Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Philosophical Essay on Probability', 'A Plea for Substitutional Quantification' and 'Causation and the Flow of Energy'

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7 ideas

4. Formal Logic / D. Modal Logic ML / 4. Alethic Modal Logic

9470	Modal logic is not an extensional language [Parsons,C]
	Full Idea: Modal logic is not an extensional language.
	From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.159 n8)
	A reaction: [I record this for investigation. Possible worlds seem to contain objects]

5. Theory of Logic / G. Quantification / 4. Substitutional Quantification

9469	Substitutional existential quantifier may explain the existence of linguistic entities [Parsons,C]
	Full Idea: I argue (against Quine) that the existential quantifier substitutionally interpreted has a genuine claim to express a concept of existence, which may give the best account of linguistic abstract entities such as propositions, attributes, and classes.
	From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
	A reaction: Intuitively I have my doubts about this, since the whole thing sounds like a verbal and conventional game, rather than anything with a proper ontology. Ruth Marcus and Quine disagree over this one.

9468	On the substitutional interpretation, '(∃x) Fx' is true iff a closed term 't' makes Ft true [Parsons,C]
	Full Idea: For the substitutional interpretation of quantifiers, a sentence of the form '(∃x) Fx' is true iff there is some closed term 't' of the language such that 'Ft' is true. For the objectual interpretation some object x must exist such that Fx is true.
	From: Charles Parsons (A Plea for Substitutional Quantification [1971], p.156)
	A reaction: How could you decide if it was true for 't' if you didn't know what object 't' referred to?

13. Knowledge Criteria / C. External Justification / 7. Testimony

7458	The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking]
	Full Idea: The credibility of a witness is in part a function of the story being reported. When the story claims to have infinite value, the temptation to lie for personal benefit is asymptotically infinite.
	From: report of Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820], Ch.XI) by Ian Hacking - The Emergence of Probability Ch.8
	A reaction: Laplace seems to especially have reports of miracles in mind. This observation certainly dashes any dreams one might have of producing a statistical measure of the reliability of testimony.

16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism

3441	If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace]
	Full Idea: An intelligence knowing at an instant the whole universe could know the movement of the largest bodies and atoms in one formula, provided his intellect were powerful enough to subject all data to analysis. Past and future would be present to his eyes.
	From: Pierre Simon de Laplace (Philosophical Essay on Probability [1820]), quoted by Mark Thornton - Do we have free will? p.70

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

8326	Science has shown that causal relations are just transfers of energy or momentum [Fair, by Sosa/Tooley]
	Full Idea: Basic causal relations can, as a consequence of our scientific knowledge, be identified with certain physicalistic [sic] relations between objects that can be characterized in terms of transference of either energy or momentum between objects.
	From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by E Sosa / M Tooley - Introduction to 'Causation' §1
	A reaction: Presumably a transfer of momentum is a transfer of energy. If only anyone had the foggiest idea what energy actually is, we'd be doing well. What is energy made of? 'No identity without substance', I say. I like Fair's idea.

10379	Fair shifted his view to talk of counterfactuals about energy flow [Fair, by Schaffer,J]
	Full Idea: Fair, who originated the energy flow view of causation, moved to a view that understands connection in terms of counterfactuals about energy flow.
	From: report of David Fair (Causation and the Flow of Energy [1979]) by Jonathan Schaffer - The Metaphysics of Causation 2.1.2
	A reaction: David Fair was a pupil of David Lewis, the king of the counterfactual view. To me that sounds like a disappointing move, but it is hard to think that a mere flow of energy through space would amount to causation. Cause must work back from an effect.