68 ideas
14562 | A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14541 | Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum] |
14553 | Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum] |
8526 | We might treat both tropes and substances as fundamental, so we can't presume it is just tropes [Daly] |
8527 | More than one trope (even identical ones!) can occupy the same location [Daly] |
8528 | If tropes are linked by the existence of concurrence, a special relation is needed to link them all [Daly] |
14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
14555 | Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum] |
14557 | Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14583 | Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum] |
14536 | We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum] |
14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
17535 | Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [Mumford/Anjum] |
14579 | Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum] |
14580 | Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum] |
14552 | Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum] |
14578 | Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum] |
14549 | Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14585 | We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum] |
14576 | Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum] |
14551 | If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum] |
14571 | The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum] |
14570 | Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14569 | It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum] |
14568 | A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum] |
14556 | Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum] |
14566 | Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum] |
14577 | Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14563 | Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14587 | We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum] |
14533 | Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum] |
14558 | A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum] |
14559 | Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14565 | Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum] |
14567 | Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum] |
14537 | Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum] |
14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum] |
14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14574 | Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum] |
14539 | Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14550 | We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum] |
14546 | Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum] |
14575 | A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum] |
14548 | There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum] |
14554 | Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
14564 | If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum] |
20624 | Work degrades into heat, but not vice versa [Close] |
20623 | First Law: energy can change form, but is conserved overall [Close] |
20625 | Third Law: total order and minimum entropy only occurs at absolute zero [Close] |
20622 | All motions are relative and ambiguous, but acceleration is the same in all inertial frames [Close] |
20628 | The electric and magnetic are tightly linked, and viewed according to your own motion [Close] |
20635 | The general relativity equations relate curvature in space-time to density of energy-momentum [Close] |
20642 | Photon exchange drives the electro-magnetic force [Close] |
20627 | Electric fields have four basic laws (two by Gauss, one by Ampère, one by Faraday) [Close] |
20630 | Light isn't just emitted in quanta called photons - light is photons [Close] |
20637 | In general relativity the energy and momentum of photons subjects them to gravity [Close] |
20629 | Electro-magnetic waves travel at light speed - so light is electromagnetism! [Close] |
20632 | In QED, electro-magnetism exists in quantum states, emitting and absorbing electrons [Close] |
20639 | Quantum fields contain continual rapid creation and disappearance [Close] |
20641 | Electrons get their mass by interaction with the Higgs field [Close] |
20631 | Dirac showed how electrons conform to special relativity [Close] |
20626 | Modern theories of matter are grounded in heat, work and energy [Close] |
20633 | The Higgs field is an electroweak plasma - but we don't know what stuff it consists of [Close] |
20640 | Space-time is indeterminate foam over short distances [Close] |