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All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Category Mistakes' and 'Causal Powers'

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155 ideas

1. Philosophy / D. Nature of Philosophy / 5. Aims of Philosophy / e. Philosophy as reason
Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Just as the tiniest error in navigation may lead to a landfall even on the wrong continent, so the acceptance of apparently innocuous principles can lead to doctrines which, if accepted, would render intellectual life impossible.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A)
     A reaction: If one lived life by an axiom system, and one of the axioms was a bit off kilter, then this idea would be a powerful one. Note that it is only 'intellectual' life that is screwed up, but even there a plurality of ideas keep correcting one another.
1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual
Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: In our view the task of a philosopher is to devise and critically assess conceptual schemes in the service of some overall vision of the world.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B)
     A reaction: This makes theology just as genuinely a branch of philosophy as their scientific essentialism. Is there any sort of philosophy, then, which is not 'in the service' of some independent worldview? Interesting. Note 'devise', as well as 'assess'.
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 4. Conceptual Analysis
Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Adequate accounts of those concepts which are neither purely formal nor simply psychological can be achieved by attention to ....the content of our knowledge, content which goes beyond the reports of immediate experience.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A)
     A reaction: I like this one. Most proponents of analysis are either bogged down in trying to reduce all of our talk to formal logic, or else they think that they are just analysing how we think. It's neither, because the concepts arise from the world.
1. Philosophy / F. Analytic Philosophy / 6. Logical Analysis
Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The Humean view has led philosophers to suppose that their task is to provide an analysis of key concepts and relations wholly in terms drawn from formal logic, since relations of necessity are, in their view, fundamentally logical relations
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A)
     A reaction: A very sharp observation about why logic has become central to contemporary philosophy. As far as I can see, logic steadily increases its dominance, to the point where ordinary metaphysical thought is being squeezed out.
1. Philosophy / G. Scientific Philosophy / 2. Positivism
Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Positivism is the doctrine that the content of scientific propositions is exhausted by what can be immediately experienced.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.I)
     A reaction: The simple thing missing from positivism is inference to the best explanation. Also, if you actually rule out other propositions as 'meaningless', you rule out speculation, which would certainly cripple science.
2. Reason / D. Definition / 1. Definitions
Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: From a logical point of view all definitions look exactly alike, that is, they contain a logical subject and a set of predicates which are attributed of necessity to that subject.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV)
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / a. Category mistakes
People have dreams which involve category mistakes [Magidor]
     Full Idea: It is an empirical fact that people often sincerely report having had dreams which involve category mistakes.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4)
     A reaction: She doesn't give any examples, but I was thinking that this might be the case before I read this idea. Dreams seem to allow you to live with gaps in reality that we don't tolerate when awake.
Category mistakes are either syntactic, semantic, or pragmatic [Magidor]
     Full Idea: A plausible case can be made for explaining the phenomenon of category mistakes in terms of each of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1)
     A reaction: I want to explain them in terms of (structured) ontology, but she totally rejects that on p.156. Her preferred account is that they are presupposition failures, which is pragmatics. She splits the semantic view into truth-valued and non-truth-valued.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / b. Category mistake as syntactic
Category mistakes seem to be universal across languages [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The infelicity of category mistakes seems to be universal across languages.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3)
     A reaction: Magidor rightly offers this fact to refute the claim that category mistakes are purely syntax (since syntax obviously varies hugely across languages). I also take the fact to show that category mistakes concern the world, and not merely language.
Category mistakes as syntactic needs a huge number of fine-grained rules [Magidor]
     Full Idea: A syntactic theory of category mistakes would require not only general syntactic features such as must-be-human, but also highly particular ones such as must-be-a-grape.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.3)
     A reaction: Her grape example comes from Hebrew, but an English example might be the verb 'to hull', which is largely exclusive to strawberries. The 'must-be' form is one of Chomsky's 'selectional features'.
Embedded (in 'he said that…') category mistakes show syntax isn't the problem [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The embedding data (such as 'John said that the number two is green', compared to '*John said that me likes apples') strongly suggests that category mistakes are not syntactically ill-formed.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.4)
     A reaction: Sounds conclusive. The report of John's category error, unlike the report of his remark about apples, seems perfectly syntactically acceptable.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / c. Category mistake as semantic
Category mistakes are meaningful, because metaphors are meaningful category mistakes [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Metaphors must have literal meanings. …Since many metaphors involving category mistakes manage to achieve their metaphorical purpose, they must also have literal meanings, so category mistakes must be (literally) meaningful.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: Hm. 'This guy is so weird that to meet him is to encounter a circular square'.
The normal compositional view makes category mistakes meaningful [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The principle that if a competent speaker understands some terms then they understand a sentence made up of them entails that category mistakes are meaningful (as in understanding 'the number two' and 'is green').
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1)
     A reaction: [compressed version] It is normal to impose restrictions on plausible compositionality, and thus back away from this claim, but I rather sympathise with it. She adds to a second version of the principle the proviso 'IF the sentence is meaningful'.
If a category mistake is synonymous across two languages, that implies it is meaningful [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Two sentences are synonymous if they have the same meaning, suggesting that they must both be meaningful. On the face of it the English 'two is green' and French 'deux est vert' are synonymous, suggesting meaningful category mistakes.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.3)
     A reaction: I'm fairly convinced already that most category mistakes are meaningful, and this seems to confirm the view. Some mistakes could be so extreme that no auditor could compute their meaning, especially if you concatenated lots of them.
If a category mistake has unimaginable truth-conditions, then it seems to be meaningless [Magidor]
     Full Idea: One motivation for taking category mistakes to be meaningless is that one cannot even imagine what it would take for 'Two is green' to be true. …Underlying this complaint is sometimes the thought that the meaning of a sentence is its truth-conditions.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6)
     A reaction: I defend the view that most sentences are meaningful if they compose from meaningful parts, but you have to acknowledge this view. It seems to come in degrees. Sentences can have fragmentary meaning, or be almost meaningful, or offer a glimpse of meaning?
A good explanation of why category mistakes sound wrong is that they are meaningless [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The meaninglessness view does seem to offer a simple and compelling explanation for the fact that category mistakes are highly infelicitous.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6)
     A reaction: However, I take there to be quite a large gulf between why meaningless sentences like 'squares turn happiness into incommensurability', which I would call 'category blunders', and subtle category mistakes, which are meaningful.
Category mistakes are neither verifiable nor analytic, so verificationism says they are meaningless [Magidor]
     Full Idea: No sense experience shows that 'two is green' is true or false. But neither is 'two is green' analytically true or false. So it fails to have legitimate verification conditions and hence, by the lights of traditional verificationism, it is meaningless.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2)
     A reaction: If a category mistake is an error in classification, then it would seem to be analytically false. If it wrongly attributes a property to something, that makes it verifiably false. The problem is to verify anything at all about 'two'.
Category mistakes play no role in mental life, so conceptual role semantics makes them meaningless [Magidor]
     Full Idea: One might argue that conceptual role semantics entails that category mistakes are meaningless. Sentences such as 'two is green' play no role in the cognitive life of any agent.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.6.2)
     A reaction: [She quotes Block's definition of conceptual role semantics] I would have thought that if a category mistake is believed by an agent, it could play a huge role in their cognitive life.
Maybe when you say 'two is green', the predicate somehow fails to apply? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: One might argue that although 'two' refers to the number two, and 'is green' expresses the property of being green, in 'two is green' the property somehow fails to apply to the number two.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.2)
     A reaction: It is an interesting thought that you say something which applies a predicate to an object, but the predicate then 'fails to apply' for reasons of its own, over which you have no control. The only possible cause of the failure is the nature of reality.
If category mistakes aren't syntax failure or meaningless, maybe they just lack a truth-value? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Having rejected the syntactic approach and the meaninglessness view, one might feel that the last resort for explaining the defectiveness of category mistakes is to claim that they are truth-valueless (even if meaningful).
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.3.1)
     A reaction: She rejects this one as well, and votes for a pragmatic explanation, in terms of presupposition failure. The view I incline towards is just that they are false, despite being well-formed, meaningful and truth-valued.
Two good sentences should combine to make a good sentence, but that might be absurd [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The principle that if 'p' and 'q' are meaningful sentences then 'p and q' is a meaningful sentence seems highly plausible. But now consider the following example: 'That is a number and that is green'.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.2)
     A reaction: This challenges the defence of the meaningfulness of category mistakes on the basis of strong compositionality.
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / d. Category mistake as pragmatic
Maybe the presuppositions of category mistakes are the abilities of things? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The most promising way to characterise the presuppositions involved in category mistakes might be to rephrase them in modal terms ('x is able to be pregnant', 'x is able to be green').
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.3)
     A reaction: This catches my attention because it suggests that category mistakes contradict dispositions, rather than contradicting classifications or types. 'Let's use a magnet to repel this iron'? The dispositions of 'two' and 'green' in 'two is green'? Hm
Category mistakes suffer from pragmatic presupposition failure (which is not mere triviality) [Magidor]
     Full Idea: I argue that category mistakes are infelicitous because they suffer from (pragmatic) presupposition failure, ...but I reject the 'naive pragmatic approach' according to which category mistakes are infelicitous because they are trivially true or false.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.1)
     A reaction: She supports her case quite well, but I vote for them being false. The falsity may involve presuppositions. 'Two is green' is a category mistake, and false, because 'two' lacks the preconditions for anything to be coloured (notably, emitting light).
Category mistakes because of presuppositions still have a truth value (usually 'false') [Magidor]
     Full Idea: I am assuming that even in those contexts in which the presupposition of 'the number two is green' fails and the utterance is infelicitious, it nevertheless receives a bivalent truth-value (presumably 'false').
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1)
     A reaction: It seems to me obvious that, in normal contexts, 'the number two is green' is false, rather than meaningless. Is 'the number eight is an odd number' meaningless?
In 'two is green', 'green' has a presupposition of being coloured [Magidor]
     Full Idea: My proposal is that the truth-conditional content of 'green' (in 'two is green') is the property of being green, and its presuppositional content is the property of being coloured.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1)
     A reaction: This requires a two-dimensional semantics of truth-conditional and presuppositional content. I fear it may have a problem she spotted elsewhere, of overgenerating presuppositions. Eyes are presupposed by 'green'. Ambient light is required.
'Numbers are coloured and the number two is green' seems to be acceptable [Magidor]
     Full Idea: 'The number two is green' is normally infelicitous, but, interestingly, 'numbers are coloured and the number two is green' is not infelicitous.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.4.1)
     A reaction: A nice example, which gives good support for her pragmatic account of category mistakes in terms of presupposition failure. But how about 'figures can have contradictory shapes, and this square is circular'? Numbers are not coloured!!!
2. Reason / F. Fallacies / 8. Category Mistake / e. Category mistake as ontological
The presuppositions in category mistakes reveal nothing about ontology [Magidor]
     Full Idea: My pragmatic account of category mistakes does not support a key role for them in metaphysics. It is highly doubtful that the presuppositions associated with category mistakes reveal anything about the fundamental nature of ontological categories.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6)
     A reaction: Thus she dashes my hope, without even bothering to offer a reason. I think she should push her enquiry further, and ask why we presuppose things. Why do we take presuppositions for granted? Why are they obvious?
4. Formal Logic / E. Nonclassical Logics / 8. Intensional Logic
Intensional logic maps logical space, showing which predicates are compatible or incompatible [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Intensional logic aims to capture necessary relations between certain predicates, such as that 'green all over' and 'red all over' cannot be co-instantiated. Each predicate is allocated a set of points in logical space, and every object has one point.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.4)
     A reaction: This produces an intriguing model of reality, as a vast and rich space of multiply overlapping modal predicates. Things can be blue, square, dangerous and large. They can't be small and large, or square and round. Objects are optional extras!
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / b. Types of number
Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Points can be 'dense' by indefinitely prolonged division. To be 'continuous' is more stringent; the points must be cut into two sets, and meet the condition laid down by Boscovich and Dedekind.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: This idea goes with Idea 15274, which lays down the specification of the Dedekind Cut, which is the criterion for the real (and continuous) numbers. Harré and Madden are interested in whether time can support continuity of objects.
6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 3. Nature of Numbers / i. Reals from cuts
Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Divide points into left and right set. They're 'continuous' if that point is either last member of left set, and greatest lower bound of right (so no least member), or least upper bound of left set (so no last member) and first member of right set.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: The best attempt I have yet encountered to explain a Dedekind Cut for the layperson. I gather modern mathematicians no longer rely on this way of defining the real numbers.
6. Mathematics / B. Foundations for Mathematics / 5. Definitions of Number / e. Caesar problem
Some suggest that the Julius Caesar problem involves category mistakes [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Various authors have argued that identity statements arising in the context of the 'Julius Caesar' problem in philosophy of mathematics constitute category mistakes.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1 n1)
     A reaction: [She cites Benacerraf 1965 and Shapiro 1997:79]
6. Mathematics / C. Sources of Mathematics / 10. Constructivism / e. Psychologism
There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The assumption that there is an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the psychological is, in our view, an error of enormous consequence.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A)
     A reaction: I agree entirely with this, and am opposed to the Fregean view of the matter. The psychology is the bridge between the physical world and the logic. Frege had to be a platonist, so that the formalism could latch onto something.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Given the Humean ontology, there is grave difficulty in making any sense at all of the concept of change with continuity as distinct from successive replacements.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6. Intro)
     A reaction: Hence the four-dimensionalist approach is basically Hume updated. The weird nature of time lurks behind this difficulty. If you can separate the moments of time, you can separate the bits of a continuous thing, and then ask how they relate.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / b. Events as primitive
Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: On our view, 'event' is to be understood in terms of the ontology of enduring things, while on the Humean view enduring things are conceived to be constructions of events.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: It has quite hard to take either objects or events, given that they seem to be amenable to analysis. I am tempted to take essences as primitive. They fix identity, endure change, bear accidental properties (including temporary intrinsics).
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events
The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: By a shift from events to things we claim to make the big problem of induction tractable.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II)
     A reaction: [You'll have to read their chapter to get the whole picture] The idea of basing a metaphysics on 'events' gives me the creeps, given the difficulty of individuating an event. Events are not primitive; even animals can analyse their components.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 6. Fundamentals / a. Fundamental reality
Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Fundamental particulars are incapable of change.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV)
     A reaction: I quote this in order to challenge it. If the proton can decay (which seems to be the case) maybe everything can. The fundamentals of a lawn mower eventually rust away; it may be thus with universe. What evidence could deny this?
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 8. Stuff / a. Pure stuff
Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: There is no metaphysical justification whatever for treating the solid, bounded, material object as the determiner of all thing concepts. Fluids are no less material things than are hard solid blocks.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV)
     A reaction: We don't tend to talk of a fluid as 'a' thing, and without distinct objects there would be virtually no structure, or interest, in nature, so what gives identity to the blocks must interest the metaphysician.
7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 8. Stuff / b. Mixtures
Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The magnetic and the gravitation field can occupy all the same places without merging.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV)
     A reaction: We can divide stuff into two classes, then, according to whether they usually merge if coextensive in space. Oil and water can be mixed, but eventually separate again.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 6. Physicalism
Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The region around a magnetic body, the space between earth and moon, and the vicinity of an electric cable remain obstinately and, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III)
     A reaction: Ouch, if you are a strict 'materialist'! I call myself a 'naturalist', in a hand-wavy sort of way. On materialism and determinism I remain vague.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 9. States of Affairs
Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: A state of affairs consists of structures of particulars that endure (of which physical objects would be one type), the properties and powers of those particulars, and the relations obtaining among them. A common 'event' is a change in state of affairs.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: I find 'event' to be so vague, and so dependent on pragmatic interests, that it has hard to find a place for it in an ontological system. Ditto with state of affairs. They overlap. States of affairs can survive change (like a political majority).
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 5. Natural Properties
Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The connectivity of ensembles of predicates is characteristic of natural science, while the independence of empirical predicates is the requirement of the Humean position.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
     A reaction: This is yet another excellent reason for getting rid of the hyperempirical Humean view of these things. The best explanation of the world is that its ingredients are clearly not 'independent' of each other.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 1. Powers
Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The concept of energy was introduced into physics precisely to make possible the application of the 'store of potency' paradigm in cases like the contact of billiard balls, since the moving ball is clearly an agent of change.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: I find this to be a hugely revealing little observation. For years the nature of energy has bothered me, and I have been struck by the active character of nature. I am beginning to understand the world!
Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Some powerful particulars require to be stimulated before their powers are manifested. Others will manifest their powers whenever the impediments to action, the constraints, are removed.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.V)
     A reaction: Sounds nice and clear, but if gunpowder explodes at a certain temperature, how can you distinguish temperatures as the 'stimulus' ones and the 'release' ones? We just remove the constraint of low temperature.
Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Contrasted with variable powers are those powers which cannot be diminished or augmented without loss of identity for the particular to which they are ascribed.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I)
     A reaction: They give the example of a Deputy Sheriff's powers, as one that cannot vary. I suppose the powers of an electron are in the fixed category. Fair enough. Can a fundamental power be variable (or only 'complex' powers)?
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: For scientists 'copper' refers to something having the properties of malleability, fusibility, ductility, electric conductivity, density 8.92, atomic weight 63.54, and atomic number 19. All but the last of these are dispositional.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
     A reaction: This is important because it is tempting to pick the atomic number as the essence of copper, but it is the only one on the list which is structural rather than dispositional. The deep question is why that substance has those dispositions.
We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The power of particulars are always made understandable by the natures of those particulars, but finally such explanations come to rest with a power of a particular that has no explanation in the nature of that thing or bit of material.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII)
     A reaction: I'm glad they faced up to this matter. The question is whether the fundamental powers which are the terminus of explanation are the same sort of thing as the powers which were said to be the target for explanations. Just complex powers?
Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: As the most promising candidate for entities which intrinsically qualify as ultimate because their nature is in principle identical with their powers we will offer a physical field.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII)
     A reaction: An electron comes fairly close to being nothing but a bundle of powers, but fields seem to have a slightly more basic role in physics, so this strikes me as a good suggestion. It meets Ladyman's mocking of the 'microbangings' view.
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 3. Powers as Derived
Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: An attribution of a power opens up a certain direction of empirical investigation. It is not an attribution of an occult quality, because it is not a quality-attribution at all.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.II)
     A reaction: They seem to have a rather behaviouristic view of powers, which I am inclined to think misses how fundamental powers are. I see fundamental powers as the terminus of empirical investigation (which focuses on how powers combine).
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 6. Dispositions / d. Dispositions as occurrent
What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: How are we to conceive of a field of potentials when the very point of the notion is that it serves to describe what would happen at various places, and is not a description of what did or is happening?
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III)
     A reaction: I suppose the answer is induction. If there were no events, the field would be beyond us. We infer the field from observed events, and infer possible events from the patterns of behaviour in the field, and its nature.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: In being properly critical about the merits of the concept of substance, ...the Humean finds he has lost the vitally important concept of a thing as well.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: This is the whole reason that Aristotle and others started talking about substances in the first place. The big mistake is to think that Aristotle believes in a thing called 'substance'. The notion is a placeholder for whatever holds a thing together.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / e. Substance critique
We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The importance of the field concept (as ultimate) is that it allows us to escape from the apparently pervasive concepts of substance and its properties. A field has no substance other than its powers (or its potentials).
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.VII)
     A reaction: You can't run away from substance by only thinking about what is ultimate. Are they going to ignore separate objects? What gives them identity? Do they have any properties? What has the properties? More work needed here.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
We can explain the statue/clay problem by a category mistake with a false premise [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Since 'the lump of clay is Romanesque' is a category mistake, a pragmatic account of that phenomenon is key to pursuing the strategy of saying that the problem rests on a false premise.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.6)
     A reaction: [compressed]
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 3. Matter of an Object
The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The assumption that shape and solidity are the fundamental mechanical qualities requires an implausible hypothesis of a substance or material filling the space of bodies.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B)
     A reaction: This is 'substance' in the sense of matter, rather than in the sense of an Aristotelian essence. They defend fields (rather than particles) as the fundamentals of the physical world.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 7. Substratum
The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Chemical analysis either arrives at a qualityless substance, the notorious substratum, or is obliged to declare certain qualities primary and inexplicable. Substituting individuals-with-powers for substance-with-qualities removes these difficulties.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II)
     A reaction: Any account gives you something as basic, and that something is always going to seem inherently and deeply mysterious. I prefer powers to substrata, but what has the powers? They like 'fields'.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: From the point of view of philosophical logic, the nature of a kind, or a material substance or an individual is its essence, that is, those of its qualities which are inseparable from its being that kind, that material or that individual.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.I)
     A reaction: This might be where the logical and the naturalistic notions of essence come apart. Could something retain its 'natural' essence while losing its identity, or lose its essence while retaining its identity?
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 9. Essence and Properties
We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: If we know the nature of a particular that explains its properties, powers and capacities and relates them into intelligible clusters, then we can indeed infer from some of the powers and properties to others via its essential nature.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III)
     A reaction: This is an optimistic assertion of precisely the possibility which Locke denied in Idea 12547. This optimism is the main reason for the revival of scientific essentialism in recent years. It just seems to be true of modern science.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The essential nature of matter and radiation is energy, so it is maintained, but the point of maintaining this is precisely to allow one to make use of a notion of the nature of things.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III)
     A reaction: They are defending essentialism, but this seems to be a counterexample, of our need to postulate essences where there are none. It makes our explanations work better, but at the cost of commitment to a 'quasi-substance' (Idea 15265).
