50 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). |
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. |
16665 | There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez] |
Full Idea: Beyond the entities there are certain real 'modes', which are positive, and in their own right act on those entities, giving them something that is outside their whole essence as individuals existing in reality. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
A reaction: Suárez is apparently the first person to formulate a proper account of properties as 'modes' of a thing, rather than as accidents which are separate, or are wholly integrated into a thing. A typical compromise proposal in philosophy. Can modes act? |
16666 | A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez] |
Full Idea: The inherence of quantity is called its mode, because it affects that quantity, which serves to ultimately determine the state and character of its existence, but does not add to it any new proper entity, but only modifies the preexisting entity. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
A reaction: He seems to present mode as a very active thing, like someone who gives it a coat of paint, or hammers it into a new shape. I don't see how a 'mode' can have any ontological status at all. To exist, there has to be some way to exist. |
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. |
16667 | Substances are incomplete unless they have modes [Suárez, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: In the view of Suárez, substances are radically incomplete entities that cannot exist at all until determined in various ways by things of another kind, modes. …Modes are regarded as completers for their subjects. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3 | |
A reaction: This is correct. In order to be a piece of clay it needs a shape, a mass, a colour etc. Treating clay as an object independently from its shape is a misunderstanding. |
17007 | Forms must rule over faculties and accidents, and are the source of action and unity [Suárez] |
Full Idea: A form is required that, as it were, rules over all those faculties and accidents, and is the source of all actions and natural motions of such a being, and in which the whole variety of accidents and powers has its root and unity. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.1.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4 | |
A reaction: Pasnau emphasises that this is scholastics giving a very physical and causal emphasis to forms, which made them vulnerable to doubts among the new experiment physicists. Pasnau says forms are 'metaphysical', following Leibniz. |
16780 | Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez] |
Full Idea: In a tree the part of the form that is in the leaf is not the same character as the part that is in the fruit., but yet they are partial forms, and apt to be united ….to compose one complete form of the whole. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.30), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 26.6 | |
A reaction: This is a common scholastic view, the main opponent of which was Aquinas, who says each thing only has one form. Do leaves have different DNA from the bark or the fruit? Presumably not (since I only have one DNA), which supports Aquinas. |
16758 | The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez] |
Full Idea: The most powerful arguments establishing substantial forms are based on the necessity, for the perfect constitution of a natural being, that all the faculties and operations of that being are rooted in one essential principle. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.64), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4 | |
A reaction: Note Idea 15756, that this stability not only applies to biological entities (the usual Aristotelian examples), but also to non-living natural kinds. We might say that the drive for survival is someone united around a single entity. |
16743 | We can get at the essential nature of 'quantity' by knowing bulk and extension [Suárez] |
Full Idea: We can say that the form that gives corporeal bulk [molem] or extension to things is the essential nature of quantity. To have bulk is to expel a similar bulk from the same space. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 539 | |
A reaction: This is one step away from asking why, once we knew the bulk and extension of the thing, we would still have any interest in trying to grasp something called its 'quantity'. |
16742 | We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez] |
Full Idea: We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5 | |
A reaction: It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things? |
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. |
22143 | Identity does not exclude possible or imagined difference [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: To be really the same excludes being really other, but does not exclude being other modally or mentally. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.65) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: So the statue and the clay are identical, but they could become separate, or be imagined as separate. |
22146 | Minor Real distinction: B needs A, but A doesn't need B [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The Minor Real distinction is if A can exist without B, but B ceases to exist without A. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: This is one-way independence. Boulter's example is Peter and Peter's actual weight. |
22144 | Real Essential distinction: A and B are of different natural kinds [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The Real Essential distinction says if A and B are not of the same natural kind, then they are essentially distinct. This is the highest degree of distinction. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: Boulter says Peter is essentially distinct from a cabbage, because neither has the nature of the other. |
22145 | Major Real distinction: A and B have independent existences [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The Major Real distinction is if A can exist in the real order without B, and B can exist in the real order without A. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: Boulter's example is the distinction between Peter and Paul, where their identity of kind is irrelevant. This is two-way independence. |
22147 | Conceptual/Mental distinction: one thing can be conceived of in two different ways [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The Conceptual or Mental distinction is when A and B are actually identical but we have two different ways of conceiving them. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: This is the Morning and Evening Star. I bet Frege never read Suarez. This seems to be Spinoza's concept of mind/body. |
22148 | Modal distinction: A isn't B or its property, but still needs B [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The Modal distinction is when A is not B or a property of B, but still could not possibly exist without B. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: Duns Scotus proposed in, Ockham rejected it, but Suarez supports it. Suarez proposes that light's dependence on the Sun is distinct from the light itself, in this 'modal' way. |
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. |
22149 | Scholastics assess possibility by what has actually happened in reality [Suárez, by Boulter] |
Full Idea: The scholastic view is that Actuality is our only guide to possibility in the real order. One knows that it is possible to separate A and B if one knows that A and B have actually been separated or are separate. | |
From: report of Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], Bk VII) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 4 | |
A reaction: It may be possible to separate A and B even though it has never happened, but it is hard to see how we could know that. (But if I put my pen down where it has never been before, I know I can pick it up again, even though this has not previously happened). |
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. |
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. |
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. |
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. |
16682 | Other things could occupy the same location as an angel [Suárez] |
Full Idea: An angelic substance could be penetrated by other bodies in the same location. | |
From: Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.2.21), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.3 | |
A reaction: So am I co-located with an angel right now? |