77 ideas
| 8558 | One system has properties, powers, events, similarity and substance [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a system of internally related concepts containing the notion of a property, the notion of a causal power, the concept of an event, the concept of similarity, and the concept of a persisting substance. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of a modern metaphysical system, one which I find fairly congenial. His notion of events is Kim's, which involves his properties. The persisting substance is the one I am least clear about. |
| 8559 | Analysis aims at internal relationships, not reduction [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The goal of philosophical analysis should not be reductive analysis but rather the charting of internal relationships. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 8558 for an attempt by Shoemaker himself. The idea that there has never been a successful analysis has become a truism among pessimistic analytic philosophers. But there are wonderful relationship maps (Quine, Davidson, Lewis, Lowe). |
| 14227 | We could refer to tables as 'xs that are arranged tablewise' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: We could paraphrase 'some chairs are heavier than some tables' as 'there are xs that are arranged chairwise and there are ys that are arranged tablewise and the xs are heavier than the ys'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 11) | |
| A reaction: Liggins notes that this involves plural quantification. Being 'arranged tablewise' has become a rather notorious locution in modern ontology. We still have to retain identity, to pick out the xs. |
| 10662 | Mereology is 'nihilistic' (just atoms) or 'universal' (no restrictions on what is 'whole') [Inwagen, by Varzi] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen writes of 'mereological nihilism' (that only mereological atoms exist) and of 'mereological universalism' (adhering to the principle of Unrestricted Composition). | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], p.72-) by Achille Varzi - Mereology 4.3 | |
| A reaction: They both look mereologically nihilistic to me, in comparison with an account that builds on 'natural' wholes and their parts. You can only be 'unrestricted' if you view the 'wholes' in your vast ontology as pretty meaningless (as Lewis does, Idea 10660). |
| 17587 | The 'Law' of Excluded Middle needs all propositions to be definitely true or definitely false [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think the validity of the 'Law' of Excluded Middle depends on the assumption that every proposition is definitely true or definitely false. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this is confused. He cites vagueness as the problem, but that is a problem for Bivalence. If excluded middle is read as 'true or not-true', that leaves the meaning of 'not-true' open, and never mentions the bivalent 'false'. |
| 17558 | Variables are just like pronouns; syntactic explanations get muddled over dummy letters [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Explanations in terms of syntax do not satisfactorily distinguish true variables from dummy or schematic letters. Identifying variables with pronouns, however, provides a genuine explanation of what variables are. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: I like this because it shows that our ordinary thought and speech use variables all the time ('I've forgotten something - what was it?'). He says syntax is fine for maths, but not for ordinary understanding. |
| 17583 | There are no heaps [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Fortunately ....there are no heaps. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: This is the nihilist view of (inorganic) physical objects. If a wild view solves all sorts of problems, one should take it serious. It is why I take reductive physicalism about the mind seriously. (Well, it's true, actually) |
| 17578 | I reject talk of 'stuff', and treat it in terms of particles [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I have a great deal of difficulty with an ontology that includes 'stuffs' in addition to things. ...I prefer to replace talk of sameness of matter with talk of sameness of particles. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is wedded to the idea that reality is composed of 'simples' - even if physicists seem now to talk of 'fields' as much as they do about objects in the fields. Has philosophy yet caught up with Maxwell? |
| 17582 | Singular terms can be vague, because they can contain predicates, which can be vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Since singular terms can contain predicates, and since vague predicates are common, vague singular terms are common. For 'the tallest man that Sally knows' there are lots of men for whom it is unclear whether Sally knows them. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) |
| 15092 | Formerly I said properties are individuated by essential causal powers and causing instantiation [Shoemaker, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My 1980 paper said properties are individuated by causal features - the contribution they make to the causal powers of things, and also how their instantiation can be caused. Collectively, these causal features are the essence of a property. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], I) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity | |
| A reaction: The later paper worries about uncertainty over individuation. The view I favour is that 'powers' is a much better term for what is basic, and this allows 'properties' to be the complex notion we use in real life, as innumberable power-combinations. |
