12 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. |
14221 | Serious essentialism says everything has essences, they're not things, and they ground necessities [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: Serious essentialism is the position that a) everything has an essence, b) essences are not themselves things, and c) essences are the ground for metaphysical necessity and possibility. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Intro') | |
A reaction: If a house is being built, it might acquire an identity first, and only get an essence later. Essences can be physical, but if you extract them you destroy thing thing of which they were the essence. Does all of this apply to abstract 'things'. |
14222 | Essences are what it is to be that (kind of) thing - in fact, they are the thing's identity [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: The route into essentialism is, first, a recognition that the essence of a thing is "what it is to be" that (kind of) thing; the essence of a thing is just its identity. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent') | |
A reaction: The first half sounds right, and very Aristotelian. The second half is dramatically different, controversial, and far less plausible. Slipping in 'kind of' is also highly dubious. This remark shows, I think, some confusion about essences. |
14226 | We distinguish objects by their attributes, not by their essences [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: In ordinary contexts, we distinguish objects not by their essences but by their attributes. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know') | |
A reaction: Hence we have a gap between what bestows identity intrinsically, and how we bestow identity conventionally. If you could grasp the essence of something, you might predict a new attribute, as yet unobserved. |
14225 | Critics say that essences are too mysterious to be known [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: According to critics, the thorniest problem for essentialism is the question of our knowledge of essence. It is usually at this point that terms of abuse such as 'dark', 'mysterious', and 'occult' are wheeled out. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Ess and Know') | |
A reaction: I'm inclined to think that the existence of essences can be fairly conclusively inferred, but that attributing a precise identity to them is the biggest challenge. |
14223 | De dicto necessity has linguistic entities as their source, so it is a type of de re necessity [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: De dicto necessity is a species of de re necessity. Anyone prone to countenance de dicto necessity must recognise mental and/or linguistic entities, thus counting each of them as a res to which necessity attaches. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Essent') | |
A reaction: This seems to rest on the Kit Fine thought that analytic necessities seem to derive from the essences of words such as 'bachelor'. I like this idea: all necessity is de re, but some of the 'things' are words. |
9220 | Lewis must specify that all possibilities are in his worlds, making the whole thing circular [Shalkowski, by Sider] |
Full Idea: If purple cows are simply absent from Lewis's multiverse, then certain correct propositions turn out to be impossible. Lewis must require a world for every possibility. But then it is circular, as the multiverse needs modal notions to characterize it. | |
From: report of Scott Shalkowski (Ontological Ground of Alethic Modality [1994], 3.9) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.9 | |
A reaction: [Inversely, a world containing a round square would make that possible] This sounds very nice, though Sider rejects it (p.197). I've never seen how you could define possibility using the concept of 'possible' worlds. |
16721 | Changes in secondary qualities are caused by changes in primary qualities [Giles of Orleans] |
Full Idea: Every alteration in secondary qualities is caused by some alteration made in the primary qualities. | |
From: Giles of Orleans (On 'Generation and Corruption' [1270], I.6c) | |
A reaction: Pasnau calls this the 'supervenience' thesis, here with the addition of causation. Was this doctrine retained by Locke and Boyle? |
14224 | Equilateral and equiangular aren't the same, as we have to prove their connection [Shalkowski] |
Full Idea: That 'all and only equilateral triangles are equiangular' required proof, and not for mere curiosity, is grounds for thinking that being an equilateral triangle is not the same property as being an equiangular triangle. | |
From: Scott Shalkowski (Essence and Being [2008], 'Serious') | |
A reaction: If you start with equiangularity, does equilateralness then require proof? This famous example is of two concepts which seem to be coextensional, but seem to have a different intension. Does a dependence relation drive a wedge between them? |