52 ideas
| 15801 | Many philosophers aim to understand metaphysics by studying ourselves [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Leibniz, Reid, Brentano and others have held that, by considering certain obvious facts about ourselves, we can arrive at an understanding of the general principles of metaphysics. The present book is intended to confirm that view. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 1) | |
| A reaction: I sympathise, but don't really agree. I see metaphysics as a process of filtering ourselves out of the picture, leaving an account of how things actually are. |
| 15802 | I use variables to show that each item remains the same entity throughout [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: My use of variables is not merely pedantic; it indicates that the various items on our list pertain to one and the same entity throughout. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 2) | |
| A reaction: I am one of those poor souls who finds modern analytic philosophy challenging simply because I think in terms of old fashioned words, instead of thinking like mathematicians and logicians. This is a nice defence of their approach. |
| 15327 | Kripke's semantic theory has actually inspired promising axiomatic theories [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: Kripke has a semantic theory of truth which has inspired promising axiomatic theories of truth. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 01.2 | |
| A reaction: Feferman produced an axiomatic version of Kripke's semantic theory. |
| 15343 | Kripke offers a semantic theory of truth (involving models) [Kripke, by Horsten] |
| Full Idea: One of the most popular semantic theories of truth is Kripke's theory. It describes a class of models which themselves involve a truth predicate (unlike Tarski's semantic theory). | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Leon Horsten - The Tarskian Turn 02.3 | |
| A reaction: The modern versions explored by Horsten are syntactic versions of this, derived from Feferman's axiomatisation of the Kripke theory. |
| 14966 | The Tarskian move to a metalanguage may not be essential for truth theories [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke established that, contrary to the prevalent Tarskian dogma, attributions of truth do not always force a move to a metalanguage. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975], 5.1) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] |
| 14967 | Certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates [Kripke, by Gupta] |
| Full Idea: Kripke showed via a fixed-point argument that certain three-valued languages can contain their own truth predicates. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Anil Gupta - Truth | |
| A reaction: [Gupta also cites Martin and Woodruff 1975] It is an odd paradox that truth can only be included if one adds a truth-value of 'neither true nor false'. The proposed three-valued system is 'strong Kleene logic'. |
| 16328 | Kripke classified fixed points, and illuminated their use for clarifications [Kripke, by Halbach] |
| Full Idea: Kripke's main contribution was …his classification of the different consistent fixed points and the discussion of their use for discriminating between ungrounded sentences, paradoxical sentences, and so on. | |
| From: report of Saul A. Kripke (Outline of a Theory of Truth [1975]) by Volker Halbach - Axiomatic Theories of Truth 15.1 |
| 8729 | Intuitionists deny excluded middle, because it is committed to transcendent truth or objects [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Intuitionists in mathematics deny excluded middle, because it is symptomatic of faith in the transcendent existence of mathematical objects and/or the truth of mathematical statements. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: There are other problems with excluded middle, such as vagueness, but on the whole I, as a card-carrying 'realist', am committed to the law of excluded middle. |
| 8763 | The number 3 is presumably identical as a natural, an integer, a rational, a real, and complex [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: It is surely wise to identify the positions in the natural numbers structure with their counterparts in the integer, rational, real and complex number structures. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: The point is that this might be denied, since 3, 3/1, 3.00.., and -3*i^2 are all arrived at by different methods of construction. Natural 3 has a predecessor, but real 3 doesn't. I agree, intuitively, with Shapiro. Russell (1919) disagreed. |
| 18249 | Cauchy gave a formal definition of a converging sequence. [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A sequence a1,a2,... of rational numbers is 'Cauchy' if for each rational number ε>0 there is a natural number N such that for all natural numbers m, n, if m>N and n>N then -ε < am - an < ε. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.2 n4) | |
| A reaction: The sequence is 'Cauchy' if N exists. |
| 8764 | Categories are the best foundation for mathematics [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: There is a dedicated contingent who hold that the category of 'categories' is the proper foundation for mathematics. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.3 n7) | |
| A reaction: He cites Lawvere (1966) and McLarty (1993), the latter presenting the view as a form of structuralism. I would say that the concept of a category will need further explication, and probably reduce to either sets or relations or properties. |
| 8762 | Two definitions of 3 in terms of sets disagree over whether 1 is a member of 3 [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Zermelo said that for each number n, its successor is the singleton of n, so 3 is {{{null}}}, and 1 is not a member of 3. Von Neumann said each number n is the set of numbers less than n, so 3 is {null,{null},{null,{null}}}, and 1 is a member of 3. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 645 - Zermelo could save Plato from the criticisms of Aristotle! These two accounts are cited by opponents of the set-theoretical account of numbers, because it seems impossible to arbitrate between them. |
| 8760 | Numbers do not exist independently; the essence of a number is its relations to other numbers [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The structuralist vigorously rejects any sort of ontological independence among the natural numbers; the essence of a natural number is its relations to other natural numbers. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to place the emphasis on ordinals (what order?) rather than on cardinality (how many?). I am strongly inclined to think that this is the correct view, though you can't really have relations if there is nothing to relate. |
| 8761 | A 'system' is related objects; a 'pattern' or 'structure' abstracts the pure relations from them [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A 'system' is a collection of objects with certain relations among them; a 'pattern' or 'structure' is the abstract form of a system, highlighting the interrelationships and ignoring any features they do not affect how they relate to other objects. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: Note that 'ignoring' features is a psychological account of abstraction, which (thanks to Frege and Geach) is supposed to be taboo - but which I suspect is actually indispensable in any proper account of thought and concepts. |
| 8744 | Logicism seems to be a non-starter if (as is widely held) logic has no ontology of its own [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The thesis that principles of arithmetic are derivable from the laws of logic runs against a now common view that logic itself has no ontology. There are no particular logical objects. From this perspective logicism is a non-starter. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 5.1) | |
| A reaction: This criticism strikes me as utterly devastating. There are two routes to go: prove that logic does have an ontology of objects (what would they be?), or - better - deny that arithmetic contains any 'objects'. Or give up logicism. |
| 8749 | Term Formalism says mathematics is just about symbols - but real numbers have no names [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Term Formalism is the view that mathematics is just about characters or symbols - the systems of numerals and other linguistic forms. ...This will cover integers and rational numbers, but what are real numbers supposed to be, if they lack names? | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.1) | |
| A reaction: Real numbers (such as pi and root-2) have infinite decimal expansions, so we can start naming those. We could also start giving names like 'Harry' to other reals, though it might take a while. OK, I give up. |
| 8750 | Game Formalism is just a matter of rules, like chess - but then why is it useful in science? [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Game Formalism likens mathematics to chess, where the 'content' of mathematics is exhausted by the rules of operating with its language. ...This, however, leaves the problem of why the mathematical games are so useful to the sciences. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This thought pushes us towards structuralism. It could still be a game, but one we learned from observing nature, which plays its own games. Chess is, after all, modelled on warfare. |
| 8752 | Deductivism says mathematics is logical consequences of uninterpreted axioms [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: The Deductivist version of formalism (sometimes called 'if-thenism') says that the practice of mathematics consists of determining logical consequences of otherwise uninterpreted axioms. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 6.2) | |
| A reaction: [Hilbert is the source] More plausible than Term or Game Formalism (qv). It still leaves the question of why it seems applicable to nature, and why those particular axioms might be chosen. In some sense, though, it is obviously right. |
| 8753 | Critics resent the way intuitionism cripples mathematics, but it allows new important distinctions [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Critics commonly complain that the intuitionist restrictions cripple the mathematician. On the other hand, intuitionist mathematics allows for many potentially important distinctions not available in classical mathematics, and is often more subtle. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: The main way in which it cripples is its restriction on talk of infinity ('Cantor's heaven'), which was resented by Hilbert. Since high-level infinities are interesting, it would be odd if we were not allowed to discuss them. |
| 8731 | Conceptualist are just realists or idealist or nominalists, depending on their view of concepts [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: I classify conceptualists according to what they say about properties or concepts. If someone classified properties as existing independent of language I would classify her as a realist in ontology of mathematics. Or they may be idealists or nominalists. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: In other words, Shapiro wants to eliminate 'conceptualist' as a useful label in philosophy of mathematics. He's probably right. All thought involves concepts, but that doesn't produce a conceptualist theory of, say, football. |
| 8730 | 'Impredicative' definitions refer to the thing being described [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: A definition of a mathematical entity is 'impredicative' if it refers to a collection that contains the defined entity. The definition of 'least upper bound' is impredicative as it refers to upper bounds and characterizes a member of this set. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The big question is whether mathematics can live with impredicative definitions, or whether they threaten to be viciously circular, and undermine the whole enterprise. |
