70 ideas
| 15169 | Metaphysics is clarifying how we speak and think (and possibly improving it) [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics, for the conventionalist, is not a matter of trying to see deeply into the structure of mind-independent reality, but of trying to clarify the way we actually speak and think, and perhaps negotiating ways of doing this to our best advantage. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Note that he is still allowing space for 'revisionary' as well as for 'descriptive' metaphysics. I can't wholly accept this, as I really do think we can have some deep insights into reality, but Sidelle is articulating a large part of the truth. |
| 15164 | We seem to base necessities on thought experiments and imagination [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Judgments of necessity seem always to be based on thought experiments and appeals to what we can imagine. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, the denial of this thing seems inconceivable. I would say that they are also based on coherence. The idea that we can think without imagination is nonsense. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 15180 | There doesn't seem to be anything in the actual world that can determine modal facts [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysically, nothing in the actual world seems to be a candidate for determining what is necessarily the case. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I file this under 'Dispositions' to show what is at stake in the debate about dispositional and categorical properties. I take a commitment to dispositions to be a commitment to modal facts about the actual world. |
| 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). |
| 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. |
| 15184 | Causal reference presupposes essentialism if it refers to modally extended entities [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Even if the causal theory of reference proper does not presuppose essentialism, it does presuppose essentialism if it is to be an account of reference to modally extended entities. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.6) |
| 15172 | Clearly, essential predications express necessary properties [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: It is clear, of course, that if there are true essential predications, then they express necessary properties. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: I would certainly want to ask whether essences have to be analysed as properties, and also (more boldly) whether there might not be contingent essences. |
| 15181 | Being a deepest explanatory feature is an actual, not a modal property [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The property of being a deepest explanatory feature is a nonmodal property: it's an actual property. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept the existence of properties of the form 'being-F'. The possibility of securing a door may be the deepest explanatory feature of a lock. [To be fair to Sidelle, see context - just for once!] Dispositions are actual. |
| 15173 | That the essence of water is its microstructure is a convention, not a discovery [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The necessity to water of whatever is found out to be the water's microstructure is given by convention, and is not something which is discovered. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: A powerful point. It shows the authority of science that we accept the microstructure as the essence. The essences of statues and people are definitely not their microstructures. One H2O molecule isn't water. Why not? Macro-properties count too! |
| 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. |
| 15185 | We aren't clear about 'same stuff as this', so a principle of individuation is needed to identify it [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Independent of conventions, no definite sense can be given to the notion of 'the same stuff as this'. So reference-fixing must include some principle of individuation to determine the aspects of sameness for the identity referred to. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.6) | |
| A reaction: Is he really saying that we don't understand 'same stuff as this'? Surely animals can manage that, and they are not famous for their conventions. Sidelle has fallen into the sortalist trap, I think. |
| 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. |
| 15175 | Evaluation of de dicto modalities does not depend on the identity of its objects [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: In the evaluation of de dicto modal statements, whether some possible state of affairs is relevant to its truth does not depend on the identity of its objects, as in 'Necessarily, the President of the USA is male'. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a more clear-cut and easy to grasp criterion than most that are on offer. |
| 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... |
| 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. |
| 15032 | Necessary a posteriori is conventional for necessity and nonmodal for a posteriority [Sidelle, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Sidelle defends conventionalism against a posteriori necessities by 'factoring' a necessary a posteriori truth into an analytic component and a nonmodal component. The modal force then comes from the analytic part, and the a posteriority from the other. | |
| From: report of Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 12.8 | |
| A reaction: [I note that Sidelle refers, it seems, to the nonmodal component as a 'deep explanatory feature', which is exactly what I take an essence to be]. |
| 15179 | To know empirical necessities, we need empirical facts, plus conventions about which are necessary [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: What we need to know, in order to know what is empirically necessary, is some empirical fact plus our conventions that tell us which truths are necessary given which empirical facts. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: I take this attack on a posteriori necessities to be the most persuasive part of Sidelle's case, but you can't just put all of our truths down to convention. There are stabilities in the world, as well as in our conventions. |
