15 ideas
| 10369 | How fine-grained Kim's events are depends on how finely properties are individuated [Kim, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: How fine-grained Kim's events are depends on how finely properties are individuated. | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.2 | |
| A reaction: I don't actually buy the idea that an event could just be an 'exemplification'. Change seems to be required, and processes, or something like them, must be mentioned. Degrees of fine-graining sound good, though, for processes too. |
| 8976 | If events are ordered triples of items, such things seem to be sets, and hence abstract [Simons on Kim] |
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Full Idea:
If Kim's events are just the ordered triple of |
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| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: You might reply that the object, and maybe the attribute, are concrete, and the time is natural, but the combination really is an abstraction, even though it is located (like the equator). Where is the set of my books located? |
| 8975 | Events cannot be merely ordered triples, but must specify the link between the elements [Kim, by Simons] |
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Full Idea:
Kim's events cannot just be the ordered triple of |
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| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: Why should they even be in that particular order? This requirement rather messes up Kim's plan for a very streamlined, Ockhamised ontology. Circles have symmetry at all times. Is 'near Trafalgar Square' a property? |
| 8974 | Events are composed of an object with an attribute at a time [Kim, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Kim's events are exemplifications by an object of an attribute at a time...It does not make events basic entities, as the three constituents are more basic, but it gives identity conditions (two events are the same if object, attribute and time the same). | |
| From: report of Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: [Aristotle is said to be behind this] I am more sympathetic to this view than the claim that events are primitive. If a pebble is ellipsoid for a million years, is that an event? I think the concept of a 'process' is the most fruitful one to investigate. |
| 8977 | Since properties like self-identity and being 2+2=4 are timeless, Kim must restrict his properties [Simons on Kim] |
| Full Idea: Since some tautologously universal properties such as self-identity or being such that 2+2=4 apply to all things at all times, that is stretching Kim's events too far. Candidate properties need to be realistically restricted, and it is unclear how. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 2.1 | |
| A reaction: You could deploy Schoemaker's concept of natural properties in terms of the source of causal powers, but the problem would be that you were probably hoping to then use Kim's events to define causation. Answer: treat causation as the primitive. |
| 8980 | Kim's theory results in too many events [Simons on Kim] |
| Full Idea: The criticism most frequently levelled against Kim's theory is that it results in an unacceptable plurality of finely differentiated events, because of the requirement for identity of the constituent property. | |
| From: comment on Jaegwon Kim (Events as property exemplifications [1976]) by Peter Simons - Events 4.4 | |
| A reaction: This may mean that the Battle of Waterloo was several trillion events, which seems daft to the historian, but it doesn't to the physicist. A cannon firing is indeed an accumulation of lots of little events. |
| 2590 | Dispositions need mental terms to define them [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The chief difficulty with the behaviour-disposition account is the virtual impossibility of specifying a disposition except as a 'disposition of x to behave as though x were in pain'. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.57) | |
| A reaction: This has become the best-known objection to behaviourism - that you can't specify a piece of behaviour clearly unless you mention the mental state which it is expressing. The defence is to go on endlessly mentioning further behaviour. |
| 2591 | Total paralysis would mean that there were mental states but no behaviour at all [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Two animals with all motor nerves cut will have the same actual and potential behaviour (i.e. none), but if only one has uncut pain fibres, it will feel pain where the other won't. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.57) | |
| A reaction: This is a splendidly literal and practical argument against behaviourism - if you prevent all the behaviour, you don't thereby prevent the experience. Clearly we have to say something about what is inside the 'black box' of the mind. |
| 2588 | Is pain a functional state of a complete organism? [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: I propose the hypothesis that pain, or the state of being in pain, is a functional state of a whole organism. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.54) | |
| A reaction: This sounds wrong right from the start. Pain hurts. The fact that it leads to avoidance behaviour etc. seems much more like a by-product of pain than its essence. |
| 2589 | Functionalism is compatible with dualism, as pure mind could perform the functions [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The functional-state hypothesis is not incompatible with dualism, as a system consisting of a body and a soul could meet the required conditions. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.55) | |
| A reaction: He doesn't really believe this, of course. This claim led to all the weak objections to functionalism involving silly implementations of minds. A brain is the only plausible way to implement our mental functions. |
| 2592 | Functional states correlate with AND explain pain behaviour [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The presence of a certain functional state is not merely 'correlated with' but actually explains the pain behaviour on the part of the organism. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.58) | |
| A reaction: Does it offer any further explanation beyond saying that it is the brain state that causes the behaviour? The pain is just a link between damage and avoidance. I wish that is all that pain was. |
| 2587 | Temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy, but they are two different concepts [Putnam] |
| Full Idea: The concept of temperature is not the same as the concept of mean molecular kinetic energy. But temperature is mean molecular kinetic energy. | |
| From: Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968], p.52) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard analogy for mind-brain identity, and it seems fair enough to me. The mind is the activity of the brain. It is rather unhelpful to think of weather in terms of chemistry, but it is actions of chemicals. |
| 6376 | Neuroscience does not support multiple realisability, and tends to support identity [Polger on Putnam] |
| Full Idea: Putnam was too quick to assert neuroscientific support for multiple realizability; current evidence does not reveal it, and there is some reason to think the enterprises of neuroscience are premised on the hypothesis of brain-state identity. | |
| From: comment on Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968]) by Thomas W. Polger - Natural Minds Ch.1.4 | |
| A reaction: I have always been suspicious of the glib claim that mental states were multiply realisable. I see no reason to think that octupi see colours as we do, or experience fear as we do, even though their behaviour has to be similar, for survival. |
| 2330 | If humans and molluscs both feel pain, it can't be a single biological state [Putnam, by Kim] |
| Full Idea: Mental states have vastly diverse physical/biological realizations in different species and structures (e.g. pain in humans and in molluscs), so no mental state can be identified with any single physical/biological state. | |
| From: report of Hilary Putnam (The Nature of Mental States [1968]) by Jaegwon Kim - Mind in a Physical World n p.120 | |
| A reaction: But maybe mollusc and human nervous systems ARE the same in the respects that matter. We don't know enough about pain to deny that possibility. |
| 21097 | Modern monarchies are (like republics) rule by law, rather than by men [Hume] |
| Full Idea: In modern times monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilized monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of laws, not of men. | |
| From: David Hume (Of Civil Liberty [1750], p.54) | |
| A reaction: Dreams of simple 'government by law' disappeared with the rise of modern media, which can be controlled by wealth. |