Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Demonstratives', 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity' and 'Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 7. Eliminating causation
Cause and effect is a hypothesis, based on our supposed willing of actions [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: Cause and effect is not a truth but rather a hypothesis - and indeed the one which we use to anthropomorphise the world for ourselves, bringing it in closer proximity to our feelings ('willing' is projected into it).
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1884-85 [1884], 25[371])
     A reaction: That is (I think), we read the gap between thought and action onto natural external events, dividing them up. We treat the flow of events as if they were agent causation. Modern theories seem close to Nietzsche's unified view.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals.