64 ideas
| 4767 | Traditionally, rational beliefs are those which are justified by reasons [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The traditional conception of Reason is that all beliefs should be justified (that is, backed up by reasons) in order to be rational. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: I think it is the duty of all philosophers to either defend this traditional view, or quit philosophy for some other activity. Rorty suggests hermeneutics. In a democracy, rulers should be continually required to give reasons for their decisions. |
| 2463 | A standard naturalist view is realist, externalist, and computationalist, and believes in rationality [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be an emerging naturalist consensus that is Realist in ontology and epistemology, externalist in semantics, and computationalist in cognitive psychology, which nicely allows us to retain our understanding of ourselves as rational creatures. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2435 | Psychology has to include the idea that mental processes are typically truth-preserving [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A psychology that can't make sense of such facts as that mental processes are typically truth-preserving is ipso facto dead in the water. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) |
| 2442 | Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Inferences are surely part of the causal structure of the world. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §3) |
| 4810 | Valid deduction is monotonic - that is, it remains valid if further premises are added [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Valid deductive arguments have the property of monotonicity; if the conclusion Q follows from the premises P, then it will also follow if further premises P* are added to P. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: For perversity's sake we could add a new premise which contradicted one of the original ones ('Socrates is a god'). Or one premise could be 'I believe..', and the new one could show that the belief was false. Induction is non-monotonic. |
| 4768 | The 'epistemic fallacy' is inferring what does exist from what can be known to exist [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The move from what can (or cannot) be known to exist to what does (or does not) exist has been dubbed the 'epistemic fallacy'. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.6) | |
| A reaction: This should be a standard concept in all philosophical discussion. It is the commonest, simplest, and most profound blunder made by philosophers, and they do it all the time. |
| 2462 | Control of belief is possible if you know truth conditions and what causes beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Premeditated cognitive management is possible if knowing the contents of one's thoughts would tell you what would make them true and what would cause you to have them. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I love the idea of 'cognitive management'. Since belief is fairly involuntary, I subject myself to the newspapers, books, TV and conversation which will create the style of beliefs to which I aspire. Why? |
| 2460 | Participation in an experiment requires agreement about what the outcome will mean [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: To be in the audience for an experiment you have to believe what the experimenter believes about what the outcome would mean, but not necessarily what the outcome will be. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2461 | An experiment is a deliberate version of what informal thinking does all the time [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Experimentation is an occasional and more or less self-conscious exercise in what informal thinking does all the time without thinking about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2454 | We can deliberately cause ourselves to have true thoughts - hence the value of experiments [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: A creature that knows what makes its thoughts true and what would cause it to have them, could therefore cause itself to have true thoughts. …This would explain why experimentation is so close to the heart of our cognitive style. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 2455 | Interrogation and experiment submit us to having beliefs caused [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You can put yourself into a situation where you may be caused to believe that P. Putting a question to someone who is in the know is one species of this behaviour, and putting a question to Nature (an experiment) is another. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 4807 | A good barometer will predict a storm, but not explain it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be predictions without explanations, as when a barometer successfully predicts storms, but on its own it does not explain them. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.8) | |
| A reaction: Actually, barometers contribute to explanations. A reasonable predictor might offer no explanation ('if he's out, she's probably out too'), but an infallible predictor is almost certain to involve causation, which helps a lot in explanation. |
| 4808 | If we say where Mars was two months ago, we offer an explanation without a prediction [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There can be explanations without predictions, as when we explain a previous position of Mars from its present one, plus a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.9) | |
| A reaction: If we don't mind stretching the word, I think we can 'predict' the past, as where I predict the location of an Egyptian tomb from my study of papyruses. |
| 2458 | Theories are links in the causal chain between the environment and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Theories function as links in the causal chains that run from environmental outcomes to the beliefs that they cause the inquirer to have. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) |
| 4811 | Induction (unlike deduction) is non-monotonic - it can be invalidated by new premises [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Unlike deductive arguments, induction is non-monotonic - that is, it can be invalidated by the addition of new premises. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §9.2.1) | |
| A reaction: This is a fancy way of stating the obvious, which is that induction is not a type of deduction. Hume is sometimes accused of this false assumption. Presumably induction is rational, even if it is not actually logical. |
| 4812 | Explanation is either showing predictability, or showing necessity, or showing causal relations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three types of explanation are 'epistemic' (the event is expectable because of a law), or 'modal' (the event is necessary because of a law), or 'ontic' (it is shown how the event fits into the world's causal structure). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §11.1) | |
| A reaction: Prediction, necessity or causes. It is hard to think of any other way to explain something. Presumably you would exclude necessities if you didn't believe in them. Hume would go for prediction, on the basis of regularities. Personally, I want it all. |
| 4802 | Just citing a cause does not enable us to understand an event; we also need a relevant law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Explanation has to do with understanding; just citing a cause would not offer an adequate understanding, unless it was accompanied by the citation of a law that connects the two events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: It is surely undeniable that being told the cause but not the law will increase our understanding. Understanding and explanation come in degrees. Full understanding would require an explanation of the law, and beyond. Any relevant truth helps. |
| 4804 | The 'covering law model' says only laws can explain the occurrence of single events [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The 'deductive-nomological' model became known as the 'covering law model': its main thesis is that laws and only laws adequately explain the occurrence of singular events. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: But presumably you need other events to derive a law, so you could say that a singular event can only be explained if it isn't singular. A regularity pattern would offer a partial explanation, before any law had been derived. |
| 4805 | If laws explain the length of a flagpole's shadow, then the shadow also explains the length of the pole [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If we use geometry and optics to explain the length of shadow cast by a flag-pole, this seems to be reversible, so that the shadow will explain the length of the pole. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.5) | |
| A reaction: A neat example which presumably implies that an explanation must involve temporal statements. The laws of physics are totally reversible in time, and so will not suffice to explain events on their own. Time's arrow becomes an axiom of explanation? |
| 4395 | There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There are non-causal explanations, most typically mathematical explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A crucial basic point, which must be drummed into the minds of ruthless Quinean naturalists, who want to explain everything by quarks and electrons |
| 4806 | An explanation can just be a 'causal story', without laws, as when I knock over some ink [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Knocking over an ink bottle explains the stain on the carpet, and it is not in doubt because you cannot quote the laws involved; a 'causal story' can give a complete explanation without a law. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.6) | |
| A reaction: But why is he so clumsy, and the bottle so unstable? Was it really (Freudian) an 'accident'? There is no end to complete explanation. But 'I was clumsy this once' and 'I am always clumsy' are equally good explanations. |
| 4404 | Maybe explanation is entirely relative to the interests and presuppositions of the questioner [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers focus on the so-called 'pragmatics of explanation' - that an explanation is an answer to a 'why' question, and the relevant answer will depend on the presuppositions or interests of the questioner. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me right. Explanation is an entirely human business, not a feature of nature, and most explanations will track back to the big bang if you have the patience, but they always terminate because of pragmatic considerations. But fobbing off? |
| 4803 | An explanation is the removal of the surprise caused by the event [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: An explanation amounts to the removal of the initial surprise that accompanied the occurrence of the event. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice simple point. It makes explanation relative. God requires no explanations, small children require many. The implication is that explanations make events predictable, which means they must either offer inductive generalisations, or laws. |
| 2443 | I say psychology is intentional, semantics is informational, and thinking is computation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I hold that psychological laws are intentional, that semantics is purely informational, and that thinking is computation (and that it is possible to hold all of these assumptions at once). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: When he puts it baldly like that, it doesn't sound terribly persuasive. Thinking is 'computation'? Raw experience is irrelevant? What is it 'like' to spot an interesting connection between two propositions or concepts? It's not like adding 7 and 5. |
| 2453 | We are probably the only creatures that can think about our own thoughts [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I think it is likely that we are the only creatures that can think about the contents of our thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I think this is a major idea. If you ask me the traditional question - what is the essential difference between us and other animals? - this is my answer (not language, or reason). We are the metathinkers. |
| 4769 | It is hard to analyse causation, if it is presupposed in our theory of the functioning of the mind [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: There is a problem if causation is the object of our analysis, but is also presupposed (as an empirical principle of human psychology) for the functioning of the mind. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.7) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't sound like a major problem. If it is, it is presumably impossible to analyse the mind, because a mind is presupposed in the process of analysis. |
| 2446 | Cartesians consider interaction to be a miracle [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The Cartesian view is that the interaction problem does arise, but is unsolvable because interaction is miraculous. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: A rather unsympathetic statement of the position. Cartesians might think that God could explain to us how interaction works. Cartesians are not mysterians, I think, but they see no sign of any theory of interaction. |
| 2445 | Semantics v syntax is the interaction problem all over again [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The question how mental representations could be both semantic, like propositions, and causal, like rocks, trees, and neural firings, is arguably just the interaction problem all over again. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Interesting way of presenting the problem. If you seem to be confronting the interaction problem, you have probably drifted into a bogus dualist way of thinking. Retreat, and reformulate you questions and conceptual apparatus, till the question vanishes. |
| 2464 | Type physicalism equates mental kinds with physical kinds [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Type physicalism is, roughly, the doctrine that psychological kinds are identical to neurological kinds. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App A n.1) | |
| A reaction: This gets my general support, leaving open the nature of 'kinds'. Presumably the identity is strict, as in 'Hesperus is identical to Phosphorus'. It seems unlikely that if you and I think the 'same' thought, that we have strictly identical brain states. |
| 2447 | Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: What Hume didn't see was that the causal and representational properties of mental symbols have somehow to be coordinated if the coherence of mental life is to be accounted for. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Certainly the idea that it all somehow becomes magic at the point where the brain represents the world is incoherent - but it is a bit magical. How can the whole of my garden be in my brain? Weird. |
| 2440 | Propositional attitudes are propositions presented in a certain way [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Propositional attitudes are really three-place relations, between a creature, a proposition, and a mode of presentation (which are sentences of Mentalese). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure about 'really'! Why do we need a creature? Isn't 'hoping it will rain' a propositional attitude which some creature may or may not have? Fodor wants it to be physical, but it's abstract? |
| 2450 | Rationality has mental properties - autonomy, productivity, experiment [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Mentalism isn't gratuitous; you need it to explain rationality. Mental causation buys you behaviours that are unlike reflexes in at least three ways: they're autonomous, they're productive, and they're experimental. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: He makes his three ways sound all-or-nothing, which is (I believe) the single biggest danger when thinking about the mind. "Either you are conscious, or you are not..." |
| 2437 | XYZ (Twin Earth 'water') is an impossibility [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: There isn't any XYZ, and there couldn't be any, and so we don't have to worry about it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: Jadeite and Nephrite are real enough, which are virtually indistinguishable variants of jade. You just need Twin Jewellers instead of Twin Earths. We could build them, and employ twins to work there. |
| 2441 | Truth conditions require a broad concept of content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: We need the idea of broad content to make sense of the fact that thoughts have the truth-conditions that they do. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.II) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be (as Dummett points out) a potential circularity here, as you can hardly know the truth-conditions of something if you don't already know its content. |
| 3114 | Concepts aren't linked to stuff; they are what is caused by stuff [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If the words of 'Swamp Man' (spontaneously created, with concepts) are about XYZ on Twin Earth, it is not because he's causally connected to the stuff, but because XYZ would cause his 'water' tokens (in the absence of H2O). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], App B) | |
| A reaction: The sight of the Eiffel tower causes my 'France' tokens, so is my word "France" about the Eiffel Tower? What would cause my 'nothing' tokens? |
| 2452 | Knowing the cause of a thought is almost knowing its content [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you know quite a lot about what would cause you to have it. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure where this fits into the great jigsaw of the mind, but it strikes me as an acute and important observation. The truth of a thought is not essential to make you have it. Ask Othello. |
| 2432 | Is content basically information, fixed externally? [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: I assume intentional content reduces (in some way) to information. …The content of a thought depends on its external relations; on the way that the thought is related to the world, not the way that it is related to other thoughts. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2) | |
| A reaction: Does this make Fodor a 'weak' functionalist? The 'strong' version would say a thought is merely a location in a flow diagram, but Fodor's 'mentalism' includes a further 'content' in each diagram box. |
| 2438 | In the information view, concepts are potentials for making distinctions [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Semantics, according to the informational view, is mostly about counterfactuals; what counts for the identity of my concepts is not what I do distinguish but what I could distinguish if I cared to (even using instruments and experts). | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: We all differ in our discriminations (and awareness of expertise), so our concepts would differ, which is bad news for communication (see Idea 223). The view has some plausibility, though. |
| 2439 | Semantic externalism says the concept 'elm' needs no further beliefs or inferences [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the essence of semantic externalism that there is nothing that you have to believe, there are no inferences that you have to accept, to have the concept 'elm'. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §2.I) | |
| A reaction: [REMINDER: broad content is filed in 18.C.7, under 'Thought' rather than under language. That is because I am a philospher of thought, rather than of language. |
| 2457 | If meaning is information, that establishes the causal link between the state of the world and our beliefs [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: It is the causal connection between the state of the world and the contents of beliefs that the reduction of meaning to information is designed to insure. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why characterising the contents of a belief in terms of its information has to amount to a 'reduction'. A cup of tea isn't reduced to tea. Connections imply duality. |
| 2451 | To know the content of a thought is to know what would make it true [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If you know the content of a thought, you thereby know what would make the thought true. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: The truthmaker might by physically impossible, and careful thought might show it to be contradictory - but that wouldn't destroy the meaning. |
| 2433 | For holists no two thoughts are ever quite the same, which destroys faith in meaning [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: If what you are thinking depends on all of what you believe, then nobody ever thinks the same thing twice. …That is why so many semantic holists (Quine, Putnam, Rorty, Churchland, probably Wittgenstein) end up being semantic eliminativists. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: If linguistic holism is nonsense, this is easily settled. What I say about breakfast is not changed by reading some Gibbon yesterday. |
| 2436 | It is claimed that reference doesn't fix sense (Jocasta), and sense doesn't fix reference (Twin Earth) [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that Frege cases [knowing Jocasta but not mother] show that reference doesn't determine sense, and Twin cases [knowing water but not H2O] show that sense doesn't determine reference. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.3) | |
| A reaction: How about 'references don't contain much information', and 'descriptions may not fix what they are referring to'? Simple really. |
| 2434 | Broad semantics holds that the basic semantic properties are truth and denotation [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: Broad semantic theories generally hold that the basic semantic properties of thoughts are truth and denotation. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §1.2b) | |
| A reaction: I think truth and denotation are the basic semantic properties, but I am dubious about whole-hearted broad semantic theories, so I seem to have gone horribly wrong somewhere. |
| 2459 | Externalist semantics are necessary to connect the contents of beliefs with how the world is [Fodor] |
| Full Idea: You need an externalist semantics to explain why the contents of beliefs should have anything to do with how the world is. | |
| From: Jerry A. Fodor (The Elm and the Expert [1993], §4) | |
| A reaction: Since externalist semantics only emerged in the 1970s, that implies that no previous theory had any notion that language had some connection to how the world is. Eh? |
| 14894 | Indexicals have a 'character' (the standing meaning), and a 'content' (truth-conditions for one context) [Kaplan, by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro] |
| Full Idea: Kaplan distinguished two different semantic features of indexical expressions: a 'character' that captures the standing meaning of the expression, and a 'content' that consists of their truth-conditional contribution in particular contexts. | |
| From: report of David Kaplan (Demonstratives [1989]) by Macià/Garcia-Carpentiro - Introduction to 'Two-Dimensional Semantics' 1 | |
| A reaction: This seems so clearly right that there isn't much to dispute. You can't understand the word 'I' or 'now' if you don't understand both its general purpose, and what it is doing in a particular utterance. But will this generalise to other semantics? |
| 14700 | 'Content' gives the standard modal profile, and 'character' gives rules for a context [Kaplan, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: Kaplan sees two aspects of meaning, the 'content', reflecting a thing's modal profile, which is modelled by standard possible worlds semantics, and 'character', giving rules for different contexts. Proper names have constant character; indexicals vary. | |
| From: report of David Kaplan (Demonstratives [1989]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 1.1.1 | |
| A reaction: This gives rise to 2-D matrices for representing meaning, and the possible worlds are used twice, for evaluating meaning and then for evaluating context of use. I've always been struck by the two-dimensional semantics of passwords. |
| 4770 | Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal sensation which they occasion. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is the core of Hume's is/ought claim - what he calls the mind 'spreading itself'. It is a powerful claim. Personally I think we have become TOO sceptical here, and have the delusion that crucial features of nature are created within our minds. |
| 4403 | We can't base our account of causation on explanation, because it is the wrong way round [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: We cannot distinguish between good and bad explanations of some phenomena, unless we first distinguish between causal and non-causal explanations. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, but it pushes us towards the idea that causation is non-analysable, and must be taken as a metaphysically basic axiom. If naturalistic accounts fail, that may be only alternative. |
| 4399 | Causes clearly make a difference, are recipes for events, explain effects, and are evidence [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The platitudes of causation are that 1) causes make a difference (counterfactually or probabilistically), 2) causes are recipes for events, 3) causes explain their effects, and 4) causes are evidence for effects. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: A nice piece of analysis which offers some problems for anyone (like Russell) who wants to analyse causation completely out of our conceptual scheme. |
| 4400 | Theories of causation are based either on regularity, or on intrinsic relations of properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: While Humeans base their theories on the intuition of regularity, their opponents base theirs on the intuition that there is an intrinsic relation between the properties of two particular things involved (like a hammer and a vase). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I favour the intrinsic relation of properties view, but this leaves the question of whether we can explain a relation, apart from observing the regularities associated with the properties. |
| 4789 | Three divisions of causal theories: generalist/singularist, intrinsic/extrinsic, reductive/non-reductive [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The three ways to divide theories on causation are: between generalist and singularist, between intrinsic and extrinsic characterisations of the causal relationship, and between reductive and non-reductive approaches. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5) | |
| A reaction: Okay. I vote for singularist, intrinsic and reductive. I'm guessing that that pushes me towards Salmon and Dowe's theory of the 'transfer of conserved quantities', which is certainly reductive, doesn't need regularities in the events, and seems intrinsic. |
| 4790 | If causation is 'intrinsic' it depends entirely on the properties and relations of the cause and effect [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If causation is taken to be an 'intrinsic' relation, then that c causes e will have to depend entirely on the properties of c and e, and the relations between c and e. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.2) | |
| A reaction: This view would move us towards 'essentialism', that the essences of objects produce the events and the laws, rather than external imposed forces and laws. |
| 4402 | Empiricists tried to reduce causation to explanation, which they reduced to logic-plus-a-law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The logical empiricists (esp. Hempel) analysed the concept of causation in terms of causal explanation, and analysed the latter as a species of deductive argument, with one premises stating a universal law (the so-called Deductive-Nomological model). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: This feels wrong, as deduction seems insufficiently naturalistic, and the assumption of a law as premise seems to beg heaps of questions. |
| 4774 | Counterfactual claims about causation imply that it is more than just regular succession [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: If counterfactual claims can be made about causation, this suggests that there is more to it than mere regular succession. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §2.2) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Even Hume makes counterfactual claims in his first definition of cause, and all claims of causation seem to go beyond the immediate evidence. |
| 4793 | "All gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" is a true universal generalisation, but not a law [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The statement "all gold cubes are smaller than one cubic mile" seems to have all the features demanded of a lawlike statement, yet it can hardly be said to express a law. It is a merely true universal generalisation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.3) | |
| A reaction: Nice example. A trickier case is "all cubes of uranium are smaller than one cubic mile", which sounds like part of a law. It suggests a blurred borderline between the two. How much gold is there in the universe? Is that fact a natural necessity? |
| 4397 | Regularity doesn't seem sufficient for causation [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A rather important objection to Humeanism has been that regularity is not sufficient for causation. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a crucial problem, but the Humean view can defend itself by introducing other constant conjunctions. We don't observe events in isolation, but as part of a pattern of regularities. |
| 4792 | A Humean view of causation says it is regularities, and causal facts supervene on non-causal facts [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The Humean view depends on the conjunction of two general theses: first, causation is tied to regularity; secondly, causal facts supervene on non-causal facts. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: If causation is just regularities, this means it is patterns observed by us, which means causation doesn't actually exist. So Hume is wrong. Singular causation is possible, and needs explanation. |
| 4801 | The regularity of a cock's crow is used to predict dawn, even though it doesn't cause it [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: A regularity can be used to predict a future event irrespective of whether it is deemed causal or not. A farmer can predict that dawn has broken on hearing the cock's crow. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §8.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems a highly significant criticism of any view that says regularity leads to causation, which is the basis of induction, which leads to counterfactual claims, and thus arrives a the laws of nature. |
| 4401 | It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: It is not a law of nature that all the coins in my pocket are euros, though it is a regularity. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Good example, but it doesn't demolish the regularity view. We should come to conscious minds last. There aren't many other unfailing regularities that are not laws. |
| 4796 | Laws are sets of regularities within a simple and strong coherent system of wider regularities [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In the 'web-of-laws' approach, laws are those regularities that are members of a coherent system of regularities, in particular, a system that can be represented as a deductive axiomatic system, striking a good balance between simplicity and strength. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §5.6) | |
| A reaction: Psillos attribute this view to Mill, Ramsey and Lewis. It is the obvious candidate for a fully developed Humean empiricist system, where regularities reinforce one another. I think laws are found in mechanisms, not in regularities, which are symptoms. |
| 4799 | Dispositional essentialism can't explain its key distinction between essential and non-essential properties [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: Many philosophers will find dispositional essentialism unappealing, not least because it seems to fail to explain how (and in virtue of what) there is this supposed fundamental distinction between essential and non-essential properties. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002]) | |
| A reaction: Maybe there is no precise definition, but any idiot can see that some properties of gold are essential (mass) and others non-essential (attractive to jackdaws). It's a fair question, but is this the strongest objection to essentialism? |
| 4780 | In some counterfactuals, the counterfactual event happens later than its consequent [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: In "had the acrobat jumped, there would have been a safety net" the antecedent of the counterfactual (the jumping) is temporally later than the consequent (the installation of the net). | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §3.3) | |
| A reaction: This blocks anyone (e.g. David Lewis) who tries to define counterfactual claims entirely in terms of a condition followed by a consequence. Nice example. |
| 4791 | Counterfactual theories say causes make a difference - if c hadn't occurred, then e wouldn't occur [Psillos] |
| Full Idea: The counterfactual theory is a non-Humean relation between singular events; the thought is that causation makes a difference - to say that c causes e is to say that if c hadn't occurred, e wouldn't have occurred either. | |
| From: Stathis Psillos (Causation and Explanation [2002], §4.5.4) | |
| A reaction: Helpful. I'm beginning to think that this theory is wrong. It gives an account of how we see causation, and a test for it, but it says nothing about what causation actually is. |