| 15171 | The necessary a posteriori is statements either of identity or of essence [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The necessary a posteriori crudely divides into two groups - (synthetic) identity statements (between rigid designators), and statements of essential properties. The latter is either statements of property identity, or of the essences of natural kinds. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.2) | |
| A reaction: He cites Kripke's examples (Hesperus,Cicero,Truman,water,gold), and divides them into the two groups. Helpful. |
| 15167 | Empiricism explores necessities and concept-limits by imagining negations of truths [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: In the traditional empiricist picture, we go about modal enquiry by trying to see whether we can imagine a situation in which it would be correct to assert the negation of a proposed necessary truth. Thus we can find out the limits of our concepts. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) |
| 15177 | Contradictoriness limits what is possible and what is imaginable [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Contradictoriness is the boundary both of what is possible and also of what is imaginable. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: Of course we may see contradictions where there are none, and fail to grasp real hidden contradictions, so the two do not coincide in the practice. I think I would say it is 'a' boundary, not 'the' boundary. |
| 15176 | The individuals and kinds involved in modality are also a matter of convention [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: It is not merely the modal facts that result from our conventions, but the individuals and kinds that are modally involved. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: I am beginning to find Sidelle's views very sympathetic - going over to the Dark Side, I'm afraid. But conventions won't work at all if they don't correspond closely to reality. |
| 15174 | A thing doesn't need transworld identity prior to rigid reference - that could be a convention of the reference [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: For a term to be rigid, it is said there must be real transworld identity prior to our use of the rigid term, ..but this may only be because we have conventional principles for individuating across worlds. 'Let's call him Fred' - perhaps explicitly rigid. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems right. An example might be a comic book character, who retains a perfect identity in all the comics, with no scars, weight change, or ageing. |
| 15183 | 'Dthat' operates to make a singular term into a rigid term [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: 'Dthat' is Kaplan's indexical operator; it operates on a given singular term, φ, and makes it into a rigid designator of whatever φ designates in the original context. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.6 n11) | |
| A reaction: I like this idea a lot, because it strikes me that referring to something rigidly is a clear step beyond referring to it in actuality. I refer to 'whoever turns up each week', but that is hardly rigid. The germ of 2-D semantics is here. |
| 15165 | A priori knowledge is entirely of analytic truths [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The a priori method yields a priori knowledge, and the objects of this knowledge are not facts about the world, but analytic truths. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: Are we not allowed any insights at all into how the world must be, independent of how we happen to conceptualise it? |
| 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. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 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. |
| 15168 | That water is essentially H2O in some way concerns how we use 'water' [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: If water is essentially H2O, this is going to have something to do with our intentions in using 'water'. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This very simple point looks to be correct, and raises very important questions about the whole Twin Earth thing. When new discoveries are made, words shift their meanings. We're not quite sure what 'jade' means any more. |
| 15166 | Causal reference seems to get directly at the object, thus leaving its nature open [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The causal theory of reference appears to give us a way to get at an object while leaving it undetermined what its essence or necessary features might be. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.1) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints why the direct/causal theory of reference seems to open the doors to scientific essentialism. Sidelle, of course, opposes the whole programme. |
| 15182 | Because some entities overlap, reference must have analytic individuation principles [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: The phenomenon of overlapping entities requires that if our reference is to be determinate (as determinate as it is), then there must be analytic principles of individuation. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.5) | |
| A reaction: His point is that there is something inescapably conventional about the way in which our reference works. It isn't just some bald realist baptism. |
| 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. |
| 15178 | Can anything in science reveal the necessity of what it discovers? [Sidelle] |
| Full Idea: Is there anything in the procedures of scientists that could reveal to them that water is necessarily H2O or that gold necessarily has atomic number 79. | |
| From: Alan Sidelle (Necessity, Essence and Individuation [1989], Ch.4) | |
| A reaction: This is Leibniz's is view, that empirical evidence can never reveal necessities. Given that we know some necessities, you have an argument for rationalism. |
| 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. |