| 8543 | Genuine properties are closely related to genuine changes [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine properties are closely related to our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine changes. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: A simple but brilliant insight. Somehow we must hack through the plethora of bogus properties and get to the real ones, cutting nature at the joints. Here we have the principle needed for the task. |
| 8551 | Properties must be essentially causal if we can know and speak about them [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Only if some causal theory of properties is true can it be explained how properties are capable of engaging our knowledge, and our language, in the way they do. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Exactly. This also the reason why epiphenomenalism doesn't make sense about consciousness (Idea 7379). The fact that something has causal powers doesn't mean that it just IS a causal power. A bomb isn't an explosion. |
| 8557 | To ascertain genuine properties, examine the object directly [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a plausible way of distinguishing genuine and mere-Cambridge properties. To decide whether an emerald is green the thing to do is to examine it, but a mere-Cambridge property is settled by observations at a remote time and place. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Scientific essentialism is beautifully simple! Schoemaker is good at connecting the epistemology to the ontology. If you examined a mirror, you might think it contained reflections. |
| 15761 | We should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I think we should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Right. I have Shoemaker on my side, and he is a distinguished and senior member of the philosophical community. I don't just prefer not to use 'predicate' and 'property' indistinguishably - philosophers should really really give it up! |
| 15756 | Some truths are not because of a thing's properties, but because of the properties of related things [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a predicate is true of a thing, not because (or only because) of any properties it has, but because something else, perhaps something related to it in certain ways, has certain properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: I'm on mission to prize predicates and properties apart, and the strategy is to focus on what is true of something, given that this may not ascribe a property to the thing. |
| 15758 | Things have powers in virtue of (which are entailed by) their properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between powers, and the properties in virtue of which things have they powers they have (n8: 'in virtue of' means that there is a lawlike truth, which turns out to be the properties entailing the powers). | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: To me this is an ontology which rests something very clear (a power) on something very indeterminate (a 'property'). |
| 8547 | One power can come from different properties; a thing's powers come from its properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to have the same power (e.g. being poisonous) in virtue of having very different properties. ..So it is in virtue of a thing's properties that the thing has the powers that it has. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an accurate and helpful picture. It means that true properties give rise to powers, and categorial or relational or whimsical properties must have their ontological status judged by that standard. |
| 8549 | Properties are functions producing powers, and powers are functions producing effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Powers are functions from circumstances to causal effects, and properties (on which powers depend) can be thought of as functions from sets of properties to sets of powers. Maybe we should call properties 'second-order powers', as they produce powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: He presents property as both a function, and a component of the function. This is the core picture on which modern scientific essentialism is built. See under Natural Theory|Laws of Nature. |
| 12678 | Shoemaker says all genuine properties are dispositional [Shoemaker, by Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I am against Shoemaker's strong dispositionalism, according to which all genuine properties are dispositional. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Brian Ellis - The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism 3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Ellis argues that some properties are categorical, and are needed to underly the active dispositional ones. I think I side with Shoemaker, but this needs more thought. |
| 8545 | A causal theory of properties focuses on change, not (say) on abstract properties of numbers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My account of properties concerns those with respect to which change is possible; it is not intended to apply to such properties of numbers as being even and being prime. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: You could argue that while these properties may not cause change, they are abstract powers. Being even allows division by 2, and being prime blocks it. I say patterns are the basis, and dividing groups of physical objects is involved. |
| 15757 | 'Square', 'round' and 'made of copper' show that not all properties are dispositional [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Surely we make a distinction beween dispositional and nondispositional properties, and can mention paradigms of both sorts. ....It seems plain that predicates like 'square', 'round' and 'made of copper' are not dispositional. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: It might be possible to account for squareness and roundness in dispositional ways, and it is certainly plausible to say that 'made of copper' is not a property (even when it is a true predicate). |