| 15832 | Events are states of affairs that occur at certain places and times [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We will restrict events to those states of affairs which occur at certain places and times. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.6) | |
| A reaction: If I say 'the bomb may explode sometime', that doesn't seem to refer to an event. Philosophers like Chisholm bowl along, defining left, right and centre, and never seem to step back from their system and ask obvious critical questions. |
| 15829 | The mark of a state of affairs is that it is capable of being accepted [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We will say that the mark of a state of affairs is the fact that it is capable of being accepted. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: I find this a quite bewildering proposal. It means that it is impossible for there to be a state of affairs which is beyond human conception, but why commit to that? |
| 15809 | A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies that it has some property [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: A state of affairs pertains to a thing if it implies the thing to have a certain property. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: For this to work, we must include extrinsic and relational properties, and properties which are derived from mere predication. I think this is bad metaphysics, and leads to endless confusions. |
| 15828 | I propose that events and propositions are two types of states of affairs [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I will propose that events are said to constitute one type of states of affairs, and propositions another | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: I would much prefer to distinguish between the static and the dynamic, so we have a static or timeless state of affairs, and a dynamic event or process. Propositions I take to be neither. He really means 'facts', which subsume the whole lot. |
| 15830 | Some properties can never be had, like being a round square [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: There are properties which nothing can possibly have; an example is the property of being both round and square. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.2) | |
| A reaction: This is a rather bizarre Meinongian claim. For a start it sounds like two properties not one. Is there a property of being both 'over here' and 'over there'? We might say the round-square property must exist, for God to fail to implement it (?) |
| 15827 | Some properties, such as 'being a widow', can be seen as 'rooted outside the time they are had' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Some properties may be said to be 'rooted outside the times at which they are had'. Examples are the property of being a widow and the property of being a future President. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: This is the sort of mess you when you treat the category in which an object belongs as if it was one of its properties. We categorise because of properties. |
| 15804 | If some dogs are brown, that entails the properties of 'being brown' and 'being canine' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: The state of affairs which is some dogs being brown may be said to entail (make it necessarily so) the property of 'being brown', as well as the properties of 'being canine' and 'being both brown and canine'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: And the property of 'being such that it is both brown and canine and brown or canine'. Etc. This is dangerous nonsense. Making all truths entail the existence of some property means we can no longer get to grips with real properties. |
| 15810 | Maybe we can only individuate things by relating them to ourselves [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: It may well be that the only way we have, ultimately, of individuating anything is to relate it uniquely to ourselves. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that Chisholm is thinking of 'ourselves' as meaning just himself, but I'm thinking this is plausible if he means the human community. I doubt whether there is much a philosopher can say on individuation that is revealing or precise. |
| 15805 | Being the tallest man is an 'individual concept', but not a haecceity [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Being the tallest man and being President of the United States are 'individual concepts', but not haecceities. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm introduces this term, to help him explain his haecceity more clearly. (His proposal on that adds a lot of fog to this area of metaphysics). |
| 15807 | A haecceity is a property had necessarily, and strictly confined to one entity [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: An individual essence or haecceity is a narrower type of individual concept. This is a property which is had necessarily, and which it is impossible for any other thing to have. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: [Apologies to Chisholm for leaving out the variables from his definition of haecceity. See Idea 15802] See also Idea 15805. The tallest man is unique, but someone else could become the tallest man. No one else could acquire 'being Socrates'. |
| 15814 | A peach is sweet and fuzzy, but it doesn't 'have' those qualities [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Our idea of a peach is not an idea of something that 'has' those particular qualities, but the concrete thing that 'is' sweet and round and fuzzy. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of his 'adverbial' account of properties, with which you have to sympathise. It tries to eliminate the possibility of some propertyless thing, to which properties can then be added, like sprinkling sugar on it. |
