26 ideas
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Activities can be identified spatiotemporally, and individuated by rate, duration, and types of entity and property that engage in them. They also have modes of operation, directionality, polarity, energy requirements and a range. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is their attempt at making 'activity' one of the two central concepts of ontology, along with 'entity'. A helpful analysis. It just seems to be one way of slicing the cake. |
| 7855 | Some suggest that materialism is empty, because 'physical' cannot be properly characterized [Mellor/Crane, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: It is sometimes contended that the whole idea of materialism is somehow empty, on the grounds that there is no proper way to characterize the 'physical' realm. | |
| From: report of DH Mellor / T Crane (There is no question of physicalism [1990]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.1 | |
| A reaction: [Papineau also cites Gabriel Segal] I agree with Papineau in rejecting this. Uncertainties about quantum states do not pose a problem, and the position tends to have an implicit dualism buried in it somewhere. |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is not the penicillin that causes the pneumonia to disappear, but what the penicillin does. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a very neat example for illustrating how we slip into 'entity' talk, when the reality we are addressing actually concerns processes. Without the 'what it does', penicillin can't participate in causation at all. |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: The intelligibility of a phenomenon consists in the mechanisms being portrayed in terms of a field's bottom out entities and activities. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: In other words, we understand complex things by reducing them to things we do understand. It would, though, be illuminating to see a nest of interconnected activities, even if we understood none of them. |
| 22190 | If a theory is more informative it is less probable [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: Popper's theory implies that more informative theories seem to be less probable. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 3) | |
| A reaction: [On p.75 Gorham replies to this objection] The point is that to be more testable they must be more detailed. He's not wrong. Theories are meant to be general, so they sweep up the details. But they need precise generalities and specifics. |
| 22189 | Why abandon a theory if you don't have a better one? [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: There is no sense in abandoning a successful theory if you have nothing to replace it with. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: This is also a problem for infererence to the best explanation. What to do if your best explanation is not very good? The simple message is do not rush to dump a theory when faced with an anomaly. |
| 22192 | Is Newton simpler with universal simultaneity, or Einstein simpler without absolute time? [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: Is Newton's theory simpler than Einstein's, since there is only one relation of simultaneity in absolute time, or is Einstein's simpler because it dispenses with absolute time altogether? | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, to which a good scientist might be willing to offer an answer. Since simultaneity is crucial but the existence of time is not, I would vote for Newton as the simpler. |
| 22194 | Structural Realism says mathematical structures persist after theory rejection [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: Structural Realists say that modern science achieves a true or 'truer' account of the world only with respect to its mathematical structure rather than its intrinsic qualities or nature. The structure carries over to new theories. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: At first glance I am unconvinced that when an old theory is replaced it neverthess contains some sort of 'mathematical structure' which endures and is worth preserving. No doubt Worrall, French and co have examples. |
| 22195 | Structural Realists must show the mathematics is both crucial and separate [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: Structural Realists must show that it is the mathematical aspects of the theories, not their content, that account for their success ….and that their structure and content can be clearly separated. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: Their approach certainly seems to rely on mathematical types of science, so it presumably fits biology, geology and even astronomy less well. |
| 22197 | Theories aren't just for organising present experience if they concern the past or future [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: The strangeness of interpreting theories as mere tools for organising present experience is brought out clearly in sciences like cosmology and paleontology, which largely concern events in the remote past or future. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: Not conclusive. An anti-realist has to interpret those sciences in terms of the current observations that are available. |
| 22196 | For most scientists their concepts are not just useful, but are meant to be true and accurate [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: The main difficulty with instrumentalism is its implausible account ot the meaning of theoretical claims and concepts. Most scientists take them to be straightforward attempts to describe the world. Most say they are useful because they are accurate. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: Instrumentalism is seen as a Pragmatist view, and Dewey is cited. |
