Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Classical Cosmology (frags)', 'Postscripts on supervenience' and 'The Putney Debates'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience

13745	Supervenience is not a dependence relation, on the lines of causal, mereological or semantic dependence [Kim]
	Full Idea: It is a mistake, or at least misleading, to think of supervenience itself as a special and distinctive type of dependence relation, alongside causal dependence, mereological dependence, semantic dependence, and others.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
	A reaction: The point, I take it, is that supervenience is something which requires explanation, rather than being a conclusion to the debate. Why are statues beautiful? Why do brains generate minds?

13746	Supervenience is just a 'surface' relation of pattern covariation, which still needs deeper explanation [Kim]
	Full Idea: Supervenience itself is not an explanatory relation, not a 'deep' metaphysical relation; rather it is a 'surface' relation that reports a pattern of property covariation, suggesting the presence of an interesting dependency relation that might explain it.
	From: Jaegwon Kim (Postscripts on supervenience [1993], 2)
	A reaction: I think the underlying idea here is that supervenience appeals to the Humean view of physical laws as mere regularities, but it is no good for those who seek underlying mechanisms to explain the patterns and regularities. Humeans are wrong.

24. Political Theory / B. Nature of a State / 2. State Legitimacy / c. Social contract

23215	Even the poorest have a life to lead, and so should consent to who governs them [-]
	Full Idea: For really I think that the poorest hee that is in England hath a life to live, as the greatest hee; …and every Man that is to live under a Government ought first by his own Consent to put himself under that Government.
	From: - (The Putney Debates [1647])
	A reaction: [remark made by Thomas Rainsborough] This is the social contract idea which is explicit in Hobbes. I'm sure we can at least trace it back to John Lilburne in the 1630s.

27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 1. Cosmology

5994	Is the cosmos open or closed, mechanical or teleological, alive or inanimate, and created or eternal? [Robinson,TM, by PG]
	Full Idea: The four major disputes in classical cosmology were whether the cosmos is 'open' or 'closed', whether it is explained mechanistically or teleologically, whether it is alive or mere matter, and whether or not it has a beginning.
	From: report of T.M. Robinson (Classical Cosmology (frags) [1997]) by PG - Db (ideas)
	A reaction: A nice summary. The standard modern view is closed, mechanistic, inanimate and non-eternal. But philosophers can ask deeper questions than physicists, and I say we are entitled to speculate when the evidence runs out.