53 ideas
| 19023 | Slippery slope arguments are challenges to show where a non-arbitrary boundary lies [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Slippery slope arguments are not intended as demonstrative arguments, but rather as a challenge to show where a boundary is, and to show that the boundary is not arbitrary. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.3.3) | |
| A reaction: [extracted from details of its context] You could respond by saying that a slippery slope levels off, rather than hitting a wall or plunging to perdition. |
| 19033 | Deontic modalities are 'ought-to-be', for sentences, and 'ought-to-do' for predicates [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Deontic modality can be divided into sentence-modifying 'ought-to-be' modals, and predicate-modifying 'ought-to-do' modals. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.9.2) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Brennan 1993] These two seem to correspond to what is 'good' (ought to be), and what is 'right' (ought to do). Since I like that distinction, I also like this one. |
| 19032 | S5 is undesirable, as it prevents necessities from having contingent grounds [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Wedgwood (2007:220) argues that S5 is undesirable because it excludes that necessary truths may have contingent grounds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4 n5) | |
| A reaction: Cameron defends the possibility of necessity grounded in contingency, against Blackburn's denial of it. It's interesting that we choose the logic on the basis of the metaphysics. Shouldn't there be internal reasons for a logic's correctness? |
| 19036 | The Barcan formula endorses either merely possible things, or makes the unactualised impossible [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Subscribers to the Barcan formula must either be committed to the existence of mere possibilia (such as possible unicorns), or deny many unactualised possibilities of existence. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: It increasingly strikes me that the implications of the Barcan formula are ridiculous. Williamson is its champion, but I'm blowed if I can see why. What could a possible unicorn be like? Without them, must we say unicorns are impossible? |
| 19034 | The world is either a whole made of its parts, or a container which contains its parts [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We can think of the world as a 'whole' that has everything as its parts, like raisins in a cake, or we can think of the world as a 'container', which is disjoint from everything there is, like a bottle containing water. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Space and time seem to have a special role here, and it is hard to think of any other candidates for being the 'container'. I think I will apply my 'what's it made of' test to ontology, and opt for the world as a 'whole'. |
| 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. |
| 19015 | Grounding can be between objects ('relational'), or between sentences ('operational') [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: 'Relational' grounding is between entities, best expressed by the two-place predicate 'x grounds y'. 'Operational' grounding is between sentences, best expressed by the two-place sentence operator read as 'because of' or 'in virtue of'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) |
| 19012 | The Humean supervenience base entirely excludes modality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Humean supervenience excludes modality - the whole modal package - from the supervenience base. The Humean world is, at root, thoroughly non-modal. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This sums up my problem with David Lewis with perfect clarity. He is just excessively empirical. Hume himself also excluded modality from the basic impressions. Locke allows powerful essences (even if they are well hidden). |
| 19024 | A determinate property must be a unique instance of the determinable class [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The crucial feature of the determinates / determinables relation is that to possess the determinable property, an object must possess exactly one of the determinate properties. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.2) | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a determinable being a function, and the determinate being its output. If 'scarlet' is a determinate of the determinables 'red' or 'coloured', it is not obvious that there is only one possible shade of scarlet. This schema oversimplifies. |
| 15435 | If you think universals are immanent, you must believe them to be sparse, and not every related predicate [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Any theorist of universals as immanent had better hold a sparse theory; it is preposterous on its face that a thing has as many nonspatiotemporal parts as there are different predicates that it falls under, or different classes that it belongs to. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: I am firmly committed to sparse universal, and view the idea that properties are just predicates as the sort of nonsense that results from approaching philosophy too linguistically. |
| 15451 | I assume there could be natural properties that are not instantiated in our world [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: It is possible, I take it, that there might be simple natural properties different from any that instantiated within our world. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: Interesting. Fine for Lewis, of course, for whom possibilities seem (to me) to be just logical possibilities. Even a scientific essentialist, though, must allow that different stuff might exist, which might have different intrinsic properties. |