| 15759 | The identity of a property concerns its causal powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity, is its potential for contributing to the causal powers of the things that have it. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that the 'potential' to act is the essence of the property, or is a property of the property, or is wholly identical with the property? Or is this just epistemological - whatever individuates the property for observers? |
| 15760 | Properties are clusters of conditional powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: A thing has a 'conditional power' when it has a power conditionally upon the possession of certain properties. ...We can then express my view by saying that properties are clusters of conditional powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: His example is a knife-shaped thing, which conditionally cuts wood if it is made of steel. Shoemaker rejected this in 1998. Mumford/Anjum prefer the earlier view. Which is fundamental? Powers are simple and primitive. Properties are complex. |
| 15762 | Could properties change without the powers changing, or powers change without the properties changing? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Could a thing undergo radical change with respect to its properties without undergoing any change in its causal powers, or undergo radical change in its causal powers without undergoing any change in the properties that underlie these powers? | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept properties underlying powers, but these two questions at least force us to see how closely the two are linked. |
| 8552 | If properties are separated from causal powers, this invites total elimination [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The disassociation of property identity from causal potentiality is an invitation to eliminate reference to properties from our explanatory hypotheses altogether. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Just as epiphenomenalism about consciousness is a step towards eliminativism. This seems to describe Quine's reaction to Goodman, in moving from predicate nominalism to elimination of properties. I agree with Shoemaker. |
| 4040 | The notions of property and of causal power are parts of a single system of related concepts [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a property and the notion of a causal power belong to a system of internally related concepts, no one of which can be explicated without the use of the other. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. It is hard to conceive of a property which has no causal powers, or a causal power that doesn't arise from a property. |
| 15765 | Actually, properties are individuated by causes as well as effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I should probably modify my view, and say that properties are individuated by their possible causes as well as by their possible effects. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §11) | |
| A reaction: (This is in an afterword responding to criticism by Richard Boyd) He doesn't use the word 'individuate' in the essay. That term always strikes me as smacking too much of epistemology, and not enough of ontology. Who cares how you individuate something? |
| 8548 | Dispositional predicates ascribe powers, and the rest ascribe properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: By and large, dispositional predicates ascribe powers while nondispositional monadic predicates ascribe properties that are not powers in the same sense. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: The powers are where the properties come into contact with the rest of the world, so you would expect dispositions to be found at that level, rather than at the deeper level of properties. Sounds good to me. |
| 9485 | Universals concern how things are, and how they could be [Shoemaker, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Shoemaker contends that universals concern the way things could be, not merely the way any things actually are. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 3.2.2 | |
| A reaction: If you want to retain universals within a scientific essentialist view (and I would rather not), then this seems like the only way to go. |
| 8550 | Triangular and trilateral are coextensive, but different concepts; but powers and properties are the same [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is natural to say that 'being triangular' and 'being trilateral', though necessarily coextensive, are different properties. But what are distinct are the concepts and meanings. If properties are not meanings of predicates, these are identical. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: A good test example. Being renate (kidney) and being cordate (heart) are different, because being cordate produces a thumping noise. Shoemaker's example is pretty much Phosphorus/Hesperus. |
| 17556 | Material objects are in space and time, move, have a surface and mass, and are made of some stuff [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A thing is a material object if it occupies space and endures through time and can move about in space (literally move, unlike a shadow or wave or reflection) and has a surface and has a mass and is made of a certain stuff or stuffs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: It is not at all clear what electrons (which must count for him as 'simples') are made of. |
| 8264 | Maybe table-shaped particles exist, but not tables [Inwagen, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: Van Ingwagen holds that although table-shaped collections of particles exist, tables do not. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Ch.13) by E.J. Lowe - The Possibility of Metaphysics 2.3 | |
| A reaction: I find this idea appealing. See the ideas of Trenton Merricks. When you get down to micro-level, it is hard to individuate a table among the force fields, and hard to distinguish a table from a smashed or burnt table. An ontology without objects? |
