Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Dthat', 'Grounding Concepts' and 'Causation'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / c. Grounding and explanation
We can learn about the world by studying the grounding of our concepts [Jenkins]
     Full Idea: What concept grounding does for us is ensure that our concepts, like the results of our empirical tests, can be treated as a source of information about the independent world.
     From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.4)
     A reaction: Presumably we learn our concepts hand-in-hand with experience, so learning our concepts is itself learning about the world. Later checking of concepts and their relations largely confirms what we already knew?
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 4. Ontological Dependence
There's essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive dependence [Jenkins, by PG]
     Full Idea: Dependence comes in essential, modal, explanatory, conceptual, metaphysical and constitutive forms.
     From: report of Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 1.2) by PG - Db (ideas)
     A reaction: You'll have to look up Jenkins for the details.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / a. Facts
Events are picked out by descriptions, and facts by whole sentences [Crane]
     Full Idea: Events are picked out using descriptions ('The death of Caesar'), while facts are picked out using whole sentences ('Caesar died').
     From: Tim Crane (Causation [1995], 1.4.2)
     A reaction: Useful, and interesting. He mentions that Kim's usage doesn't agree with this. For analysis purposes, this means that an event is a more minimal item than a fact, and many facts will contain events as components.
7. Existence / E. Categories / 4. Category Realism
The concepts we have to use for categorising are ones which map the real world well [Jenkins]
     Full Idea: Concepts which are indispensably useful for categorising, understanding, explaining, and predicting our sensory input are likely to be ones which map the structure of that input well.
     From: Carrie Jenkins (Grounding Concepts [2008], 4.6)
     A reaction: Anti-realists about classification seem to think that we just invent an array of concepts, and then start classifying with them. The truth seems to be that the actual classes of worldly thing have generated our concepts.