60 ideas
| 15477 | Ontology is highly abstract physics, containing placeholders and exclusions [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Ontology sets out an even more abstract model of how the world is than theoretical physics, a model that has placeholders for scientific results and excluders for tempting confusions. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: Most modern metaphysicians accept this account. The interesting (mildly!) question is whether physicists will accept it. If the metaphysics is really rooted in physics, a metaphysical physicist is better placed than a metaphysician knowing some physics. |
| 17774 | Definitions make our intuitions mathematically useful [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Definition provides us with the means for converting our intuitions into mathematically usable concepts. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.405-1) |
| 17773 | Proof shows that it is true, but also why it must be true [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: When you have proved something you know not only that it is true, but why it must be true. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.405-2) | |
| A reaction: Note the word 'must'. Presumably both the grounding and the necessitation of the truth are revealed. |
| 15471 | Truth is a relation between a representation ('bearer') and part of the world ('truthmaker') [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Truth is a relation between two things - a representation (the truth 'bearer') and the world or some part of it (the 'truthmaker'). | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: That truth is about representations seems to me to be exactly right. That it is about truthmakers is more controversial. There are well known problems with negative truths, general truths, future truths etc. I'm happy with 'facts'. |
| 17795 | Set theory can't be axiomatic, because it is needed to express the very notion of axiomatisation [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Set theory cannot be an axiomatic theory, because the very notion of an axiomatic theory makes no sense without it. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.413-2) | |
| A reaction: This will come as a surprise to Penelope Maddy, who battles with ways to accept the set theory axioms as the foundation of mathematics. Mayberry says that the basic set theory required is much more simple and intuitive. |
| 17796 | There is a semi-categorical axiomatisation of set-theory [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: We can give a semi-categorical axiomatisation of set-theory (all that remains undetermined is the size of the set of urelements and the length of the sequence of ordinals). The system is second-order in formalisation. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.413-2) | |
| A reaction: I gather this means the models may not be isomorphic to one another (because they differ in size), but can be shown to isomorphic to some third ingredient. I think. Mayberry says this shows there is no such thing as non-Cantorian set theory. |
| 17800 | The misnamed Axiom of Infinity says the natural numbers are finite in size [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The (misnamed!) Axiom of Infinity expresses Cantor's fundamental assumption that the species of natural numbers is finite in size. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.414-2) |
| 17801 | The set hierarchy doesn't rely on the dubious notion of 'generating' them [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The idea of 'generating' sets is only a metaphor - the existence of the hierarchy is established without appealing to such dubious notions. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.414-2) | |
| A reaction: Presumably there can be a 'dependence' or 'determination' relation which does not involve actual generation. |
| 17803 | Limitation of size is part of the very conception of a set [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Our very notion of a set is that of an extensional plurality limited in size. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.415-2) |
| 17786 | The mainstream of modern logic sees it as a branch of mathematics [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: In the mainstream tradition of modern logic, beginning with Boole, Peirce and Schröder, descending through Löwenheim and Skolem to reach maturity with Tarski and his school ...saw logic as a branch of mathematics. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.410-1) | |
| A reaction: [The lesser tradition, of Frege and Russell, says mathematics is a branch of logic]. Mayberry says the Fregean tradition 'has almost died out'. |
| 17788 | First-order logic only has its main theorems because it is so weak [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: First-order logic is very weak, but therein lies its strength. Its principle tools (Compactness, Completeness, Löwenheim-Skolem Theorems) can be established only because it is too weak to axiomatize either arithmetic or analysis. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.411-2) | |
| A reaction: He adds the proviso that this is 'unless we are dealing with structures on whose size we have placed an explicit, finite bound' (p.412-1). |
| 17791 | Only second-order logic can capture mathematical structure up to isomorphism [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Second-order logic is a powerful tool of definition: by means of it alone we can capture mathematical structure up to isomorphism using simple axiom systems. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-1) |
| 17787 | Big logic has one fixed domain, but standard logic has a domain for each interpretation [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The 'logica magna' [of the Fregean tradition] has quantifiers ranging over a fixed domain, namely everything there is. In the Boolean tradition the domains differ from interpretation to interpretation. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.410-2) | |
