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Ideas for 'reports', 'Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus' and 'Process and Reality'

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2 ideas

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation
Whitehead held that perception was a necessary feature of all causation [Whitehead, by Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: On Whitehead's view, not only is a volitional sense of 'causal power' projected on to physical events, but 'perception in the causal mode' is literally ascribed to them.
     From: report of Alfred North Whitehead (Process and Reality [1929]) by Harré,R./Madden,E.H. - Causal Powers 3.II
     A reaction: This seems to be a close relative of Leibniz's monads. 'Perception' is a daft word for it, but in some way everything is 'responsive' to the things adjacent to it.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 7. Eliminating causation
There are no causes, because they are relative, and alike things can't cause one another [Pyrrho, by Diog. Laertius]
     Full Idea: The idea of cause is relative to that of which it is the cause, and so has no real existence. …Also cause must either be body causing body, or incorporeal causing incorporeal, and neither of these is possible.
     From: report of Pyrrho (reports [c.325 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 09.11.11