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17304
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As causation links across time, grounding links the world across levels [Schaffer,J]
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Full Idea:
Grounding is something like metaphysical causation. Just as causation links the world across time, grounding links the world across levels. Grounding connects the more fundamental to the less fundamental, and thereby backs a certain form of explanation.
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From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], Intro)
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A reaction:
Obviously you need 'levels' for this, which we should take to be structural levels.
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8511
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Stout first explicitly proposed that properties and relations are particulars [Stout,GF, by Campbell,K]
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Full Idea:
In modern times, it was G.F. Stout who first explicitly made the proposal that properties and relations are as particular as the substances that they qualify.
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From:
report of G.F. Stout (The Nature of Universals and Propositions [1923]) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §1
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A reaction:
Note that relations will have to be tropes, as well as properties. Williams wants tropes to be parts of objects, but that will be tricky with relations. If you place two objects on a table, how does the 'to the left of' trope come into existence?
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17308
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Explaining 'Adam ate the apple' depends on emphasis, and thus implies a contrast [Schaffer,J]
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Full Idea:
Explaining why ADAM ate the apple is a different matter from explaining why he ATE the apple, and from why he ate THE APPLE. ...In my view the best explanations incorporate ....contrastive information.
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From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
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A reaction:
But why are the contrasts Eve, or throwing it, or a pear? It occurs to me that this is wrong! The contrast is with anything else which could have gone in subject, verb or object position. It is a matter of categories, not of contrasts.
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17305
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I take what is fundamental to be the whole spatiotemporal manifold and its fields [Schaffer,J]
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Full Idea:
I myself would prefer to speak of what is fundamental in terms of the whole spatiotemporal manifold and the fields that permeate it, with parts counting as derivative of the whole.
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From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.1.1)
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A reaction:
Not quite the Parmenidean One, since it has parts, but a nice try at updating the great man. Note the reference to 'fields', suggesting that this view is grounded in the physics rather than metaphysics. How many fields has it got?
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17307
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Nowadays causation is usually understood in terms of equations and variable ranges [Schaffer,J]
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Full Idea:
The leading treatments of causation work within 'structural equation models', with events represented via variables each of which is allotted a range of permitted values, which constitute a 'contrast space'.
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From:
Jonathan Schaffer (Grounding, Transitivity and Contrastivity [2012], 4.3.1)
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A reaction:
Like Woodward's idea that causation is a graph, this seems to be a matter of plotting or formalising correlations between activities, which is a very Humean approach to causation.
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11945
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In addition to laws, God must also create appropriate natures for things [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
It isn't sufficient to say that God has made a general law, for in addition to the decree there has also to be a natural way of carrying it out. It is necessary, that is, that what happens should be explicable in terms of the God-given nature of things.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letter to the Editor about Bayle [1698], p.205)
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A reaction:
Thus Leibniz is an ancestor of scientific essentialism, but he was too frightened to take the next step, which is to see that once God has endowed the natures, he doesn't need to wield his laws as well. The natures will do the whole job.
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