54 ideas
8166 | Truth is part of semantics, since valid inference preserves truth [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The concept of truth belongs to semantics, since after all truth is what must be preserved by a valid deductive inference. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 2) | |
A reaction: Does this conclusion follow? Compare 'nice taste belongs to cooking, since that is what cooking must preserve'. I don't like this. I take 'truth' to be a relevant concept to a discussion of a dog's belief that it is going to be taken for a walk. |
6548 | Physicalism requires the naturalisation or rejection of set theory [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Eventually set theory will have to be either naturalised or rejected, if a thoroughgoing physicalism is to be maintained. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
A reaction: Personally I regard Platonism as a form of naturalism (though a rather bold and dramatic one). The central issue seems to be the ability of the human main/brain to form 'abstract' notions about the physical world in which it lives. |
8173 | Language can violate bivalence because of non-referring terms or ill-defined predicates [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Two features of natural languages cause them to violate bivalence: singular terms (or proper names) which have a sense but fail to denote an object ('the centre of the universe'); and predicates which are not well defined for every object. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: If we switch from sentences to propositions these problems might be avoided. If there is no reference, or a vague predicate, then there is (maybe) just no proposition being expressed which could be evaluated for truth. |
8179 | The law of excluded middle is the logical reflection of the principle of bivalence [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The law of excluded middle is the reflection, within logic, of the principle of bivalence. It states that 'For any statement A, the statement 'A or not-A' is true'. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: True-or-not-true is an easier condition to fulfil than true-or-false. The second says that 'false' is the only alternative, but the first allows other alternatives to 'true' (such as 'undecidable'). It is hard to challenge excluded middle. Somewhat true? |
6532 | Types cannot be reduced, but levels of reduction are varied groupings of the same tokens [Lycan] |
Full Idea: If types cannot be reduced to more physical levels, this is not an embarrassment, as long as our institutional categories, our physiological categories, and our physical categories are just alternative groupings of the same tokens. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: This is a self-evident truth about a car engine, so I don't see why it wouldn't apply equally to a brain. Lycan's identification of the type as the thing which cannot be reduced seems a promising explanation of much confusion among philosophers. |
6531 | Institutions are not reducible as types, but they are as tokens [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Institutional types are irreducible, though I assume that institutional tokens are reducible in the sense of strict identity, all the way down to the subatomic level. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: This seems a promising distinction, as the boundaries of 'institutions' disappear when you begin to reduce them to lower levels (cf. Idea 4601), and yet plenty of institutions are self-evidently no more than physics. Plants are invisible as physics. |
6534 | One location may contain molecules, a metal strip, a key, an opener of doors, and a human tragedy [Lycan] |
Full Idea: One space-time slice may be occupied by a collection of molecules, a metal strip, a key, an allower of entry to hotel rooms, a facilitator of adultery, and a destroyer souls. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: Desdemona's handkerchief is a nice example. This sort of remark seems to be felt by some philosophers to be heartless wickedness, and yet it so screamingly self-evident that it is impossible to deny. |
8184 | Philosophers should not presume reality, but only invoke it when language requires it [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The philosopher's task is not to make a prior commitment for or against realism, but to discover how far realist considerations must be invoked in order to describe our understanding of our language: they may be invoked only if they must be invoked. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 6) | |
A reaction: I don't see why the default position should be solipsism, or a commitment to Ockham's Razor. This is the Cartesian 'Enlightenment Project' approach to philosophy - that everything has to be proved. There is more to ontology than language. |
8185 | We can't make sense of a world not apprehended by a mind [Dummett] |
Full Idea: We can make no clear sense of there being a world that is not apprehended by any mind. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 8) | |
A reaction: I find Dummett's view quite baffling. It is no coincidence that Dummett is a theist, along (it seems) Berkeleian lines. I see no more problem with imagining such worlds than with imagining ships sunken long ago which will never be found. |
8163 | Since 'no bird here' and 'no squirrel here' seem the same, we must talk of 'atomic' facts [Dummett] |
