Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'General Draft', 'Letters to Leibniz' and 'Causal and Metaphysical Necessity'

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13 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / a. Philosophy as worldly
22026 Philosophy is homesickness - the urge to be at home everywhere [Novalis]
     Full Idea: Philosophy is actually homesickness - the urge to be everywhere at home.
     From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 45)
     A reaction: The idea of home [heimat] is powerful in German culture. The point of romanticism was seen as largely concerning restless souls like Byron and his heroes, who do not feel at home. Hence ironic detachment.
5. Theory of Logic / I. Semantics of Logic / 3. Logical Truth
15091 Restrict 'logical truth' to formal logic, rather than including analytic and metaphysical truths [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I favour restricting the term 'logical truth' to what logicians would count as such, excluding both analytic truths like 'Bachelors are unmarried' and Kripkean necessities like 'Gold is an element'.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: I agree. There is a tendency to splash the phrases 'logical truth' and 'logical necessity around in vague ways. I take them to strictly arise out of the requirements of formal systems of logic.
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 1. Nature of Properties
15095 A property's causal features are essential, and only they fix its identity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The view I now favour says that the causal features of a property, both forward-looking and backward-looking, are essential to it. And it says that properties having the same causal features are identical.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: In this formulation we have essentialism about properties, as well as essentialism about the things which have the properties.
15097 I claim that a property has its causal features in all possible worlds [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: The controversial claim of my theory is that the causal features of properties are essential to them - are features that they have in all possible worlds.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: One problem is that a property can come in degrees, so what degree of the property is necessary to it? It is better to assign this claim to the fundamental properties (which are best called 'powers').
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
15094 I now deny that properties are cluster of powers, and take causal properties as basic [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: I now reject the formulation of the causal theory which says that a property is a cluster of conditional powers. That has a reductionist flavour, which is a cheat. We need properties to explain conditional powers, so properties won't reduce.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: [compressed wording] I agree with Mumford and Anjum in preferring his earlier formulation. I think properties are broad messy things, whereas powers can be defined more precisely, and seem to have more stability in nature.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence
12750 The question is whether force is self-sufficient in bodies, and essential, or dependent on something [Lenfant]
     Full Idea: The whole question is to know if the force to act in bodies is in matter something distinct and independent of everything else that one conceives there. Without that, this force cannot be its essence, and will remain the result of some primitive quality.
     From: Jacques Lenfant (Letters to Leibniz [1693], 1693.11.07), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 8
     A reaction: This challenge to Leibniz highlights the drama of trying to simultaneously arrive at explanations of things, and to decide the nature of essence. Leibniz replied that force is primitive, because it is the 'principle' of behaviour and dispositions.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 5. Metaphysical Necessity
15099 If something is possible, but not nomologically possible, we need metaphysical possibility [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: If it is possible that there could be possible states of affairs that are not nomologically possible, don't we therefore need a notion of metaphysical possibility that outruns nomological possibility?
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: Shoemaker rejects this possibility (p.425). I sympathise. So there is 'natural' possibility (my preferred term), which is anything which stuff, if it exists, could do, and 'logical' possibility, which is anything that doesn't lead to contradiction.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
15101 Once you give up necessity as a priori, causal necessity becomes the main type of necessity [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Once the obstacle of the deeply rooted conviction that necessary truths should be knowable a priori is removed, ...causal necessity is (pretheoretically) the very paradigm of necessity, in ordinary usage and in dictionaries.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VII)
     A reaction: The a priori route seems to lead to logical necessity, just by doing a priori logic, and also to metaphysical necessity, by some sort of intuitive vision. This is a powerful idea of Shoemaker's (implied, of course, in Kripke).
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / a. Conceivable as possible
15098 Empirical evidence shows that imagining a phenomenon can show it is possible [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: We have abundant empirical evidence that when we can imagine some phenomenal situation, e.g., imagine things appearing certain ways, such a situation could actually exist.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: There seem to be good reasons for holding the opposite view too. We can imagine gold appearing to be all sorts of colours, but that doesn't make it possible. What does empirical evidence really tell us here?
15100 Imagination reveals conceptual possibility, where descriptions avoid contradiction or incoherence [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Imaginability can give us access to conceptual possibility, when we come to believe situations to be conceptually possible by reflecting on their descriptions and seeing no contradiction or incoherence.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], VI)
     A reaction: If take the absence of contradiction to indicate 'logical' possibility, but the absence of incoherence is more interesting, even if it is a bit vague. He is talking of 'situations', which I take to be features of reality. A priori synthetic?
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / a. Grue problem
15096 'Grue' only has causal features because of its relation to green [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: Perhaps 'grue' has causal features, but only derivatively, in virtue of its relation to green.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], III)
     A reaction: I take grue to be a behaviour, and not a property at all. The problem only arises because the notion of a 'property' became too lax. Presumably Shoemaker should also mention blue in his account.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 6. Idealisation
19591 Desire for perfection is an illness, if it turns against what is imperfect [Novalis]
     Full Idea: An absolute drive toward perfection and completeness is an illness, as soon as it shows itself to be destructive and averse toward the imperfect, the incomplete.
     From: Novalis (General Draft [1799], 33)
     A reaction: Deep and true! Novalis seems to be a particularist - hanging on to the fine detail of life, rather than being immersed in the theory. These are the philosophers who also turn to literature.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
15093 We might say laws are necessary by combining causal properties with Armstrong-Dretske-Tooley laws [Shoemaker]
     Full Idea: One way to get the conclusion that laws are necessary is to combine my view of properties with the view of Armstrong, Dretske and Tooley, that laws are, or assert, relations between properties.
     From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causal and Metaphysical Necessity [1998], I)
     A reaction: This is interesting, because Armstrong in particular wants the necessity to arise from relations between properties as universals, but if we define properties causally, and make them necessary, we might get the same result without universals.