9 ideas
16210 | Humean supervenience says the world is just a vast mosaic of qualities in space-time [Lewis] |
Full Idea: Humean supervenience says the world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact. We have a geometry of external relations of spatio-temporal distance between points, and local qualities at points. …In short: we have an arrangement of qualities. | |
From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986], p.ix-x) | |
A reaction: [compressed] This is the key fundamental tenet of David Lewis's philosophy. He names it after Hume because it contains no necessary connections. It is 'supervenient' because all worldly truths reduce to and depend on the mosaic. His thesis is contingent. |
11842 | If short-lived happenings like car crashes are 'events', why not long-lived events like Dover Cliffs? [Broad] |
Full Idea: We call a lightning flash or a motor accident an event, but refuse to apply this to the cliffs of Dover. ...But quantitative differences (of time) give no good grounds for calling one bit of history an event, and refusing the name to another bit. | |
From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], p.54), quoted by David Wiggins - Sameness and Substance Renewed 2.3 n13 | |
A reaction: Wiggins calls this proposal a 'terrible absurdity', but it seems to me to demand attention. There is a case to be made for a 'process' to be the fundamental category of our ontology, with stable physical objects seen in that light. |
14759 | A thing is simply a long event, linked by qualities, and spatio-temporal unity [Broad] |
Full Idea: A thing is simply a long event, throughout the course of which there is either qualitative similarity or continuous qualitative change, together with a characteristic spatio-temporal unity. | |
From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], 10 'Duration') | |
A reaction: At least he is trying to give some sort of principle that links the stages of the event together. |
7861 | Libet says the processes initiated in the cortex can still be consciously changed [Libet, by Papineau] |
Full Idea: Libet himself points out that the conscious decisions still have the power to 'endorse' or 'cancel', so to speak, the processes initiated by the earlier cortical activity: no action will result if the action's execution is consciously countermanded. | |
From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness 1.4 | |
A reaction: This is why Libet's findings do not imply 'epiphenomenalism'. It seems that part of a decisive action is non-conscious, undermining the all-or-nothing view of consciousness. Searle tries to smuggle in free will at this point (Idea 3817). |
6660 | Libet found conscious choice 0.2 secs before movement, well after unconscious 'readiness potential' [Libet, by Lowe] |
Full Idea: Libet found that a subject's conscious choice to move was about a fifth of a second before movement, and thus later than the onset of the brain's so-called 'readiness potential', which seems to imply that unconscious processes initiates action. | |
From: report of Benjamin Libet (Unconscious Cerebral Initiative [1985]) by E.J. Lowe - Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind Ch.9 | |
A reaction: Of great interest to philosophers! It seems to make conscious choices epiphenomenal. The key move, I think, is to give up the idea of consciousness as being all-or-nothing. My actions are still initiated by 'me', but 'me' shades off into unconsciousness. |
9426 | The world is just a vast mosaic of little matters of local particular fact [Lewis] |
Full Idea: The world is a vast mosaic of local matters of particular fact, just one little thing and then another. | |
From: David Lewis (Introduction to Philosophical Papers II [1986]) | |
A reaction: Basing laws on this picture is what Lewis calls 'Humean Supervenience'. |
8160 | The present and past exist, but the future does not [Broad, by Dummett] |
Full Idea: Not only the present but also the past exist, but the future (so long as it is the future) does not. | |
From: report of C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923]) by Michael Dummett - Thought and Reality 1 | |
A reaction: This is quite appealing, and seems right if you believe that every truth has a truthmaker, and that there are no truths about the future. And yet the whole misery of people dying is that they cease to exist. |
14609 | We could say present and past exist, but not future, so that each event adds to the total history [Broad] |
Full Idea: One theory accepts the reality of the present and the past, but holds that the future is simply nothing at all. Nothing has happened to the present by becoming past except that fresh slices of existence have been added to the total history of the world. | |
From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II) | |
A reaction: This is now known as Broad's 'Growing Block' view of time. It is tempting to say that neither past nor future exist, but it seems undeniable that statements about the past can be wholly true, unlike those about the future. |
22933 | We imagine the present as a spotlight, moving across events from past to future [Broad] |
Full Idea: We imagine presentness moving, like the spot of light from a policeman's bulls eye traversing the fronts of houses in a street. What is illuminated is present, what was illuminated is past, and what is not yet illuminated is the future. | |
From: C.D. Broad (Scientific Thought [1923], II) | |
A reaction: This is the 'moving spotlight' compromise theory, which retains the B-series eternal sequence of ordered events, but adds the A-series privileged present moment. Le Poidevin says Broad represents time twice over. |