Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'poems', 'Parthood and Identity across Time' and 'Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World'

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4 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts

13267	Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki]
	Full Idea: Thomson famously objects that the doctrine of temporal parts is 'a crazy metaphysic - obviously false', since it entails that material objects are constantly being generated ex nihilo (or, at least, the stuff of which they are composed is).
	From: report of Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (Parthood and Identity across Time [1983], p.210) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 2.2
	A reaction: The related objections are to ask what the temporal 'width' of a part is, and whether the joins are visible.

14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / i. Explanations by mechanism

17093	Causation produces productive mechanisms; to understand the world, understand these mechanisms [Salmon]
	Full Idea: Causal processes, causal interactions, and causal laws provide the mechanisms by which the world works; to understand why certain things happen, we need to see how they are produced by these mechanisms.
	From: Wesley Salmon (Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World [1984]), quoted by David-Hillel Ruben - Explaining Explanation Ch 7
	A reaction: I don't think I've ever found a better quotation on explanation. That strikes me as correct, and (basically) there is nothing more to be said. I'm not sure about the 'laws'. This is later Wesley Salmon.

17492	Salmon's interaction mechanisms needn't be regular, or involving any systems [Glennan on Salmon]
	Full Idea: While Salmon's mechanisms are processes involving interactions, the interactions are not necessarily regular, and they do not involve the operation of systems.
	From: comment on Wesley Salmon (Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World [1984]) by Stuart Glennan - Mechanisms 'hierarchical'
	A reaction: This is why modern mechanistic philosophy only began in 2000, despite Wesley Salmon's championing of the roughly mechanistic approach.

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention

6017	Nomos is king [Pindar]
	Full Idea: Nomos is king.
	From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
	A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.