102 ideas
| 9408 | Science studies phenomena, but only metaphysics tells us what exists [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Science deals with the phenomena, ..but it is metaphysics, and only metaphysics, that tells us what ultimately exists. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.2) |
| 10468 | A metaphysics has an ontology (objects) and an ideology (expressed ideas about them) [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysical theory hs two parts: ontology and ideology. The ontology consists of the entities which the theory says exist; the ideology consists of the ideas which are expressed within the theory using predicates. Ideology sorts into categories. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02.1) | |
| A reaction: Say 'what there is', and 'what we can say about it'. The modern notion remains controversial (see Ladyman and Ross, for example), so it is as well to start crystalising what metaphysics is. I am enthusiastic, but nervous about what is being said. |
| 9429 | Many forms of reasoning, such as extrapolation and analogy, are useful but deductively invalid [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: There are many forms of reasoning - extrapolation, interpolation, and other arguments from analogy - that are useful but deductively invalid. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 04.4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Molnar for this] |
| 10471 | Ockham's Razor has more content if it says believe only in what is causal [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One might give Ockham's Razor a bit more content by advising belief in only those entities which are causally efficacious. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: He cites Armstrong as taking this line, but I immediately think of Shoemaker's account of properties. It seems to me to be the only account which will separate properties from predicates, and bring them under common sense control. |
| 10749 | Necessary truths seem to all have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The definition of truth-makers entails that a truth-maker for a given necessary truth is equally a truth-maker for every other necessary truth. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: Maybe we could accept this. Necessary truths concern the way things have to be, so all realities will embody them. Are we to say that nothing makes a necessary truth true? |
| 10750 | Slingshot Argument: seems to prove that all sentences have the same truth-maker [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Slingshot Argument: if truth-makers work for equivalent sentences and co-referring substitute sentences, then if 'the numbers + S1 = the numbers' has a truth-maker, then 'the numbers + S2 = the numbers' will have the same truth-maker. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §24) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Hence every sentence has the same truth-maker! Truth-maker fans must challenge one of the premises. |
| 9427 | For Humeans the world is a world primarily of events [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: For Humeans the world is a world primarily of events. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.6) |
| 14334 | Modest realism says there is a reality; the presumptuous view says we can accurately describe it [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The claim of modest realism is that there is a subject-independent reality; the presumptuous claim is that we are capable of describing that reality accurately. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 09.1) | |
| A reaction: And the super-presumptuous claim is that there only exists one ultimate accurate description of reality. I am happy to call myself a Modest Realist on this one. |
| 14306 | Anti-realists deny truth-values to all statements, and say evidence and ontology are inseparable [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The anti-realist declines to permit that all statements have truth-values. ...The essence of the anti-realist position is that evidence and ontology cannot be separated. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.6) | |
| A reaction: [second half on p.51] The idea that evidence and ontology are 'inseparable' strikes me as an absurd idea. The proposal that you should not speculate about ontology without some sort of evidence is, of course, not unreasonable. |
| 10747 | Accepting properties by ontological commitment tells you very little about them [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The route to the existence of properties via ontological commitment provides little information about what properties are like. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: NIce point, and rather important, I would say. I could hardly be committed to something for the sole reason that I had expressed a statement which contained an ontological commitment. Start from the reason for making the statement. |
| 10748 | Reference is not the only way for a predicate to have ontological commitment [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: For a predicate to have a referential function is one way, but not the only way, to harbour ontological commitment. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §22) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the main idea is that the predicate makes some important contribution to a sentence which is held to be true. Maybe reference is achieved by the whole sentence, rather than by one bit of it. |
| 10719 | There are four conditions defining the relations between particulars and properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Four adequacy conditions for particulars and properties: asymmetry of instantiation; different particulars can have the same property; particulars can have many properties; two properties can be instantiated by the same particulars. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: The distinction between particulars and universals has been challenged (e.g. by Ramsey and MacBride). There are difficulties in the notion of 'instantiation', and in the notion of two properties being 'the same'. |
| 10721 | If properties are sui generis, are they abstract or concrete? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If properties are sui generis entities, one must decide whether they are abstract or concrete. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: A nice basic question! I take the real properties to be concrete, but we abstract from them, especially from their similarities, and then become deeply confused about the ontology, because our language doesn't mark the distinctions clearly. |
| 10716 | There are just as many properties as the laws require [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One conception of properties says there are only as many properties as are needed to be constituents of laws. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §03) | |