| 15433 | Tropes are particular properties, which cannot recur, but can be exact duplicates [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Tropes are supposed to be particularized properties: nonspatiotemporal parts of their instances which cannot occur repeatedly, but can be exact duplicates. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Russell's objection is that 'duplication' appears to be a non-trope universal. The account seems wrong for very close resemblance, which is accepted by everyone as being the same (e.g. in colour, for football shirts). |
| 19021 | I have an 'iterated ability' to learn the violin - that is, the ability to acquire that ability [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: I do not have the ability to play the violin. Nor does my desk. Unlike my desk, however, I possess the ability to learn to play the violin - the ability, that is, to acquire the ability to play the violin. I have an 'iterated ability' to play the violin. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, though the examples are more likely to come from human behaviour than from the non-human physical world. |
| 19016 | We should think of dispositions as 'to do' something, not as 'to do something, if ....' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think in terms of dispositions in terms of the manifestation alone - not as a disposition to ...if..., but as a disposition to ..., full stop. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: This way of individuating dispositions seems plausible. Some dispositions only have one trigger, but others have many. All sorts of things are inclined to trigger a human smile, but we are just disposed to smile. Some people smile at disasters. |
| 19017 | Nomological dispositions (unlike ordinary ones) have to be continually realised [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Nomological dispositions such as electric charge seem different from ordinary dispositions. A particle's being electrically charged is not just a possibility of exerting a certain force. Rather, the particle has to exert a force in certain circumstances. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: I can only pull when there is something to pull, but a magnet seems to have a 'field' of attraction which is pullish in character. Does it detect something to pull (like a monad)? Can there be a force which has no object? |
| 19014 | How can spatiotemporal relations be understood in dispositional terms? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Spatiotemporal relations are a prime example of properties that are difficult to understand in dispositional terms. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: [Vetter refers to A.Bird 2007 Ch.8 for an attempt] One approach would be to question whether they are 'properties'. I don't think of relations as properties, even if they are predicates. Is space a property of something? |
| 15436 | Universals are meant to give an account of resemblance [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the main job of a theory of universals is to give an account of resemblance. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: This invites the quick reply, popular with some nominalists, of taking resemblance as primitive, and hence beyond explanation. |
| 15438 | We can add a primitive natural/unnatural distinction to class nominalism [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: To class nominalism we can add a primitive distinction between natural and unnatural classes. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis explores this elsewhere, but this looks like a very complex concept to play the role of a 'primitive'. Human conventions seem to be parts of nature. |
| 15448 | The 'magical' view of structural universals says they are atoms, even though they have parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The 'magical' conception of structural universals says 'simple' must be distinguished from 'atomic'. A structural universal is never simple; it involves other, simpler, universals, but it is mereologically atomic. The other universals are not its parts. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: Hence the 'magic' is for it to be an indissoluble unity, while acknowledging that it has parts. Personally I don't see much problem with this view, since universals already perform the magical feat of being 'instantiated', whatever that means. |
| 15449 | If 'methane' is an atomic structural universal, it has nothing to connect it to its carbon universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is it about the universal carbon that gets it involved in necessary connections with methane? Why not rubidium instead? The universal 'carbon' has nothing more in common with the universal methane than the universal rubidium has! | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The magical') | |
| A reaction: This is his objection to the 'magical' unity of structural universals. The point is that if methane is an atomic unity, as claimed, it can't have anything 'in common' with its components. |
| 15439 | The 'pictorial' view of structural universals says they are wholes made of universals as parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: On the 'pictorial' conception, a structural universal is isomorphic to its instances. ...It is an individual, a mereological composite, not a set. ...It is composed of simpler universals which are literally parts of it. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: I'm not clear why Lewis labels this the 'pictorial' view. His other two views of structural universals are 'linguistic' and 'magical'. The linguistic is obviously wrong, and the magical doesn't sound promising. Must I vote for pictorial? |
| 15441 | The structural universal 'methane' needs the universal 'hydrogen' four times over [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the pictorial conception is that if the structural universal 'methane' is to be an isomorph of the molecules that are its instances, it must have the universal 'hydrogen' as a part not just once, but four times over. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: The point is that if hydrogen is a universal it must be unique, so there can't be four of them. To me this smacks of the hopeless mess theologians get into, because of bad premisses. Drop universals, and avoid this kind of stuff. |
