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17292
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Avoid 'in virtue of' for grounding, since it might imply a reflexive relation such as identity [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
We should not use 'in virtue of' where it might express a reflexive relation, such as identity. Since grounding is a relation of determination, and closely linked to the concept of explanation, it is irreflexive and asymmetric.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
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A reaction:
E.g. he says someone isn't a bachelor in virtue of being an unmarried man, since a bachelor just is an unmarried man. I can't disagree. 'Determination' looks like the magic word, even if we don't know how it cashes out.
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17302
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Ground is irreflexive, asymmetric, transitive, non-monotonic etc. [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
The logical principles about grounding include irreflexivity, asymmetry, transitivity, non-monotonicity, and so forth.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.8)
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A reaction:
[It can't ground itself, there is no mutual grounding, grounds of grounds ground, and grounding judgements are not fixed]
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17294
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Grounding is a singular relation between worldly facts [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
On my view, grounding is a singular relation between facts. ...Facts, on this view, are obtaining states of affairs.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.2)
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A reaction:
He rest this claim on his 'worldly' view of facts, Idea 17293. I seem to be agreeing with him. Note that it is not between types of fact, even if there are such general truths, such as in chemistry.
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17300
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If grounding relates facts, properties must be included, as well as objects [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
Taking facts to be the relata of grounding has the interesting consequence that it does not relate ordinary particulars, objects, considered apart from their properties.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.4)
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A reaction:
It will depend on what you mean by properties, and it seems to me that something like 'powers' must be invoked, to get the active character that seems to be involved in grounding.
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17301
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Reduction is just identity, so the two things are the same fact, so reduction isn't grounding [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
I deny that when p grounds q, q thereby reduces to p, and I deny that if q reduces to p, then p grounds q. ...On my view, reduction is nothing other than identity, so p is the same fact as q.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.5)
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A reaction:
Very good. I can't disagree with any of it, and it is crystal clear. Philosophical heaven.
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23669
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Thinkers say that matter has intrinsic powers, but is also passive and acted upon [Reid]
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Full Idea:
Those philosophers who attribute to matter the power of gravitation, and other active powers, teach us, at the same time, that matter is a substance altogether inert, and merely passive; …that those powers are impressed on it by some external cause.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 6)
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A reaction:
This shows the dilemma of the period, when 'laws of nature' were imposed on passive matter by God, and yet gravity and magnetism appeared as inherent properties of matter.
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23666
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It is obvious that there could not be a power without a subject which possesses it [Reid]
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Full Idea:
It is evident that a power is a quality, and cannot exist without a subject to which it belongs. That power may exist without any being or subject to which that power may be attributed, is an absurdity, shocking to every man of common understanding.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 1)
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A reaction:
This is understandble in the 18th C, when free-floating powers were inconceivable, but now that we have fields and plasmas and whatnot, we can't rule out pure powers as basic. However, I incline to agree with Reid. Matter is active.
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17299
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There are plenty of examples of non-causal explanation [Audi,P]
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Full Idea:
There are a number of explanations where it seems clear that causation is not involved at all: normative grounded in non-normative, disposition grounded in categorical, aesthetic grounded in non-aesthetic, semantic in social and psychological.
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From:
Paul Audi (Clarification and Defense of Grounding [2012], 3.3)
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A reaction:
Apart from dispositions, perhaps, these all seem to be experienced phenomena grounded in the physical world. 'Determination' is the preferred term for non-causal grounding.
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8383
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Day and night are constantly conjoined, but they don't cause one another [Reid, by Crane]
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Full Idea:
A famous example of Thomas Reid: day regularly follows night, and night regularly follows day. There is therefore a constant conjunction between night and day. But day does not cause night, nor does night cause day.
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From:
report of Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788]) by Tim Crane - Causation 1.2.2
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A reaction:
Not a fatal objection to Hume, of course, because in the complex real world there are huge numbers of nested constant conjunctions. Night and the rotation of the Earth are conjoined. But how do you tell which constant conjunctions are causal?
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23667
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Regular events don't imply a cause, without an innate conviction of universal causation [Reid]
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Full Idea:
A train of events following one another ever so regularly, could never lead us to the notion of a cause, if we had not, from our constitution, a conviction of the necessity of a cause for every event.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 5)
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A reaction:
Presumably a theist like Reid must assume that the actions of God are freely chosen, rather than necessities. It's hard to see why this principle should be innate in us, and hard to see why it must thereby be true. A bit Kantian, this idea.
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23670
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Scientists don't know the cause of magnetism, and only discover its regulations [Reid]
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Full Idea:
A Newtonian philosopher …confesses his ignorance of the true cause of magnetic motion, and thinks that his business, as a philosopher, is only to find from experiment the laws by which it is regulated in all cases.
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From:
Thomas Reid (Essays on Active Powers 1: Active power [1788], 6)
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A reaction:
Since there is a 'true cause', that implies that the laws don't actively 'regulate' the magnetism, but only describe its regularity, which I think is the correct view of laws.
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