| A reaction: I take this view to the be precise opposite of the real situation. The properties are what lead to the laws. Properties are internal to nature, and laws are imposed from outside, which is ridiculous unless you think there is an active deity. |
| 10720 | We have four options, depending whether particulars and properties are sui generis or constructions [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Both properties and particulars can be taken as either sui generis or as constructions, so we have four options: both sui generis, or both constructions, or one of each. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §09) | |
| A reaction: I think I favour both being sui generis. God didn't make the objects, then add their properties, or make the properties then create some instantiations. There can't be objects without properties, or objectless properties (except in thought). |
| 14333 | Dispositions and categorical properties are two modes of presentation of the same thing [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The dispositional and the categorical are correctly understood just as two modes of presentation of the same instantiated properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.6) | |
| A reaction: This is Mumford's own conclusion, after discussing the views of Armstrong. How about 'a disposition is the modal profile' of a categorical property? |
| 14336 | Categorical predicates are those unconnected to functions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A predicate which is conceptually connected to no function ... is a categorical predicate. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: This is an expansion of Mumford's own theory of dispositions, as functional. Does a cork in a wine bottle have a function, but without doing anything? It seems to achieve its function purely through its structure. |
| 14315 | Categorical properties and dispositions appear to explain one another [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Though categorical properties provide explanations for dispositions, categorical properties are also explained by dispositions; hence neither category uniquely explains the other. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: The conclusion doesn't seem to follow. It depends which one is found at the bottom level. It can go up from a basic disposition, to a categorical property, to another disposition - or the other way around. |
| 14332 | There are four reasons for seeing categorical properties as the most fundamental [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Four reasons for reducing everything to the categorical are: categorical predicates have wider scope; dispositions are variably realised by the categorical; categorical is 1st order, dispositions 2nd; categorical properties are explanatorily basic. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.5) | |
| A reaction: I particularly reject the fourth reason, as I take categorical properties as still in need of explanation. The categorical view is contingent (and Humean), but I take the categorical properties to be necessitated by the underlying powers. |
| 14302 | A lead molecule is not leaden, and macroscopic properties need not be microscopically present [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Though lead is said to be composed of molecules of lead, these molecules are not leaden in the everyday sense of the word. This suggests that a property need not be present at the microscopic level in order to be present at the macroscopic level. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: [He quotes Joske] This strikes me as a key principle to grasp about properties. One H2O molecule is not water, any more than a brick is a house! Nearly all properties (or all?) are 'emergent' (in the sensible, non-mystical use of that word). |
| 10714 | The expressions with properties as their meanings are predicates and abstract singular terms [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The types of expressions which have properties as their meanings may vary, the chief candidates being predicates, such as '...is wise', and abstract singular terms, such as 'wisdom'. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be important, because there is too much emphasis on predicates. If this idea is correct, we need some account of what 'abstract' means, which is notoriously tricky. |
| 10715 | There are five main semantic theories for properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties in semantic theory: functions from worlds to extensions ('Californian'), reference, as opposed to sense, of predicates (Frege), reference to universals (Russell), reference to situations (Barwise/Perry), and composition from context (Lewis). | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §02 n12) | |
| A reaction: [compressed; 'Californian' refers to Carnap and Montague; the Lewis view is p,67 of Oliver]. Frege misses out singular terms, or tries to paraphrase them away. Barwise and Perry sound promising to me. Situations involve powers. |
| 10738 | Tropes are not properties, since they can't be instantiated twice [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I rule that tropes are not properties, because it is not true that one and the same trope of redness is instantiated by two books. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but has very far-reaching implications, because it means there are no properties, and no two things have the same properties, so there can be no generalisations about properties, let alone laws. ..But they have equivalence sets. |
| 10739 | The property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of exactly similar redness [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Using the predicate '...is exactly similar to...' we can sort tropes into equivalence sets, these sets serving as properties and relations. For example, the property of redness is the maximal set of the tropes of redness. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: You have somehow to get from scarlet and vermilion, which have exact similarity within their sets, to redness, which doesn't. |
| 10740 | The orthodox view does not allow for uninstantiated tropes [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: It is usual to hold an aristotelian conception of tropes, according to which tropes are present in their particular instances, and which does not allow for uninstantiated tropes. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: What are you discussing when you ask what colour the wall should be painted? Presumably we can imagine non-existent tropes. If I vividly imagine my wall looking yellow, have I brought anything into existence? |
