as in 'there are no persons, only thoughts etc.'). | |
From: report of Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.295) by PG - Db (ideas) | |
A reaction: Constitutive Reductionism seems the most common one, as in 'chemistry just consists of lots of complicated physics'. He doesn't mention bridge laws, which are presumably only required in more complicated cases of constitutive reduction. |
23786 | The status quo is part of what exists, and so needs metaphysical explanation [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: The status quo is part of what exists, and thus it is a proper topic of concern for the metaphysician, and so it warrants explanation. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
A reaction: His point is that ontology as a mere inventory of things gives no account of why they remain unchanged, as well as their processes and connections. |
23768 | A metaphysic is a set of wider explanations derived from a basic ontology [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: A metaphysic is what you get when you embed a fundamental ontology within a larger metaphysical framework by repeatedly appealing to elements of that ontology in explaining metaphysical phenomena. …Only then do you see what the ontology is worth. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.1) | |
A reaction: Confirming my mantra that metaphysics is an explanatory activity. I think it is important that the ontology includes relations (such as 'determinations'), and is not just an inventory of types of entity. |
23773 | Humeans say properties are passive, possibility is vast, laws are descriptions, causation is weak [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: The main components of neo-Humean metaphysics are that properties are inherently non-modal and passive, that what is possible is restricted only by imagination and coherence, that laws are non-governing descriptions, and causation is weak and extrinsic. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 02.1) | |
A reaction: This is Williams identifying the enemy, prior to offering the much more active and restictive powers ontology. I'm with Williams. |
23779 | We shouldn't posit the existence of anything we have a word for [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: There seems to be a mysterious desire to posit entities simply because certain terms pop up in our vocabulary. But we should not be so indiscriminate about our posits, even if our talk is properly vetted. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.1) | |
A reaction: This should hardly need saying, and the familiar example is 'for the sake of' entailing sakes, but it seems to be a vice that is still found in metaphysical philosophy. The word 'nothingness' comes to mind. |
16657 | Substance, Quantity and Quality are real; other categories depend on those three [Henry of Ghent] |
Full Idea: Among creatures there are only three 'res' belong to the three first categories: Substance, Quantity and Quality. All other are aspects [rationes] and intellectual concepts with respect to them, with reality only as grounded on the res of those three. | |
From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3 | |
A reaction: Pasnau connects with the 'arrangement of being', giving an 'ontologically innocent' structure to reality. That seems to be what we all want, if only we could work out the ontologically guilty bit. |
16658 | The only reality in the category of Relation is things from another category [Henry of Ghent] |
Full Idea: There is beyond a doubt nothing real in the category of Relation, except what is a thing from another category. | |
From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], VII:1-2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.3 | |
A reaction: This seems to have been the fairly orthodox scholastic view of relations. |
16645 | Accidents are diminished beings, because they are dispositions of substance (unqualified being) [Henry of Ghent] |
Full Idea: Accidents are beings only in a qualified and diminished sense, because they are not called beings, nor are they beings, except because they are dispositions of an unqualified being, a substance. | |
From: Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], XV.5), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 10.4 | |
A reaction: This is aimed to 'half' detach the accidents (as the Eucharist requires). Later scholastics detached them completely. Late scholastics seem to have drifted back to Henry's view. The equivocal use of 'being' here was challenged later. |
23780 | Every possible state of affairs is written into its originating powers [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: On the model of powers I prefer, every possible state of affairs that can arise is written into the powers that would constitute them. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.3) | |
A reaction: I can't make any sense of 'written into', any more than I could when Leibniz proposed roughly the same thing about monads. I presume he means that any state of affairs which ever arises is the expression of the intrinsic nature of powers. |
23789 | Naming powers is unwise, because that it usually done by a single manifestation [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Naming powers is unwise; the main reason is that there is a long tradition of naming powers according to the manifestations they can produce, and that does not square well with multi-track powers. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.4) | |
A reaction: On the other hand there must be some attempt to individuate powers (by scientists, if not by philosophers), and that can only rely on the manifestations. Describe them, rather than name them? Just assign them a number! |
23775 | Powers are 'multi-track' if they can produce a variety of manifestations [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Powers are 'multi-track', meaning that they are capable of producing a variety of different manifestations when me with diverse stimuli. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
A reaction: He later mentions magnetism. Not convinced of this. Powers probably never exist in isolation, so a different manifestation could be because a different power becomes involved. (Bird is a single-tracker). |
23771 | Fundamental physics describes everything in terms of powers [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Physics describes fundamental entities exclusively in terms of what sound like powers. 'Charge' names the power to produce electromagnetic fields; 'spin' the power to contribute to the angular momentum of of system; 'mass' to produce gravitational force. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.4) | |