| A reaction: Modal logic displays both approaches, with different systems for global and local domains. |
| 17790 | No Löwenheim-Skolem logic can axiomatise real analysis [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: No logic which can axiomatize real analysis can have the Löwenheim-Skolem property. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-1) |
| 17779 | 'Classificatory' axioms aim at revealing similarity in morphology of structures [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The purpose of a 'classificatory' axiomatic theory is to single out an otherwise disparate species of structures by fixing certain features of morphology. ...The aim is to single out common features. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.406-2) |
| 17778 | Axiomatiation relies on isomorphic structures being essentially the same [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The central dogma of the axiomatic method is this: isomorphic structures are mathematically indistinguishable in their essential properties. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.406-2) | |
| A reaction: Hence it is not that we have to settle for the success of a system 'up to isomorphism', since that was the original aim. The structures must differ in their non-essential properties, or they would be the same system. |
| 17780 | 'Eliminatory' axioms get rid of traditional ideal and abstract objects [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The purpose of what I am calling 'eliminatory' axiomatic theories is precisely to eliminate from mathematics those peculiar ideal and abstract objects that, on the traditional view, constitute its subject matter. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.407-1) | |
| A reaction: A very interesting idea. I have a natural antipathy to 'abstract objects', because they really mess up what could otherwise be a very tidy ontology. What he describes might be better called 'ignoring' axioms. The objects may 'exist', but who cares? |
| 17789 | No logic which can axiomatise arithmetic can be compact or complete [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: No logic which can axiomatise arithmetic can be compact or complete. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-1) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be because there are new truths in the transfinite level (as well as the problem of incompleteness). |
| 17784 | Real numbers can be eliminated, by axiom systems for complete ordered fields [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: We eliminate the real numbers by giving an axiomatic definition of the species of complete ordered fields. These axioms are categorical (mutually isomorphic), and thus are mathematically indistinguishable. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.408-2) | |
| A reaction: Hence my clever mathematical friend says that it is a terrible misunderstanding to think that mathematics is about numbers. Mayberry says the reals are one ordered field, but mathematics now studies all ordered fields together. |
| 17782 | Greek quantities were concrete, and ratio and proportion were their science [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: Quantities for Greeks were concrete things - lines, surfaces, solids, times, weights. At the centre of their science of quantity was the beautiful theory of ratio and proportion (...in which the notion of number does not appear!). | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.407-2) | |
| A reaction: [He credits Eudoxus, and cites Book V of Euclid] |
| 17781 | Real numbers were invented, as objects, to simplify and generalise 'quantity' [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The abstract objects of modern mathematics, the real numbers, were invented by the mathematicians of the seventeenth century in order to simplify and to generalize the Greek science of quantity. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.407-2) |
| 17799 | Cantor's infinite is an absolute, of all the sets or all the ordinal numbers [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: In Cantor's new vision, the infinite, the genuine infinite, does not disappear, but presents itself in the guise of the absolute, as manifested in the species of all sets or the species of all ordinal numbers. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.414-2) |
| 17797 | Cantor extended the finite (rather than 'taming the infinite') [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: We may describe Cantor's achievement by saying, not that he tamed the infinite, but that he extended the finite. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.414-2) |
| 17775 | If proof and definition are central, then mathematics needs and possesses foundations [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: If we grant, as surely we must, the central importance of proof and definition, then we must also grant that mathematics not only needs, but in fact has, foundations. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.405-1) |
| 17776 | The ultimate principles and concepts of mathematics are presumed, or grasped directly [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The ultimate principles upon which mathematics rests are those to which mathematicians appeal without proof; and the primitive concepts of mathematics ...themselves are grasped directly, if grasped at all, without the mediation of definition. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.405-1) | |
| A reaction: This begs the question of whether the 'grasping' is purely a priori, or whether it derives from experience. I defend the latter, and Jenkins puts the case well. |
