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Single Idea 9650

[filed under theme 7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / a. Nature of supervenience ]

Full Idea

The idea of supervenience is when there could be no difference of one sort without difference of another sort. ..Clearly this 'could' indicates modality, and without modality we have nothing of interest.

Gist of Idea

Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion

Source

David Lewis (On the Plurality of Worlds [1986], 1.2)

Book Ref

Lewis,David: 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [Blackwell 2001], p.15

A Reaction

This might explain why philosophers are going to be more at home with the concept than neuroscientists would be.

The 14 ideas with the same theme [defining and elucidating supervenience]:

12922 A thing 'expresses' another if they have a constant and fixed relationship [Leibniz]
3536 Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim]
2310 Supervenience is linked to dependence [Kim]
9650 Supervenience concerns whether things could differ, so it is a modal notion [Lewis]
4077 Aesthetic properties of thing supervene on their physical properties [Crane]
2392 Properties supervene if you can't have one without the other [Chalmers]
10421 Supervenience is nowadays seen as between properties, rather than linguistic [Swoyer]
19281 Interesting supervenience must characterise the base quite differently from what supervenes on it [Hale]
15017 Supervenience is a modal connection [Sider]
6155 Supervenience is a one-way relation of dependence or determination between properties [Rowlands]
13747 Supervenience is just modal correlation [Schaffer,J]
16039 Supervenience: No A-difference without a B-difference [Bennett,K]
16043 Supervenience is non-symmetric - sometimes it's symmetric, and sometimes it's one-way [Bennett,K]
18680 To avoid misunderstandings supervenience is often expressed negatively: no A-change without B-change [Orsi]