| 10741 | Maybe concrete particulars are mereological wholes of abstract particulars [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Some trope theorists give accounts of particulars. Sets of tropes will not do because they are always abstract, but we might say that particulars are (concrete) mereological wholes of the tropes which they instantiate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: Looks like a non-starter to me. How can abstract entities add up to a mereological whole which is concrete? |
| 10742 | Tropes can overlap, and shouldn't be splittable into parts [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: More than one trope can occupy the same place at the same time, and a trope occupies a place without having parts which occupy parts of the place. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §12) | |
| A reaction: This is the general question of the size of a spatial trope, or 'how many red tropes in a tin of red paint?' |
| 14294 | Dispositions are attacked as mere regularities of events, or place-holders for unknown properties [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions are attacked as either just saying how something will behave (logical fictions about regularities of events), or as primitive pre-scientific terms like 'phlogiston', place-holders used when we are ignorant of real properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] The first view he calls the Ryle-Wittgenstein view, which seems to track back to Hume. |
| 9446 | Properties are just natural clusters of powers [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The view of properties I find most attractive is one in which they are natural clusters of, and exhausted by, powers (plus other connections to other properties). | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.6) |
| 14316 | If dispositions have several categorical realisations, that makes the two separate [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: We might claim that dispositions are variably realized by a number of categorical bases; therefore they must be distinct from those bases. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.4) | |
| A reaction: Cars can be realised by a variety of models, therefore models are not cars? This might work if dispositions are only characterised functionally, as Mumford proposes, but I'm not convinced. |
| 14310 | Dispositions are classifications of properties by functional role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A dispositional property is the classification of a property according to its functional role....[p.85] What is essential to a disposition - its identity condition - is its functional role. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.5) | |
| A reaction: This is Mumford's view of dispositions. I am wary of any proposal to define something according to its role, because it must have an intrinsic nature which equips it to have that role. |
| 14317 | I say the categorical base causes the disposition manifestation [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The view I promote is one where the categorical base is a cause of the disposition manifestation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 05.5) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me (I think) that the most basic thing has to be a power, whose nature is intrinsically beyond our grasp, and that categorical properties are the result of these powers. Powers are dispositional in character. |
| 14313 | All properties must be causal powers (since they wouldn't exist otherwise) [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems that every property must be a causal power, since every property must be causally potent (as a necessary condition of its very existence). | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: Mumford cautiously endorses this idea, which seems to rest on the thesis that 'to exist is to have causal powers'. I think I am even keener on it than Mumford is. Powers and properties need to be disentangled, however. |
| 14318 | Intrinsic properties are just causal powers, and identifying a property as causal is then analytic [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Understanding intrinsic properties as being causal powers is likely to be most profitable, and, if true, renders the causal criterion of property existence true analytically. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: [He cites E.Fales on this] I'm inclined to think that in the ultimate ontology the notion of a 'property' drops out. There are true causal powers, and then conventional human ways of grouping such powers together and naming them. |
| 14293 | Dispositions are ascribed to at least objects, substances and persons [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions are ascribed to at least three distinguishable classes of things: objects, substances, and persons. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Are dispositions not also ascribed to properties? Magnetism has a disposition to attract iron filings? |
| 14326 | Unlike categorical bases, dispositions necessarily occupy a particular causal role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a disposition occupying a different causal role involves a conceptual confusion, ...but there is no conceptual or logical absurdity in a categorical base occupying a different causal role. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 07.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Mumford's theory of dispositions. I'm beginning to think that dispositions are merely ways we have of describing and labelling functional mechanisms, and so 'dispositions' drop out of the final story. |
| 14298 | Dispositions can be contrasted either with occurrences, or with categorical properties [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: For some the notion of a disposition is contrasted with the notion of an occurrence; for others, it is contrasted with that of a categorical property. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.6) | |
| A reaction: I vote for dispositions over the other two, but I take the categorical properties to be the main rival. |
| 14314 | If dispositions are powers, background conditions makes it hard to say what they do [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The realist says that disposition ascriptions are ascriptions of real powers. This leaves unanswered the question, 'power to do what?' The problem of background conditions means that the realist cannot say what it is that a power is a power to do. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.9) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to say what a disposition will do, under any other account of dispositions. I would take a power to be defined by a 'modal profile', rather than an actual account of what it will lead to. |
| 14325 | Maybe dispositions can replace powers in metaphysics, as what induces property change [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions can regain the metaphysical role traditionally ascribed to real powers: the that-in-virtue-of-which-something-will-G, if F. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.9) | |