| 17777 | Foundations need concepts, definition rules, premises, and proof rules [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: An account of the foundations of mathematics must specify four things: the primitive concepts for use in definitions, the rules governing definitions, the ultimate premises of proofs, and rules allowing advance from premises to conclusions. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.405-2) |
| 17804 | Axiom theories can't give foundations for mathematics - that's using axioms to explain axioms [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: No axiomatic theory, formal or informal, of first or of higher order can logically play a foundational role in mathematics. ...It is obvious that you cannot use the axiomatic method to explain what the axiomatic method is. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.415-2) |
| 17792 | 1st-order PA is only interesting because of results which use 2nd-order PA [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The sole theoretical interest of first-order Peano arithmetic derives from the fact that it is a first-order reduct of a categorical second-order theory. Its axioms can be proved incomplete only because the second-order theory is categorical. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-1) |
| 17793 | It is only 2nd-order isomorphism which suggested first-order PA completeness [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: If we did not know that the second-order axioms characterise the natural numbers up to isomorphism, we should have no reason to suppose, a priori, that first-order Peano Arithmetic should be complete. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-1) |
| 17794 | Set theory is not just first-order ZF, because that is inadequate for mathematics [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The idea that set theory must simply be identified with first-order Zermelo-Fraenkel is surprisingly widespread. ...The first-order axiomatic theory of sets is clearly inadequate as a foundation of mathematics. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.412-2) | |
| A reaction: [He is agreeing with a quotation from Skolem]. |
| 17802 | We don't translate mathematics into set theory, because it comes embodied in that way [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: One does not have to translate 'ordinary' mathematics into the Zermelo-Fraenkel system: ordinary mathematics comes embodied in that system. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.415-1) | |
| A reaction: Mayberry seems to be a particular fan of set theory as spelling out the underlying facts of mathematics, though it has to be second-order. |
| 17805 | Set theory is not just another axiomatised part of mathematics [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The fons et origo of all confusion is the view that set theory is just another axiomatic theory and the universe of sets just another mathematical structure. ...The universe of sets ...is the world that all mathematical structures inhabit. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.416-1) |
| 15484 | A property is a combination of a disposition and a quality [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: I take properties to have a dual nature; in virtue of possessing a property, an object possesses both a particular dispositionality and a particular qualitative character. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: That leaves you with the question of the relationship between the disposition and the quality. I say you must choose, and I choose the disposition. Qualities (which are partly subjective, obviously) arise from fundamental dispositions. |
| 15478 | Properties are the respects in which objects resemble, which places them in classes [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: If objects belong to classes in virtue of resemblances they bear to one another, they resemble one another in virtue of their properties. Objects resemble in some way or respect, and you could think of these ways or respects as 'properties'. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: If you pare the universe down to one object with five distinct properties, they resemble nothing, and fail this definition. Resemblance seems like the epistemology, not the ontology. |
| 15483 | Properties are ways particular things are, and so they are tied to the identity of their possessor [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: The redness or sphericity of this tomato cannot migrate to another tomato. This is a consequence of the idea that properties are particular ways things are. The identity of a property is bound up with the identity of its possessor. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: This is part of his declaration that he believes in tropes. At the very least, properties can be thought of separately, and have second-order properties that don't seem tied to the particulars. |
| 15480 | Objects are not bundles of tropes (which are ways things are, not parts of things) [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: The bundle theory for tropes treats properties inappositely as parts of objects. Objects can have parts, but an object's properties are not its parts, they are particular ways the object is. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: The 'way an object is' seems a very vague concept. Most things that get labelled as tropes are actually highly complex. Without mention of causal powers I think these discussions drift in a muddle. |
| 15489 | A property that cannot interact is worse than inert - it isn't there at all [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: A property that is intrinsically incapable of affecting or being affected by anything else, actual or possible, is not merely a case of inertness - it amounts to a no-thing. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 06.6) | |
| A reaction: In the end Martin rejects Shoemaker's purely causal account of properties, but he clearly understands Shoemaker's point well. |
