8 ideas
16052 | 'Superdupervenience' is supervenience that has a robustly materialistic explanation [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: The idea of a ontological supervenience that is robustly explainable in a materialistically explainable way I hereby dub 'superdupervenience'. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §4) | |
A reaction: [He credits William Lycan with the actual word] His assumption prior to this introduction is that mere supervenience just adds a new mystery. I take supervenience to be an observation of 'tracking', which presumably needs to be explained. |
16053 | 'Global' supervenience is facts tracking varying physical facts in every possible world [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: The idea of 'global supervenience' is standardly expressed as 'there are no two physically possible worlds which are exactly alike in all physical respects but different in some other respect'. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
A reaction: [Jaegwon Kim is the source of this concept] The 'local' view will be that they do indeed track, but they could, in principle, come apart. A zombie might be a case of them possibly coming apart. Zombies are silly. |
16056 | Don't just observe supervenience - explain it! [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Although the task of explaining supervenience has been little appreciated and little discussed in the philosophical literature, it is time for that to change. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
A reaction: I would offer a strong addition to this: be absolutely sure that you are dealing with two distinct things in the supervenience relationship, before you waste time trying to explain how they relate to one another. |
16055 | Materialism requires that physics be causally complete [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Any broadly materialistic metaphysical position needs to claim that physics is causally complete. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §6) | |
A reaction: Since 'physics' is a human creation, I presume he means that physical reality is causally complete. The interaction problem that faced Descartes seems crucial - how could something utterly non-physical effect a physical change? |
16054 | Physicalism needs more than global supervenience on the physical [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Global supervenience seems too weak to capture the physical facts determining all the facts. …There could be two spatio-temporal regions alike in all physical respects, but different in some intrinsic non-physical respect. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §5) | |
A reaction: I.e. there might be two physically identical regions, but one contains angels and the other doesn't (so the extra fact isn't tracking the physical facts). Physicalism I take to be the simple denial of the angels. Supervenience is an explanandum. |
16057 | Instrumentalism normally says some discourse is useful, but not genuinely true [Horgan,T] |
Full Idea: Instrumentalist views typically attribute utility to the given body of discourse, but deny that it expresses genuine truths. | |
From: Terence Horgan (From Supervenience to Superdupervenience [1993], §8) | |
A reaction: To me it is obvious to ask why anything could have a high level of utility (especially in accounts of the external physical world) without being true. Falsehoods may sometimes (though I doubt it) be handy in human life, but useful in chemistry…? |
8130 | Qualities of experience are just representational aspects of experience ('Representationalism') [Harman, by Burge] |
Full Idea: Harman defended what came to be known as 'representationalism' - the view that qualitative aspects of experience are nothing other than representational aspects. | |
From: report of Gilbert Harman (The Intrinsic Quality of Experience [1990]) by Tyler Burge - Philosophy of Mind: 1950-2000 p.459 | |
A reaction: Functionalists like Harman have a fairly intractable problem with the qualities of experience, and this may be clutching at straws. What does 'represent' mean? How is the representation achieved? Why that particular quale? |
19068 | Causation interests us because we want to explain change [Mumford] |
Full Idea: Like Aristotle, the reason we are really interested in causation is because we want to be able to explain change. | |
From: Stephen Mumford (Contemporary Efficient Causation: Aristotelian themes [2014], 8) | |
A reaction: This pinpoints a very important and simple idea. It raises the question (among others) of whether we have just invented this thing called 'causation', because no explanation of change was visible. Hume certainly couldn't see any explanation. |