| 12852 | If x is ever part of y, then y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm has an axiom: if x is a proper part of y, then necessarily if y exists then x is part of it. If x is ever part of y, they y is necessarily such that x is part of y at any time that y exists. | |
| From: report of Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], p.149) by Peter Simons - Parts 5.3 | |
| A reaction: This is Chisholm's notorious mereological essentialism, that all parts are necessary, and change of part means change of thing. However, it looks to me more like a proposal about what properties are necessary, not what are essential. |
| 15808 | A traditional individual essence includes all of a thing's necessary characteristics [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: According to the traditional account of individual essence, each thing has only one individual essence and it includes all the characteristics that the thing has necessarily. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm is steeped in medieval theology, but I don't think this is quite what Aristotle meant. Everyone nowadays has to exclude the 'trivial' necessary properties, for a start. But why? I'm contemplating things which survive the loss of their essence. |
| 12851 | Intermittence is seen in a toy fort, which is dismantled then rebuilt with the same bricks [Chisholm, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Chisholm poses the problem of intermittence with the case of a toy fort which is built from toy bricks, taken apart, and then reassembled with the same bricks in the same position. | |
| From: report of Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], p.90) by Peter Simons - Parts 5.3 | |
| A reaction: You could strengthen the case, or the problem, by using those very bricks to build a ship during the interval. Or building a fort with a different design. Most people would be happy to say that same object (token) has been rebuilt. |
| 15806 | The property of being identical with me is an individual concept [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I wish to urge that the property of being identical with me is an individual concept. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.4) | |
| A reaction: I can just about live with the claim (for formal purposes) that I am identical with myself, but I strongly resist my then having a 'property' consisting of 'being identical with myself' (or 'not being identical with somone else' etc.). |
| 15826 | There is 'loose' identity between things if their properties, or truths about them, might differ [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that there is a 'loose' sense of identity that is consistent with saying 'A has a property that B does not have', or 'some things are true of A but not of B'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 3.2) | |
| A reaction: He is trying to explicate Bishop Butler's famous distinction between 'strict and philosophical' and 'loose and popular' senses. We might want to claim that the genuine identity relation is the 'loose' one (pace the logicians and mathematicians). |
| 15819 | Do sense-data have structure, location, weight, and constituting matter? [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Does a red sense-datum or appearance have a back side as well as a front? Where is it located? Does it have any weight? What is it made of? | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: A reductive physicalist like myself is not so troubled by questions like this, which smack of Descartes's non-spatial argument for dualism. |
| 15816 | 'I feel depressed' is more like 'he runs slowly' than like 'he has a red book' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: The sentences 'I feel depressed' and 'I feel exuberant' are related in the way in which 'He runs slowly' and 'He runs swiftly' are related, and not in the way in which 'He has a red book' and 'He has a brown book' are related. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Ducasse 1942 and Chisholm 1957 seem to be the sources of the adverbial theory. I gather Chisholm gave it up late in his career. The adverbial theory seems sort of right, but it doesn't illuminate what is happening. |
| 15818 | So called 'sense-data' are best seen as 'modifications' of the person experiencing them [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: We may summarise my way of looking at appearing by saying that so-called appearances or sense-data are 'affections' or 'modifications' of the person who is said to experience them. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Hm. That seems to transfer the ontological problem of the redness of the tomato from the tomato to the perceiver, but leave the basic difficulty untouched. I think we need to pull apart the intrinsic and subjective ingredients here. |
| 15817 | If we can say a man senses 'redly', why not also 'rectangularly'? [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: If we say a man 'senses redly', may we also say that he 'senses rhomboidally' or 'senses rectangularly'? There is no reason why not. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: This is Chisholm replying to one of the best known objections to the adverbial theory. Can we sense 'wobblyrhomboidallywithpinkdots-ly'? Can we perceive 'landscapely'? The problem is bigger than he thinks. |
| 8725 | Rationalism tries to apply mathematical methodology to all of knowledge [Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Rationalism is a long-standing school that can be characterized as an attempt to extend the perceived methodology of mathematics to all of knowledge. | |