| 15445 | Butane and Isobutane have the same atoms, but different structures [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: The stuctural universal 'isobutane' consists of the universal carbon four times over, hydrogen ten times over, and the universal 'bonded' thirteen times over - just like the universal 'butane'. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: The point is that isobutane and butane have the same components in different structures. At least this is Lewis facing up to the problem of the 'flatness' of mereological wholes. |
| 15434 | Structural universals have a necessary connection to the universals forming its parts [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: There is a necessary connection between the instantiating of a structural universal by the whole and the instantiating of other universals by its parts. We can call the relation 'involvement', a nondescript word. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'What are') | |
| A reaction: In the case of a shape, I suppose the composing 'universals' [dunno what they are] will all be essential to the shape - that is, part of the very nature of the thing, loss of which would destroy the identity. |
| 15437 | We can't get rid of structural universals if there are no simple universals [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We can't dispense with structural universals if we cannot be sure that there are any simples which can be involved in them. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Why believe') | |
| A reaction: Lewis cites this as Armstrong's strongest reason for accepting structural universals (and he takes their requirement for an account of laws of nature as the weakest). I can't comprehend a world that lacks underlying simplicity. |
| 15446 | Composition is not just making new things from old; there are too many counterexamples [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Not just any operation that makes new things from old is a form of composition! There is no sense in which my parents are part of me, and no sense in which two numbers are parts of their greatest common factor. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: One of those rare moments when David Lewis seems to have approached a really sensible metaphysics. Further on he rejects all forms of composition apart from mereology. |
| 15440 | A whole is distinct from its parts, but is not a further addition in ontology [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: A whole is an extra item in our ontology only in the minimal sense that it is not identical to any of its proper parts; but it is not distinct from them either, so when we believe in the parts it is no extra burden to believe in the whole. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: A little confusing, to be 'not identical' and yet 'not different'. As Lewis says elsewhere, the whole is one, and the parts are not. A crux. Essentialism implies a sort of holism, that parts with a structure constitute a new thing. |
| 15444 | Different things (a toy house and toy car) can be made of the same parts at different times [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: Different things can be made of the same parts at different times, as when the tinkertoy house is taken apart and put back together as a tinkertoy car. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Variants') | |
| A reaction: More important than it looks! This is Lewis's evasion of the question of the structure of the parts. Times will individuate different structures, but if I take type-identical parts and make a house and a car simultaneously, are they type-identical? |
| 19030 | Why does origin matter more than development; why are some features of origin more important? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Not every feature of an individual's origin is plausibly considered necessary, so we can distinguish two questions: 'why origin, rather than development?', and 'why these particular features of origin?'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] The point is that exactly where someone was born doesn't seem vital. If it is nothing more than that every contingent object must have an origin, that is not very exciting. |
| 19040 | We take origin to be necessary because we see possibilities as branches from actuality [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The plausibility of the necessity of origin is a symptom of our general tendency to think of possibility in terms of the 'branching model' - that unactualised possibilities must branch off from actuality, at some point. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [she cites P. Mackie 1998] It is hard to see how we could flatly deny some possibilities which had absolutely no connection with actuality, and were probably quite unimaginable for us. |
| 19008 | The modern revival of necessity and possibility treated them as special cases of quantification [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessity and possibility had a revival with the development of modal logic, treating them as special cases of the existential and universal quantifiers, ranging over an infinity of possible worlds. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: The problem seems to be that possible worlds offer a very useful and interesting 'model' of modality, but say nothing at all about its nature. Any more than a weather map will show you what weather is. |
| 19029 | It is necessary that p means that nothing has the potentiality for not-p [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Necessities mark the limits of the potentialities that objects have. More precisely, it is necessary that p just in case nothing has, or had, or will have a potentiality to be such that not-p. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [See Vetter's other ideas for her potentiality account of modality] If we wish to build a naturalistic account of modality (and if you don't want that then your untethered metaphysics will drift away in logical space) then this is the way to go. |
