display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
| 12256 | We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg] |
| Full Idea: We need a theory of essence to help us distinguish between the powers that do and do not belong to the essence of a thing. | |
| From: David S. Oderberg (Real Essentialism [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a very good reason for searching for the essence of things, though the need to distinguish does not guarantee that there really is something to distinguish. Maybe powers just come and go. A power is essential in you but not in me? |
| 15723 | Either dispositions rest on structures, or we keep saying 'all things being equal' [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The further a disposition is from those that can confidently be pinned on molecular structure or something comparably firm, the more our talk of it tends to depend on a vague factor of 'caeteris paribus' | |
| From: Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) | |
| A reaction: I approve of this. It is precisely the point of scientific essentialism, I take it. We are faced with innumerable uncertain dispositions, but once the underlying mechanisms are known, their role in nature becomes fairly precise. |
| 15490 | Explain unmanifested dispositions as structural similarities to objects which have manifested them [Quine, by Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Quine claims that an unmanifested disposition is explicable in terms of an object having a structure similar to a structure of an object that has manifested the supposed disposition. | |
| From: report of Willard Quine (Word and Object [1960], §46) by C.B. Martin - The Mind in Nature 07.4 | |
| A reaction: This is probably the best account available for the firm empiricist who denies modal features in the actual world. In other words, a disposition is the result of an induction, not a conditional statement. |