71 ideas
| 21382 | Things get smaller without end [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Of the small there is no smallest, but always a smaller. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B03), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras II | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras seems to be speaking of the physical world (and probably writing prior to the emergence of atomism, which could have been a rebellion against he current idea). |
| 481 | Nothing is created or destroyed; there is only mixing and separation [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: No thing comes into being or passes away, but it is mixed together or separated from existing things. Thus it would be correct if coming into being was called 'mixing', and passing away 'separation-off''. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B17), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 163.20 |
| 21822 | Anaxagoras's concept of supreme Mind has a simple First and a multiple One [Anaxagoras, by Plotinus] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras, in his assertion of a Mind pure and unmixed, affirms a simplex First and a sundered One, though writing long ago he failed in precision. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.09 | |
| A reaction: The crunch question is whether the supreme One or Mind is part of Being, or is above and beyond Being. Plotinus claims that Anaxagoras was on his side (with Plato, against Parmenides). |
| 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. |
| 17995 | Basic is the potentially perceptible, then comes the contrary qualities, and finally the 'elements' [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: We must recognise three 'originative sources': first that which is potentially perceptible body, secondly the contrarities (e.g hot and cold), and thirdly Fire, Water, and the like. Only thirdly, however, for these bodies change into one another. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]), quoted by Aristotle - The History of Animals 529a34 | |
| A reaction: The 'potentially perceptible' seems to be matter. The surprise here is that the contraries are more basic than the elements, rather than being properties of them. Reality is modes of matter, it seems. |
| 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). |
| 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... |
| 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. |
| 20802 | Snow is not white, and doesn't even appear white, because it is made of black water [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras not only denied that snow was white, but because he knew that the water from which it was composed was black, even denied that it appeared white to himself. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Academica II.100 | |
| A reaction: Not ridiculous. Can you deny that red and yellow balls look orange from a distance? A failure of discrimination on your part. It sounds okay to say 'what I am really perceiving is red and yellow'. [see 'Anaxagoras' poem by D.H.Lawrence!] |
| 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. |
| 13257 | The senses are too feeble to determine the truth [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Owing to the feebleness of the sense, we are not able to determine the truth. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B21), quoted by Patricia Curd - Anaxagoras 5.1 | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras offers a corresponding elevation of the power of mind (Idea 13256), so I now realise that he is, along with Pythagoras and Parmenides, one of the fathers of rationalism in philosophy. They probably overrate reason. |
| 22761 | We reveal unreliability in the senses when we cannot discriminate a slow change of colour [Anaxagoras, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Our lack of sureness in the senses is shown if we take two colours, back and white, and pour one into the other drop by drop, we are unable to distinguish the gradual alterations although they subsist as actual facts. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Logicians (two books) I.090 | |
| A reaction: [Sextus calls Anaxagoras 'the greatest of the physicists'] I'm not sure what this proves. People with bad eyesight can distinguish very little, but that doesn't prove scepticism. And there are things too small for anyone to see. |
| 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? |
| 13256 | Nous is unlimited, self-ruling and pure; it is the finest thing, with great discernment and strength [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Nous is unlimited and self-ruling and has been mixed with no thing, but is alone itself by itself. ...For it is the finest of all things and the purest, and indeed it maintains all discernment about everything and has the greatest strength. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B12), quoted by Patricia Curd - Anaxagoras 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Anaxagoras seems to have been a pioneer in elevating the status of the mind, which is a prop to the rationalist view, and encourages dualism. More naturalistic accounts are, in my view, much healthier. |
| 13784 | Mind is self-ruling, pure, ordering and ubiquitous [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that mind is self-ruling, mixes with nothing else, orders the things that are, and travels through everything. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plato - Cratylus 413c | |
| A reaction: This elevation of the mind in the natural scheme of things by Anaxagoras looks increasingly significant in western culture to me. Without this line of thought, Descartes and Kant are inconceivable. |
| 5118 | Anaxagoras says mind remains pure, and so is not affected by what it changes [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says that intellect (which is a cause of change) is not affected by or mixed in with anything else; for this is the only way in which it can cause change, while being itself changeless, and control things without mixing with them. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 256b24 | |
| A reaction: I suggest that this is the germ of the original concept of freewill - of the mind as somehow outside the causal processes of the world, so that it can initiate change without itself being affected by other causes. Aristotle says he's right; I disagree. |
