Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On Being (frags)', 'Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature?' and 'Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes'

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7 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / c. Dispositions as conditional
An 'antidote' allows a manifestation to begin, but then blocks it [Corry]
     Full Idea: An 'antidote' (or 'mask') to a disposition (unlike a 'finkish' one) leaves the disposition intact, but interferes with the causal chain between the disposition and its manifestation so that the manifestation doesn't come about.
     From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 2)
     A reaction: [He cites Bird 1997] Thus the disposition of the poison at least begins to manifest, but its disposition to kill is blocked. So what was the disposition of the poison?
A 'finkish' disposition is one that is lost immediately after the appropriate stimulus [Corry]
     Full Idea: An object's disposition is said to be 'finkish' if the object loses the disposition after the occurrence of the appropriate stimulus, but before the manifestation has had time to come about.
     From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 2)
     A reaction: [He cites Lewis 1997] An example would be some sort of safety device which only cuts in if the disposition seems about to operate (e.g. turns off electricity). It seems to block analyses of dispositions simply in terms of their outcomes.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / d. Dispositions as occurrent
If a disposition is never instantiated, it shouldn't be part of our theory of nature [Corry]
     Full Idea: If we have no good reason to believe that a disposition is instantiated, then the disposition should play no role in our theorizing about the world.
     From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 3)
     A reaction: It is part of our theory that a substantial lump of uranium will explode, but also that a galaxy-sized lump of uranium would explode. Surely we are committed to the latter, even though it never happens?
14. Science / A. Basis of Science / 3. Experiment
Maybe an experiment unmasks an essential disposition, and reveals its regularities [Corry]
     Full Idea: The dispositional essentialist can argue that what happens in laboratory conditions is that, by controlling external influences, we effectively 'unmask' the relevant dispositions, and thus observe the regularities to which those dispositions give rise.
     From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 5)
     A reaction: That seems to me to be exactly right, though Corry dislikes it, and even suggests that dispositional essentialist might not like it.
17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 3. Eliminativism
Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true.
     From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9
     A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory.
Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM]
     Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced).
     From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro)
     A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature
Dispositional essentialism says fundamental laws of nature are strict, not ceteris paribus [Corry]
     Full Idea: Dispositional essentialism implies that the fundamental laws of nature must be strict, not ceteris paribus.
     From: Richard Corry (Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? [2010], 1)
     A reaction: I am not keen on the 'laws' of nature, but since essentialism seems to make them necessary, you can't get stricter than that.