5 ideas
468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
21432 | Culture is the struggle to agree what is normal [Gibson,A] |
Full Idea: Culture is the struggle to agree what is normal. | |
From: Andrew Gibson (talk [2018]) | |
A reaction: A nice aphorism. Typically the struggle took place in villages, but has now gone global. The normalities of other cultures are beamed into a remote society, and are frequently unwelcome. |
14586 | Physical causation consists in transference of conserved quantities [Dowe, by Mumford/Anjum] |
Full Idea: For Dowe physical causation consists in transference of conserved quantities. | |
From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum - Getting Causes from Powers 10.2 | |
A reaction: [see Psillos 2002 on this] This is evidently a modification of the idea of physical causation as energy-transfer, but narrowing it down to exclude trivial cases. I guess. Need better physics. |
4787 | Causation interaction is an exchange of conserved quantities, such as mass, energy or charge [Dowe, by Psillos] |
Full Idea: Dowe argues that a 'causal process' is a world line of an object with a conserved quantity (such as mass, energy, momentum, charge), and a 'causal interaction' is an exchange between two such objects. | |
From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.4 | |
A reaction: This looks very promising. Nice distinction between causal process and causal interaction. 'Conserved quantities' is better physics than just 'energy'. We can hand causation over to the scientist? |
4788 | Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory as it avoids mention of counterfactuals [Dowe, by Psillos] |
Full Idea: Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory because it avoids any mention of counterfactuals. | |
From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.4 | |
A reaction: Clearly the truth of a counterfactual is quite a problem for an empiricist/scientist, but one needs to distinguish between reality and our grasp of it. We commit ourselves to counterfactuals, even if causation is transfer of conserved quantities. |