| 17565 | Nihilism says composition between single things is impossible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Nihilism about objects says there is a Y such that the Xs compose it if and only if there is only one of the Xs. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 08) | |
| A reaction: He says that Unger, the best known 'nihilist' about objects, believes a different version - claiming there are composites, but they never make up the ordinary objects we talk about. |
| 14228 | If there are no tables, but tables are things arranged tablewise, the denial of tables is a contradiction [Liggins on Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen says 'there are no tables', and 'there are tables' means 'there are some things arranged tablewise'. Presumably 'there are no tables' negates the latter claim, saying no things are arranged tablewise. But he should think that is false. | |
| From: comment on Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction 3 | |
| A reaction: Liggins's nice paper shows that Van Inwagen is in a potential state of contradiction when he starts saying that there are no tables, but that there are things arranged tablewise, and that they amount to tables. Liggins offers him an escape. |
| 14468 | Actions by artefacts and natural bodies are disguised cooperations, so we don't need them [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: All the activities apparently carried out by shelves and stars and other artefacts and natural bodies can be understood as disguised cooperative activities. And, therefore, we are not forced to grant existence to any artefacts or natural bodies. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: In 'the crowd tore her to pieces' are we forced to accept the existence of a crowd? We can't say 'Jack tore her to pieces' and 'Jill tore her to pieces'. If a plural quantification is unavoidable, we have to accept the plurality. Perhaps. |
| 17571 | Every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The thesis about composition and parthood that I am advocating has far-reaching ontological consequences: that every physical thing is either a living organism or a simple. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 10) | |
| A reaction: A 'simple' is a placeholder for anything considered to be a fundamental unit of existence (such as an electron or a quark). This amazingly sharp distinction strikes me as utterly implausible. There is too much in the middle ground. |
| 17562 | The statue and lump seem to share parts, but the statue is not part of the lump [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Those who believe that the statue is distinct from the lump should concede that whatever shares a part with the statue shares a part with the lump but deny that the statue is a part of the lump. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 05) | |
| A reaction: Standard mereology says if they share all their parts then they are the same thing, so it is hard to explain how they are 'distinct'. The distinction is only modal - that they could be separated (by squashing, or by part substitution). |
| 17574 | If you knead clay you make an infinite series of objects, but they are rearrangements, not creations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you can make a (random) gollyswoggle by accident by kneading clay, then you must be causing the generation and corruption of a series of objects of infinitesimal duration. ...We have not augmented the furniture of the world but only rearranged it. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen's final conclusion is a bit crazy, but I am in sympathy with his general scepticism about what sorts of things definitively constitute 'objects'. He overrates simples, and he overrates lives. |
| 17531 | I assume matter is particulate, made up of 'simples' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I assume in this book that matter is ultimately particulate. Every material being is composed of things that have no proper parts: 'elementary particles' or 'mereological atoms' or 'metaphysical simples'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], Pref) | |
| A reaction: It may be that modern physics doesn't support this, if 'fields' is the best term for what is fundamental. Best to treat his book as hypothetical - IF there are just simples, proceed as follows. |
| 17560 | If contact causes composition, do two colliding balls briefly make one object? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, if I cause the cue ball to rebound from the eight ball, do I thereby create a short-lived object shaped like two slightly flattened spheres in contact? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 03) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17561 | If bricks compose a house, that is at least one thing, but it might be many things [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If composition just requires contact, that tells us that the bricks of a house compose at least one thing; it does not tell us that they also compose at most one thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 04) |
| 17566 | I think parthood involves causation, and not just a reasonably stable spatial relationship [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I propose that parthood essentially involves causation. Too many philosophers have supposed that objects compose something when and only when they stand in some (more or less stable) spatial relationship to one another. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: I have to say that I like this, even though it comes from a thinker who is close to nihilism about ordinary non-living objects. He goes on to say that only a 'life' provides the right sort of causal relationship. |
| 14230 | We can deny whole objects but accept parts, by referring to them as plurals within things [Inwagen, by Liggins] |
