17 ideas
| 15557 | Verisimilitude has proved hard to analyse, and seems to have several components [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The analysis of verisimilitude has been much debated. Some plausible analyses have failed disastrously, others conflict with one another. One conclusion is that verisimilitude seems to consist of several distinguishable virtues. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], V n7) | |
| A reaction: Presumably if it is complex, you can approach truth in one respect while receding from it in another. It seems clear enough if you are calculating pi by some iterative process. |
| 14979 | Being alone doesn't guarantee intrinsic properties; 'being alone' is itself extrinsic [Lewis, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: The property of 'being alone in the world' is an extrinsic property, even though it has had by an object that is alone in the world. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983]) by Theodore Sider - Writing the Book of the World 01.2 | |
| A reaction: I always choke on my cornflakes whenever anyone cites a true predicate as if it were a genuine property. This is a counterexample to Idea 14978. Sider offers another more elaborate example from Lewis. |
| 15454 | Extrinsic properties come in degrees, with 'brother' less extrinsic than 'sibling' [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Properties may be more or less intrinsic; being a brother has more of an admixture of intrinsic structure than being a sibling does, yet both are extrinsic. | |
| From: David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: I suppose the point is that a brother is intrinsically male - but then a sibling is intrinsically human. A totally extrinsic relation would be one between entities which shared virtually no categories of existence. |
| 15554 | A disposition needs a causal basis, a property in a certain causal role. Could the disposition be the property? [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I take for granted that a disposition requires a causal basis: one has the disposition iff one has a property that occupies a certain causal role. Shall we then identify the disposition with its basis? That makes the disposition cause its manifestations. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], III) | |
| A reaction: Introduce the concept of a 'power' and I see no problem with his proposal. Fundamental dispositions are powerful, and provide the causal basis for complex dispositions. Something had better be powerful. |
| 15455 | Total intrinsic properties give us what a thing is [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The way something is is given by the totality of its intrinsic properties. | |
| From: David Lewis (Extrinsic Properties [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: No. Some properties are intrinsic but trivial. The 'important' ones fix the identity (if the identity is indeed 'fixed'). |
| 15560 | We can explain a chance event, but can never show why some other outcome did not occur [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I think we are right to explain chance events, yet we are right also to deny that we can ever explain why a chance process yields one outcome rather than another. We cannot explain why one event happened rather than the other. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], VI) | |
| A reaction: This misses out an investigation which slowly reveals that a 'chance' event wasn't so chancey after all. Failure to explain confirms chance, so the judgement of chance shouldn't block attempts to explain. |
| 15559 | Does a good explanation produce understanding? That claim is just empty [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is said that a good explanation ought to produce understanding, ...but this just says that a good explanation produces possession of that which it provide, so this desideratum is empty. It adds nothing to our understanding of explanation. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], V) | |
| A reaction: I am not convinced by this dismissal. If you are looking for a test of whether an explanation is good, the announcement that the participants feel they have achieved a good understanding sounds like success. |
| 15556 | Science may well pursue generalised explanation, rather than laws [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The pursuit of general explanations may be very much more widespread in science than the pursuit of general laws. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], IV) | |
| A reaction: Nice. I increasingly think that the main target of all enquiry is ever-widening generality, with no need to aspire to universality. |
| 15558 | A good explanation is supposed to show that the event had to happen [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is said that a good explanation ought to show that the explanandum event had to happen, given the laws and circumstances. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], V) | |
| A reaction: I cautiously go along with this view. Given that there are necessities in nature (a long story), we should aim to reveal them. There is no higher aspiration open to us than successful explanation. Lewis says good explanations can reveal falsehoods. |
| 4809 | Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation [Lewis, by Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Lewis endorses the thesis that all explanation of singular events is causal explanation. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation p.237 | |
| A reaction: It is hard to challenge this. The assumption is that only nomological and causal explanations are possible, and the former are unobtainable for singular events. |
| 14321 | To explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Here is my main thesis: to explain an event is to provide some information about its causal history. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], II) | |
| A reaction: The obvious thought is that you might provide some tiny and barely relevant part of that causal history, such as a bird perched on the Titanic's iceberg. So how do we distinguish the 'important' causal information? |
| 20062 | If a desire leads to a satisfactory result by an odd route, the causal theory looks wrong [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: If someone wants to kill his uncle to inherit a fortune, and having this desire makes him so agitated that he loses control of his car and kills a pedestrian, who turns out to be his uncle, the conditions of the causal theory seem to be satisfied. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966]), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Deviant' | |
| A reaction: This line of argument has undermined all sorts of causal theories that were fashionable in the 1960s and 70s. Explanation should lead to understanding, but a deviant causal chain doesn't explain the outcome. The causal theory can be tightened. |
| 20054 | There has to be a brain event which is not caused by another event, but by the agent [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: There must be some event A, presumably some cerebral event, which is not caused by any other event, but by the agent. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Freedom and Action [1966], p.20), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 4 'Agent' | |
| A reaction: I'm afraid this thought strikes me as quaintly ridiculous. What kind of metaphysics can allow causation outside the natural nexus, yet occuring within the physical brain? This is a relic of religious dualism. Let it go. |
| 15555 | Explaining match lighting in general is like explaining one lighting of a match [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Explaining why struck matches light in general is not so very different from explaining why some particular struck match lit. ...We may generalize modestly, without laying claim to universality. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], IV) | |
| A reaction: A suggestive remark, since particular causation and general causation seem far apart, but Lewis suggests that the needs of explanation bring them together. Lawlike and unlawlike explanations? |
| 15551 | Ways of carving causes may be natural, but never 'right' [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is no one right way - though there may be more or less natural ways - of carving up a causal history. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], I) | |
| A reaction: This invites a distinction between the 'natural' causes and the 'real' causes. Presumably if any causes were 'real', they would have a better claim to be 'right'. Is an earthquake the 'real' (correct?) cause of a tsunami? |
| 15552 | We only pick 'the' cause for the purposes of some particular enquiry. [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Disagreement about 'the' cause is only disagreement about which part of the causal history is most salient for the purposes of some particular inquiry. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], I) | |
| A reaction: I don't believe this. In the majority of cases I see the cause of an event, without having any interest in any particular enquiry. It is just so obvious that there isn't even a disagreement. Maybe there is only one sensible enquiry. |
| 15553 | Causal dependence is counterfactual dependence between events [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: I take causal dependence to be counterfactual dependence, of a suitably back-tracking sort, between distinct events. | |
| From: David Lewis (Causal Explanation [1986], I) | |
| A reaction: He quotes Hume in support. 'Counterfactual dependence' strikes me as too vague, or merely descriptive, for the job of explanation. 'If...then' is a logical relationship; what is it in nature that justifies the dependency? |