83 ideas
15477 | Ontology is highly abstract physics, containing placeholders and exclusions [Martin,CB] |
15471 | Truth is a relation between a representation ('bearer') and part of the world ('truthmaker') [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15484 | A property is a combination of a disposition and a quality [Martin,CB] |
15478 | Properties are the respects in which objects resemble, which places them in classes [Martin,CB] |
15483 | Properties are ways particular things are, and so they are tied to the identity of their possessor [Martin,CB] |
15480 | Objects are not bundles of tropes (which are ways things are, not parts of things) [Martin,CB] |
15489 | A property that cannot interact is worse than inert - it isn't there at all [Martin,CB] |
14538 | Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum] |
15487 | If unmanifested partnerless dispositions are still real, and are not just qualities, they can explain properties [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15488 | Qualities and dispositions are aspects of properties - what it exhibits, and what it does [Martin,CB] |
15479 | Properties endow a ball with qualities, and with powers or dispositions [Martin,CB] |
15469 | Dispositions in action can be destroyed, be recovered, or remain unchanged [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15466 | 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers [Martin,CB] |
14584 | The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum] |
15467 | Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis [Martin,CB] |
14582 | Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum] |
16235 | Persistence conditions cannot contradict, so there must be a 'dominant sortal' [Burke,M, by Hawley] |
14753 | The 'dominant' of two coinciding sortals is the one that entails the widest range of properties [Burke,M, by Sider] |
16072 | 'The rock' either refers to an object, or to a collection of parts, or to some stuff [Burke,M, by Wasserman] |
14751 | Tib goes out of existence when the tail is lost, because Tib was never the 'cat' [Burke,M, by Sider] |
14542 | If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum] |
16071 | Sculpting a lump of clay destroys one object, and replaces it with another one [Burke,M, by Wasserman] |
16234 | Burke says when two object coincide, one of them is destroyed in the process [Burke,M, by Hawley] |
13278 | Maybe the clay becomes a different lump when it becomes a statue [Burke,M, by Koslicki] |
14750 | Two entities can coincide as one, but only one of them (the dominant sortal) fixes persistence conditions [Burke,M, by Sider] |
15476 | Structural properties involve dispositionality, so cannot be used to explain it [Martin,CB] |
15465 | Structures don't explain dispositions, because they consist of dispositions [Martin,CB] |
14535 | Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum] |
15481 | I favour the idea of a substratum for properties; spacetime seems to be just a bearer of properties [Martin,CB] |
15474 | Properly understood, wholes do no more causal work than their parts [Martin,CB] |
14561 | Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum] |
15486 | Only abstract things can have specific and full identity specifications [Martin,CB] |
15475 | The concept of 'identity' must allow for some changes in properties or parts [Martin,CB] |
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] |
17535 | Dispositionality has its own distinctive type of modality [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] |
15472 | It is pointless to say possible worlds are truthmakers, and then deny that possible worlds exist [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15492 | Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative [Martin,CB] |
15495 | Analogy works, as when we eat food which others seem to be relishing [Martin,CB] |
15493 | Memory requires abstraction, as reminders of what cannot be fully remembered [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15485 | Instead of a cause followed by an effect, we have dispositions in reciprocal manifestation [Martin,CB] |
15491 | Causation should be explained in terms of dispositions and manifestations [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15468 | Causal counterfactuals are just clumsy linguistic attempts to indicate dispositions [Martin,CB] |
14572 | Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum] |
14573 | Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [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] |
15470 | Causal laws are summaries of powers [Martin,CB] |
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] |
15482 | We can't think of space-time as empty and propertyless, and it seems to be a substratum [Martin,CB] |