Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Causality: Production and Propagation' and 'Letters to Wagner'

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5 ideas

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 / 7. Later Matter Theories / a. Early Modern matter
19436 Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: The active principle is not attributed by me to bare or primary matter, which is merely passive ...but to clothed or secondary matter which in addition contains a primitive entelechy, or active principle.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Wagner [1710], 1710 §2)
     A reaction: Secondary matter contains monads. The puzzling question is what primary matter consists of. It is not atoms, because it is infinitely divisible, and it seems to be composed of corpuscles. But what is it made of? Just gunge? He says it is 'flux'.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 4. Naturalised causation
8412 A causal interaction is when two processes intersect, and correlated modifications persist afterwards [Salmon]
     Full Idea: When two processes intersect, and they undergo correlated modifications which persist after the intersection, I shall say that the intersection is a causal interaction. I take this as a fundamental causal concept.
     From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §4)
     A reaction: There may be a problem individuating processes, just as there is for events. I like this approach to causation, which is ontologically sparse, and fits in with the scientific worldview. Change of properties sounds precise, but isn't. Stick to processes.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
8413 Cause must come first in propagations of causal interactions, but interactions are simultaneous [Salmon]
     Full Idea: In a typical cause-effect situation (a 'propagation') cause must precede effect, for propagation over a finite time interval is an essential feature. In an 'interaction', an intersection of processes resulting in change, we have simultaneity.
     From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §8)
     A reaction: This takes the direction of time as axiomatic, and quite right too. Salmon isn't addressing the real difficulty, though, which is that the resultant laws are usually held to be time-reversible, which is a bit of a puzzle.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata
8411 Instead of localised events, I take enduring and extended processes as basic to causation [Salmon]
     Full Idea: I propose to approach causality by taking processes rather than events as basic entities. Events are relatively localised in space and time, while processes have much greater temporal duration, and, in many cases, much greater spatial extent.
     From: Wesley Salmon (Causality: Production and Propagation [1980], §2)
     A reaction: This strikes me as an incredibly promising proposal, not just in our understanding of causation, but for our general metaphysics and understanding of nature. See Idea 4931, for example. Vague events and processes blend into one another.