display all the ideas for this combination of texts
22 ideas
| 9502 | There might be just one fundamental natural property [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The thought that there might be just one fundamental natural property is not that strange. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: A nice variation on the Parmenides idea that only the One exists. Bird's point would refer to a possible unification of modern physics. We see, for example, the forces of electricity and of magnetism turning out to be the same force. |
| 14979 | Being alone doesn't guarantee intrinsic properties; 'being alone' is itself extrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: The property of 'being alone in the world' is an extrinsic property, even though it has had by an object that is alone in the world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 01.2 | |
| A reaction: I always choke on my cornflakes whenever anyone cites a true predicate as if it were a genuine property. This is a counterexample to Idea 14978. Sider offers another more elaborate example from Lewis. |
| 15454 | Extrinsic properties come in degrees, with 'brother' less extrinsic than 'sibling' [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties may be more or less intrinsic; being a brother has more of an admixture of intrinsic structure than being a sibling does, yet both are extrinsic. | |
| From: David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the point is that a brother is intrinsically male - but then a sibling is intrinsically human. A totally extrinsic relation would be one between entities which shared virtually no categories of existence. |
| 9477 | Categorical properties are not modally fixed, but change across possible worlds [Bird] |
| Full Idea: Categorical properties do not have their dispositional characters modally fixed, but may change their dispositional characters (and their causal and nomic behaviour more generally) across different worlds. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the key ground for Bird's praiseworth opposition to categorical propertie. I take it to be a nonsense to call the category in which we place something a 'property' of that thing. A confusion of thought with reality. |
| 9490 | The categoricalist idea is that a property is only individuated by being itself [Bird] |
| Full Idea: In the categoricalist view, the essential properties of a natural property are limited to its essentially being itself and not some distinct property. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: He associates this view with Lewis (modern regularity view) and Armstrong (nomic necessitation), and launches a splendid attack against it. I have always laughed at the idea that 'being Socrates' was one of the properties of Socrates. |
| 9495 | If we abstractly define a property, that doesn't mean some object could possess it [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The possibility of abstract definition does not show that we have defined a property that we can know, independently of any theory, that it is physically possible for some object to possess. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 4.2.3.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a naturalist resisting the idea that there is no more to a property than set-membership. I strongly agree. We need a firm notion of properties as features of the actual world; anything else should be called something like 'categorisations'. |
| 9492 | Categoricalists take properties to be quiddities, with no essential difference between them [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The categoricalist conception of properties takes them to be quiddities, which are primitive identities between fundamental qualities, having no difference with regard to their essence. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Compare 'haecceitism' about indentity of objects, though 'quidditism' sounds even less plausible. Bird attributes this view to Lewis and Armstrong, and makes it sound well daft. |
| 9503 | To name an abundant property is either a Fregean concept, or a simple predicate [Bird] |
| Full Idea: It isn't clear what it is to name an abundant property. One might reify them, as akin to Fregean concepts, or it might be equivalent to a simple predication. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 7.1.2) | |
| A reaction: 'Fregean concepts' would make them functions that purely link things (hence relational?). One suspects that people who actually treat abundant properties as part of their ontology (Lewis) are confusing natural properties with predicates. |
| 11942 | Power is the possibility of action, as discovered by experience [Hume] |
| Full Idea: Power consists in the possibility or probability of any action, as discovered by experience and the practice of the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.313), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 5 | |
| A reaction: [page in OUP edn] This strikes me as blatantly false, and typical of those who confuse epistemology with ontology. It implies that a power that takes everyone by surprise is impossible, by definition. |
| 11949 | There may well be powers in things, with which we are quite unacquainted [Hume] |
| Full Idea: I am, indeed, ready to allow, that there may be several qualities both in material and immaterial objects, with which we are utterly unacquainted; and if we please to call these powers and efficiency, 'twill be be of little consequence to the world. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.168), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 7.2.1 | |
| A reaction: A delightful air of casual indifference. What the classic empiricists needed was a notion of 'best explanation', which would allow them to leap beyond immediate experience. They made plenty of other leaps beyond experience, though Hume hated them. |
| 14540 | Only real powers are fundamental [Bird, by Mumford/Anjum] |
| Full Idea: Bird says only real powers are fundamental. | |
| From: report of Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007]) by S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum - Getting Causes from Powers 1.5 | |
| A reaction: They disagree, and want higher-level properties in their ontology. I'm with Bird, except that something must exist to have the powers. Powers are fundamental to all the activity of nature, and are intrinsic to the stuff which constitutes nature. |
| 9450 | If all properties are potencies, and stimuli and manifestation characterise them, there is a regress [Bird] |