| A reaction: The attraction is that dispositions can be specified a little more clearly (especially in Mumford's functional version) whereas there may be no more to say about a power once it has been located and named. |
| 14312 | Orthodoxy says dispositions entail conditionals (rather than being equivalent to them) [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The orthodox realist view has it that what makes an ascription a disposition ascription is not that it is equivalent to a conditional proposition but that it entails one. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: Mumford says that Martin has shown that dispositions need not entail conditionals (when a 'fink' is operating, something which intervenes between disposition and outcome). |
| 14291 | Dispositions are not just possibilities - they are features of actual things [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Dispositions should correctly be understood as more than mere possibilities. To say something has a disposition is to say something about how it is actually. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], Pref) | |
| A reaction: To me this is a basic axiom of metaphysics. The word 'power' serves well for the actual embodiment of a disposition. A power gives rise to one or more dispositions. Or one or more powers give rise to a disposition? |
| 14299 | There could be dispositions that are never manifested [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems plausible that a disposition could be possessed though no manifestation events occur. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.6) | |
| A reaction: It is more than 'plausible' - it is screamingly obvious to everybody, apart from a few philosophers. "Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest" (Gray's Elegy). |
| 14323 | If every event has a cause, it is easy to invent a power to explain each case [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Given any event, and the assumption that every event has a cause, then some power can always be invented as the cause of that event. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.6) | |
| A reaction: This is a useful warning, and probably explains why 'powers' fell out of fashion in scientifice theorising. They seem to make a return, though, as an appropriate term for the bottom level of each of our explanations. |
| 14328 | Traditional powers initiate change, but are mysterious between those changes [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: In the old-fashioned sense, 'powers' are real potentialities that initiate changes but seem to have a mysterious existence in between those changes. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 07.10) | |
| A reaction: What is a person when they are asleep? What is a dishwasher when it isn't running? What is gunpowder when it doesn't explode? We all understand latent powers. To see them as a 'mystery' is to want to know too much. |
| 14331 | Categorical eliminativists say there are no dispositions, just categorical states or mechanisms [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The categorical eliminativist claims that there are no dispositional properties. All properties must be conceived of as categorical states or mechanisms, in the spirit of Boyle's explanation of powers. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 08.3A) | |
| A reaction: What is the difference between a structure and a mechanism? How do we distinguish an active from an inactive mechanism? Without powers or dispositions, nature is dead junk. |
| 10472 | 'Structural universals' methane and butane are made of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: The 'structural universals' methane and butane are each made up of the same universals, carbon and hydrogen. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §07) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lewis 1986, who is criticising Armstrong. If you insist on having universals, they might (in this case) best be described as 'patterns', which would be useful for structuralism in mathematics. They reduce to relations. |
| 10724 | Located universals are wholly present in many places, and two can be in the same place [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: So-called aristotelian universals have some queer features: one universal can be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two universals can occupy the same place at the same time. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: If you want to make a metaphysical doctrine look ridiculous, stating it in very simple language will often do the job. Belief in fairies is more plausible than the first of these two claims. |
| 7963 | Aristotle's instantiated universals cannot account for properties of abstract objects [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged, but they would have no spatio-temporal location, so they cannot instantiate Aristotelian universals, there being nowhere for such universals to be. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Maybe. Why can't the second-order properties be in the same location as the first-order ones? If the reply is that they would seem to be in many places at once, that is only restating the original problem of universals at a higher level. |
| 10730 | If universals ground similarities, what about uniquely instantiated universals? [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If universals are to ground similarities, it is hard to see why one should admit universals which only happen to be instantiated once. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: He is criticising Armstrong, who holds that universals must be instantiated. This is a good point about any metaphysics which makes resemblance basic. |
| 10727 | Uninstantiated universals seem to exist if they themselves have properties [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We may have to accept uninstantiated universals because the properties and relations of abstract objects may need to be acknowledged. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This is the problem of 'abstract reference'. 'Courage matters more than kindness'; 'Pink is more like red than like yellow'. Not an impressive argument. All you need is second-level abstraction. |
| 7962 | Uninstantiated properties are useful in philosophy [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Uninstantiated properties and relations may do some useful philosophical work. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11), quoted by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: Their value isn't just philosophical; hopes and speculations depend on them. This doesn't make universals mind-independent. I think the secret is a clear understanding of the word 'abstract' (which I don't have). |