Full Idea: What complex of objects constitutes the fact that there is no bird on the bough, and how is that distinct from no squirrel on the bough? This drives us to see the world as composed of 'atomic' facts, making complexes into compounds, not reality itself. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 1) | |
A reaction: [He cites early Wittgenstein as an example] But 'no patch of red here' (or sense-datum) seems identical to 'no patch of green here'. I suppose you could catalogue all the atomic facts, and note that red wasn't among them. But you could do that for birds. |
8161 | We know we can state facts, with true statements [Dummett] |
Full Idea: One thing we know about facts, namely that we can state them. Whenever we make some true statement, we state some fact. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 1) | |
A reaction: Then facts become boring, and are subsumed within the problem of what 'true' means. Personally I have a concept of facts which includes unstatable facts. The physical basis of melancholy I take to be a complex fact which is beyond our powers. |
8180 | 'That is red or orange' might be considered true, even though 'that is red' and 'that is orange' were not [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A statement of the form 'that is red or orange', said of something on the borderline between the two colours, might rank as true, although neither 'that is red' nor 'that is orange' was true. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: It seems to me that the problem here would be epistemological rather than ontological. One of the two is clearly true, but sometimes we can't decide which. How can anyone say 'It isn't red and it isn't orange, but it is either red or orange'? |
6529 | I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics [Lycan] |
Full Idea: I see the 'role'/'occupant' distinction as fundamental to metaphysics. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.0) | |
A reaction: A passing remark in a discussion of functionalism about the mind, but I find it appealing. Causation is basic to materialistic metaphysics, and it creates networks of regular causes. It leaves open the essentialist question of WHY it has that role. |
6549 | I think greenness is a complex microphysical property of green objects [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Personally I favour direct realism regarding secondary qualities, and identify greenness with some complex microphysical property exemplified by green physical objects. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.4) | |
A reaction: He cites D.M.Armstrong (1981) as his source. Personally I find this a bewildering proposal. Does he think there is greenness in grass AS WELL AS the emission of that wavelength of electro-magnetic radiation? Is greenness zooming through the air? |
8178 | Empirical and a priori knowledge are not distinct, but are extremes of a sliding scale [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Our sentences cannot be divided into two classes, empirical and a priori, the truth of one to be decided by observation, the other by ratiocination. They lie on a scale, with observational sentences at one end, and mathematical ones at the other. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: The modern post-Kantian dissolution of the rationalist-empiricist debate. I would say that mathematical sentences require no empirical evidence (for their operation, rather than foundation), but a bit of reasoning is involved in observation. |
6543 | Intentionality comes in degrees [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Intentionality comes in degrees. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
A reaction: I agree. A footprint is 'about' a foot, in the sense of containing concentrated information about it. Can we, though, envisage a higher degree than human thought? Is there a maximum degree? Everything is 'about' everything, in some respect. |
6537 | Teleological views allow for false intentional content, unlike causal and nomological theories [Lycan] |
Full Idea: The teleological view begins to explain intentionality, and in particular allows brain states and events to have false intentional content; causal and nomological theories of intentionality tend to falter on this last task. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Certainly if you say thought is 'caused' by the world, false thought become puzzling. I'm not sure I understand the rest of this, but it is an intriguing remark about a significant issue… |
6546 | Pain is composed of urges, desires, impulses etc, at different levels of abstraction [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Our phenomenal experience of pain has components - it is a complex, consisting (perhaps) of urges, desires, impulses, and beliefs, probably occurring at quite different levels of institutional abstraction. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.5) | |
A reaction: This seems to be true, and offers the reductionist a strategy for making inroads into the supposed irreducable and fundamental nature of qualia. What's it like to be a complex hierarchically structured multi-functional organism? |
6547 | The right 'level' for qualia is uncertain, though top (behaviourism) and bottom (particles) are false [Lycan] |
Full Idea: It is just arbitrary to choose a level of nature a priori as the locus of qualia, even though we can agree that high levels (such as behaviourism) and low-levels (such as the subatomic) can be ruled out as totally improbable. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.6) | |