| Full Idea: Van Inwagen's claim that nothing has parts causes incredulity. ..But the problem is not with endorsing the sentence 'Some things have parts'; it is with interpreting this sentence by means of singular resources rather than plural ones. | |
| From: report of Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 7) by David Liggins - Nihilism without Self-Contradiction | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen notoriously denies the existence of normal physical objects. Liggins shows that modern formal plural quantification gives a better way of presenting his theory, by accepting tables and parts of tables as plurals of basic entities. |
| 17557 | Special Composition Question: when is a thing part of something? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The Special Composition Question asks, In what circumstances is a thing a (proper) part of something? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 02) | |
| A reaction: [He qualifies this formulation as 'misleading'] It's a really nice basic question for the metaphysics of objects. |
| 17564 | The essence of a star includes the released binding energy which keeps it from collapse [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: I think it is part of the essence of a star that the radiation pressures that oppose the star's tendency to gravitational collapse has its source in the release of no-longer-needed nuclear binding energy when colliding nuclei fuse in the star's hot core. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: A perfect example of giving the essence of something as the bottom level of its explanation. This even comes from someone who doesn't really believe in stars! |
| 17575 | The persistence of artifacts always covertly involves intelligent beings [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Statements that are apparently about the persistence of artifacts make covert reference to the dispositions of intelligent beings to maintain certain arrangements of matter. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: If you build a self-sustaining windmill that pumps water, that seems to have an identity of its own, apart from the intentions of whoever makes it and repairs it. The function of an artefact is not just the function we want it to have. |
| 8555 | There is no subset of properties which guarantee a thing's identity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is, putting aside historical properties and 'identity properties', no subset of the properties of a thing which constitutes an individual essence, so that having those properties is necessary and sufficient for being that particular thing. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: He asserts this rather dogmatically. If he says a thing can lose its essence, I agree, but it seems to me that there must be a group of features which will guarantee that (if they are present) it has that identity. |
| 17577 | When an electron 'leaps' to another orbit, is the new one the same electron? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Is the 'new' electron in the lower orbit the one that was in the higher orbit? Physics, as far as I can tell, has nothing to say about this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that physicists would say that philosophers are worrying about such questions because they haven't grasped the new conceptual scheme that emerged in 1926. The poor mutts insist on hanging on to 'objects'. |
| 17589 | If you reject transitivity of vague identity, there is no Ship of Theseus problem [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If you have rejected the Principle of the Transitivity of (vague) Identity, it is hard to see how the problem of the Ship of Theseus could arise. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: I think this may well be the best solution to the whole problem |
| 17588 | We should talk of the transitivity of 'identity', and of 'definite identity' [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: In some contexts, the principle of 'the transitivity of identity' should be called 'the transitivity of definite identity'. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: He is making room for a person to retain identity despite having changed. Applause from me. |
| 8554 | Possible difference across worlds depends on difference across time in the actual world [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The ways in which a given thing can be different in different possible worlds depend on the ways in which such a thing can be different at different times in the actual world. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Where change in a thing is possible across time in the actual world seems to require a combination of experiment and imagination. Unimaginability does not entail necessity, but it may be the best guide we have got. |
| 17572 | Actuality proves possibility, but that doesn't explain how it is possible [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A proof of actuality is a proof of possibility, but that does not invariably explain the possibility whose existence it demonstrates, for we may know that a certain thing is actual (and hence possible) but have no explanation of how it could be possible. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: I like this, because my project is to see all of philosophy in terms of explanation rather than of description. |
| 15764 | 'Conceivable' is either not-provably-false, or compatible with what we know? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: We could use 'conceivable' to say it is not provable that it is not the case, or we could use it to say that it is compatible with what we know. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: Rather significant, since the first one would seem to allow in a great deal that the second one would rule out. Any disproof of some natural possibility founders on the remark that 'you never know'. |