| 10722 | Instantiation is set-membership [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: One view of instantiation is that it is the set-membership predicate. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §10) | |
| A reaction: This cuts the Gordian knot rather nicely, but I don't like it, if the view of sets is extensional. We need to account for natural properties, and we need to exclude mere 'categorial' properties. |
| 9435 | A 'porridge' nominalist thinks we just divide reality in any way that suits us [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A 'porridge' nominalist denies natural kinds, and thinks there are no objective divisions in reality, so concepts or words can be used by a community to divide the world up in any way that suits their purposes. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.3) |
| 10744 | Nominalism can reject abstractions, or universals, or sets [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: We can say that 'Harvard-nominalism' is the thesis that there are no abstract objects, 'Oz-nominalism' that there are no universals, and Goodman's nominalism rejects entities, such as sets, which fail to obey a certain principle of composition. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15 n46) | |
| A reaction: Personally I'm a Goodman-Harvard-Oz nominalist. What are you rebelling against? What have you got? We've been mesmerized by the workings of our own minds, which are trying to grapple with a purely physical world. |
| 9447 | If properties are clusters of powers, this can explain why properties resemble in degrees [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If a cluster of ten powers exhausts property F, and property G differs in respect of just one power, this might explain why properties can resemble other properties and in different degrees. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: I love this. The most intractable problem about properties and universals is that of abstract reference - pink resembles red more than pink resembles green. If colours are clusters of powers, red and pink share nine out of ten of them. |
| 10726 | Things can't be fusions of universals, because two things could then be one thing [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say it is a mereological fusion of them, but if two universals can be instantiated by more than one particular, then two particulars can have the same universals, and be the same thing. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This and Idea 10725 pretty thoroughly demolish the idea that objects could be just bundles of universals. The problem pushes some philosophers back to the idea of 'substance', or some sort of 'substratum' which has the universals. |
| 10725 | Abstract sets of universals can't be bundled to make concrete things [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: If a particular thing is a bundle of located universals, we might say that it is the set of its universals, but this won't work because the thing can be concrete but sets are abstract. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §11) | |
| A reaction: This objection applies just as much to tropes (abstract particulars) as it does to universals. |
| 18617 | Substances, unlike aggregates, can survive a change of parts [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Substances can survive a change in their parts in a way that a mere aggregate of parts. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Metaphysics: a very short introduction [2012], 3) | |
| A reaction: A simple but very important idea. If we then distinguish between 'substances' and 'aggregates' we get a much clearer grip on things. Is the Ship of Theseus a substance or an aggregate? There is no factual answer to that. What do you want to explain? |
| 14295 | Many artefacts have dispositional essences, which make them what they are [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Thermostats, thermometers, axes, spoons, and batteries have dispositional essences, which make them what they are. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 01.2 iv) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that we could extend this proposal well beyond artefacts, but it certainly seems particularly clear in artefacts, where a human intention seems to be inescapably involved. |
| 12248 | How can we show that a universally possessed property is an essential property? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Essentialists fail to show how we ascend from being a property universally possessed, by all kind members, to the status of being an essential property. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.5) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely where my proposal comes in - the essential properties, as opposed to the accidentaly universals, are those which explain the nature and behaviour of each kind of thing (and each individual thing). |
| 18618 | Maybe possibilities are recombinations of the existing elements of reality [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It has been suggested that we could think of possibilities as recombinations of all the existing elements of reality. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Metaphysics: a very short introduction [2012], 8) | |
| A reaction: [Armstrong 1989 is the source] The obvious problem would be that the existence of an entirely different reality would be impossible, if this was all possibility could be. It seems to cramp the style of the possible too much. Are properties elements? |
| 18619 | Combinatorial possibility has to allow all elements to be combinable, which seems unlikely [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The combinatorial account only works if you allow that the elements are recombinable. ...But could Lincoln really have been green? It seems possible that you could jump to the moon, unless we impose some restrictions. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Metaphysics: a very short introduction [2012], 8) | |
| A reaction: Mumford suggests different combination rules for logical and natural possibility. The general objection is that combinatorial possibility is too permissive - which it clearly is. |
| 18620 | Combinatorial possibility relies on what actually exists (even over time), but there could be more [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Can combinatorial possibility deliver enough possibilities? It uses the existing elements, but there might have been one more particular or one more property. Even extended over time, the elements seem finite, yet there could have been more. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Metaphysics: a very short introduction [2012], 8) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] One objection is that the theory allows too much, and now the objection is that it allows too little. Both objections are correct, so that's the end of that. But I admire the attempt to base modality on actuality. |
