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15286
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Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3)
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A reaction:
I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection.
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15283
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Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
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A reaction:
[They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms).
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15316
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The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III)
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A reaction:
This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists.
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15298
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We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III)
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A reaction:
If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302.
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15255
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Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I)
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A reaction:
I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I.
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15284
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Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
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A reaction:
[compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation.
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15285
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The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
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A reaction:
This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view.
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15293
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If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
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A reaction:
If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow.
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15294
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Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
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A reaction:
I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality.
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15254
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If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I)
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A reaction:
They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct.
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15310
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Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden]
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Full Idea:
Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things.
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From:
Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B)
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A reaction:
This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say.
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