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change
To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Talk about particulars remaining the same and yet lacking their usual capacities and powers is at once to assert and deny that a certain object or sample of material has a given nature.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
     A reaction: They imply that this is a contradiction, and hence impossible. So what do we say about something in which the powers fade? Do they both retain and lose their identity? Or can we separate essence from identity?? Aha!
Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Some individuals to gain or lose certain capacities or powers, but do not thereby lose their identity. They still have the same nature. A drug, or photographic paper, may lose effectiveness over time.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
     A reaction: Damn! I thought I was the first to spot this problem! I, however, take it to be much more metaphysically significant than Harré and Madden do. The question is whether those properties were essential, since they can be lost. Essential but not necessary!
A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Change might mean that a particular lost some or perhaps all of its previous characteristics and retained at worst only a dubious numerical identity derived from temporal continuity of the occupation of a place or continuous sequence of places.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.II)
     A reaction: If all that is left is its location, that seems like passing-away rather than change. A dead leaf retains mere numerical identity while losing its essence. A burnt-up leaf might have a location, but it hardly qualifies as a 'leaf'.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 3. Three-Dimensionalism
'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Since discontinuities in a dense set of temporal points lead to doubts about the existential integrity of a thing, the thing-ontology demands that a dense time be continuous.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: This seems to be a rather unequivocal assertion about a rather uncertain topic. If quanta can move in 'leaps', which appear to abolish the notion of what happens 'between' two states, who can say what objects might manage to do?
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 4. Four-Dimensionalism
If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: If events are instantaneous time-slices of a physical thing, the persistence of the pattern is an inexplicable fact in that there is no requirement for the successive time-slices to bear any resemblance to the event previously occurring at that place.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: The Humean four-dimensional view doesn't seem to require an explanation of this (or of much else), and takes it as a brute fact that slices resemble. Something has to be a brute fact, I suppose.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 8. Continuity of Rivers
Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: A Humean cannot step in the same river twice, not because the river is always a different river, but because he can strictly have no such concept as 'river'.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.II)
     A reaction: This arises from a discussion of induction. What is a Humean to make of an object which keeps changing? They only have connected impressions, and no underlying essence to hold the impressions together.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 2. Nature of Necessity
What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Whatever reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.IV)
     A reaction: This is a deeply stirring idea, because it suddenly opens up a research project of narrowing the possibilities, with a stunning Holy Grail at the end of it. Sherlock Holmes said this first, of course.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 3. Types of Necessity
There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: In addition to absolute necessity ('p is strictly implied by ¬p'), i.e. p strictly implied by any proposition whatever, C.I. Lewis also distinguished relative necessity ('p implied by what is given or known').
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
     A reaction: Once you accept this distinction you find that the 'relative' one comes in all sorts of degrees. You "have to" put more salt in this soup. (Deontic' necessity, someone on Twitter tells me!)
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 6. Logical Necessity
Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: When the logical form of a statement is offered as the grounds for the judgement that it cannot be true we have logical necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B)
     A reaction: This sounds like a truth about logical necessity, but certainly not a full account of it, because contingent statements also have logical form. I can't think of any other criterion than the finding of a contradiction buried in the logical form.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 7. Natural Necessity
Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Natural necessity is neither a mere reflection of logical necessity nor a roundabout way of referring to empirical contingency.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.B)
     A reaction: They offer a strong defence of natural necessity, which is basic to their scientific essentialism. The key point is that they, unlike some others, are not defending metaphysical necessity about nature, but finding a different type of necessity. Good.
The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The relation between what a thing is and what it is capable of doing and undergoing is naturally necessary.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
     A reaction: Note that this was written in 1975, and in no way rests of Kripkean notions of rigid designation and necessary identities. Needs thought, but I take it to be an appealing proposal.
A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: There is a necessity corresponding to the nature of the actual.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.C)
     A reaction: A nice slogan for the assertion of a genuine and distinct natural necessity. Hence every possible world will have its own distinctive natural necessity. If the actual contains the possible, then there are possible new natural necessities in the actual!
Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: When the natures of the operative powerful particulars, the constraining or stimulating effect of conditions and so on are offered as the grounds for the judgement that a certain effect cannot but happen (or fail), we have natural necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B)
     A reaction: This is the view I subscribe to, the really right bit of scientific essentialism. Can this view be proved? Hm. I take the opposite view to be the misguided Humean idea that if you can imagine it not happening, then it might not happen. Firey furnace.
People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: At the basis of all doubts about the rationality of science lies the idea that there is no rational resting place between logical necessity and absolute contingency.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III)
     A reaction: I'm struck by the fact that when someone says "I have to go now", they express a necessity. Are there thousands of types of necessity, or one conditional necessity resting on thousands of different foundations?
Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The relationship between co-existing properties or successive events or states is naturally necessary when understood by scientists to be related by generative mechanisms, whose structure and components constitute the essential natures of the world.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III)
     A reaction: Does that mean that the relationship between an actual state and a possible state is metaphysically necessary, rather than naturally necessary? I think we need dispositions to be part of actuality, and hence replace 'co-existing' with 'possible'.
10. Modality / A. Necessity / 8. Transcendental Necessity
Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: When the conditions for a rational being having knowledge of the nature of a world are offered as the grounds for the judgement that such a world must have certain characteristics, we have transcendental necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B)
     A reaction: It seems like a rather hard call to decide whether such characteristics pertain to the world, or to the mind of the rational being. Kant is obviously behind this one. You must read his first Critique at least four times to evaluate it.
There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Whatever is logically necessary must be reflected in a corresponding transcendental necessity. But there are a great range of transcendental necessities which are not reflected in any logical necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.C)
     A reaction: That is, the world would be unknowable if any of the logical necessities failed to apply to it. I hope that doesn't mean that we are supposed to intuitively know all the logical necessities. Nowadays we are famous for being bad at that.
10. Modality / B. Possibility / 9. Counterfactuals
Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: We understand subjunctive conditionals as statements about possibilities, excluding those actualised. So that form is just right for part of the analysis of a power statement, since to say a thing has a power is to say what behaviour is possible for it.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VII)
     A reaction: They seem unaware of the famous work of Stalnaker and Lewis on this type of analysis, but as a fan of powers I find this interesting, and it offers a nice extra piece for my big jigsaw.
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 3. Necessity by Convention
If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: When a natural necessity is used as the basis for the inclusion or exclusion of the appropriate predicate in the meaning of a concept of a kind of particular, then it is conceptually necessary that that kind of particular has that property or power.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V.B)
     A reaction: This is one of the bolder views of Harré and Madden, since many philosophers would say that conceptual necessity rests entirely on convention rather than on nature. We could cut them out by just saying that most of our conventions rest on nature.
Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Described as a man it is quite contingent that he has a child, but described as a father it is conceptually necessary that he has a child. But that conceptual necessity is a reflection of the natural necessity of the father's role in reproduction.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I)
     A reaction: This is a (good) response to Quine's claim that necessity depends entirely on the mode of description (and his mathematician cyclist example).
10. Modality / C. Sources of Modality / 4. Necessity from Concepts
Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The question about conceptual necessity is whether it is only stipulative and conventional in character or whether it mirrors something about the nature of physical systems.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.A)
     A reaction: This is the key question, which fans of conventionalism (such as Sidelle) don't seem to face up to. I take it to be important that our concepts are not created by a committee of fools, but by people constantly relating to the world.
There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: When discoveries about the nature of a thing or substance explain or justify our holding that certain properties are its nominal essence, then the diachronic process of meaning development creates a genuine conceptual necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.VI)
     A reaction: This sounds like a pretty good account of one of the bases for conceptual necessity. They seem to think that conceptual necessity rests on a mixture of real and nominal essence (but then some of the nominal features are also real).
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 1. A Priori Necessary
Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The concepts of necessity and contingency are detached from those of the apriori and the a posteriori.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV)
     A reaction: This seems to arise quite independently of Kripke, from the attack by the authors on the Humean view of modality. They also mention the possibility of the apriori contingent.
10. Modality / D. Knowledge of Modality / 4. Conceivable as Possible / b. Conceivable but impossible
If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Even in cases (such as Goldbach's Conjecture) which, if true, are logically necessary, we may be able to conceive the opposite. We can conceive of there being a number which is not the sum of two primes.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: [attributed to Kneale] Ah, but can we conceive this (as Descartes would say) 'clearly and distinctly'? I can conceive circular squares, as long as I don't concentrate too hard.
11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 2. Common Sense Certainty
It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: It would be silly to suggest that what is a matter of experience must be justified by reason, and it makes no sense to say that what we are insisting upon as a matter of direct experience must itself be established by experience.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: The first half is now known as the 'Moorean' view (Idea 6349). It does make sense, when faced with a weird experience, to assess and establish it by means of a combination of reason and other experiences. It's called 'coherence'!
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 4. Sense Data / d. Sense-data problems
We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: It seems clear that we are never presented with a quality except of some object.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: I'm not convinced that that 'seems clear'. The idea of sense-data is that while it seems to be of an object, reason suggests that the experience of the quality must precede the object assembled thereby. How do you arbitrate?
12. Knowledge Sources / B. Perception / 6. Inference in Perception
Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: To the objection that one is never aware of inferences in sensation, the unconvincing reply comes that such inferences are automatic, telescoped, non-discursive and unconscious.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: I think the 'unconvincing' reply is a bit more convincing in the light of modern research on the brain, which presents everything it does in a far less conscious light than the traditional view. Even reason seems barely conscious.
12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 2. Associationism
Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The Humean event, the impression, basic to his epistemology, is, as we have seen, instantaneous in nature, punctiform and elemenentary, and from this characterisation follows its atomicity, its lack of internal connections with anything else.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: This simple point about Humean associationism is the key to grasping the whole hideous worldview that has gripped twentieth century philosophy. How many impressions make up an apple? And why do they sum to make something?
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 1. Scientific Theory
Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Clavius' Paradox shows that a theorem-like structure organised by entailments cannot be identified as a scientific explanation by reference to syntactical criteria, since it shares its syntactic criteria with many other theorem-like structures.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.3)
     A reaction: I think I was pretty convinced that a scientific theory had to meet more than mere syntactic criteria, before I encountered this idea. Lewis's account of laws may have to face this objection.
Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Whatever simplicity criterion is chosen for theories, it can at best sort out strata of explanations of equal simplicity, each stratum containing infinitely many items.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
     A reaction: [They cite Katz 1962 for this] This sounds to me like a purely technical result, where pragmatics would narrow the plausible theories right down. The 'Paradox of Clavius' is behind the idea (with an infinity of possible middle terms).
The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The marvellous success in science of the powers/natures formula as a guide to research naturally leads to an attempt at a universal application of such a powerful schema. The electric and magnetic and gravitational fields are known by their powers.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III)
     A reaction: This is a wonderfully heroic, and accurate, opposition to the prevailing accounts of science when they wrote. The laws, processes and equations of science and just part of a description of the natures and basic powers of what exists.
14. Science / B. Scientific Theories / 2. Aim of Science
We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: There are competitive models of the nature of things and materials, and that one is chosen which is successful in explaining the most powers and capacities of particulars and in leading to the discovery of hitherto unsuspected powers and capacities.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.III)
     A reaction: If the powers and capacities are what get explained, what exactly does the explaining? If you says 'essences', you then have to characterise essences in some other way. I vote for basic powers as primitive. - but Idea 15302.
Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The task of natural science is to investigate the nature of a thing or substance, and to test hypotheses as to the constitution of that thing or substance.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV)
     A reaction: This seems to suggest that science is only concerned with the very small, but it would include facts such as the dramatic change of a lump of uranium when it grows bigger.
14. Science / C. Induction / 3. Limits of Induction
Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: 'Going together' is irrelevant as an explanation, and that is precisely why it is useless as a reason for having confidence in inductive inferences.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I)
     A reaction: I suspect that the deep underlying question is whether the actual world has modal features - that is, are dispositions, rather than mere categorical properties, a feature of the actual. Is this room full of possibilities? Yes, say I.
Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The atomicity of Humean events ensures the sequential independence of properties, ...and this in turn leads to the Humean problem of induction.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: This strikes me as pretty good analysis of what has gone wrong with the Humean account. As far as I can see, the 'problem' of induction just doesn't occur in scientific essentialism.
14. Science / C. Induction / 5. Paradoxes of Induction / b. Raven paradox
Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The question about Hempel's Paradox is whether contraposition is not only equivalent in truth, but equivalent tout court. It forcibly inserts new predicates into a context of properties known to be connected by nature.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
     A reaction: [compressed] This seems to capture quite nicely the intuition most people have (which makes it a 'paradox') that the equivalent predicate is irrelevant to the immediate enquiry. The paradox is good because it forces the present explanation.
The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: If empirical predicates are linked in clusters, contraposition of (black, raven) would carry one via such pairs as (shoe, white) into a different empirical cluster, or no cluster at all.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.I)
     A reaction: This is, of course, addressed to Hempel's Raven Paradox. Those paradoxes now strike me as relics of a time when Humean empiricism and logic were thought to be the best approaches to scientific theory. Harré and Madden pioneered a better view.
The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The generating mechanism that produces black raven-like beings is assumed in the according of potential law status to the statement that all ravens are black.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.III)
     A reaction: This is a very nice succinct statement of what I take to be the scientific essentialist view of induction. It isn't about building up Humean habits of regularity, but of gradually inferring explanatory mechanisms, which might even give necessities.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / b. Aims of explanation
Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Only changes require explanation.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.I)
     A reaction: This points to powers as the fundamentals of all explanations, whereas if stasis also has to be explained then structures and matter have to be explained. Why is there something rather than nothing? No explanations allowed!
14. Science / D. Explanation / 1. Explanation / c. Direction of explanation
If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Natural necessity involves causal directionality as an essential element, while entailment as a purely logical relation does not.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
     A reaction: If there is a naturally necessary relation between an eclipse and its cause, the directionality of that doesn't seem to arise from the mutual relation between the two. You have to add time's arrow, or causation's arrow.
Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The concept of power can be used to explain the temporal directionality of the concept of causality, and, at the same time, makes that causality a genuine case of natural necessity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
     A reaction: I'm not sure that powers actually 'explain' causal direction. It seems more like transferring the directionality from the process to its source. You are still left with brute directionality.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / i. Explanations by mechanism
If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: If we see that certain powers and capacities are explained by the nature of certain particulars and are necessarily attendant upon them, then we have an explanation of why certain things must go together and happen as they do.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 4.I)
     A reaction: They are offering this as an account of induction, as well as of explanation, and it is a nice summary of the account which I take to be correct.
Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Usually in science the powers/natures formula does lead to the imagining of hypothetical mechanisms which might be discovered to be real.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.III)
     A reaction: The underlying mechanism is what I take Aristotle to have proposed, and it is the instinctive explanation by children (charted by Susan Gelman).
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / j. Explanations by reduction
Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Solidity is the effect of a power of repulsion between whole things, and shape is the effect of a power of attraction between parts of whole things.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.II.B)
     A reaction: This sounds a bit too neat in its division, but it shows nicely how a metaphysics with powers can deal with categorical properties. The question, remains, though of what is doing the repelling and attracting. Fields, they say.
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / k. Explanations by essence
Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Capacities just as much as powers, what particulars and substances are liable to undergo as well as what they are able to do, are explained by reference to what the thing is in itself.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.C)
     A reaction: This is an important warning against trying to give the whole account in terms of powers - unless the capacities and structures and categorical properties can also be explained in terms of the basic powers.
15. Nature of Minds / C. Capacities of Minds / 5. Generalisation by mind
The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The concepts of power, capacity and the nature of a particular involve generalisations and hence already presuppose that there are grounds for extrapolation.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.V)
     A reaction: I take sortal essentialism to be a serious misundertanding, but the mistake needs to be explained, and this idea is helpful towards that. I think the problem resides in the nature of the language we need to describe particulars.
18. Thought / A. Modes of Thought / 2. Propositional Attitudes
Propositional attitudes relate agents to either propositions, or meanings, or sentence/utterances [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Three views of the semantics of propositional attitudes: they are relations between agents and propositions ('propositional' view); relations between individuals and meanings (Fregean); or relations of individuals and sentences/utterances ('sentential').
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4)
     A reaction: I am a propositionalist on this one. Meanings are too vague, and sentences are too linguistic.
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
Two sentences with different meanings can, on occasion, have the same content [Magidor]
     Full Idea: It is commonly assumed that meaning and content can come apart: the sentence 'I am writing' and 'Ofra is writing' may have different meanings, even if, as currently uttered, they express the same content.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1)
     A reaction: From that, I would judge 'content' to mean the same as 'proposition'.
18. Thought / C. Content / 5. Twin Earth
What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: A statement which asserts that a substance or thing must manifest certain properties in order to be identified as a thing or substance of that sort can be laid down a priori.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.IV)
     A reaction: This observation is encountered in Sidelle, but this is earlier, and seems to be the key to the Twin Earth thing. It is just convention whether we call XYZ water, or whether there are two sorts of jade or one. Science has prestige.
18. Thought / D. Concepts / 4. Structure of Concepts / b. Analysis of concepts
To grasp 'two' and 'green', must you know that two is not green? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Is it a necessary condition on possessing the concepts of 'two' and 'green' that one does not believe that two is green? I think this claim is false.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.4)
     A reaction: To see that it is false one only has to consider much more sophisticated concepts, which are grasped without knowing their full implications. I might think two is green because I fully grasp 'two', but have not yet mastered 'green'.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 1. Syntax
Generative semantics says structure is determined by semantics as well as syntactic rules [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Generative semanticists claimed that the structure of a sentence is determined by both 'syntactic' and 'semantic' considerations which interact with each other in complex ways.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.3)
     A reaction: [She mentions George Lakoff for this view] You need to study a range of examples, but this sounds a better view to me than the tidy picture of producing a syntactic structure and then adding a semantics. We make up sentences while speaking them.
'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' have different deep structure [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The sentences 'John is easy to please' and 'John is eager to please' can have very different deep structure (with the latter concerning John as a pleaser, while the former concerns John as the one being pleased).
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 2.1)
     A reaction: This demolishes the old idea of grammar as 'parts of speech' strung together according to superficial rules. The question is whether we now just have deeper syntax, or whether semantics is part of the process.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 2. Semantics
The semantics of a sentence is its potential for changing a context [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The basic semantics of sentences are not truth-conditions, but rather context change potential, which is a rule which determines what the effect of uttering the sentence would be on the context.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2)
     A reaction: [I. Heim's 'renowned' 1983 revision of Stalnaker] This means the semantics of a sentence can vary hugely, depending on context. It is known as 'dynamic semantics'. 'I think you should go ahead and do it'.
19. Language / C. Assigning Meanings / 4. Compositionality
Weaker compositionality says meaningful well-formed sentences get the meaning from the parts [Magidor]
     Full Idea: A weaker principle of compositionality states that if a syntactically well-formed sentence is meaningful, then its meaning is a function of the meaning of its parts.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1)
     A reaction: I would certainly accept this as being correct. I take the meaning of a sentence to be something which you assemble in your head as you hear the parts of it unfold. ….However, irony might exhibit meaning that only comes from the whole sentence. Hm.
Strong compositionality says meaningful expressions syntactically well-formed are meaningful [Magidor]
     Full Idea: In the strong form of the principle of compositionality any meaningful expressions combined in a syntactically well-formed manner compose a meaningful expression.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1)
     A reaction: [She cites Montague as holding this view] I find this plausible, at least. If you look at whole sentences they can seem meaningless, but if you track the process of composition a collective meaning emerges, despite the oddities.
Understanding unlimited numbers of sentences suggests that meaning is compositional [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The fact that speakers of natural languages have the capacity to understand indefinitely many new sentences suggests that meaning must be compositional.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.2.1)
     A reaction: To some extent, the compositionality of meaning is so obvious as to hardly require pointing out. It is the precise nature of the claim, and the extent to which whole sentences can add to the compositional meaning, that is of interest.
19. Language / D. Propositions / 2. Abstract Propositions / b. Propositions as possible worlds
Are there partial propositions, lacking truth value in some possible worlds? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Are there such things as 'partial propositions', which are truth-valueless relative to some possible worlds?
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 1.1)
     A reaction: Presumably this could be expressed without possible worlds. Are there propositions meaningful in New Guinea, and meaningless in England? Do some propositions require the contingent existence of certain objects to be meaningful?
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / a. Contextual meaning
We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: To attribute necessity to a condition, an outcome or effect, the truth of a statement, or a conclusion, is to indicate within the relevant context that no alternative is possible. In each context there are appropriate grounds for such judgements.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.V)
     A reaction: This anticipipates Kit Fine's account of necessity by 25 years, and seems to be the right way to understand it. In ordinary usage, 'there is no alternative' is obvious a quite different claim in very different contexts.
A sentence can be meaningful, and yet lack a truth value [Magidor]
     Full Idea: 'That is red' in a context where the demonstrative fails to refer is truth-valueless, despite being meaningful, as is 'the queen of France in 2010 is bald'. ...The claim that some sentences are meaningful but truth-valueless is, then, widely accepted.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 4.1)
     A reaction: The lack of truth value is usually because of reference failure. It is best to say the words are meaningful, but no proposition is expressed.
In the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are assumed in a context, for successful assertion [Magidor]
     Full Idea: According to the pragmatic approach, presuppositions are constraints on the context: if a sentence s generates a presupposition p, an assertion of s cannot proceed smoothly unless the context already entails p (p is taken for granted).
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2)
     A reaction: She credits Stalnaker for this approach. There is a choice between the presuppositions being largely driven by internal features of the sentence, or by external features of context. You may not know the context of some statements.
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / b. Implicature
The infelicitiousness of trivial truth is explained by uninformativeness, or a static context-set [Magidor]
     Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially true, asserting it would violate the maxim of quantity. For Stalnaker, if p is trivially true, it involves no update to the context-set, and is thus pointless.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2)
     A reaction: 'Let us remind ourselves, before we proceed, of the following trivial truth: p'.
The infelicitiousness of trivial falsity is explained by expectations, or the loss of a context-set [Magidor]
     Full Idea: In Grice's theory if a sentence is trivially false, asserting it would violate the maxim of quality. For Stalnaker if p is trivially false, removing all worlds incompatible with p would result in an empty context-set, preventing any further communication.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.2)
     A reaction: [compressed] I'm not sure whether we need to 'explain' the inappropriateness of uttering trivial falsities. I take the main rule of conversation to be 'don't be boring', but we all violate that.
19. Language / F. Communication / 5. Pragmatics / c. Presupposition
A presupposition is what makes an utterance sound wrong if it is not assumed? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The most obvious test for presupposition would be this: if s generates the presupposition p, then an utterance of s would be infelicitous, unless p is taken for granted by participants in the conversation.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.1)
     A reaction: The principle of charity seems to be involved here - that we try to make people's utterances sound right, so we add in the presuppositions which would achieve that. The problem, she says, is that the infelicity may have other causes.
A test for presupposition would be if it provoked 'hey wait a minute - I have no idea that....' [Magidor]
     Full Idea: A proposed test for presupposition is the 'Hey, wait a minute' test. S presupposes that p, just in case it would be felictious to respond to an utterance of s with something like 'Hey, wait a minute - I had not idea that p!'.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.2)
     A reaction: [K. Von Finkel 2004 made the suggestion] That is, you think 'hm ...this statement seems to presuppose p'. She says the suggestion vastly over-generates possible presuppositions - unlikely ones, as well as the obvious ones.
The best tests for presupposition are projecting it to negation, conditional, conjunction, questions [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The most robust tests for presupposition are the projection tests. If s presupposes p, then ¬s does too. If s1 presupposes p, then 'if s1 then s2' presupposes p. If s1 presupposes p, then 's1 and s2' presupposes p. If s presupposes p, then 's?' does too.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.1.3)
     A reaction: [compressed] She also discusses quantifiers. In other words, the presupposition remains stable through various transformations of the underlying proposition.
If both s and not-s entail a sentence p, then p is a presupposition [Magidor]
     Full Idea: In the traditional account, a sentence s presupposes p if and only if both s and ¬s entail p. Standardly, this entails that if s presupposes p, then whenever p is false, s must be neither true nor false.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2)
     A reaction: 'I'm looking down on the garden' presupposes 'I'm upstairs'. Why would 'I'm not looking down on the garden' entail 'I'm upstairs'? I seem to have missed something.
Why do certain words trigger presuppositions? [Magidor]
     Full Idea: We can ask why a range of lexical items (e.g. 'stop' or 'know') trigger the presuppositions they do.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 5.3.2)
     A reaction: I'm not sure whether we'll get an answer, but I would approach the question by thinking about mental files.
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / d. Metaphor
One theory says metaphors mean the same as the corresponding simile [Magidor]
     Full Idea: On standard versions of the simile theory of metaphors, they mean the same as the corresponding simile.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: Magidor points out that this allows the metaphor to work while being meaningless, since all the work is done by the perfectly meaningful simile. But the metaphor must at least mean enough to indicate what the simile is.
Theories of metaphor divide over whether they must have literal meanings [Magidor]
     Full Idea: There are theories of metaphors that require them to have literal meanings in order to achieve their metaphorical purpose, and those that do not.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: I take almost any string of proper language to have literal meaning (for compositional reasons), even if the end result is somewhat ridiculous. 'Churchill was a lion' obviously has literal meaning. And so does 'Churchill was a transcendental number'.
The simile view of metaphors removes their magic, and won't explain why we use them [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The simile theory of metaphors makes them too easy to figure out, when they cannot be paraphrased in literal terms, …and it does not explain why we use metaphors as well as similes.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: [She cites Davidson for these points] They might just be similes with the added frisson of leaving out 'like', so that they seem at first to be false, until you work out the simile and see their truth.
Maybe a metaphor is just a substitute for what is intended literally, like 'icy' for 'unemotional' [Magidor]
     Full Idea: According to the substitution view of metaphors, a word used metaphorically is merely a substitute for another word or phrase that expresses the same meaning literally. Thus 'John is an ice-cube' is a substitute for 'John is cruel and unemotional'.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: This seems to capture the denotation but miss the connotation. Whoever came up with this theory didn't read much poetry.
Gricean theories of metaphor involve conversational implicatures based on literal meanings [Magidor]
     Full Idea: Gricean theories of metaphor …assume that conversational implicatures are generated via literal contents, and hence that a sentence cannot generate an implicature without being literally meaningful.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: Magidor gives not details of such theories, but presumably the metaphor is all in the speaker's intention, which is parasitic on the wayward literal meaning, as in cases of irony.
Non-cognitivist views of metaphor says there are no metaphorical meanings, just effects of the literal [Magidor]
     Full Idea: According to non-cognitivists there is no such thing as metaphorical meaning. …The effects on the hearer are induced directly via the literal meaning of the metaphor.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: [This is said to be Davidson's view] I wonder how many people defended some explicit 'metaphorical meaning', as opposed to connotations that accumulate as you take in the metaphor? Any second meaning is just a further literal meaning.
Metaphors as substitutes for the literal misses one predicate varying with context [Magidor]
     Full Idea: A problem with the substitution view of metaphors is that the same predicate can have very different metaphorical contributions in different contexts. Consider 'Juliet is the sun' uttered by Romeo, and 'Stalin is the sun' from a devoted communist.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: The substitution view never looked good (especially if you like poetry), and now it looks a lot worse.
Metaphors tend to involve category mistakes, by joining disjoint domains [Magidor]
     Full Idea: The fact that most metaphors involve category mistakes is not a coincidence. …A big part of them is to do with connecting objects and properties that normally seem to belong to disjoint domains.
     From: Ofra Magidor (Category Mistakes [2013], 3.5)
     A reaction: Metaphysica poets took disjoint domains and 'yoked them together by violence', according to Dr Johnson.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius]
     Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.
     From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078
     A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book.
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 6. Necessity of Kinds
We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Natural necessity involves the concept of generative mechanisms and powerful particulars, and these in turn can be the basis of a useful notion of a natural kind.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.V)
     A reaction: Not sure about that. Say gold and silver are two kinds that lead to two outcomes. Each is a natural necessity. How do you distinguish them? Only by one being the gold-necessity and the other the silver-necessity. Circular?
