display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
4347 | When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural [Hegel] |
Full Idea: When man wills the natural, it is no longer natural. | |
From: Georg W.F.Hegel (works [1812]), quoted by Rosalind Hursthouse - On Virtue Ethics Ch.4 | |
A reaction: Sounds good, though I'm not sure what it means. The application of the word 'natural' seems a bit arbitrary to me. No objective joint exists between the natural and unnatural. The default position has to be that everything is natural. |
19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
Full Idea: The Armstrong/Tooley/Dretske view, which takes laws to be substantial but grounded in a relation of nomic necessitation external to the properties themselves, is not an attractive option for the dispositionalist. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
A reaction: The point is that the dispositionalist sees laws as grounded in the properties. I prefer her other option, of dispositionalism plus a 'shallow' view of laws (which she attributes to Mumford). The laws are as Lewis says, but powers explain them. |
19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
Full Idea: Even on the dispositional essentialist view the world might have been governed by different laws, if those laws involved different properties. What is excluded is the possibility of different laws involving the same properties as our actual laws. | |
From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
A reaction: Important. Critics of dispositional essentialism accuse it of promoting the idea that the laws of nature are necessary, a claim for which we obviously have no evidence. I prefer to say they are necessary given that 'stuff', rather than those properties. |
23195 | Laws of nature are actually formulas of power relations [Nietzsche] |
Full Idea: The alleged 'laws of nature' are formulas for power relationships… | |
From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 34[247]) | |
A reaction: Love it. This is precisely the powers ontology of modern philosophy of science. His Will to Power is not often recognised as closely related to this view. |