29 ideas
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Activities can be identified spatiotemporally, and individuated by rate, duration, and types of entity and property that engage in them. They also have modes of operation, directionality, polarity, energy requirements and a range. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: This is their attempt at making 'activity' one of the two central concepts of ontology, along with 'entity'. A helpful analysis. It just seems to be one way of slicing the cake. |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is not the penicillin that causes the pneumonia to disappear, but what the penicillin does. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a very neat example for illustrating how we slip into 'entity' talk, when the reality we are addressing actually concerns processes. Without the 'what it does', penicillin can't participate in causation at all. |
| 11993 | Jones may cease to exist without some simple property, but that doesn't make it essential [Kung] |
| Full Idea: If Jones ceases to be a father, or ceases to be over eight years old, he will cease to exist, yet these properties surely do not belong essentially to him. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: This seems to correct, though I would doubt whether either of these count as true properties, in the causal sense I prefer. If being 'over 8' is a property, how many 'over n' or 'under m' properties does he have? One for each quantum moment? |
| 11997 | A property may belong essentially to one thing and contingently to another [Kung] |
| Full Idea: It is possible that a property may belong essentially to one thing and contingently to another. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], III) | |
| A reaction: Thus a love of blues music may be part of your essence, but only a minor part of me. Sounds right. Spin or charge are part of the essence of an electron, but only contingently part of a child's top. |
| 11992 | Aristotelian essences underlie a thing's existence, explain it, and must belong to it [Kung] |
| Full Idea: Three essentialist claims are labelled 'Aristotelian': the thing would cease to exist without the property; an essential property is explanatory; and it is such that it must belong to everything to which it belongs. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], Intro) | |
| A reaction: She says the second one is indispensable, and that it rules out the third one. My working assumption, like hers, is that the second one is the key part of the game, because Aristotle wanted to explain things. |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: The intelligibility of a phenomenon consists in the mechanisms being portrayed in terms of a field's bottom out entities and activities. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: In other words, we understand complex things by reducing them to things we do understand. It would, though, be illuminating to see a nest of interconnected activities, even if we understood none of them. |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is not regularities that explain but the activities that sustain the regularities. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: Good, but we had better not characterise the 'activities' in terms of regularities. |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: It is common to speak of functions as properties 'had by' entities, …but they should rather be understood in terms of the activities by virtue of which entities contribute to the workings of a mechanism. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: I'm certainly quite passionately in favour of cutting down on describing the world almost entirely in terms of entities which have properties. An 'activity', though, is a bit of an elusive concept. |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: One should not think of mechanisms as exclusively mechanical (push-pull) systems. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: The difficulty seems to be that you could broaden the concept of 'mechanism' indefinitely, so that it covered history, mathematics, populations, cultural change, and even mathematics. Where to stop? |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Mechanisms are entities and activities organized such that they are productive of regular change from start or set-up to finish or termination conditions. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is their initial formal definition of a mechanism. Note that a mere 'activity' can be included. Presumably the mechanism might have an outcome that was not the intended outcome. Does a random element disqualify it? Are hands mechanisms? |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: To give a description of a mechanism for a phenomenon is to explain that phenomenon, i.e. to explain how it was produced. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 1) | |
| A reaction: To 'show how' something happens needs a bit of precisification. It is probably analytic that 'showing how' means 'revealing the mechanism', though 'mechanism' then becomes the tricky concept. |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: We emphasise the activities in mechanisms. This is explicitly dualist. Substantivalists speak of entities with dispositions to act. Process ontologists reify activities and try to reduce entities to processes. We try to capture both intuitions. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3) | |
| A reaction: [A quotation of selected fragments] The problem here seems to be the raising of an 'activity' to a central role in ontology, when it doesn't seem to be primitive, and will typically be analysed in a variety of ways. |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Nested hierachical descriptions of mechanisms typically bottom out in lowest level mechanisms. …Bottoming out is relative …the explanation comes to an end, and description of lower-level mechanisms would be irrelevant. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me exactly the right story about mechanism, and it is a story I am associating with essentialism. The relevance is ties to understanding. The lower level is either fully understood, or totally baffling. |
| 11995 | Some peripheral properties are explained by essential ones, but don't themselves explain properties [Kung] |
| Full Idea: There will be demonstrated properties at the edge of the system, so to speak. They will be explained in terms of the essential properties of the basic entities and principles of the science, but will themselves not be explanatory of further properties. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: This is an important line of thought which needs clarification. We can't glibly say that essences are what explain the other properties. Some properties do more than others to explain subsequent dependent properties. |
| 11996 | Some non-essential properties may explain more than essential-but-peripheral ones do [Kung] |
| Full Idea: It seems highly likely that some non-essential properties may explain more about the individual or about things of his kind than the peripheral properties. | |
| From: Joan Kung (Aristotle on Essence and Explanation [1977], II) | |
| A reaction: Another important issue, if one is defending the explanatory role of essences. It is not only essences which explain. A key question is whether we endorse individual essences as well as generic ones. I think we should. They explain the details. |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: There are four bottom-out kinds of activities: geometrico-mechanical, electro-chemical, electro-magnetic and energetic. These are abstract means of production that can be fruitfully applied in particular cases to explain phenomena. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 7) | |
| A reaction: I like that. It gives a nice core for a metaphysics for physicalists. I suspect that 'mechanical' can be reduced to something else, and that 'energetic' will disappear in the final story. |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: Abstractions may be constructed by taking an exemplary case or instance and removing detail. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: I love 'removing detail'. That's it. Simple. I think this process is the basis of our whole capacity to formulate abstract concepts. Forget Frege - he's just describing the results of the process. How do we decide what is 'detail'? Essentialism! |
| 8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The main approaches to causation I shall refer to as direct realism, Humean reductionism, non-Humean reductionism, and indirect or theoretical realism. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: The first simply observes causation (Anscombe), the second reduces it to regularity (Hume), the third reduces it to other natural features (Fair, Salmon, Dowe), the fourth takes an instrumental approach (Armstrong, Tooley). I favour the third approach. |
| 8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The three main distinctions concerning causation are between reductionism and realism; between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and between states that are immediately observable and those that are not. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
| A reaction: I favour reductionism over realism, because I like the question 'If x is real, what is it made of?' I favour non-Humean states of affairs, because I think constant conjunction is very superficial. I presume the existence of non-observable components. |
| 8416 | Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2) | |
| A reaction: I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns. |
| 8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: A reductionist can hold that the direction of causation is to be defined in terms of the direction of time; but this response is only available if one is prepared to adopt a realist view of the direction of time. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.2.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of the problems that arise if we try to be reductionist about everything. Personally I prefer my realism to be about time rather than about causation. Time, I would say, makes causation possible, not the other way around. |
| 8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The arguments in favour of causation being observable appeal especially to the impression of pressure upon one's body, and to one's introspective awareness of willing, together with the perception of the event which one willed. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Evan Fagels] Anscombe also cites words which have causality built into their meaning. This would approach would give priority to mental causation, and would need to demonstrate that similar things happen out in the world. |
| 8418 | Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Quantum physics seems to lend strong support to the idea that the basic laws of nature may well be probabilistic. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 3.2.1) | |
| A reaction: Groan. Quantum physics should be outlawed from all philosophical discussions. The scientists don't understand it themselves. I'm certainly not going to build my worldview on it. I don't accept that these probabilities could count as 'laws'. |
| 8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: If laws of causation are probabilistic then the law does not entail any restrictions upon the proportion of events that follow a cause: ...it can have absolutely any value from zero to one. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.3) | |
| A reaction: This objection applies to an account of laws of nature, and also to definitions of causes as events which increase probabilities. One needn't be fully committed to natural necessity, but it must form some part of the account. |
| 8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: A given type of state may be causally efficacious, but not as efficacious as an alternative states, so it is not true that even a direct cause need raise the probability of its effect. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 6.2.4) | |
| A reaction: My intuition is that explaining causation in terms of probabilities entirely misses the point, which mainly concerns explaining the sense of necessitation in a cause. This idea give me a good reason for my intuition. |
| 8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: If a counterfactual holds in a possible world, that is presumably because a law holds in that world, which means there could be basic causal laws that lack all instances. But then causal laws cannot be totally supervenient on the history of the universe. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.2) | |
| A reaction: A nice argument, which sounds like trouble for Lewis. One could deny that the laws have to hold in the counterfactual worlds, but then we wouldn't be able to conceive them. |
| 8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: The most serious objection to any account of causation in terms of nomological relations alone is that it can't provide any account of the direction of causation. | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 8393. I am not convinced that there could be an 'account' of the direction of causation, so I am inclined to take it as given. If we take 'powers' (active properties) as basic, they would have a direction built into them. |
| 8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
| Full Idea: Against the view that causation is a particular physical process, might it not be argued that the concept of causation is the concept of a relation that possesses a certain intrinsic nature, so that causation must be the same in all possible worlds? | |
| From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: This makes the Humean assumption that laws of nature might be wildly different. I think it is perfectly possible that physical processes are the only way that causation could occur. Alternatively, the generic definition of 'cause' is just very vague. |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| Full Idea: The traditional notion of a law of nature has few, if any, applications in neurobiology or molecular biology. | |
| From: Machamer,P/Darden,L/Craver,C (Thinking About Mechanisms [2000], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a simple and self-evident fact, and bad news for anyone who want to build their entire ontology around laws of nature. I take such a notion to be fairly empty, except as a convenient heuristic device. |