| 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. |
| 18231 | Anaxagoras said a person would choose to be born to contemplate the ordered heavens [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: When Anaxagoras was asked what it was for which a person would choose to be born rather than not, he said it would be to apprehend the heavens and the order in the whole universe. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], 1216), quoted by Aristotle - Eudemian Ethics 8 'Finality' | |
| A reaction: [Anaxagoras, quoted by Aristotle, quoted by Korsgaard, quoted by me, and then quoted by you, perhaps] |
| 631 | For Anaxagoras the Good Mind has no opposite, and causes all movement, for a higher reason [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras says the good is a principle as the source of movement, in the form of Mind. However it does it for the sake of something else, which is a further factor. And he allows no opposite to the good Mind. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1075b |
| 22727 | Mind creates the world from a mixture of pure substances [Anaxagoras, by ] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras assumed that Mind, which is God, is the efficient principle, and the multi-mixture of homoeomeries is the material principle. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by - I.6 | |
| A reaction: The choice of homoeomeries as basic is a good one. They are much better candidates than materials which are made of parts of a quite different kind, where the parts are a better candidate than the whole. |
| 550 | Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras said that the number of principles was infinite. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 984a |
| 21383 | The ultimate constituents of reality are the homoeomeries [Anaxagoras, by Vlastos] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras contrasts with other thinkers in the formula that his 'elements' were not the air of Anaximenes or the fire of Heraclitus or the roots of Empedocles or the atoms of Leucippus, but the infinite variety of homoiomereia. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras III | |
| A reaction: Not sure about the 'roots' of Empedocles. Anaxagoras is particularly thinking of the basic stuffs that make up the body, such as hair, bone and blood. It is plausible to reduce everything to stuffs that seem to have no further structure. |
| 13208 | Anaxagoreans regard the homoeomeries as elements, which compose earth, air, fire and water [Anaxagoras, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The followers of Anaxagoras regard the 'homoeomeries' as 'simple' and elements, whilst they affirm that Earth, Fire, Water and Air are composite; for each of these is (according to them) a 'common seminary' of all the homoeomeries. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Aristotle - Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) 314a28 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 13207. Aristotle is amused that the followers of Empedocles and of Anaxagoras have precisely opposite views on this subject. |
| 367 | Anaxagoras says mind produces order and causes everything [Anaxagoras, by Plato] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras asserted that it is mind that produces order and is the cause of everything. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plato - Phaedo 097d |
| 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. |
| 21381 | Germs contain microscopic organs, which become visible as they grow [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: In the germ there are hair, nails, arteries, sinews, bones, which are not manifest because of the smallness of their parts, but become distinct little by little as they grow. For how could hair come from not-hair, or flesh from non-flesh. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B10), quoted by Gregory Vlastos - The Physical Theory of Anaxagoras I | |
| A reaction: Compare Aristotle's apparent view that the physical world has no microscopic structure, and Democritus's view that hair can come from not-hair by the organisation of atoms. Is this the first suggestion that we need to know what is microscopic? |
| 22726 | When things were unified, Mind set them in order [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: All things were together, and Mind came and set them in order. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably the source for the passionate belief of Plato in the importance of order. Existence seems like chaos, with order residing beneath it, but we can wonder whether if we go even deeper it is chaos again. |
| 2629 | Anaxagoras was the first to say that the universe is directed by an intelligence [Anaxagoras, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras, pupil of Anaximenes, was the first to maintain that the form and motion of the universe was determined and directed by the power and purpose of an infinite intelligence. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum') I.26 |
| 480 | Past, present and future, and the movements of the heavens, were arranged by Mind [Anaxagoras] |
| Full Idea: Whatever was then in existence which is not now, and all things that now exist, and whatever shall exist - all were arranged by Mind, as also the revolution followed now by the stars, the sun and the moon. | |
| From: Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B12), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 164.24 |
| 5956 | Anaxagoras was charged with impiety for calling the sun a lump of stone [Anaxagoras, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras was charged with impiety because he called the sun a lump of stone. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Plutarch - 14: Superstition §9 | |
| A reaction: The point is that he was supposed to say that the sun is a god. |
| 7488 | Anaxagoras was the first recorded atheist [Anaxagoras, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: Anaxagoras was the first recorded atheist. | |
| From: report of Anaxagoras (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE]) by Peter Watson - Ideas Ch.25 | |
| A reaction: He was a very lively character, right in the middle of the Athenian golden age. |