26 ideas
| 16185 | Causality indicates which properties are real [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Causality is a clue to what properties are real. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 9.3) | |
| A reaction: An interesting variant on the Shoemaker proposal that properties actually are causal. I'm not sure that there is anything more to causality that the expression in action of properties, which I take to be powers. Structures are not properties. |
| 16182 | Two main types of explanation are by causes, or by citing a theoretical framework [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: In explaining a phenomenon one can cite the causes of that phenomenon; or one can set the phenomenon in a general theoretical framework. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: The thing is, you need to root an explanation in something taken as basic, and theoretical frameworks need further explanation, whereas causes seem to be basic. |
| 16184 | An explanation is a model that fits a theory and predicts the phenomenological laws [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: To explain a phenomenon is to find a model that fits it into the basic framework of the theory and that thus allows us to derive analogues for the messy and complicated phenomenological laws that are true of it. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 8.3) | |
| A reaction: This summarises the core of her view in this book. She is after models rather than laws, and the models are based on causes. |
| 16171 | The covering law view assumes that each phenomenon has a 'right' explanation [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: The covering-law account supposes that there is, in principle, one 'right' explanation for each phenomenon. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the law is held to be 'right', but there must be a bit of flexibility in describing the initial conditions, and the explanandum itself. |
| 16167 | Laws get the facts wrong, and explanation rests on improvements and qualifications of laws [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: We explain by ceteris paribus laws, by composition of causes, and by approximations that improve on what the fundamental laws dictate. In all of these cases the fundamental laws patently do not get the facts right. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is rather headline-grabbing to say in this case that laws do not get the facts right. If they were actually 'wrong' and 'lied', there wouldn't be much point in building explanations on them. |
| 16169 | Laws apply to separate domains, but real explanations apply to intersecting domains [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: When different kinds of causes compose, we want to explain what happens in the intersection of different domains. But the laws we use are designed only to tell truly what happens in each domain separately. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Since presumably the laws are discovered through experiments which try to separate out a single domain, in those circumstances they actually are true, so they don't 'lie'. |
| 16176 | Covering-law explanation lets us explain storms by falling barometers [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Much criticism of the original covering-law model objects that it lets in too much. It seems we can explain Henry's failure to get pregnant by his taking birth control pills, and we can explain the storm by the falling barometer. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.0) | |
| A reaction: I take these examples to show that true explanations must be largely causal in character. The physicality of causation is what matters, not 'laws'. I'd say the same of attempts to account for causation through counterfactuals. |
| 16177 | I disagree with the covering-law view that there is a law to cover every single case [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Covering-law theorists tend to think that nature is well-regulated; in the extreme, that there is a law to cover every case. I do not. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: The problem of coincidence is somewhere at the back of this thought. Innumerable events have their own explanations, but it is hard to explain their coincidence (see Aristotle's case of bumping into a friend in the market). |
| 16180 | You can't explain one quail's behaviour by just saying that all quails do it [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: 'Why does that quail in the garden bob its head up and down in that funny way whenever it walks?' …'Because they all do'. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.5) | |
| A reaction: She cites this as an old complaint against the covering-law model of explanation. It captures beautifully the basic error of the approach. We want to know 'why', rather than just have a description of the pattern. 'They all do' is useful information. |
| 16183 | In science, best explanations have regularly turned out to be false [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: There are a huge number of cases in the history of science where we now know our best explanations were false. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Laudan 1981 for this] The Ptolemaic system and aether are the standard example cited for this. I believe strongly in the importance of best explanation. Only a fool would just accept the best explanation available. Coherence is needed. |
| 9264 | Persons are distinguished by a capacity for second-order desires [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: The essential difference between persons and other creatures is in the structure of the will, with their peculiar characteristic of being able to form 'second-order desires'. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], Intro) | |
| A reaction: There are problems with this - notably that all strategies of this kind just shift the problem up to the next order, without solving it - but this still strikes me as a very promising line of thinking when trying to understand ourselves. See Idea 9266. |
| 9266 | A person essentially has second-order volitions, and not just second-order desires [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is having second-order volitions, and not having second-order desires generally, that I regard as essential to being a person. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], §II) | |
| A reaction: Watson criticises Frankfurt for just pushing the problem up to the the next level, but Frankfurt is not offering to explain the will. He merely notes that this structure produces the sort of behaviour which is characteristic of persons, and he is right. |
| 9267 | Free will is the capacity to choose what sort of will you have [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: The statement that a person enjoys freedom of the will means that he is free to want what he wants to want. More precisely, he is free to will what he wants to will, or to have the will he wants. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], §III) | |
| A reaction: A good proposal. It covers kleptomaniacs and drug addicts quite well. Thieves have second-order desires (to steal) of which kleptomaniacs are incapable. There is actually no such thing as free will, but this sort of thing will do. |
