Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Through the Looking Glass', 'Philosophy of Mind' and 'Essence and Potentiality'

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5 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 6. Categorical Properties

3430	Resemblance or similarity is the core of our concept of a property [Kim]
	Full Idea: Resemblance or similarity is the very core of our concept of a property.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.219)

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 7. Emergent Properties

3432	Is weight a 'resultant' property of water, but transparency an 'emergent' property? [Kim]
	Full Idea: Emergent properties are said to be irreducible to, and unpredictable from, the lower-level phenomena from which they emerge (as weight is a 'resultant' property, but the transparency of water is an 'emergent' property).
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.228)
	A reaction: So weight is predictable, but transparency is a surprise? But presumably the transparency of water is totally predictable, once you understand it. Emergent properties are either dualist or reducible, in my view.

3434	Emergent properties are 'brute facts' (inexplicable), but still cause things [Kim]
	Full Idea: For the emergentist why pain emerges when C-fibres are excited remains a mystery (a 'brute fact'), but such properties then take on a life of their own as 'downward causation'.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.229)
	A reaction: I don't think there are any 'brute facts', except perhaps at the lowest level of physics. Whatever happened to the principle of sufficient reason? Is the mind like God - a causal source which is uncaused?

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence

17954	Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter]
	Full Idea: Essence is, as it were, necessity rooted in things, ...but how about possibility rooted in things? ...Having the potential to Φ, unlike being essentially Φ, does not entail being actually Φ.
	From: Barbara Vetter (Essence and Potentiality [2010], §2)
	A reaction: To me this invites the question 'what is it about the entity which endows it with its rooted possibilities?' A thing has possibilities because it has a certain nature (at a given time).

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 5. Powers and Properties

3436	Should properties be individuated by their causal powers? [Kim]
	Full Idea: Arguably, properties must be individuated in terms of their causal powers.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Philosophy of Mind [1996], p.230)