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Single Idea 17486

[filed under theme 7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience ]

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.


The 11 ideas from 'Chemistry'

Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry]
Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry]
Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry]
Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry]
Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry]
The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry]
Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry]
Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry]
Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry]
Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry]
Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry]