Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Clitophon', 'Letters to Lelong' and 'Causality: Reductionism versus Realism'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / f. Altruism

1590	The just man does not harm his enemies, but benefits everyone [Plato]
	Full Idea: First, Socrates, you told me justice is harming your enemies and helping your friends. But later it seemed that the just man, since everything he does is for someone's benefit, never harms anyone.
	From: Plato (Clitophon [c.372 BCE], 410b)
	A reaction: Socrates certainly didn't subscribe to the first view, which is the traditional consensus in Greek culture. In general Socrates agreed with the views later promoted by Jesus.

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

8416	Reductionists can't explain accidents, uninstantiated laws, probabilities, or the existence of any laws [Tooley]
	Full Idea: Reductionist accounts of causation cannot distinguish laws from accidental uniformities, cannot allow for basic uninstantiated laws, can't explain probabilistic laws, and cannot even demonstrate the existence of laws.
	From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 2)
	A reaction: I am tempted to say that this is so much the worse for the idea of laws. Extensive regularities only occur for a reason. Probabilities aren't laws. Hypothetical facts will cover uninstantiated laws. Laws are just patterns.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / e. Probabilistic causation

8418	Quantum physics suggests that the basic laws of nature are probabilistic [Tooley]
	Full Idea: Quantum physics seems to lend strong support to the idea that the basic laws of nature may well be probabilistic.
	From: Michael Tooley (Causality: Reductionism versus Realism [1990], 3.2.1)
	A reaction: Groan. Quantum physics should be outlawed from all philosophical discussions. The scientists don't understand it themselves. I'm certainly not going to build my worldview on it. I don't accept that these probabilities could count as 'laws'.

27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / c. Forces

13097	Force in substance makes state follow state, and ensures the very existence of substance [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: By the force I give to substances, I understand a state from which another state follows, if nothing prevents it. ...I dare say that without force, there would be no substance.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Lelong [1712], 1712), quoted by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 7.1
	A reaction: [the whole quote is interesting] This remark, more than any other I have found, places force at the centre of Leibniz's metaphysics. He is using it to resist Spinoza's one-substance view.