| 19028 | Possibilities are potentialities of actual things, but abstracted from their location [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: When we speak of possibility, we speak of potentiality in abstraction from its possessor; a possibility is a potentiality somewhere or other in the world, no matter where. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: I note that, as so often, this is psychological abstraction, which is usually sneered at by modern philosophers (e.g. Geach), and yet is employed all the time. This is Vetter's key thesis, which I like. |
| 19010 | All possibility is anchored in the potentiality of individual objects [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality is, metaphorically speaking, possibility anchored in individual objects; I claim that all possibility is thus anchored in some individual object(s) or other. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This will be fine for specific physical possibilities, but may become tricky for possibilities that are increasingly abstract, or universal, or idealised. I agree with the general approach. Anchor modality in reality (which is physical!). |
| 19013 | Possibility is a generalised abstraction from the potentiality of its bearer [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: We should think of possibility as potentiality in abstraction from its bearer. So 'it is possible that p' is defined as 'something has an iterated potentiality for it to be the case that p'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: If possibilities are abstractions from potentialities, I am inclined the treat potentialities as abstractions from dispositions, and dispositions (and properties) as abstractions from powers. Powers are not abstractions - they are the reality. |
| 19019 | Potentiality is the common genus of dispositions, abilities, and similar properties [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality can now be recognised as the common genus of dispositions and such related properties as abilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Vetter defends a metaphysics of modality based on potentialities, rather than on narrower concepts such as dispositions, powers or essences. She can evade the problems which those narrower concepts raise. |
| 19022 | Water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break (by freezing) [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Water has no potentiality to break. But water has a potentiality to be frozen and turn into ice, which does have a potentiality to break. So water has a potentiality to acquire a potentiality to break. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: Thus potentially has an 'iterated' character to it, and an appropriate modal logic for it will have to allow for those iterations. She suggests a version of System T modal logic. |
| 23705 | A potentiality may not be a disposition, but dispositions are strong potentialities [Vetter, by Friend/Kimpton-Nye] |
| Full Idea: Although not all potentialities are dispositions, Vetter claims that all dispositions are potentialities which are had to a sufficiently high degree. | |
| From: report of Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015]) by Friend/Kimpton-Nye - Dispositions and Powers 2.4.2 | |
| A reaction: This sounds plausible. A potentiality could be faint or negligible, but once it is a serious possibility it becomes a 'disposition'. ...I suppose. But if the meteor is probably going to hit my house, it doesn't mean it has a disposition to do so. |
| 19009 | Potentiality does the explaining in metaphysics; we don't explain it away or reduce it [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: This book is a plea for recognising potentiality as an explanans in the metaphysics of modality, rather than as something in need of explanation or reduction. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Something has to do the explaining, and it is obviously much better to have some aspect of the real world do the job, rather than remote abstractions such as laws, possible worlds or Forms. Personally I like the potentiality of 'powers'. |
| 19027 | Potentiality logic is modal system T. Stronger systems collapse iterations, and necessitate potentials [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The logic for potentiality corresponds to modal system T, the minimum for metaphysics. The S4 axiom ◊◊φ → ◊φ says iterated potentialities collapse, and the S5 ◊φ → □◊φ says potentialities can't be lost. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems persuasive. I nice example of modern analytic metaphysics, that you have to find a logic that suits your theory. N.Salmon defends system T for all of metaphysics, though most people favour S5. |
| 19031 | There are potentialities 'to ...', but possibilities are 'that ....'. [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities are 'potentialities to ....', while possibilities are 'possibilities that ....'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: This feels a bit like a stipulation, rather than a precise description of normal usage. That said, it is quite a nice distinction. It sounds as if an event follows a potentiality, and a state of affairs follows a possibility. Active and passive? |
| 19025 | Potentialities may be too weak to count as 'dispositions' [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Potentialities may get exercised despite having a degree that is too low for them to qualify as dispositions. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.7.4) | |
| A reaction: The key reason why her book is called 'Potentialities', rather than 'Dispositions'. She still wants to offer a naturalistic picture which ties potentialities to individual objects, but I am wondering whether potentialities are too abstract for the job. |