| 14309 | Truth-functional conditionals can't distinguish whether they are causal or accidental [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If a conditional remains truth-functional it is incapable of expressing the fact that the connection between antecedent and consequent in the conditional is a causal one rather than merely accidental | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the first step towards an account of conditionals which will work in real life rather than merely in classical logic. |
| 14311 | Dispositions are not equivalent to stronger-than-material conditionals [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The conclusion that disposition ascriptions are not equivalent to stronger-than-material conditionals is largely to be accepted. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 04.7) | |
| A reaction: [he attributes the view to C.B.Martin 1994] It is hard to see how to describe a disposition in anything other than conditional terms. Mumford's 'functional role' probably has to be described conditionally. It is how the conditional cashes out. |
| 10745 | Science is modally committed, to disposition, causation and law [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Natural science is up to its ears in modal notions because of its use of the concepts of disposition, causation and law. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §15) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at Quine. It might be possible for an auster physicist to dispense with these concepts, by merely describing patterns of observed behaviour. |
| 14319 | Nomothetic explanations cite laws, and structural explanations cite mechanisms [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A nomothetic explanation appeals to laws where the explanandum is shown to be an instance of a general law. ...The alternative is a structural explanation, which postulates a mechanism, opening up a hidden world. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: [He cites E.McMullin 1978] I am very much in favour of structural explanations, and opposed to nomothetic ones. That is, nomothetic accounts are only the first step towards an explanation - perhaps a mere identification of the explanandum. |
| 14342 | General laws depend upon the capacities of particulars, not the other way around [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws, qua true generalities, if they exist at all, are ontologically parasitic upon the capacities of particulars, rather than the other way round. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: Quite so. And hence trying to explain a particular behaviour by saying that it falls under a law is absurdly circular and vacuous. |
| 14322 | If fragile just means 'breaks when dropped', it won't explain a breakage [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If fragile means nothing more than 'breaks when dropped', then it is no explanation of why something breaks when dropped. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.5) | |
| A reaction: His point is that you have to unpack the notion of fragile, which presumably cites underlying mechanisms. This is the 'virtus dormitiva' problem - but that explanation of opium's dormitive powers is not entirely stupid. |
| 14337 | Maybe dispositions can replace the 'laws of nature' as the basis of explanation [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: I will consider the case for an ontology of real dispositions replacing the so-called laws of nature as the basic building blocks of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: This precisely summarises the view I am exploring, with a particular focus on real essences. I certainly think the 'laws of nature' must go. See Mumford's second book on this. |
| 14343 | To avoid a regress in explanations, ungrounded dispositions will always have to be posited [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The nature of explanation is such that ungrounded dispositions will always have to be posited in order to avoid a regress of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.6) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be right, but leaves it open to mock the proposals as 'virtus dormitiva' - empty place-holders that ground explanations but do no explanatory work. What else can be done, though? |
| 14320 | Subatomic particles may terminate explanation, if they lack structure [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The behaviour of subatomic particles cannot be further analysed into structures and this may tempt us to regard these as instances of 'brute' ungrounded dispositions which end any possible regress of explanation. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, if it is 'structural' explanations we are after (as I think we are) which look for mechanisms. An electron seems to be just three dispositions and no structure, so there is nothing more to say. Ladyman scorns this account. |
| 14324 | Ontology is unrelated to explanation, which concerns modes of presentation and states of knowledge [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Nothing about ontology is at stake in questions of explanation, for explanatory success is contingent upon the modes of presentation of explanans and explananda, and relative states of knowledge and ignorance. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 06.8) | |
| A reaction: There are real facts about the immediate and unusual causes which immediately precede an event, and these might be candidates for a real explanation. There are also real mechanisms and powers which dictate a things behaviour. |
| 10746 | Conceptual priority is barely intelligible [Oliver] |
| Full Idea: I find the notion of conceptual priority barely intelligible. | |
| From: Alex Oliver (The Metaphysics of Properties [1996], §19 n48) | |
| A reaction: I don't think I agree, though there is a lot of vagueness and intuition involved, and not a lot of hard argument. Can you derive A from B, but not B from A? Is A inconceivable without B, but B conceivable without A? |
| 9073 | Abstraction from an ambiguous concept like 'mole' will define them as the same [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: The procedure of abstraction will not allow us to distinguish the ambiguity between 'mole' as an animal and as an artefact. The stages of abstraction will only end up with 'physical object', and this will then count as the definition. | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem if you adhere to a rather precise account of the steps of abstraction, with every stage explicit (and probably expressed in terms of sets), but I suspect that the real tangle of semi-conscious abstraction avoids this problem. |