A reaction: Very good. People scream 'qualia!' whenever the behaviour level or the atomic level are proposed as the locations of the mind, but the suggestion that they are complex, and are spread across many functional levels in the middle sounds good. |
6527 | If energy in the brain disappears into thin air, this breaches physical conservation laws [Lycan] |
Full Idea: By interacting causally, Cartesian dualism seems to violate the conservation laws of physics (concerning matter and energy). This seems testable, and afferent and efferent pathways disappearing into thin air would suggest energy is not conserved. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
A reaction: It would seem to be no problem as long as outputs were identical in energy to inputs. If the experiment could actually be done, the result might astonish us. |
6528 | In lower animals, psychology is continuous with chemistry, and humans are continuous with animals [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Evolution has proceeded in all other known species by increasingly complex configurations of molecules and organs, which support primitive psychologies; our human psychologies are more advanced, but undeniably continuous with lower animals. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 1.1) | |
A reaction: Personally I find the evolution objection to dualism highly persuasive. I don't see how anyone can take evolution seriously and be a dualist. If there is a dramatic ontological break at some point, a plausible reason would be needed for that. |
6554 | Two behaviourists meet. The first says,"You're fine; how am I?" [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Old joke: two Behaviourists meet in the street, and the first says,"You're fine; how am I?" | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], n1.6) | |
A reaction: This invites the response that introspection is uniquely authoritative about 'how we are', but this has been challenged quite a lot recently, which pushes us to consider whether these stupid behaviourists might actually have a good point. |
6545 | If functionalism focuses on folk psychology, it ignores lower levels of function [Lycan] |
Full Idea: 'Analytical functionalists', who hold that meanings of mental terms are determined by the causal roles associated with them by 'folk psychology', deny themselves appeals to lower levels of functional organisation. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
A reaction: Presumably folk psychology can fit into the kind of empirical methodology favoured by behaviourists, whereas 'lower levels' are going to become rather speculative and unscientific. |
6541 | Functionalism must not be too abstract to allow inverted spectrum, or so structural that it becomes chauvinistic [Lycan] |
Full Idea: The functionalist must find a level of characterisation of mental states that is not so abstract or behaviouristic as to rule out the possibility of inverted spectrum etc., nor so specific and structural as to fall into chauvinism. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
A reaction: If too specific then animals and aliens won't be able to implement the necessary functions; if the theory becomes very behaviouristic, then it loses interest in the possibility of an inverted spectrum. He is certainly right to hunt for a middle ground. |
6539 | The distinction between software and hardware is not clear in computing [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Even the software/hardware distinction as it is literally applied within computer science is philosophically unclear. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
A reaction: This is true, and very important for functionalist theories of the mind. Even very volatile software is realised in 'hard' physics, and rewritable discs etc blur the distinction between 'programmable' and 'hardwired'. |
6535 | Teleological characterisations shade off smoothly into brutely physical ones [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Highly teleological characterisations, unlike naïve and explicated mental characterisations, have the virtue of shading off fairly smoothly into (more) brutely physical ones. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: Thus the purpose of a car engine, and a spark plug, and the spark, and the temperature, and the vibration of molecules show a fading away of the overt purpose, disappearing into the pointless activity of electrons and quantum levels. |
6533 | Mental types are a subclass of teleological types at a high level of functional abstraction [Lycan] |
Full Idea: I am taking mental types to form a small subclass of teleological types occurring for the most part at a high level of functional abstraction. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: He goes on to say that he understand teleology in evolutionary terms. There is always a gap between how you characterise or individuate something, and what it actually is. To say spanners are 'a small subclass of tools' is not enough. |
6544 | Identity theory is functionalism, but located at the lowest level of abstraction [Lycan] |
Full Idea: 'Neuron' may be understood as a physiological term or a functional term, so even the Identity Theorist is a Functionalist - one who locates mental entities at a very low level of abstraction. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
A reaction: This is a striking observation, and somewhat inclines me to switch from identity theory to functionalism. If you ask what is the correct level of abstraction, Lycan's teleological-homuncular version refers you to all the levels. |