| Full Idea: Potencies are characterized in terms of their stimulus and manifestation properties, then if potencies are the only properties then these properties are also potencies, and must be characterized by yet further properties, leading to a vicious regress. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is cited as the most popular objection to the dispositional account of properties. |
| 9498 | The essence of a potency involves relations, e.g. mass, to impressed force and acceleration [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The essence of a potency involves a relation to something else; if inertial mass is a potency then its essence involves a relation to a stimulus property (impressed force) and a manifestation property (acceleration). | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: It doesn't seem quite right to say that the relations are part of the essence, if they might not occur, but some other relations might happen in their place. An essence is what makes a relation possible (like being good-looking). |
| 9474 | A disposition is finkish if a time delay might mean the manifestation fizzles out [Bird] |
| Full Idea: Finkish dispositions arise because the time delay between stimulus and manifestation provides an opportunity for the disposition to go out of existence and so halt the process that would bring about the manifestation. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 2.2.3) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem for the conditional analysis of dispositions; there may be a disposition, but it never reaches manifestation. Bird rightly points us towards actual powers rather than dispositions that need manifestation. |
| 9475 | A robust pot attached to a sensitive bomb is not fragile, but if struck it will easily break [Bird] |
| Full Idea: If a robust iron pot is attached to a bomb with a sensitive detonator. If the pot is struck, the bomb will go off, so they counterfactual 'if the pot were struck it would break' is true, but it is not a fragile pot. This is a 'mimic' of the disposition. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 2.2.5.1) | |
| A reaction: A very nice example, showing that a true disposition would have to be an internal feature (a power) of the pot itself, not a mere disposition to behave. The problem is these pesky empiricists, who want to reduce it all to what is observable. |
| 9499 | Megarian actualists deny unmanifested dispositions [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The Megarian actualist denies that a disposition can exist without being manifested. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 5.4) | |
| A reaction: I agree with Bird that this extreme realism seems wrong. As he puts it (p.109), "unrealized possibilities must be part of the actual world". This commitment is beginning to change my understanding of the world I am looking at. |
| 11950 | We have no idea of powers, because we have no impressions of them [Hume] |
| Full Idea: We never have any impression that contains any power or efficacy. We never therefore have any idea of power. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.161), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 7.2.1 | |
| A reaction: [page in Selby-Bigges edn] It seems to me plausible that Hume is utterly wrong, because our own mental lives are a direct and constant experience of the physical powers and efficacies of material objects. |
| 11941 | The distinction between a power and its exercise is entirely frivolous [Hume] |
| Full Idea: The distinction which we sometimes make betwixt a power and the exercise of it is entirely frivolous, and ... neither man nor any other being ought ever to be thought possesst of any ability, unless it be exerted and put into action. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], p.311), quoted by George Molnar - Powers 5 | |
| A reaction: [page in OUP] Molnar says this strong intuition is shared by most of us, but I take the world to be full of people who can play the piano or speak Spanish, but never actually do it. [but see Idea 11942] Most wasps never sting anything. |
| 9486 | Why should a universal's existence depend on instantiation in an existing particular? [Bird] |
| Full Idea: An instantiation condition seems to be a failure of nerve as regards realism about universals. If universals really are entities in their own right, why should their existence depend upon a relationship with existing particulars? | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 3.2.2) | |
| A reaction: I like this challenge, which seems to leave fans of universals no option but full-blown Platonism, which most of them recognise as being deeply implausible. |
| 11098 | Momentary impressions are wrongly identified with one another on the basis of resemblance [Hume, by Quine] |
| Full Idea: Momentary impressions, according to Hume, are wrongly identified with one another on the basis of resemblance. | |
| From: report of David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739]) by Willard Quine - Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis 3 | |
| A reaction: I don't have a Hume quotation for this yet, but Quine is plausibly claiming Hume as a resemblance nominalist, equipped with an error theory about universals. |
| 7954 | If we see a resemblance among objects, we apply the same name to them, despite their differences [Hume] |
| Full Idea: When we have found a resemblance among several objects, that often occur to us, we apply the same name to all of them, whatever differences we may observe in the degrees of their quantity and quality, and whatever other differences may appear among them. | |
| From: David Hume (Treatise of Human Nature [1739], I.I.7) | |
| A reaction: This must to some extent by right, whatever objections can be found. Russell's objection (Idea 4441) wouldn't alter the truth of Hume's observation, thought Hume is attacking universals and Russell defending them. |
| 9472 | Resemblance itself needs explanation, presumably in terms of something held in common [Bird] |
| Full Idea: The realist view of resemblance nominalism is that it is resemblance that needs explaining. When there is resemblance it is natural to want to explain it, in terms of something held in common. Explanations end somewhere, but not with resemblance. | |
| From: Alexander Bird (Nature's Metaphysics [2007], 2.1.2) | |
| A reaction: I smell a regress. If a knife and a razor resemble because they share sharpness, you have to see that the sharp phenomenon falls within the category of 'sharpness' before you can make the connection, which is spotting its similarity. |