| 8562 | It is possible to conceive what is not possible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to conceive what is not possible. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that, while we cannot clearly conceive the impossible in a world like mathematics, we can conceive of impossible perceptions in the physical world, such as a bonfire burning under water. |
| 17579 | Counterparts reduce counterfactual identity to problems about similarity relations [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Counterpart Theory essentially reduces all problems about counterfactual identity to problems about choosing appropriate similarity relations. That is, Counterpart Theory essentially eliminates problems of counterfactual identity as such. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 14) |
| 17590 | A merely possible object clearly isn't there, so that is a defective notion [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a merely possible object is an even more defective notion than the notion of a borderline object; after all, a merely possible object is an object that definitely isn't there. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 17591 | Merely possible objects must be consistent properties, or haecceities [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Talk of merely possible objects may be redeemed in either maximally consistent sets of properties or in haecceities. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 19) |
| 8556 | Grueness is not, unlike green and blue, associated with causal potential [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Grueness, as defined by Goodman, is not associated in the way greenness and blueness are with causal potentialities. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Expressed rather more simply in Idea 7296. 'Grue' is a characteristic production of a predicate nominalist (i.e. Goodman), and that theory is just wrong. The account of properties must mesh with the account of induction. |
| 23834 | Friendship is partly universal - the love of a person is like the ideal of loving everyone [Weil] |
| Full Idea: Friendship has something universal about it. It consists in loving a human being as we should like to be able to love each soul in particular of all those who go to make up the human race. | |
| From: Simone Weil (Friendship [1940], p.288) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Would you like your lover to dream of loving the human race, rather than just loving you? Perhaps only a Christian could see friendship in this way? |
| 8542 | If causality is between events, there must be reference to the properties involved [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Any account of causality as a relation between events should involve, in a central way, reference to the properties of the constituent objects of the events. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is aimed at Davidson, who seems to think you need know no more about an event than the way in which someone chooses to describe it. Metaphysics must dig deeper, even if science can't. |
| 8560 | If causal laws describe causal potentialities, the same laws govern properties in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: To the extent that causal laws can be viewed as propositions describing the causal potentialities of properties, it is impossible that the same properties should be governed by different causal laws in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §08) | |
| A reaction: [He has just asserted that causal potentialities are essential to properties] This is the dramatic basic claim of scientific essentialism, which grows out of Shoemaker's causal account of properties. Note that the laws are just descriptions. |
| 15763 | If properties are causal, then causal necessity is a species of logical necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My theory of properties as causal appears to have the consequence that causal laws are logically necessary, and that causal necessity is just a species of logical necessity. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: Where he writes 'logical' necessity I would claim that he really means 'metaphysical' necessity. The point, I take it, is that given the existence of those properties, certain causal efforts must always follow from them. I agree. |
| 8561 | If a world has different causal laws, it must have different properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If there are worlds in which the causal laws are different from those that prevail in this world, ..then the properties will have to be different as well. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: The next question is whether the same stuff (e.g. gold or water) could have different properties, and I take the the scientific essentialism answer to be 'no'. So the actual stuff (substances?) would have to be different. |
| 8553 | It looks as if the immutability of the powers of a property imply essentiality [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a prima facie case for saying that the immutability of the causal potentialities of a property implies their essentiality. ...If they cannot vary across time, they also cannot vary across possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: This is only the beginning of scientific essentialism, but one of the targets is to save the phenomena. It is also involves unimaginability (of different powers from a given property) implying necessity. |
| 17563 | The strong force pulls, but also pushes apart if nucleons get too close together [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The strong force doesn't always pull nucleons together, but pushes them apart if they get too close. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 07) | |
| A reaction: Philosophers tend to learn their physics from other philosophers. But that's because philosophers are brilliant at picking out the interesting parts of physics, and skipping the boring stuff. |
