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Full Idea
There is a common tendency to identify a cause with its symptoms. Hence we are not sure how to characterise a law, and so we identify it with the regularities to which it gives rise.
Gist of Idea
We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms
Source
Kit Fine (Vagueness: a global approach [2020], 1)
Book Ref
Fine,Kit: 'Vagueness: a global approach' [OUP 2020], p.16
A Reaction
A lovely clear identification of my pet hate, which is superficial accounts of things, which claim to be the last word, but actually explain nothing.
Related Idea
Idea 23542 Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K]
| 23539 | Classical semantics has referents for names, extensions for predicates, and T or F for sentences [Fine,K] |
| 23544 | Local indeterminacy concerns a single object, and global indeterminacy covers a range [Fine,K] |
| 23540 | Conjoining two indefinites by related sentences seems to produce a contradiction [Fine,K] |
| 23542 | Identifying vagueness with ignorance is the common mistake of confusing symptoms with cause [Fine,K] |
| 23541 | Supervaluation can give no answer to 'who is the last bald man' [Fine,K] |
| 23543 | We identify laws with regularities because we mistakenly identify causes with their symptoms [Fine,K] |
| 23545 | We do not have an intelligible concept of a borderline case [Fine,K] |
| 23546 | Standardly vagueness involves borderline cases, and a higher standpoint from which they can be seen [Fine,K] |
| 23548 | Indeterminacy is in conflict with classical logic [Fine,K] |
| 23547 | It seems absurd that there is no identity of any kind between two objects which involve survival [Fine,K] |