Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Events and Their Names', 'Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory' and 'on Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking''

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4 ideas

3. Truth / B. Truthmakers / 2. Truthmaker Relation

18470	Maybe truth-making is an unanalysable primitive, but we can specify principles for it [Smith,B]
	Full Idea: The signs are that truth-making is not analysable in terms of anything more primitive, but we need to be able to say more than just that. So we ought to consider it as specified by principles of truth-making.
	From: Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory [2000], p.20), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.5
	A reaction: This is the axiomatic approach to such problems - treat the target concept as an undefinable, unanalysable primitive, and then give rules for its connections. Maybe all metaphysics should work like that, with a small bunch of primitives.

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events

8978	Events are made of other things, and are not fundamental to ontology [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Events are not basic items in the universe; they should not be included in any fundamental ontology...all the truths about them are entailed by and explained and made true by truths that do not involve the event concept.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.12), quoted by Peter Simons - Events 3.1
	A reaction: Given the variable time spans of events, their ability to coincide, their ability to contain no motion, their blatantly conventional component, and their recalcitrance to individuation, I say Bennett is right.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism

18438	Every worldly event, without exception, is a redistribution of microphysical states [Quine]
	Full Idea: Nothing happens in the world, not the flutter of an eyelid, not the flicker of a thought, without some redistribution of microphysical states.
	From: Willard Quine (on Goodman's 'Ways of Worldmaking' [1978], p.98)
	A reaction: Is this causation, identity, or baffling supervenience?

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata

10364	Facts are about the world, not in it, so they can't cause anything [Bennett]
	Full Idea: Facts are not the sort of item that can cause anything. A fact is a true proposition (they say); it is not something in the world but is rather something about the world.
	From: Jonathan Bennett (Events and Their Names [1988], p.22), quoted by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 1.1
	A reaction: Compare 10361. Good argument, but maybe 'fact' is ambiguous. See Idea 10365. Events are said to be more concrete, and so can do the job, but their individuation also seems to depend on a description (as Davidson has pointed out).