A reaction: These are the three basic properties of an electron, which is fundamental in the standard model. You can say that their field is more fundamental than the particles, but the field is also only known as a set of powers. Powers rule! |
23776 | Rather than pure powers or pure categoricals, I favour basics which are both at once [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Power Monism: all properties are powers. Categoricalism: all fundamentals are categorical. Dualism allows both types. I defend Mixed Monism - that there is a single class of fundamental properties that are at once powerful and categorical. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
A reaction: This is the main dilemma for the powers ontology - of how powers can be basic, if there needs to be some entity which possesses the power. But what possesses the powers of an electron? I like Williams's idea, without being clear about it. |
23777 | Powers are more complicated than properties which are always on display [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: The mode in which a power presents itself is more complicated than those properties that have (strictly) nothing more to them than that which is always on display. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
A reaction: This is the key idea that nature is dynamic, and so must consist of potentials as well as actuals. Interesting distinction. A basic division between those properties 'always on display', and those that are not? |
23774 | There are basic powers, which underlie dispositions, potentialities, capacities etc [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: It is no surprise that talk of dispositions, capacities, abilities, tendencies, powers, and potentialities are part of our everyday interactions. …I have in mind a basic set of powers, the sort which underlie all of these. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as the correct picture. It is misleading say that a ball has a 'power' to roll smoothly. The powers are inside the ball. |
23791 | Dispositions are just useful descriptions, which are explained by underlying powers [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Powers are the properties at the core of the powers ontology, and dispositions are more like useful talk. …Dispositions are the phenomena to be explained by the power metaphysic. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 10.2) | |
A reaction: The picture I subscribe to. The first step is to see nature as dynamic (as Aristotle does with his 'potentialities'), and the next step to understand what must ground these dynamic dispositional properties. He calls dispositions 'process initiators'. |
23772 | If objects are property bundles, the properties need combining powers [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: If objects are bundles of properties …they must be robust enough to enter into building relations with one another such that they can form objects. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.5) | |
A reaction: A very nice point. The Humean bundle view of objects just seems to take properties to be 'impressions' or verbal predicates, but they must have causal powers to be a grounding for ontology. |
23788 | Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: 'Perdurantism' is the view that objects persist by being composed of temporal parts. When it is commonly combined with the eternalist account of the ontology of time, the result is known as 'four-dimensionalism'. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.1) | |
A reaction: At last, a clear account of the distinction between these two! They're both wrong. He says the result is the spatiotemporal 'worm' view (i.e. one temporal extended thing, rather than a collection of parts). |
22012 | Kant says things-in-themselves cause sensations, but then makes causation transcendental! [Henry of Ghent, by Pinkard] |
Full Idea: Kant claimed that things-in-themselves caused our sensations; but causality was a transcendental condition of experience, not a property of things-in-themselves, so the great Kant had contradicted himself. | |
From: report of Henry of Ghent (Quodlibeta [1284], Supplement) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 04 | |
A reaction: This early objection by the conservative Jacobi (who disliked Enlightenment rational religion) is the key to the dispute over whether Kant is an idealist. Kant denied being an idealist, but how can he be, if this idea is correct? |
3539 | Personal identity is just causally related mental states [Parfit, by Maslin] |
Full Idea: For Parfit all personal identity really amounts to is a chain of experiences and other psychological features causally related to each other in 'direct' sorts of ways. | |
From: report of Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971]) by Keith T. Maslin - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind 10.5 | |
A reaction: When summarised like this, it strikes me that Parfit is just false to our experience, whatever Hume may say. I suspect that Parfit (and those like him) concentrate too much on rather passive perceptual experience, and neglect the will. |
5514 | Psychologists are interested in identity as a type of person, but philosophers study numerical identity [Parfit] |
Full Idea: When psychologists discuss identity, they are typically concerned with the kind of person someone is, or wants to be (as in an 'identity crisis'). But when philosophers discuss identity, it is numerical identity they mean. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.293) | |
A reaction: I think it is important to note that the philosophical problem breaks down into two areas: whether I have numerical identity with myself over time, and whether other people have it. It may be that two different sets of criteria will emerge. |
1393 | One of my future selves will not necessarily be me [Parfit] |
Full Idea: If I say 'It will not be me, but one of my future selves', I do not imply that I will be that future self. He is one of my later selves, and I am one of his earlier selves. There is no underlying person we both are. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §5) | |
A reaction: The problem here seems to be explaining why I should care about my later self, if it isn't me. If the answer is only that it will be psychologically very similar to me, then I would care more about my current identical twin than about my future self. |
5521 | If my brain-halves are transplanted into two bodies, I have continuity, and don't need identity [Parfit] |
Full Idea: If the two halves of my brain are transplanted into different bodies just like mine, they cannot both be me, since that would make them the same person. ..But my relation to these two contains everything that matters, so identity is not what matters. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.314) | |
