display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 8541 | Regularities theories are poor on causal connections, counterfactuals and probability [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Regularity theories make laws molecular, with no inner causal connections; also, only some cosmic regularities are manifestations of laws; molecular states can't sustain counterfactuals; and probabilistic laws are hard to accommodate. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §2) | |
| A reaction: [very compressed] A helpful catalogue of difficulties. The first difficulty is the biggest one - that regularity theories have nothing to say about why there is a regularity. They offer descriptions instead of explanations. |
| 8540 | The introduction of sparse properties avoids the regularity theory's problem with 'grue' [Armstrong] |
| Full Idea: Regularity theories of laws face the grue problem. That, I think, can only be got over by introducing properties, sparse properties, into one's ontology. | |
| From: David M. Armstrong (Properties [1992], §2) | |
| A reaction: The problem is, roughly, that regularities have to be described in language, which is too arbitrary in character. Armstrong rightly tries to break the rigid link to language. See his Idea 8536, which puts reality before language. |
| 7206 | Things are strong or weak, and do not behave regularly or according to rules or compulsions [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: 'Things' do not behave regularly, not according to a rule: things are our fiction, and nor do they behave under the compulsion of necessity. That something is as it is, as strong or as weak, is not the consequence of obeying or rules or compulsion. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79]) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about the denial of 'things', given that they are then said to be strong or weak, but Nietzsche seems to have had the key insight of modern essentialism, that the so-called 'laws' are merely the outcome of the inner natures of things. |
| 7140 | Chemical 'laws' are merely the establishment of power relations between weaker and stronger [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: I take care not to talk of chemical 'laws'. It is rather a matter of the absolute establishment of power relations: the stronger becomes master of the weaker to the extent that the weaker cannot assert its autonomy - there is no respect for 'laws'. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[18]) | |
| A reaction: This links Nietzsche's will to power with Locke's talk of physical powers, and both point towards an essentialist view of natural laws, rather than seeing laws as something imposed from outside on nature. |
| 7142 | All motions and 'laws' are symptoms of inner events, traceable to the will to power [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: One must understand all motion, all 'appearances', all 'laws' as mere symptoms of inner events. ...all the functions of animal and organic life can be traced back to the will to power. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 36[31]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche must be the first philosopher to put inverted commas round the word 'law', referring to nature. |