more on this theme | more from this thinker
Full Idea
Supervenience is not an ontological relationship, being just modally robust property co-variance.
Clarification
'modally robust' means it persists through most possibilities
Gist of Idea
Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance
Source
Robin F. Hendry (Chemistry [2008], 'Ontol')
Book Ref
'Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Science', ed/tr. Psillos,S/Curd,M [Routledge 2010], p.528
A Reaction
I take supervenience to be nothing more than an interesting phenomenon that requires explanation. I suppose Humean Supervenience is a priori metaphysics, since you could hardly explain it.
17476 | Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry] |
17477 | Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry] |
17480 | Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry] |
17481 | Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry] |
17478 | Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry] |
17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
17482 | Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry] |
17483 | Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry] |
17486 | Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry] |