Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'works', 'Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford' and 'Dispositional Essentialism and the Laws of Nature'

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5 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories

18088	Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental [Place]
	Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1)
	A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions.

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws

18089	Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place]
	Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6)
	A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world.

17993	Laws are relations of kinds, quantities and qualities, supervening on the essences of a domain [Vetter]
	Full Idea: The laws of a domain are the fundamental, general explanatory relationships between kinds, quantities, and qualities of that domain, that supervene upon the essential natures of those things.
	From: Barbara Vetter (Dispositional Essentialism and the Laws of Nature [2012], 9.3)
	A reaction: Hm. How small can the domain be? Can it embrace the multiverse? Supervenience is a rather weak relationship. How about 'are necessitated/entailed by'? Are the relationships supposed to do the explaining? I would have thought the natures did that.

29. Religion / B. Monotheistic Religion / 4. Christianity / d. Heresy

16713	Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics [Tertullian]
	Full Idea: Philosophers are the forefathers of heretics.
	From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 20.2

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 1. Religious Commitment / e. Fideism

6610	I believe because it is absurd [Tertullian]
	Full Idea: I believe because it is absurd ('Credo quia absurdum est').
	From: Tertullian (works [c.200]), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason n4.2
	A reaction: This seems to be a rather desperate remark, in response to what must have been rather good hostile arguments. No one would abandon the support of reason if it was easy to acquire. You can't deny its engaging romantic defiance, though.