26. Natural Theory / B. Natural Kinds / 7. Critique of Kinds
Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: We know from biology that naturally occurring species do not exhibit the constancy required by the concept of natural kind.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 8.IV)
     A reaction: This view has been challenged recently. How much constancy does a natural kind need? Even protons decay eventually, it seems. I think a natural kind just needs a fair degree of stability over a reasonable time-period. Tigers qualify.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 2. Types of cause
If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The concept of cause may come to include the concepts of its usual effects. Concepts of this character are used in science, and in common language, to ascribe powers.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: See Theme 8|c|3 in Theme/Structure for more ideas about powers. It's hard to see how you could specify a cause at all if you weren't allowed to say what it does. I love powers, and want to make them the key idea in all of metaphysics.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The Humean effort to ground the intuition of causal directionality on temporal priority of cause alone fails, because in fact some causes and effects are simultaneous. The moving of the knife and separation of the orange occur together.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: Since I take causation to be largely concerned with movements of 'energy', this idea that cause and effect might be simultaneous sounds more like a matter of pragmatics and convention. Moving the knife and moving the orange are different.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 6. Causation as primitive
Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The exercise of causal power is not a force or power that has some existence of its own but refers to forceful objects at work.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: This seems to be a behaviourist account of causation, which should make us a bit suspicious. Powers differ from one another. Does all causation have something universally in common? 'Energy' is a stab at the missing ingredient.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / a. Observation of causation
Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Causation always involves a material particular which produces or generates something.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.I.A)
     A reaction: I agree with this. My bete noire is the idea that causation somehow results from laws or general truths. That gets the whole thing the wrong way round. This idea is based on the notion of 'powers'.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / c. Conditions of causation
Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Efficient causes comprise both the presence of stimuli which activate a quiescent individual, and the absence or removal of constraints upon an individual already in a state of activity.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.II.B)
     A reaction: This is part of an account of causation in term of 'powers', with which I agree. Before you object, there is always going to be something about causation which is mind boggling weird, and probably leaves even God bewildered.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / d. Selecting the cause
The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: We can unambiguously differentiate the cause from the effect in that whatever stimulates or releases the action of the powerful particular involved in the causal production is the cause or part of the cause of that effect.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: I have doubts about distinguishing stimulus from release, and they sensibly don't say they have a test for 'the' cause, but I roughly agree with this idea. I take 'the' cause to also be tied in with explanation.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 5. Laws from Universals
Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The original Humean suggestion was that lawlike statements must contain only purely qualitative predicates - that is, predicates which do not require in a statement of their meaning a reference to any particular object or spatio-temporal location.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II)
     A reaction: Harré and Madden are keen to promote particulars (with powers) as the foundation of scientific theory, and I agree with them. It strikes me as quite elementary that generalisations arise from particulars, so can't fundamentally explain them.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 7. Strictness of Laws
Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The whole idea of a formal analysis of the concept of lawlikeness has come to seem hopeless; every syntactical criterion proposed has a counter-example.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II)
     A reaction: They seem unaware of Lewis's work in this area, which may be the most sophisticated attempt at a (Humean) attempt at formal analysis. Personally I see nothing in Lewis that would make them change their minds.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / b. Scientific necessity
Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Given some general theory specifying the fundamental causal powers and thereby laying down the general lineaments of a world, the necessity of certain effects can be inferred. They will be 'hypothetically necessary' (given those powers).
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 1.III.B)
     A reaction: This is a pretty good statement of the core idea of necessity at the heart of scientific essentialism. Are we to call this 'natural' necessity or 'metaphysical' necessity? Presumably it is 'relative' necessity. Big implications for induction!
Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Humeans say there can be no element of necessity in the causal relation because the conjunction of a description of a cause with the negation of a description of its usual effect is never self-contradictory.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.I)
     A reaction: We might say there actually is a contradiction, because you assert the existence of something, and then deny that existence by denying that the effect could occur. If the object is inert this is wrong, but if it is defined by its powers it is right.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws
In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The only sure way of distinguishing lawful and accidental universal statements is to point out that in the former cases we see why the regularity must hold, while in the latter case we do not.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II)
     A reaction: I agree with this, and also take it to be the solution to the problem of induction. That smoking causes cancer will be a true generalisation but not a law, until we see clearly why it happens.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 11. Against Laws of Nature
We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: There is a case for calling a generalisation a law when its only confirmation is the multiplication of instances, if they don't conflict with other criteria. In fact any supported generalisation could count as a law if there is no counter-evidence.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 2.II)
     A reaction: This is the beginning of the modern doubts about laws of nature, fully articulated in Mumford 2004. It seems to me inescapable that laws drop out if our ontology is based on powerful particulars. They are just patterns of outcome.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 1. Mechanics / a. Explaining movement
We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: A moving thing is perceptually distinct from a motionless thing, but takes on no new quality. The perception of its motion is a genuine perception. Its motion is not inferred from observation of its successive occupations of different relative positions.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 3.II)
     A reaction: This seems to be a response to Russell's reductive 'at-at' account of motion, which always struck me as wrong. It doesn't prove Russell wrong, of course, and they are trying to demonstrate that we perceive causation directly.
27. Natural Reality / A. Classical Physics / 2. Thermodynamics / a. Energy
'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: In the case of electron/positron/gamma ray annihilation scientists maintain the paradigm of rational explanation by inventing a quasi-substance as the bearer of continuity, and all three are seen in terms of 'energy'.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.III)
     A reaction: What a relief to see energy described as a 'quasi-substance'. I spent all of my physics studies bewildered by the nature of energy (especially when described as 'pure energy'). What does e=mc^2 mean if e is a quasi-substance?
'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The 'store' of kinetic energy is used as a latency concept to explain the power of bringing about changes which is manifested by the moving thing when its motion is arrested.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.IV)
     A reaction: These ideas have been most illuminating in connecting for me the general idea of a 'power' to the rather dubious concept of 'energy' in physics.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 2. Space
Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Space lacks a place, and does not qualify as an individual, since the ordinary notion of individuals relates to place not space. ...But we can think of space as present in every place through the necessary connection between space and all places.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 9.IV)
     A reaction: I'm not sure I understand it being present in every place, given that it is every place.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus]
     Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness.
     From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
     A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them.
27. Natural Reality / F. Chemistry / 1. Chemistry
Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: The same electronic constitution confers two distinct powers upon chemical atoms: the power of entering only into certain chemical combinations and the power to radiate a particular spectrum.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 5.VI)
     A reaction: Presumably radioactive elements emit other radiation. Do atoms have passive powers as well as active ones?
Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Modern chemistry is not, as chemistry, purely structural. ...Thus CO2 is a different substance from SO2.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 6.II)
     A reaction: I don't think I ever thought the chemistry was purely structural, but if you go in for the idea that reality is essentially geometrical (inspired by physics, presumably, like Ladyman) then you might make this mistake.
28. God / C. Attitudes to God / 5. Atheism
Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden]
     Full Idea: Theism is supposedly a positive view that renders the world more intelligible than its alternatives, and this professed programme requires the production of results.
     From: Harré,R./Madden,E.H. (Causal Powers [1975], 7.VI)
     A reaction: A nice articulation of a view of theism which will make believers wince, because Harré and Madden see it as a scientific theory, intended to explain the world. I'm with them. I see Plato's theory of Forms as a scientific theory.