Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Internal and External Reasons' and 'The Facts of Causation'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

5 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 5. What Makes Truths / a. What makes truths

10365	We might use 'facta' to refer to the truth-makers for facts [Mellor, by Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Mellor offers a distinction between 'facts' and 'facta' (the latter being the truth-makers for facts).
	From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1
	A reaction: The idea is that 'facta' can do the work in causation, because 'facts' are not part of the world. This seems a very helpful terminology, which should be encouraged, since 'fact' is plainly ambiguous in current usage.

20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / c. Reasons as causes

9284	Reasons are 'internal' if they give a person a motive to act, but 'external' otherwise [Williams,B]
	Full Idea: Someone has 'internal reasons' to act when the person has some motive which will be served or furthered by the action; if this turns out not to be so, the reason is false. Reasons are 'external' when there is no such condition.
	From: Bernard Williams (Internal and External Reasons [1980], p.101)
	A reaction: [compressed] An external example given is a family tradition of joining the army, if the person doesn't want to. Williams says (p.111) external reason statements are actually false, and a misapplication of the concept of a 'reason to act'. See Idea 8815.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

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?

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata

4785	Causal statements relate facts (which are whatever true propositions express) [Mellor, by Psillos]
	Full Idea: Mellor argues that causal statements relate facts, where facts may be seen as whatever true propositions express.
	From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §2.6
	A reaction: Choose between 'facts', 'objects', 'conserved quantities, 'events' (the usual one) or 'processes'. I rather like processes (Salmon) as they are a better prospect as the building blocks of an ontology.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / e. Probabilistic causation

8408	Probabilistic causation says C is a cause of E if it increases the chances of E occurring [Mellor, by Tooley]
	Full Idea: The basic idea of probabilistic causation is that a sufficient condition of C's being a cause of E is that C and E are actual, individual events, and the objective chance of E's occurring is greater given the occurrence of C than it would be without C.
	From: report of D.H. Mellor (The Facts of Causation [1995]) by Michael Tooley - Causation and Supervenience 5.3
	A reaction: Mellor has to include objective 'chances' in his ontology to support his theory. As it stands this looks like a weak theory, since the event might not occur despite C happening, and some less likely event might turn out to be the actual cause.