| 19011 | If worlds are sets of propositions, how do we know which propositions are genuinely possible? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: If possible worlds are sets of propositions, we need some way to distinguish those sets of propositions that do from those that do not correspond to genuine possibilities. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The idea of a 'genuine' possibility does not seem to play a role in the conceptual scheme of those who treat possibility entirely in terms of possible worlds. If possibility is primitive, or is a set of worlds, there can be no criterion for 'genuine'. |
| 19037 | Are there possible objects which nothing has ever had the potentiality to produce? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Is it not possible that there be objects with (natural) properties that no actual thing ever had the potentiality to have, to produce, or constitute? (Call such properties 'super-alien properties'). | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a problem for her potentiality account of possibility. Her solution is (roughly) to either deny the super-aliens, or have chains of iterated possibility which take this case back to actuality. That sounds OK to me. |
| 19018 | Explanations by disposition are more stable and reliable than those be external circumstances [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Patterns of behaviour may be explained by circumstances external to the individual, but dispositional explanations, based on the instrinsic make-up of individuals are typically more reliable and stable. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This is very nice support for the view I have been defending. She doesn't deal in essences, and prefers 'potentialities' (as broader) to 'dispositions'. The point is to explain events by the natures of the ingredients. |
| 19020 | Grounding is a kind of explanation, suited to metaphysics [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Grounding is a kind of explanation - and specifically, the kind of metaphysical explanation that metaphysicians are after. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 4.5) | |
| A reaction: Depending on how you interpret 'grounding', it is plausible that it is the sort of explanation that physicists and economists are after as well. If the aim is to understand the structure of everything, the target is to know what grounds what. |
| 15450 | Maybe abstraction is just mereological subtraction [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: We could say that abstraction is just mereological subtraction of universals. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'Uninstantiated') | |
| A reaction: This only works, of course, for the theories that complex universals have simpler universals as 'parts'. This is just a passing surmise. I take it that abstraction only works for a thing whose unity survives the abstraction. |
| 15443 | Mathematicians abstract by equivalence classes, but that doesn't turn a many into one [Lewis] |
| Full Idea: When mathematicians abstract one thing from others, they take an equivalence class. ....But it is only superficially a one; underneath, a class are still many. | |
| From: David Lewis (Against Structural Universals [1986], 'The pictorial') | |
| A reaction: This is Frege's approach to abstraction, and it is helpful to have it spelled out that this is a mathematical technique, even when applied by Frege to obtaining 'direction' from classes of parallels. Too much philosophy borrows inappropriate techniques. |
| 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). |
| 19039 | The view that laws are grounded in substance plus external necessity doesn't suit dispositionalism [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: The Armstrong/Tooley/Dretske view, which takes laws to be substantial but grounded in a relation of nomic necessitation external to the properties themselves, is not an attractive option for the dispositionalist. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the dispositionalist sees laws as grounded in the properties. I prefer her other option, of dispositionalism plus a 'shallow' view of laws (which she attributes to Mumford). The laws are as Lewis says, but powers explain them. |
| 19038 | Dispositional essentialism allows laws to be different, but only if the supporting properties differ [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Even on the dispositional essentialist view the world might have been governed by different laws, if those laws involved different properties. What is excluded is the possibility of different laws involving the same properties as our actual laws. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.8) | |
| A reaction: Important. Critics of dispositional essentialism accuse it of promoting the idea that the laws of nature are necessary, a claim for which we obviously have no evidence. I prefer to say they are necessary given that 'stuff', rather than those properties. |
| 19026 | If time is symmetrical between past and future, why do they look so different? [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Any defender of the symmetry of time will have to provide some explanation of the obstinate appearance that the future is very different from the past. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 5.8) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you have to say that it is all there, but only one end of the time spectrum is revealed to us, namely the past. But how do we get this uniquely lopsided view? Being an ominiscient god is more obvious than being a lopsided human. |
| 19041 | Presentists explain cross-temporal relations using surrogate descriptions [Vetter] |
| Full Idea: Presentists usually deal with the lack of cross-temporal relations by the construction of a surrogate, by way of paraphrasing the objectionable relation ascriptions. 'I admire Socrates' becomes 'I admire the Socrates properties'. | |
| From: Barbara Vetter (Potentiality [2015], 7.9) | |
| A reaction: [compressed. The cites Markosian 2004:63] Why can't I just say 'I admire Socrates, who no longer exists'? The present includes tensed facts, and memories and evidence-based theories. Admiring is not a direct relation between objects. |