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2 ideas
| 8317 | To cite facts as the elements in causation is to confuse states of affairs with states of objects [Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers who have advocated facts as being causal relata have confused them with states, such as a stone's being heavy; they are guilty of confusing states of affairs with states of objects. | |
| From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 11.3) | |
| A reaction: A state of an object can be individuated rather more precisely than a fact or state of affairs. There are, of course, vast numbers of states of objects, but only a few states of affairs, involved in (say) the fall of the Berlin Wall. |
| 9363 | Science seeks classification which will discover laws, essences, and predictions [Lewis,CI] |
| Full Idea: The scientific search is for such classification as will make it possible to correlate appearance and behaviour, to discover law, to penetrate to the "essential nature" of things in order that behaviour may become predictable. | |
| From: C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368) | |
| A reaction: Modern scientific essentialists no longer invoke scare quotes, and I think we should talk of the search for the 'mechanisms' which explain behaviour, but Lewis seems to have been sixty years ahead of his time. |