A reaction: I challenge his concept of what 'matters'. He has a rather solipsistic view of the problem, and I take Parfit to be a rather unsociable person, since his friends and partner will be keenly interested in the identities of the new beings. |
5522 | Over a period of time what matters is not that 'I' persist, but that I have psychological continuity [Parfit] |
Full Idea: We should revise our view about identity over time: what matters isn't that there will be someone alive who will be me; it is rather that there should be at least one living person who will be psychologically continuous with me as I am now. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.316) | |
A reaction: Parfit and Locke seem to agree on this, and it is no accident that they both like 'science fiction' examples. Apparently Parfit wouldn't bat an eyelid if someone threatened to cut his corpus callosum. I rate it as a catastrophe for my current existence. |
1392 | If we split like amoeba, we would be two people, neither of them being us [Parfit] |
Full Idea: In the case of the man who, like an amoeba, divides….we can suggest that he survives as two different people without implying that he is those people. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §1) | |
A reaction: Maybe an amoeba is a homogeneous substance for which splitting is insignificant, but when a person has certain parts that are totally crucial, splitting them is catastrophic, and quite different. I'm not sure that splitting a self would leave persons. |
5519 | It is fine to save two dying twins by merging parts of their bodies into one, and identity is irrelevant [Parfit] |
Full Idea: If I am largely paralysed, and my twin brother is dying of brain disease, then if the operation to graft my head onto his body is offered, I should accept the operation, and it is irrelevant whether this person would be me. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.308) | |
A reaction: Parfit notes that the brain is a particularly significant part of the process. The fact that I might cheerfully accept this offer without philosophical worries doesn't get rid of the question 'who is this person?' Who should they remain married to? |
5520 | If two humans are merged surgically, the new identity is a purely verbal problem [Parfit] |
Full Idea: If there is someone with my head and my brother's body, it is a merely verbal question whether that person will be me, and that is why, even if it won't be me, that doesn't matter. ..What matters is not identity, but the facts of which identity consists. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.310) | |
A reaction: It strikes me that from the subjective psychological point of view identity is of little interest, but from the objective external viewpoint (e.g. the forensic one) such questions are highly significant, and rightly so. |
1391 | Concern for our own lives isn't the source of belief in identity, it is the result of it [Parfit] |
Full Idea: Egoism, and the fear not of near but of distant death, and the regret that so much of one's life should have gone by - these are not, I think, wholly natural or instinctive. They are strengthened by a false belief in stable identity. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Personal Identity [1971], §6) | |
A reaction: This raises some very nice questions, about the extent to which various aspects of self-concern are instinctive and natural, or culturally induced, and even totally misguided and false. I can worry about the distant death of my guinea pig, or my grandson. |
5518 | It doesn't matter whether I exist with half my components replaced (any more than an audio system) [Parfit] |
Full Idea: It is quite uninteresting whether, with half its components replaced, I have the same audio system, and also whether I exist if half of my body were simultaneously replaced. | |
From: Derek Parfit (The Unimportance of Identity [1995], p.302) | |
A reaction: It is impossible to deny this, if the part replaced is not the brain. My doubt about Parfit's thesis is that while I may not care whether some modified thing is still me, my lawyers and the police might be very concerned. |
9762 | We should focus less on subjects of experience, and more on the experiences themselves [Parfit] |
Full Idea: It becomes more plausible, when thinking morally, to focus less upon the person, the subject of experiences, and instead to focus more upon the experiences themselves. | |
From: Derek Parfit (Reasons and Persons [1984], §116) | |
A reaction: This pinpoints how Parfit moves from a view of persons in terms of continuity of consciousness to a utilitarian morality. It brings out nicely what is wrong with utilitarianism - the reductio of a great ball of nice experiences, with no one having them. |
23785 | Causation needs to explain stasis, as well as change [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: I believe that it is also the job of a theory of causation to explain non-change | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
A reaction: Good point. Most attempts to pin down causation refer only to changes and differences. Two playing cards propping one another up is his example. |
23782 | Causation is the exercise of powers [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Causation is the exercising of powers. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
A reaction: Job done. Get over it. This is the view I prefer. |
23787 | If causes and effects overlap, that makes changes impossible [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: It would be shocking if an account of causation ruled out the possibility of change. But if a cause perfectly overlaps its effect in time, then the rejection of change is precisely what follows. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.6) | |
A reaction: He cites Kant, Martin, Heil and Mumford/Anjum for this view. The latter seem to see causation as a 'process' (allowing change), which Williams as ruled out. The Williams point must be correct. |
23778 | Powers contain lawlike features, pointing to possible future states [Williams,NE] |
Full Idea: Powers carry their lawlike features within them: it is part of their essence, qua power. Their pointing at future states just is their internal law-like nature; it is what gets expressed in such and such conditions. | |
From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
A reaction: Modern writers on powers seem unaware that Leibniz got there first. This seems to me the correct account of the ontology of laws. The formulation of laws is probably the best descriptive system for nature's patterns (over time as well as space). |