| 17559 | Is one atom a piece of gold, or is a sizable group of atoms required? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A physicist once told me that of course a gold atom was a piece of gold, and a physical chemist has assured me that the smallest possible piece of gold would have to be composed of sixteen or seventeen atoms. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 01) | |
| A reaction: The issue is at what point all the properties that we normally begin to associate with gold begin to appear. One water molecule can hardly have a degree of viscosity or liquidity. |
| 17586 | At the lower level, life trails off into mere molecular interaction [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: The lives of the lower links of the Great Chain of Being trail off into vague, temporary episodes of molecular interaction. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: His case involves conceding all sorts of vagueness to life, but asserting the utter distinctness of the full blown cases of more elaborate life. I don't really concede the distinction. |
| 17567 | A flame is like a life, but not nearly so well individuated [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A flame, though it is a self-maintaining event, does not seem to be nearly so well individuated as a life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) | |
| A reaction: This is to counter the standard problem that if you attempt to define 'life', fire turns out to tick nearly all the same boxes. The concept of 'individuated' often strikes me as unsatisfactory. How does a bonfire fail to be individuated? |
| 17576 | If God were to 'reassemble' my atoms of ten years ago, the result would certainly not be me [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: If God were to 'reassemble' the atoms that composed me ten years ago, the resulting organism would certainly not be me. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 13) | |
| A reaction: What is obvious to Van Inwagen is not obvious to me. He thinks lives are special. Such examples just leave us bewildered about what counts as 'the same', because our concept of sameness wasn't designed to deal with such cases. |
| 17568 | A tumour may spread a sort of life, but it is not a life, or an organism [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A tumour is not an organism (or a parasite) and there is no self-regulating event that is its life. It does not fill one space, but is a locus within which a certain sort of thing is happening: the spreading of a certain sort of (mass-term) life. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17581 | Being part of an organism's life is a matter of degree, and vague [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Being caught up in the life of an organism is, like being rich or being tall, a matter of degree, and is in that sense a vague condition. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 17) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen is trying to cover himself, given that he makes a sharp distinction between living organisms, which are unified objects, and everything else, which isn't. There may be a vague centre to a 'life', as well as vague boundaries. |
| 17570 | The chemical reactions in a human life involve about sixteen elements [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are sixteen or so chemical elements involved in those chemical reactions that collectively constitute the life of a human being. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17585 | Life is vague at both ends, but could it be totally vague? [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: Individual human lives are infected with vagueness at both ends. ...But could there be a 'borderline life'? | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Van Inwagen says (p.239) that there may be wholly vague lives, though it would suit his case better if there were not. |
| 17584 | Some events are only borderline cases of lives [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There are events of which it is neither definitely true nor definitely false that those events are lives. I do not see how we can deny this. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 18) | |
| A reaction: Very frustrating, since this is my main objection to Van Inwagen's distinction between unified lives and mere collections of simples. Some boundaries are real enough, despite their vagueness, and others indicate that there is no real distinction. |
| 17569 | Unlike waves, lives are 'jealous'; it is almost impossible for them to overlap [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: A wave is not a 'jealous' event. Lives, however, are jealous. It cannot be that the activities of the Xs constitute at one and the same time two lives. Only in certain special cases can two lives overlap. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 09) |
| 17580 | One's mental and other life is centred on the brain, unlike any other part of the body [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: One's life - not simply one's mental life - is centered in the activity of the simples that virtually compose one's brain in a way in which it is not centered in the activity of any of the other simples that compose one. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 15) | |
| A reaction: This justifies the common view that 'one follows one's brain'. I take that to mean that my brain embodies my essence. I would read 'centered on' as 'explains'. |
| 17573 | There is no reason to think that mere existence is a valuable thing [Inwagen] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose - whatever Saint Anselm and Descartes may have thought - that mere existence is a valuable thing. | |
| From: Peter van Inwagen (Material Beings [1990], 12) | |
| A reaction: This is one of the simplest and most powerful objections to the Ontological Argument. God's existence may be of great value, but the existence of Hitler wasn't. |