Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Mahaprajnaparamitashastra', 'Physical Causation' and 'Some Remarks on Essentialism'

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8 ideas

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties

13952	Essentialism says some of a thing's properties are necessary, and could not be absent [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: Essentialism, as I shall understand it, is the doctrine that among the attributes of a thing some are essential, others merely accidental. Its essential attributes are those it has necessarily, those it could not have lacked.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.149)
	A reaction: The problem with this, which Cartwright does not address, is that trivial and gerrymandered properties (such as having self-identity, or being 'such that 2+2=4') seem to be necessarily, but don't seem to constitute the essence of a thing.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences

13954	The difficulty in essentialism is deciding the grounds for rating an attribute as essential [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: I see no reason for thinking essentialism unintelligible, but a chief perplexity is the obscurity of the grounds on which ratings of attributes as essential or accidental are to be made.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
	A reaction: In that case some of us younger philosophers will have to roll up our sleeves and tease out the grounds for essentialism, starting with Aristotle and Leibniz, and ending with the successes of modern science.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

13955	Essentialism is said to be unintelligible, because relative, if necessary truths are all analytic [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: Apparently those who think essentialism unintelligible see support for their position in the doctrine that necessary truths are all analytic. Only relative to some mode of designation does it make sense to speak of an object as necessarily this or that.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.158)
	A reaction: He has in mind Quine and his mathematician-cyclist (Idea 8482). Personally I have no problems with the example. No one is essentially a cyclist - that isn't what essence is. Two-legged people can be cyclists.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 3. Relative Identity

13953	An act of ostension doesn't seem to need a 'sort' of thing, even of a very broad kind [Cartwright,R]
	Full Idea: For an ostension to be successful it is surely not necessary that I gather what sort of object it is you have indicated, such as being a horse or a zebra. I may even gather which thing you have indicated without knowing that it is a mammal or even alive.
	From: Richard Cartwright (Some Remarks on Essentialism [1968], p.157)
	A reaction: This nicely articulates the objection I have always felt to Geach's relative identity. 'Oh my God, what the hell is THAT???' is probably going to be a successful act of verbal reference, even while explicitly denying all knowledge of sortals.

23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 3. Virtues / a. Virtues

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').

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 4. Naturalised causation

4787	Causation interaction is an exchange of conserved quantities, such as mass, energy or charge [Dowe, by Psillos]
	Full Idea: Dowe argues that a 'causal process' is a world line of an object with a conserved quantity (such as mass, energy, momentum, charge), and a 'causal interaction' is an exchange between two such objects.
	From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.4
	A reaction: This looks very promising. Nice distinction between causal process and causal interaction. 'Conserved quantities' is better physics than just 'energy'. We can hand causation over to the scientist?

14586	Physical causation consists in transference of conserved quantities [Dowe, by Mumford/Anjum]
	Full Idea: For Dowe physical causation consists in transference of conserved quantities.
	From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum - Getting Causes from Powers 10.2
	A reaction: [see Psillos 2002 on this] This is evidently a modification of the idea of physical causation as energy-transfer, but narrowing it down to exclude trivial cases. I guess. Need better physics.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 9. Counterfactual Claims

4788	Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory as it avoids mention of counterfactuals [Dowe, by Psillos]
	Full Idea: Dowe commends the Conserved Quantity theory because it avoids any mention of counterfactuals.
	From: report of Phil Dowe (Physical Causation [2000]) by Stathis Psillos - Causation and Explanation §4.4
	A reaction: Clearly the truth of a counterfactual is quite a problem for an empiricist/scientist, but one needs to distinguish between reality and our grasp of it. We commit ourselves to counterfactuals, even if causation is transfer of conserved quantities.