| 15487 | If unmanifested partnerless dispositions are still real, and are not just qualities, they can explain properties [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Given a realist view of dispositions as fully actual, even without manifestations or partners, a purely dispositional account of properties has a degree of plausibility, which is enhanced because properties lack purely qualitative characterisations. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 06.4) | |
| A reaction: In the end Martin opts for a mixed account, as in Idea 15484, but he gives reasons here for the view which I favour. If he concedes that dispositions may exist without manifestation, they must surely lack qualities. Are they not properties, then? |
| 15479 | Properties endow a ball with qualities, and with powers or dispositions [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Each property endows a ball with a distinctive qualitative character and a distinctive range of powers or dispositionalities. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the wrong way round. Do properties support powers, or powers support properties? I favour the latter. Properties are much vaguer than powers. Powers generate the required causation and activity. |
| 15488 | Qualities and dispositions are aspects of properties - what it exhibits, and what it does [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: For any intrinsic and irreducible property, what is qualitative and what is dispositional are one and the same property considered as what that property exhibits of its nature and what that property is directive and selective for in its manifestation. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 06.6) | |
| A reaction: This is supposed to support qualities and dispositions as equal partners, but I don't see how 'what a property exhibits' can have any role in fundamental ontology. What it exhibits may be very misleading about its nature. |
| 15469 | Dispositions in action can be destroyed, be recovered, or remain unchanged [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Three forms of dispositionality are illustrated by explosives (which are destroyed by manifestation), being soluble (where the dispositions is lost but recoverable), and being stable (where the disposition is unchanged). | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.7) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Presumably the explosives could be recovered after the explosion, since the original elements are still there, but it would take a while. The retina remains stable by continually changing. There are no simple distinctions! |
| 15467 | Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Nobody believes, or ought to believe, that manifestations of powers follow upon the single event mentioned in the antecedent of the conditional independently of the circumstances. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.4) | |
| A reaction: Another way of putting it would be that the behaviour of powers is more ceteris paribus than law. |
| 15466 | 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: According to the conditional analysis of 'the wire is live', if the wire is touched then it gives off electricity. What ultimately defeats this analysis is the acknowledged possibility of objects gaining or losing powers. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.3) | |
| A reaction: He offers his 'electro-fink' as a counterexample, where touching the wire changes its disposition. The conditional analysis is simple and clearcut, but dispositions in reality are complex and unstable. |
| 17785 | Real numbers as abstracted objects are now treated as complete ordered fields [Mayberry] |
| Full Idea: The abstractness of the old fashioned real numbers has been replaced by generality in the modern theory of complete ordered fields. | |
| From: John Mayberry (What Required for Foundation for Maths? [1994], p.408-2) | |
| A reaction: In philosophy, I'm increasingly thinking that we should talk much more of 'generality', and a great deal less about 'universals'. (By which I don't mean that redness is just the set of red things). |
| 15476 | Structural properties involve dispositionality, so cannot be used to explain it [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: I take it as obvious that any structural property involves dispositionality and, therefore, cannot be used to 'explain' dispositionality. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this is the right way round. The so-called 'categorical' properties seem to be close in nature to the 'structural' properties. |
| 15465 | Structures don't explain dispositions, because they consist of dispositions [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: It is self-defeating to try to explain dispositionality in terms of structural states because structural states are themselves dispositional. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: No doubt structures have dispositions, but are they entirely dispositional? Might there be 'emergent' dispositions which can only be explained by the structure itself, rather than by the dispositions that make up the structure? |
| 15481 | I favour the idea of a substratum for properties; spacetime seems to be just a bearer of properties [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: I favour the old idea of substratum: the haver of properties not itself had as a property. Space-time might itself be the bearer of properties, not itself borne as a property. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: A very nice idea. The choice is between saying either that fundamentals like space-time and physical fields are the propertyless bearers of properties, or that they purely consist of properties (so properties are fundamental, not substrata). |