| From: Stewart Shapiro (Thinking About Mathematics [2000], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: Sometimes called 'Descartes's Dream', or the 'Enlightenment Project', the dream of proving everything. Within maths, Hilbert's Programme aimed for the same certainty. Idea 22 is the motto for the opposition to this approach. |
| 15831 | Explanations have states of affairs as their objects [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: I suggest that states of affairs constitute the objects of the theory of explanation. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 4.4) | |
| A reaction: It is good to ask what the constituents of a theory of explanation might be. He has an all-embracing notion of state of affairs, whereas I would say that events and processes are separate. See Idea 15828. |
| 15811 | I am picked out uniquely by my individual essence, which is 'being identical with myself' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: What picks me out uniquely, without relating me to some other being? It can only be the property of 'being me' or 'being identical with myself', which can only be an individual essence or haecceity, a property I cannot fail to have. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: Only a philosopher (and a modern analytic one at that) would imagine that this was some crucial insight into how we know our own identities. |
| 15815 | Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I prefer to say that it is 'transparent' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Sartre says the ego is 'opaque'; I would think it better to say that the ego is 'transparent'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.8) | |
| A reaction: Insofar as we evidently have a self, I would say it is neither. It is directly experienced, through willing, motivation, and mental focus. |
| 15813 | People use 'I' to refer to themselves, with the meaning of their own individual essence [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Each person uses the first person pronoun to refer to himself, and in such a way that its reference (Bedeutung) is to himself and its intention (Sinn) is his own individual essence. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 1.5) | |
| A reaction: I think this is exactly right, and may be the basis of the way we essentialise in our understanding of the rest of reality. I have a strong notion of what is essential in me and what is not. |
| 15803 | Bad theories of the self see it as abstract, or as a bundle, or as a process [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Some very strange theories of the self suggest it is an abstract object, such as a class, or a property, or a function. Some theories imply that I am a collection, or a bundle, or a structure, or an event, or a process (or even a verb!). | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], Intro 4) | |
| A reaction: I certainly reject the abstract lot, but the second lot doesn't sound so silly to me, especially 'structure' and 'process'. I don't buy the idea that the Self is an indivisible monad. It is a central aspect of brain process - the prioritiser of thought. |
| 15821 | Determinism claims that every event has a sufficient causal pre-condition [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Determinism is the proposition that, for every event that occurs, there occurs a sufficient causal condition of that event. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: You need an ontology of events to put it precisely this way. Doesn't it also work the other way: that there is an event for every sufficient causal condition? The beginning and the end of reality pose problems. |
| 15824 | There are mere omissions (through ignorance, perhaps), and people can 'commit an omission' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: If a man does not respond to a greeting, if he was unaware that he was addressed then his failure to respond may be a mere omission. But if he intended to snub the man, then he could be said to have 'committed the omission'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.6) | |
| A reaction: Chisholm has an extensive knowledge of Catholic theology. These neat divisions are subject to vagueness and a continuum of cases in real life. |
| 15822 | The concept of physical necessity is basic to both causation, and to the concept of nature [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: It is generally agreed, I think, that the concept of physical necessity, or a law of nature, is fundamental to the theory of causation and, more generally, to the concept of nature. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.3) | |
| A reaction: This seems intuitively right, but we might be able to formulate a concept of nature that had a bit less necessity in it, especially if we read a few books on quantum theory first. |
| 15823 | Some propose a distinct 'agent causation', as well as 'event causation' [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a distinction is made between 'event causation' and 'agent causation' and it has been suggested that there is an unbridgeable gap between the two. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Nope, don't buy that. I connect it with Davidson's 'anomalous monism', that tries to combine one substance with separate laws of action. The metaphysical price for such a theory is too high to pay. |
| 15820 | A 'law of nature' is just something which is physically necessary [Chisholm] |
| Full Idea: When we say something is 'physically necessary' we can replace it with 'law of nature'. | |
| From: Roderick Chisholm (Person and Object [1976], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: [plucked out of context even more than usual!] This is illuminating about what contemporary philosophers (such as Armstrong) seem to mean by a law of nature. It is not some grand equation, but a small local necessary connection. |