Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Lynch,MP/Glasgow,JM, Thomas Paine and Jacques Lenfant

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6 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 3. Levels of Reality

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.

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience

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.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism

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.

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence

12750	The question is whether force is self-sufficient in bodies, and essential, or dependent on something [Lenfant]
	Full Idea: The whole question is to know if the force to act in bodies is in matter something distinct and independent of everything else that one conceives there. Without that, this force cannot be its essence, and will remain the result of some primitive quality.
	From: Jacques Lenfant (Letters to Leibniz [1693], 1693.11.07), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
	A reaction: This challenge to Leibniz highlights the drama of trying to simultaneously arrive at explanations of things, and to decide the nature of essence. Leibniz replied that force is primitive, because it is the 'principle' of behaviour and dispositions.

24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 3. Constitutions

23261	A people, not government, creates a constitution, which is essential for legitimacy [Paine]
	Full Idea: A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government, and a government without a constitution is power without right.
	From: Thomas Paine (Rights of Man [1792], Ch.7), quoted by A.C. Grayling - The Good State 5
	A reaction: A constitution looks like the ultimate focus of a social contract (though Greeks had them long ago). It is hard to say why a government should consider itself to be sovereign if it hasn't got it in writing.