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15390
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Metaphysics attempts to give an account of everything, in terms of categories and principles [Simons]
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Full Idea:
Metaphysics, the noblest of philosophic enterprises, is an attempt to give an account of everything. ...Its job is to provide a universal framework (of categories and principles) within which anything whatever can take its place.
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From:
Peter Simons (Whitehead: process and cosmology [2009], 'Speculative')
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A reaction:
Bravo! I take metaphysics to be entirely continuous with science, but operating entirely at the highest level of generality. See Westerhoff on categories, though. The enterprise may not be going too well.
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7720
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Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe]
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Full Idea:
A problem for resemblance nominalism is that in saying that two particulars 'resemble' one another, it is necessary to specify in what respect they do so (e.g. colour, shape, size), and this threatens to reintroduce what appears to be talk of universals.
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From:
E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7)
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A reaction:
We see resemblance between faces instantly, long before we can specify the 'respects' of the resemblance. This supports the Humean hard-wired view of resemblance, rather than some appeal to Platonic universals.
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7714
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Personal identity is a problem across time (diachronic) and at an instant (synchronic) [Lowe]
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Full Idea:
There is the question of the identity of a person over or across time ('diachronic' personal identity), and there is also the question of what makes for personal identity at a time ('synchronic' personal identity).
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From:
E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.5)
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A reaction:
This seems to me to be the first and most important distinction in the philosophy of personal identity, and they regularly get run together. Locke, for example, has an account of synchronic identity, which is often ignored. It applies to objects too.
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7715
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Mentalese isn't a language, because it isn't conventional, or a means of public communication [Lowe]
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Full Idea:
'Mentalese' would be neither conventional nor a means of public communication so that even to call it a language is seriously misleading.
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From:
E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7)
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A reaction:
It is, however, supposed to contain symbolic representations which are then used as tokens for computation, so it seems close to a language, if (for example) symbolic logic or mathematics were accepted as languages. But who understands it?
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8326
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Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley]
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Full Idea:
Basic causal relations can, as a consequence of our scientific knowledge, be identified with certain physicalistic [sic] relations between objects that can be characterized in terms of transference of either energy or momentum between objects.
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From:
report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by E Sosa / M Tooley - Introduction to 'Causation' §1
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A reaction:
Presumably a transfer of momentum is a transfer of energy. If only anyone had the foggiest idea what energy actually is, we'd be doing well. What is energy made of? 'No identity without substance', I say. I like Fair's idea.
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10379
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Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J]
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Full Idea:
Fair, who originated the energy flow view of causation, moved to a view that understands connection in terms of counterfactuals about energy flow.
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From:
report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.1.2
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A reaction:
David Fair was a pupil of David Lewis, the king of the counterfactual view. To me that sounds like a disappointing move, but it is hard to think that a mere flow of energy through space would amount to causation. Cause must work back from an effect.
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