4 ideas
| 13745 | Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim] |
| Full Idea: It is a mistake, or at least misleading, to think of supervenience itself as a special and distinctive type of dependence relation, alongside causal dependence, mereological dependence, semantic dependence, and others. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: The point, I take it, is that supervenience is something which requires explanation, rather than being a conclusion to the debate. Why are statues beautiful? Why do brains generate minds? |
| 13746 | Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation [Kim] |
| Full Idea: Supervenience itself is not an explanatory relation, not a 'deep' metaphysical relation; rather it is a 'surface' relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it. | |
| From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2) | |
| A reaction: I think the underlying idea here is that supervenience appeals to the Humean view of physical laws as mere regularities, but it is no good for those who seek underlying mechanisms to explain the patterns and regularities. Humeans are wrong. |
| 16458 | Semantic vagueness involves alternative and equal precisifications of the language [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: If vagueness is semantic indeterminacy, then wherever we have vague statements, we have several alternative precisifications of the vague language involved, all with equal claims of being 'intended'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood [1988], p.318) |
| 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? |