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13737
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The empiricist says that metaphysics is meaningless, rather than false [Schlick]
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Full Idea:
The empiricist does not say to the metaphysician 'what you say is false', but 'what you say asserts nothing at all!' He does not contradict him, but says 'I don't understand you'.
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From:
Moritz Schlick (Positivism and Realism [1934], p.107), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1.1
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A reaction:
I take metaphysics to be meaningful, but at such a high level of abstraction that it is easy to drift into vague nonsense, and incredibly hard to assess what is meant, and whether it is correct. The truths of metaphysics are not recursive.
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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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