| 9265 | The will is the effective desire which actually leads to an action [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: A person's will is the effective desire which moves (or will or would move) a person all the way to action. The will is not coextensive with what an agent intends to do, since he may do something else instead. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], §I) | |
| A reaction: Essentially Hobbes's view, but with an arbitrary distinction added. If the desire is only definitely a 'will' if it really does lead to action, then it only becomes the will after the action starts. The error is thinking that will is all-or-nothing. |
| 20015 | Freedom of action needs the agent to identify with their reason for acting [Frankfurt, by Wilson/Schpall] |
| Full Idea: Frankfurt says that basic issues concerning freedom of action presuppose and give weight to a concept of 'acting on a desire with which the agent identifies'. | |
| From: report of Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971]) by Wilson,G/Schpall,S - Action 1 | |
| A reaction: [the cite Frankfurt 1988 and 1999] I'm not sure how that works when performing a grim duty, but it sounds quite plausible. |
| 9270 | A 'wanton' is not a person, because they lack second-order volitions [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: I use the term 'wanton' to refer to agents who have first-order desires but who are not persons because, whether or not they have desires of the second-order, they have no second-order volitions. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], §II) | |
| A reaction: He seems to be describing someone who behaves like an animal, performing actions without ever stopping to think about them. Presumably some persons occasionally become wantons, if, for example, they have an anger problem. |
| 9269 | A person may be morally responsible without free will [Frankfurt] |
| Full Idea: It is not true that a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if his will was free when he did it. He may be morally responsible for having done it even though his will was not free at all. | |
| From: Harry G. Frankfurt (Freedom of the Will and concept of a person [1971], §IV) | |
| A reaction: Frankfurt seems to be one of the first to assert this break with the traditional view. Good for him. I take moral responsibility to hinge on an action being caused by a person, but not with a mystical view of what a person is. |
| 22745 | Pherecydes said the first principle and element is earth [Pherecydes, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Pherecydes of Syros said that the principle and element of all things is earth. | |
| From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Physicists (two books) I.360 | |
| A reaction: Sextus is giving the history, and mentions it before saying that Thales thought it was water. Earth seems a sensible starting point, and I am guessing that Thales was trying to think a bit more deeply than Pherecydes about it. |
| 16175 | A cause won't increase the effect frequency if other causes keep interfering [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: A cause ought to increase the frequency of the effect, but this fact may not show up in the probabilities if other causes are at work. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: [She cites Patrick Suppes for this one] Presumably in experimental situations you can weed out the interference, but that threatens to eliminate mere 'probability' entirely. |
| 6781 | There are fundamental explanatory laws (false!), and phenomenological laws (regularities) [Cartwright,N, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Nancy Cartwright distinguishes between 'fundamental explanatory laws', which we should not believe, and 'phenomenological laws', which are regularities established on the basis of observation. | |
| From: report of Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983]) by Alexander Bird - Philosophy of Science Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: The distinction is helpful, so that we can be clearer about what everyone is claiming. We can probably all agree on the phenomenological laws, which are epistemological. Personally I claim truth for the best fundamental explanatory laws. |
| 16166 | Laws of appearances are 'phenomenological'; laws of reality are 'theoretical' [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers distinguish phenomenological from theoretical laws. Phenomenological laws are about appearances; theoretical ones are about the reality behind the appearances. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: I'm suspecting that Humeans only really believe in the phenomenological kind. I'm only interested in the theoretical kind, and I take inference to the best explanation to be the bridge between the two. Cartwright rejects the theoretical laws. |
| 16179 | Good organisation may not be true, and the truth may not organise very much [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to think that the principles that best organise will be true, nor that the principles that are true will organise much. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: This is aimed at the Mill-Ramsey-Lewis account of laws, as axiomatisations of the observed patterns in nature. |
| 16178 | There are few laws for when one theory meets another [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: Where theories intersect, laws are usually hard to come by. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: There are attempts at so-called 'bridge laws', to get from complex theories to simple ones, but her point is well made about theories on the same 'level'. |
| 16170 | To get from facts to equations, we need a prepared descriptions suited to mathematics [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: To get from a detailed factual knowledge of a situation to an equation, we must prepare the description of the situation to meet the mathematical needs of the theory. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], Intro) | |
| A reaction: She is clearly on to something here, as Galileo is blatantly wrong in his claim that the book of nature is written in mathematics. Mathematics is the best we can manage in getting a grip on the chaos. |
| 16181 | Simple laws have quite different outcomes when they act in combinations [Cartwright,N] |
| Full Idea: For explanation simple laws must have the same form when they act together as when they act singly. ..But then what the law states cannot literally be true, for the consequences that occur if it acts alone are not what occurs when they act in combination. | |
| From: Nancy Cartwright (How the Laws of Physics Lie [1983], 3.6) | |
| A reaction: This is Cartwright's basic thesis. Her point is that the laws 'lie', because they claim to predict a particular outcome which never ever actually occurs. She says we could know all the laws, and still not be able to explain anything. |
| 5883 | Pherecydes was the first to say that the soul is eternal [Pherecydes, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: As far as the literature tells us, Pherecydes of Syros was the first who pronounced the souls of men to be eternal. | |
| From: report of Pherecydes (fragments/reports [c.600 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - Tusculan Disputations I.xvi.38 | |
| A reaction: Presumably before that it was the physical person who arrived in the Underworld. The Hindu tradition seems to require the soul to be very long-lived, if not eternal. Why did Pherecydes come up with this idea? |