Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Recent Aesthetics in England and America' and 'Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity'

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8 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 1. Grounding / a. Nature of grounding
17304 As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels.
17306 If ground is transitive and irreflexive, it has a strict partial ordering, giving structure [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: By treating grounding as transitive (and irreflexive), one generates a strict partial ordering that induces metaphysical structure.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
     A reaction: Schaffer's paper goes on to attach the claim that grounding is transitive, but I didn't find his examples very convincing.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / b. Contrastive explanations
17308 Explaining 'Adam ate the apple' depends on emphasis, and thus implies a contrast [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: Explaining why ADAM ate the apple is a different matter from explaining why he ATE the apple, and from why he ate THE APPLE. ...In my view the best explanations incorporate ....contrastive information.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
     A reaction: But why are the contrasts Eve, or throwing it, or a pear? It occurs to me that this is wrong! The contrast is with anything else which could have gone in subject, verb or object position. It is a matter of categories, not of contrasts.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 1. Aesthetics
12156 Aesthetics has risen and fallen with Romanticism [Scruton]
     Full Idea: The rise and fall (as we presently perceive them) of aesthetics have been contemporaneous with the rise and fall of Romanticism.
     From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.3)
     A reaction: Maybe it started a little before Romanticism, as part of the Englightenment aim of being rational about everything, and maybe it survives Romanticism because we want to be scientific about everything.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
12158 Aesthetic experience informs the world with the values of the observer [Scruton]
     Full Idea: It is possible to conclude that aesthetic experience has a peculiar practical significance: it represents the world as informed by the values of the observer.
     From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.13)
     A reaction: An excellent remark. If you look at, or listen to, anything, you can make a conscious effort to drain away your personal values (objectivity; science?), or you can consciously flood them with values. But moral and aesthetic vision must differ...
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 / A. Speculations on Nature / 1. Nature
17305 I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: I myself would prefer to speak of what is fundamental in terms of the whole spatiotemporal manifold and the fields that permeate it, with parts counting as derivative of the whole.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.1.1)
     A reaction: Not quite the Parmenidean One, since it has parts, but a nice try at updating the great man. Note the reference to 'fields', suggesting that this view is grounded in the physics rather than metaphysics. How many fields has it got?
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation
17307 Nowadays causation is usually understood in terms of equations and variable ranges [Schaffer,J]
     Full Idea: The leading treatments of causation work within 'structural equation models', with events represented via variables each of which is allotted a range of permitted values, which constitute a 'contrast space'.
     From: Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
     A reaction: Like Woodward's idea that causation is a graph, this seems to be a matter of plotting or formalising correlations between activities, which is a very Humean approach to causation.