display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 15641 | Kinds are fixed by the essential properties of things - the properties that make it that kind of thing [Eagle] |
| Full Idea: The natural thought is to think that real kinds are given only by classification on the basis of essential properties: properties that make an object the kind of thing that it is. | |
| From: Antony Eagle (Locke on Essences and Kinds [2005], II) | |
| A reaction: Circularity alert! Circularity alert! Essence gives a thing its kind - and hence we can see what the kind is? Test for a trivial property! Eagle is not unaware of these issues. Does he mean 'necessary' rather than 'essential'? |
| 15126 | Maybe scientific causation is just generalisation about the patterns [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps science doesn't need a robust conception of causation, and can get by with thinking of causal laws in a Humean way, as the simplest generalization over the mosaic. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: The Humean view he is referring to is held by David Lewis. That seems a council of defeat. We observe from a distance, but make no attempt to explain. |
| 15125 | We only know the mathematical laws, but not much else [Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: We know the laws of the physical world, in so far as they are mathematical, pretty well, but we know nothing else about it. | |
| From: John Hawthorne (Causal Structuralism [2001], Ch.25) | |
| A reaction: Lovely remark [spotted by Hawthorne]. This sums up exactly what I take to be the most pressing issue in philosophy of science - that we develop a view of science that has space for the next step in explanation. |