| 9074 | Abstraction cannot produce the concept of a 'game', as there is no one common feature [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: Abstractions cannot account for those general terms whose instances do not have any set of features in common. The word 'game' is not ambiguous, but not all games have one thing in common; they are united by looser 'family resemblance'. | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: (This point comes from Wittgenstein, Idea 4141) English-speakers can't agree on borderline cases (avoiding cracks in pavements). Life is just a game. The objection would be refuted by discussion of higher-level abstractions to make connections. |
| 9072 | Defining concepts by abstractions will collect together far too many attributes from entities [Barnes,J] |
| Full Idea: If we create abstractions by collection of attributes common to groups of entities, we will collect far too many attributes, and wrongly put them into the definition (such as 'having hairless palms' when identifying 'men'). | |
| From: Jonathan Barnes (Commentary on 'Posterior Analytics [1993], n to 97b7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Defining 'man' is a hugely complex business (see Idea 1763!), unlike defining 'hair' or 'red'. Some attributes will strike perceivers immediately, but absence of an attribute is not actually 'perceived' at all. |
| 14344 | Natural kinds, such as electrons, all behave the same way because we divide them by dispositions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Regularities exist because we classify kinds on the basis of their dispositions, not on pre-established divisions of kinds. The dispositions are the basis for the division into kinds, which is why all electrons behave in the same way. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as being so obvious that it is hardly worth saying, and yet an enormous number of philosophers seem to have been led up the garden path by the notion of a 'kind', probably under the influence of Kripke, Putnam and Wiggins. |
| 19068 | Causation interests us because we want to explain change [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Like Aristotle, the reason we are really interested in causation is because we want to be able to explain change. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Contemporary Efficient Causation: Aristotelian themes [2014], 8) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints a very important and simple idea. It raises the question (among others) of whether we have just invented this thing called 'causation', because no explanation of change was visible. Hume certainly couldn't see any explanation. |
| 9430 | Singular causes, and identities, might be necessary without falling under a law [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: One might have a singularist view of causation in which a cause necessitates its effect, but they need not be subsumed under a law, ..and there are identities which are metaphysically necessary without being laws of nature. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 04.5) |
| 9445 | We can give up the counterfactual account if we take causal language at face value [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If we take causal language at face value and give up reducing causal concepts to non-causal, non-modal concepts, we can give up the counterfactual dependence account. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.5) |
| 9443 | It is only properties which are the source of necessity in the world [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If laws do not give the world necessity, what does? I argue the positive case for it being properties, and properties alone, that do the job (so we might call them 'modal properties'). | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.1) |
| 14338 | In the 'laws' view events are basic, and properties are categorical, only existing when manifested [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: In the 'laws' world view, events are the basic ontological unit and properties are parasitic upon them. Properties exist only in virtue of their instantiation in events. Properties are categorical, because they are only manifested in the present. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: Mumford rejects this view, and I am with him all the way. The first requirement is that properties be active, and not inert. See Leibniz on this. |
| 9444 | There are four candidates for the logical form of law statements [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The contenders for the logical form of a law statement are 1) a universally quantified conditional, 2) a second-order relation between first-order universals, 3) a functional equivalence, and 4) a dispositional characteristic of a natural kind. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 10.3) |
| 14339 | Without laws, how can a dispositionalist explain general behaviour within kinds? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The problem is how, without general laws, can the dispositionalist explain why generalities in behaviour are true of kinds. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: And the answer is to make kinds depend on individuals, and not vice versa, and then point to the necessary patterns that arise from conjunctions of individual dispositions, given their identity in many individuals. |
| 14341 | Dretske and Armstrong base laws on regularities between individual properties, not between events [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The improved Dretske/Armstrong regularity view of laws dispenses with the empiricist articulation of them in terms of events, and construes them as singular statements of fact that describe relations between properties. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: They then seem to go a bit mystical, by insisting that the properties are 'universals' (even if they have to be instantiated). Universals explain nothing. |
| 9431 | Pure regularities are rare, usually only found in idealized conditions [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Pure regularities are not nearly as common as might have been thought, and are usually only to be found in simplified or idealized conditions. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 05.3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Nancy Cartwright 1999 for this view] |
| 9441 | Regularity laws don't explain, because they have no governing role [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: A regularity-law does not explain its instances, because such laws play no role in determining or governing their instances. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 09.7) | |
| A reaction: Good. It has always seemed to me entirely vacuous to explain an event simply by saying that it falls under some law. |
| 14340 | It is a regularity that whenever a person sneezes, someone (somewhere) promptly coughs [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It is no doubt a true regularity that every time I sneeze, someone, somewhere in the world, immediately coughs. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.4) | |
