15 ideas
16062 | A necessary relation between fact-levels seems to be a further irreducible fact [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: It seems unavoidable that the facts about logically necessary relations between levels of facts are themselves logically distinct further facts, irreducible to the microphysical facts. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: I'm beginning to think that rejecting every theory of reality that is proposed by carefully exposing some infinite regress hidden in it is a rather lazy way to do philosophy. Almost as bad as rejecting anything if it can't be defined. |
16061 | If some facts 'logically supervene' on some others, they just redescribe them, adding nothing [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Logical supervenience, restricted to individuals, seems to imply strong reduction. It is said that where the B-facts logically supervene on the A-facts, the B-facts simply re-describe what the A-facts describe, and the B-facts come along 'for free'. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], C) | |
A reaction: This seems to be taking 'logically' to mean 'analytically'. Presumably an entailment is logically supervenient on its premisses, and may therefore be very revealing, even if some people think such things are analytic. |
16060 | Nonreductive materialism says upper 'levels' depend on lower, but don't 'reduce' [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: The root intuition behind nonreductive materialism is that reality is composed of ontologically distinct layers or levels. …The upper levels depend on the physical without reducing to it. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], B) | |
A reaction: A nice clear statement of a view which I take to be false. This relationship is the sort of thing that drives people fishing for an account of it to use the word 'supervenience', which just says two things seem to hang out together. Fluffy materialism. |
16064 | The hallmark of physicalism is that each causal power has a base causal power under it [Lynch/Glasgow] |
Full Idea: Jessica Wilson (1999) says what makes physicalist accounts different from emergentism etc. is that each individual causal power associated with a supervenient property is numerically identical with a causal power associated with its base property. | |
From: Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM (The Impossibility of Superdupervenience [2003], n 11) | |
A reaction: Hence the key thought in so-called (serious, rather than self-evident) 'emergentism' is so-called 'downward causation', which I take to be an idle daydream. |
15143 | Kind essences are the categorical bases of a thing's causal powers [Bhaskar, by Chakravartty] |
Full Idea: Bhaskar identifies kind essences with underlying properties, often called 'categorical bases', of the causal powers of things. | |
From: report of Roy Bhaskar (A Realist Theory of Science [1975], p.212) by Anjan Chakravarrty - Inessential Aristotle: Powers without Essences 1 | |
A reaction: The problem with this, it always seems to me, is the something inherently passive is said to give rise to something which is inherently active. Couldn't two individuals with a kind have slightly different categorical bases? |
13267 | Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki] |
Full Idea: Thomson famously objects that the doctrine of temporal parts is 'a crazy metaphysic - obviously false', since it entails that material objects are constantly being generated ex nihilo (or, at least, the stuff of which they are composed is). | |
From: report of Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (Parthood and Identity across Time [1983], p.210) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 2.2 | |
A reaction: The related objections are to ask what the temporal 'width' of a part is, and whether the joins are visible. |
16209 | How can point-duration slices of people have beliefs or desires? [Thomson] |
Full Idea: Can one really think that point-duration temporal slices of bodies believe things or want things? | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (People and Their Bodies [1997], p.211), quoted by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 2.9 n21 | |
A reaction: There is a problem with a slice doing anything long-term. The bottom line is that things are said to 'endure', but that is precisely what time-slices are unable to do. Hawley rejects this idea. |
4058 | Is someone's right to life diminished if they were conceived by a rape? [Thomson] |
Full Idea: Can we say that a person has a right to life only if they didn't come into existence through rape, or that the latter have less right to life? | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.126) | |
A reaction: This would clearly be an inconsistency for some opponents of abortion who allow rape as an exception. |
4060 | The right to life does not bestow the right to use someone else's body to support that life [Thomson] |
Full Idea: Having a right to life does not guarantee having either a right to be given the use of or a right to be allowed continued use of another person's body. | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.131) | |
A reaction: A very nice point. You have a right to your life once you are the sole owner of it. |
4062 | No one is morally required to make huge sacrifices to keep someone else alive for nine months [Thomson] |
Full Idea: No one is morally required to make large sacrifices, of health, and other interests and commitments, for nine months, in order to keep another person alive. | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.135) | |
A reaction: It is a trade-off. It might become a duty if society (or even a husband) urgently needed the baby. |
4061 | The right to life is not a right not to be killed, but not to be killed unjustly [Thomson] |
Full Idea: Maybe the right to life consists not in the right not to be killed, but in the right not to be killed unjustly. | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.131) | |
A reaction: Sounds tautological. There is no right to life, then, but just the requirement that people behave justly? |
4057 | A newly fertilized ovum is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree [Thomson] |
Full Idea: A newly fertilized ovum, a newly implanted clump of cells, is no more a person than an acorn is an oak tree. | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.125) | |
A reaction: This relies heavily on the philosopher's concept of a 'person', but it seems right to me. |
4695 | Maybe abortion can be justified despite the foetus having full human rights [Thomson, by Foot] |
Full Idea: Thomson suggests that abortion can be justified without the need to deny that the foetus has the moral rights of a human person. | |
From: report of Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971]) by Philippa Foot - Killing and Letting Die p.86 | |
A reaction: Thomson uses a dubious analogy between pregnancy and being hooked up to someone for life-support. Presumably killing an innocent person is occasionally justifiable, but the situation would normally be more abnormal than pregnancy. |
4059 | It can't be murder for a mother to perform an abortion on herself to save her own life [Thomson] |
Full Idea: It cannot seriously be thought to be murder if a mother performs an abortion on herself to save her own life (if, say, she had a serious heart condition). | |
From: Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971], p.127) | |
A reaction: An extreme view might condemn such an action, but it can hardly be based on the 'sanctity of life'. |
4696 | The foetus is safe in the womb, so abortion initiates its death, with the mother as the agent. [Foot on Thomson] |
Full Idea: A fetus is not in jeopardy because it is in the womb, so an abortion originates the fatal sequence, and the mother is the agent. Hence Thomson's argument is invalid, and we must return to question of the moral status of the foetus. | |
From: comment on Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (A Defense of Abortion [1971]) by Philippa Foot - Killing and Letting Die p.86 | |
A reaction: The problem would be if a 'person' was safe, but only if I continue some sustained effort which is not required of me by normal duties. |