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Ideas for 'Metaphysics', 'Modes of Extension: comment on Fine' and 'The Possibility of Metaphysics'

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5 ideas

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
Nature is an active principle of change, like potentiality, but it is intrinsic to things [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Nature [phusis] is in the same genus as dunamis [power/potential], for it is an active principle of change, but not in another thing but in the thing itself qua itself.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1049a09)
     A reaction: [Gill's translation; Lawson-Tancred refers to 'A nature' rather than 'nature', which implies an essence]. It seems like phusis is intrinsic, and dunamis is relational. Two sorts of power?
Heraclitus says change is new creation, and Spinoza that it is just phases of the one substance [Lowe]
     Full Idea: The extreme views on change are the Heraclitan view - that every change brings into existence an entirely new entity, and destroys what existed before, and the Spinozan view - that all changes are phase changes within a single substance.
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 8.2)
     A reaction: The views in between are that bundles of properties shift their contents, or that many substances undergo changes in their properties. The unification of physics might be aiming to vindicate Spinoza. Temporal parts (Lewis) are close to Heraclitus.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 2. Processes
An actuality is usually thought to be a process [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: An actuality is thought most normally to be a process.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a30)
     A reaction: He comments of this that he wishes to include entelechies (unified items) in the general account, and not just processes. To present everything as fundamentally a process is a hard story to tell with full coherence, I think.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / a. Nature of events
Events are changes or non-changes in properties and relations of persisting objects [Lowe]
     Full Idea: My own broadly Aristotelian view is that events are changes (and unchanges) in the properties and relations of persisting objects.
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 4.4)
     A reaction: This needs an account of what it is that persists, and the philosophers' (but not physicists') concept of 'substance' fills this role. It is rather hard to give identity-conditions for an event if it is an 'unchange'. How would you count such events?
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / b. Events as primitive
Events are ontologically indispensable for singular causal explanations [Lowe]
     Full Idea: We must include events in our ontology because they figure indispensably in singular causal explanations.
     From: E.J. Lowe (The Possibility of Metaphysics [1998], 10.5)
     A reaction: Hm. Spirits figure indispensably in supernatural explanations. It would be quite a task to prove that events really are indispensable to causal explanations. Why would nomological or counterfactual causal explanations not have the same need?