| A reaction: Not a huge problem for the regularity theory of laws, but the first challenge that it must meet. |
| 9416 | Regularities are more likely with few instances, and guaranteed with no instances! [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems that the fewer the instances, the more likely it is that there be a regularity, ..and if there are no cases at all, and no S is P, that is a regularity. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: [He attributes the second point to Molnar] |
| 9415 | Would it count as a regularity if the only five As were also B? [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: While it might be true that for all x, if Ax then Bx, would we really want to count it as a genuine regularity in nature if only five things were A (and all five were also B)? | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.3) |
| 9422 | If the best system describes a nomological system, the laws are in nature, not in the description [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If the world really does have its own nomological structure, that a systematization merely describes, why are the laws not to be equated with the nomological structure itself, rather than with the system that describes it? | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.4) |
| 9421 | The best systems theory says regularities derive from laws, rather than constituting them [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The best systems theory (of Mill-Ramsey-Lewis) says that laws are not seen as regularities but, rather, as those things from which regularities - or rather, the whole world history including the regularities and everything else - can be derived. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 03.4) | |
| A reaction: Put this way, the theory invites questions about ontology. Regularities are just patterns in physical reality, but axioms are propositions. So are they just features of human thought, or do these axioms actuallyr reside in reality. Too weak or too strong. |
| 9432 | Laws of nature are necessary relations between universal properties, rather than about particulars [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The core of the Dretske-Tooley-Armstrong view of the late 70s is that we have a law of nature when we have a relation of natural necessitation between universals. ..The innovation was that laws are about properties, and only indirectly about particulars. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 06.2) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as if we should then be able to know the laws of nature a priori, since that was Russell's 1912 definition of a priori knowledge. |
| 9433 | If laws can be uninstantiated, this favours the view of them as connecting universals [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If there are laws that are instantiated in no particulars, then this would seem to favour the theory that laws connect universals rather than particulars. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: There is a dispute here between the Platonic view of uninstantiated universals (Tooley) and the Aristotelian instantiated view (Armstrong). Mumford and I prefer the dispositional account. |
| 14345 | The necessity of an electron being an electron is conceptual, and won't ground necessary laws [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The logical necessity of physical laws is not required by dispositional essentialism. An electron would not be an electron if its behaviour were different from the behaviour it has in the actual world, but this necessity is purely conceptual. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 10.8) | |
| A reaction: [He is particularly aiming this at Ellis and Lierse 1994] This may be missing the point. Given those electron dispositions, the electrons necessitate law-like happenings. Whether a variable entity is called an 'electron' is trivial. |
| 9434 | Laws of nature are just the possession of essential properties by natural kinds [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: If dispositional essentialism is granted, then there is a law of nature wherever there is an essential property of a natural kind; laws are just the havings of essential properties by natural kinds. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: [He is expounding Ellis's view] |
| 14307 | Some dispositions are so far unknown, until we learn how to manifest them [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: It seems reasonable to assume that there are some dispositions of some things of which we are not aware because we have not yet discovered the way to get these dispositions to manifest. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Dispositions [1998], 03.7) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a pretty good description of what scientists are currently doing when, for example, they build a new particle accelerator. |
| 9437 | To distinguish accidental from essential properties, we must include possible members of kinds [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Where properties are possessed by all kind members, we must distinguish the accidental from essential ones by considering all actual and possible kind members. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 07.5) | |
| A reaction: This is why we must treat possibilities as features of the actual world. |
| 9439 | The Central Dilemma is how to explain an internal or external view of laws which govern [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: The Central Dilemma about laws of nature is that, if they have some governing role, then they must be internal or external to the things governed, and it is hard to give a plausible account of either view. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 09.2) | |
| A reaction: This dilemma is the basis of Mumford's total rejection of 'laws of nature'. I think I agree. |
| 9412 | You only need laws if you (erroneously) think the world is otherwise inert [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws are a solution to a problem that was misconceived. Only if you think that the world would be otherwise inactive or inanimate, do you have the need to add laws to your ontology. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a bold and extreme view - and I agree with it. I consider laws to be quite a useful concept when discussing nature, but they are not part of the ontology, and they don't do any work. They are metaphysically hopeless. |
| 9411 | There are no laws of nature in Aristotle; they became standard with Descartes and Newton [Mumford] |
| Full Idea: Laws do not appear in Aristotle's metaphysics, and it wasn't until Descartes and Newton that laws entered the intellectual mainstream. | |
| From: Stephen Mumford (Laws in Nature [2004], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 5470. |