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13857
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Truth-functional possibilities include the irrelevant, which is a mistake [Edgington]
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Full Idea:
How likely is a fair die landing on an even number to land six? My approach is, assume an even number, so three possibilities, one a six, so 'one third'; the truth-functional approach is it's true if it is not-even or six, so 'two-thirds'.
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From:
Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 3)
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A reaction:
The point is that in the truth-functional approach, if the die lands not-even, then the conditional comes out as true, when she says it should be irrelevant. She seems to be right about this.
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13853
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It is a mistake to think that conditionals are statements about how the world is [Edgington]
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Full Idea:
The mistake philosophers have made, in trying to understand the conditional, is to assume that its function is to make a statement about how the world is (or how other possible worlds are related to it), true or false, as the case may be.
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From:
Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)
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A reaction:
'If pigs could fly we would never catch them' may not be about the world, but 'if you press this switch the light comes on' seems to be. Actually even the first one is about the world. I've an inkling that Edgington is wrong about this. Powers!
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13854
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Conditionals express what would be the outcome, given some supposition [Edgington]
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Full Idea:
It is often necessary to suppose (or assume) that some epistemic possibility is true, and to consider what else would be the case, or would be likely to be the case, given this supposition. The conditional expresses the outcome of such thought processes.
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From:
Dorothy Edgington (Do Conditionals Have Truth Conditions? [1986], 1)
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A reaction:
This is the basic Edgington view. It seems to involve an active thought process, and imagination, rather than being the static semantic relations offered by possible worlds analyses. True conditionals state relationships in the world.
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6616
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Least action is not a causal law, but a 'global law', describing a global essence [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The principle of least action is not a causal law, but is what I call a 'global law', which describes the essence of the global kind, which every object in the universe necessarily instantiates.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005])
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A reaction:
As a fan of essentialism I find this persuasive. If I inherit part of my essence from being a mammal, I inherit other parts of my essence from being an object, and all objects would share that essence, so it would look like a 'law' for all objects.
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6615
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A species requires a genus, and its essence includes the essence of the genus [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
A specific universal can exist only if the generic universal of which it is a species exists, but generic universals don't depend on species; …the essence of any genus is included in its species, but not conversely.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
Thus the species 'electron' would be part of the genus 'lepton', or 'human' part of 'mammal'. The point of all this is to show how individual items connect up with the rest of the universe, giving rise to universal laws, such as Least Action.
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6614
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A hierarchy of natural kinds is elaborate ontology, but needed to explain natural laws [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
The hierarchy of natural kinds proposed by essentialism may be more elaborate than is strictly required for purposes of ontology, but it is necessary to explain the necessity of the laws of nature, and the universal applicability of global principles.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 91)
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A reaction:
I am all in favour of elaborating ontology in the name of best explanation. There seem, though, to be some remaining ontological questions at the point where the explanations of essentialism run out.
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6612
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Without general principles, we couldn't predict the behaviour of dispositional properties [Ellis]
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Full Idea:
It is objected to dispositionalism that without the principle of least action, or some general principle of equal power, the specific dispositional properties of things could tell us very little about how these things would be disposed to behave.
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From:
Brian Ellis (Katzav on limitations of dispositions [2005], 90)
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A reaction:
Ellis attempts to meet this criticism, by placing dispositional properties within a hierarchy of broader properties. There remains a nagging doubt about how essentialism can account for space, time, order, and the existence of essences.
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