| 15474 | Properly understood, wholes do no more causal work than their parts [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: There is no causal work for the whole that is not done by the parts, provided the complex role of the parts is fully appreciated. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.1) | |
| A reaction: It seems like a truth that because some parts are doing particular causal work (e.g. glue), the whole can acquire causal powers that the mereological sum of parts lacks. |
| 15486 | Only abstract things can have specific and full identity specifications [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Abstract entities (as nonspatiotemporal) seem to be the only candidates for specific and full identity specifications. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 05.2 n1) | |
| A reaction: Martin says that only the 'mad logician' seeks such specifications elsewhere. Some people like persons to have perfect identity. God is a popular candidate too. Can objects have perfect 'macroscopic' identity? |
| 15475 | The concept of 'identity' must allow for some changes in properties or parts [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: We must avoid a use of 'identity' that implies that any entity over time must be said to lack continuing identity simply because it has changed properties or has lost, added, or had substituted some parts. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: This may the key area where the logical-mathematical type of philosophy comes into contact with the natural-metaphysical type. Imagine Martin's concept of 'identity' in mathematics. π changes to 3.1387... during the calculation! |
| 15472 | It is pointless to say possible worlds are truthmakers, and then deny that possible worlds exist [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: To claim that the truthmaker for a counterfactual, for example, is a set of possible worlds, but to deny that these worlds really exist, seems pointless. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Lewis therefore argues that they do exist. Martin argues that possible worlds are not truthmakers. He rests his account of modality on dispositions. I prefer Martin. |
| 15492 | Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't think you can rule out the 'real' explanation, as the one dominant causal predecessor, such as the earthquake producing a tsunami. |
| 15495 | Analogy works, as when we eat food which others seem to be relishing [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: The long-derided way of analogy works! Otherwise why, when someone else is relishing a food we have not tried, is it reasonable for us to try it ourselves? | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 12.2) | |
| A reaction: Why wouldn't we rush to eat something an animal was relishing? Nice idea. |
| 15493 | Memory requires abstraction, as reminders of what cannot be fully remembered [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Selectivity and abstraction are required for the development of memory, because reminders and promptings are rarely replicas of what is being remembered. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 10.3) | |
| A reaction: I take the key idea of mental life to be that of a 'label'. This need not be verbal, so 'conceptual label'. It could be an image, as on a road sign. Labelling is the most indispensable aspect of thought. We label objects, parts, properties and groups. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 15485 | Instead of a cause followed by an effect, we have dispositions in reciprocal manifestation [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: The two-event cause-and-effect view is easily avoided and replaced by the view of mutual manifestations of reciprocal disposition partners, suggesting a natural contemporaneity. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 05.1) | |
| A reaction: This view, which I find much more congenial than the traditional one, is explored in the ideas of Mumford and Anjum. |
| 15491 | Causation should be explained in terms of dispositions and manifestations [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Disposition and manifestation are the basic categories by means of which cause and effect are to be explained. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 07.8) | |
| A reaction: 'Manifestation' sounds a bit subjective. The manifestation evident to us may not indicate what is really going on below the surface. I like his basic picture. |
| 15468 | Causal counterfactuals are just clumsy linguistic attempts to indicate dispositions [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: 'Causal' counterfactuals have a place, of course, but only as clumsy and inexact linguistic gestures to dispositions, and they should be kept in that place. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.6) | |
| A reaction: Counterfactuals only seem to give a regularity account of causation, by correlating an effect with a minimal context which will give rise to it. Surely dispositions run deeper than that? |
| 15470 | Causal laws are summaries of powers [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: Causal laws are summaries of what entities are capable and incapable of. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 02.8) | |
| A reaction: That's a pretty good formulation. Personally I favour a Humean analysis, perhaps along Lewis's lines, but on a basis of real powers. This remark of Martin's has got me rethinking. |
| 15482 | We can't think of space-time as empty and propertyless, and it seems to be a substratum [Martin,CB] |
| Full Idea: It makes no sense in ontology or modern physics to think of space-time as empty and propertyless. Space-time nicely fulfils the condition of a substratum. | |
| From: C.B. Martin (The Mind in Nature [2008], 04.6) | |
| A reaction: At the very least, space-time seems to be 'curved', so it had better be something. Time has properties like being transitive. Space-time (or fields) might be a pure bundle of properties (the only pure bundle?), rather than a substratum. |