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3 ideas
23227 | Each object has a precise number of properties, each to a precise degree [Fichte] |
Full Idea: Each object has a definite number of properties, no more, no less. …Each of these objects possesses each of these properties to a definite degree. | |
From: Johann Fichte (The Vocation of Man [1800], 1) | |
A reaction: Quine flatly disagrees with this. Fichte offers no grounds for his claim. On the whole I think of properties as psychologically abstracted by us from holistic objects, so there is plenty of room for error. The underlying powers are real. |
4082 | The distinction between 'resultant' properties (weight) and 'emergent' properties is a bit vague [Crane] |
Full Idea: The distinction between 'resultant' properties like weight, and 'emergent' properties like colour, seems intuitive enough, but on examination it is very hard to make precise. | |
From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
A reaction: It is no coincidence that the examples are of primary and secondary qualities. If 'the physical entails the mental' then all mental properties are resultant. |
4083 | If mental properties are emergent they add a new type of causation, and physics is not complete [Crane] |
Full Idea: Whatever the causal process is, it remains true that if emergentism is true, the completeness of physics is false; there are some effects which would not have come about if mental things were absent from the world. | |
From: Tim Crane (Elements of Mind [2001], 2.18) | |
A reaction: Emergentism looks to me like an incoherent concept, unless it is another word for dualism. |