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Ideas of R.D. Ingthorsson, by Text

[Swedish, fl. 2021, Professor at University of Helsinki.]

2021 A Powerful Particulars View of Causation
1 p.4 Neo-Humeans say there are no substantial connections between anything
1 p.4 Humeans describe the surface of causation, while powers accounts aim at deeper explanations
1.4 p.9 Time and space are not causal, but they determine natural phenomena
1.5 p.10 Casuation is the transmission of conserved quantities between causal processes
1.8 p.15 Philosophers accepted first-order logic, because they took science to be descriptive, not explanatory
1.8 p.15 It is difficult to handle presentism in first-order logic
1.9 p.16 Metaphysics can criticise interpretations of science theories, and give good feedback
10.3 p.172 Causal events are always reciprocal, and there is no distinction of action and reaction
2.1 p.20 Most materialist views postulate smallest indivisible components which are permanent
2.1 p.20 Endurance and perdurance just show the consequences of A or B series time
2.1 p.23 Interventionist causal theory says it gets a reliable result whenever you manipulate it
3.08 p.49 One effect cannot act on a second effect in causation, because the second doesn't yet exist
3.10 p.54 Empiricists preferred events to objects as the relata, because they have observable motions
3.10 p.59 Science now says all actions are reciprocal, not unidirectional
4.04 p.64 In modern physics the first and second laws of motion (unlike the third) fail at extremes
4.06 p.68 Causes are not agents; the whole interaction is the cause, and the changed compound is the effect
4.10 p.73 If causation involves production, that needs persisting objects
4.11 p.77 Causation as transfer only works for asymmetric interactions
4.13 p.79 Any process can go backwards or forwards in time without violating the basic laws of physics
5.3 p.90 A cause can fail to produce its normal effect, by prevention, pre-emption, finks or antidotes
6 p.99 Science suggests causal aspects of the constitution and persistance of objects
7 p.106 Compound objects are processes, insofar as change is essential to them
7.4 p.116 Basic processes are said to be either physical, or organic, or psychological
7.6 p.122 If particles have decay rates, they can't really be elementary, in the sense of indivisible
8 p.123 Properties are said to be categorical qualities or non-qualitative dispositions
8.06 p.131 Physics understands the charge of an electron as a power, not as a quality
8.13 p.148 Indirect realists are cautious about the manifest image, and prefer the scientific image
9.1 p.149 Counterfactuals don't explain causation, but causation can explain counterfactuals
9.3 p.155 People only accept the counterfactual when they know the underlying cause
9.6 p.165 Every philosophical theory must be true in some possible world, so the ontology is hopeless
9.6 p.166 Counterfactual theories are false in possible worlds where causation is actual
9.7 p.168 Worlds may differ in various respects, but no overall similarity of worlds is implied