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3 ideas
| 7648 | The sun and rain weren't made for us; they sometimes burn us, or spoil our seeds [La Mettrie] |
| Full Idea: The sun was not made in order to heat the earth and all its inhabitants - whom it sometimes burns - any more than the rain was created in order to grow seeds - which it often spoils. | |
| From: Julien Offray de La Mettrie (Machine Man [1747]) | |
| A reaction: This denial of Aristotelian (and divine) teleology is as much part of the movement against religion, as are concerns about natural evil, and about the weakness of arguments for God's existence. These facts were obvious long before La Mettrie. |
| 15798 | Kinds are arrangements of dispositions [Fetzer] |
| Full Idea: Kinds of things are specific arrangements of dispositions. | |
| From: J.H. Fetzer (A World of Dispositions [1977], 2) | |
| A reaction: A 'disposition' doesn't seem quite the right word for what is basic to the physical world, though Harré and Madden make a good case for the 'fields' of physic being understood in that way. I prefer 'power', though that doesn't solve anything. |
| 15799 | Lawlike sentences are general attributions of disposition to all members of some class [Fetzer] |
| Full Idea: Lawlike sentences are conceived as logically general dispositional statements attributing permanent dispositional properties to every member of a reference class. ...Their basic form is that of subjunctive generalizations. | |
| From: J.H. Fetzer (A World of Dispositions [1977], 3) | |
| A reaction: I much prefer talk of 'lawlike sentences' to talk of 'laws'. At least they imply that the true generalisations about nature are fairly fine-grained. Why not talk of 'generalisations' instead of 'laws'? Fetzer wants dispositions to explain everything. |