| 22193 | Consilience makes the component sciences more likely [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: The more unification and integration is found among the modern sciences, the less likely it seems it will have all been a dream. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: I believe this strongly. Ancient theories which were complex, wide ranging and false do not impress me. This is part of my coherence view of justification. |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is not regularities that explain but the activities that sustain the regularities. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: Good, but we had better not characterise the 'activities' in terms of regularities. |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is common to speak of functions as properties 'had by' entities, …but they should rather be understood in terms of the activities by virtue of which entities contribute to the workings of a mechanism. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: I'm certainly quite passionately in favour of cutting down on describing the world almost entirely in terms of entities which have properties. An 'activity', though, is a bit of an elusive concept. |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: One should not think of mechanisms as exclusively mechanical (push-pull) systems. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: The difficulty seems to be that you could broaden the concept of 'mechanism' indefinitely, so that it covered history, mathematics, populations, cultural change, and even mathematics. Where to stop? |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular change from start or set-up to finish or termination conditions. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is their initial formal definition of a mechanism. Note that a mere 'activity' can be included. Presumably the mechanism might have an outcome that was not the intended outcome. Does a random element disqualify it? Are hands mechanisms? |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: To give a description of a mechanism for a phenomenon is to explain that phenomenon, i.e. to explain how it was produced. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: To 'show how' something happens needs a bit of precisification. It is probably analytic that 'showing how' means 'revealing the mechanism', though 'mechanism' then becomes the tricky concept. |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: We emphasise the activities in mechanisms. This is explicitly dualist. Substantivalists speak of entities with dispositions to act. Process ontologists reify activities and try to reduce entities to processes. We try to capture both intuitions. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: [A quotation of selected fragments] The problem here seems to be the raising of an 'activity' to a central role in ontology, when it doesn't seem to be primitive, and will typically be analysed in a variety of ways. |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Nested hierachical descriptions of mechanisms typically bottom out in lowest level mechanisms. …Bottoming out is relative …the explanation comes to an end, and description of lower-level mechanisms would be irrelevant. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me exactly the right story about mechanism, and it is a story I am associating with essentialism. The relevance is ties to understanding. The lower level is either fully understood, or totally baffling. |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: There are four bottom-out kinds of activities: geometrico-mechanical, electro-chemical, electro-magnetic and energetic. These are abstract means of production that can be fruitfully applied in particular cases to explain phenomena. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: I like that. It gives a nice core for a metaphysics for physicalists. I suspect that 'mechanical' can be reduced to something else, and that 'energetic' will disappear in the final story. |
| 6120 | Causation depends on intrinsic properties [Mellor/Crane] |
| Full Idea: The problem thoughts pose for causation is that causation depends directly only on intrinsic properties, whereas the causal powers of token thoughts depend on their contents, which are not intrinsic. | |
| From: DH Mellor / T Crane (There is no question of physicalism [1990], p.194) | |
| A reaction: This, as we find later in the paper, depends on an externalist account of thoughts. Could a relational property not be causal? Edinburgh's being wetter than London is caused by its being further north? |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Abstractions may be constructed by taking an exemplary case or instance and removing detail. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: I love 'removing detail'. That's it. Simple. I think this process is the basis of our whole capacity to formulate abstract concepts. Forget Frege - he's just describing the results of the process. How do we decide what is 'detail'? Essentialism! |
| 6121 | There are many psychophysicals laws - about the effects of sweets, colours and soft cushions [Mellor/Crane] |
| Full Idea: There are many psychophysical laws, linking sensations to non-mental features of those who have them; the industries of anaesthetics, scents, narcotics, sweeteners, coloured paints, loudspeakers and soft cushions depend on them. | |
| From: DH Mellor / T Crane (There is no question of physicalism [1990], p.198) | |
| A reaction: It may be expressing it a little strongly to call these 'laws', but they are certainly reliable regularities, and they are probably enough to undermine Davidson's claim that such laws don't exist. |
| 6122 | No defences of physicalism can deprive psychology of the ontological authority of other sciences [Mellor/Crane] |
| Full Idea: Neither laws nor causation nor claims of supervenience (the last refuge of the physicalist) deprive psychology of the ontological authority of non-mental science. | |
| From: DH Mellor / T Crane (There is no question of physicalism [1990], p.203) | |
| A reaction: There is no need to defend the practice of psychologists (or garden designers) from the depradations of bandit physicalists. But what is the ontology of psychology if it isn't dualist or physicalist? |
| 22198 | Aristotelian physics has circular celestial motion and linear earthly motion [Gorham] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian physics assumed that celestial motion is naturally circular and eternal while terrestrial motion is naturally toward the center of the earth and final. | |
| From: Geoffrey Gorham (Philosophy of Science [2009], 4) | |
| A reaction: The overthrow of this by Galileo and then Newton may have been the most dramatic revolution of the new science. It opened up the possibility of universal laws of physics. |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: The traditional notion of a law of nature has few, if any, applications in neurobiology or molecular biology. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple and self-evident fact, and bad news for anyone who want to build their entire ontology around laws of nature. I take such a notion to be fairly empty, except as a convenient heuristic device. |