6536 | Teleological functionalism helps us to understand psycho-biological laws [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Teleological functionalism helps us to understand the nature of biological and psychological laws, particularly in the face of Davidsonian scepticism about the latter. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Personally I doubt the existence of psycho-physical laws, but only because of the vast complexity. They would be like the laws of weather. 'Psycho-physical' laws seem to presuppose some sort of dualism. |
6530 | We reduce the mind through homuncular groups, described abstractly by purpose [Lycan] |
Full Idea: I am explicating the mental in a reductive way, by reducing mental characterizations to homuncular institutional ones, which are teleological characterizations at various levels of functional abstraction. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.3) | |
A reaction: I think this is the germ of a very good physicalist account of the mind. More is needed than a mere assertion about what the mind reduces to at the very lowest level; this offers a decent account of the descending stages of reduction. |
6542 | A Martian may exhibit human-like behaviour while having very different sensations [Lycan] |
Full Idea: Quite possibly a Martian's humanoid behaviour is prompted by his having sensations somewhat unlike ours, despite his superficial behavioural similarities to us. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 5.4) | |
A reaction: I think this firmly refutes the multiple realisability objection to type-type physicalism. Mental events are individuated by their phenomenal features (known only to the user), and by their causal role (publicly available). These are separate. |
8174 | The theories of meaning and understanding are the only routes to an account of thought [Dummett] |
Full Idea: For the linguistic philosopher, the theory of meaning, and the theory of understanding that is built upon it, form the only route to a philosophical account of thought. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: I am of the party that thinks thought is prior to language (esp. because of animals), but Dummett's idea does not deny this. He may well be right that this is the 'only route'. We can only hope to give an account of human thought. |
8175 | A theory of thought will include propositional attitudes as well as propositions [Dummett] |
Full Idea: A comprehensive theory of thought will include such things as judgement and belief, as well as the mere grasp of propositions. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: This seems to make any theory of thought a neat two-stage operation. Beware of neatness. While propositions might be explained using concepts, syntax and truth, the second stage looks faintly daunting. See Idea 2209, for example. |
8165 | To 'abstract from' is a logical process, as opposed to the old mental view [Dummett] |
Full Idea: The phrase 'abstracted from' does not refer to the mental process of abstraction by disregarding features of concrete objects, in which many nineteenth century thinkers believed; it is a logical (not mental) process of concept-formation. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 1) | |
A reaction: I take Frege's attack on 'psychologism' to be what dismissed the old view (Idea 5816). Could one not achieve the same story by negating properties in quantified logical expressions, instead of in the mind? |
8168 | To know the truth-conditions of a sentence, you must already know the meaning [Dummett] |
Full Idea: You can know the condition for a sentence to be true only when you know what the sentence means. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 3) | |
A reaction: This makes the truth-conditions theory of meaning circular, and is Dummett's big objection to Davidson's view. The composition of a sentence creates a model of a world. Truth-conditions may only presuppose knowledge of concepts. |
8181 | A justificationist theory of meaning leads to the rejection of classical logic [Dummett] |
Full Idea: If we adopt a justificationist theory of meaning, we must reject the universal law of excluded middle, and with it classical logic (which rests on the two-valued semantics of bivalence). We admit only intuitionist logic, which preserves justifiability. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: This is Dummett's philosophy in a very neat nutshell. He seems to have started by accepting Brouwer's intuitionism, and then working back to language. It all implies anti-realism. I don't buy it. |
8182 | Verificationism could be realist, if we imagined the verification by a superhuman power [Dummett] |
Full Idea: There is a possible route to realism, which has been called 'ideal verificationism', if we base our grasping the understanding and truth of a range of sentences on the procedure that would be available to an imagined being with superhuman powers. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 5) | |
A reaction: This is actually a slippery slope for verificationists, as soon as they allow that verification could be done by other people. A verifier might turn up who had telepathy, or x-ray vision, or could see quarks... |
8183 | If truths about the past depend on memories and current evidence, the past will change [Dummett] |
Full Idea: If justificationists succumb to the temptation for statements in the past, we shall view their senses as given by present memories and present traces of past events; but this will force us into a view of the past as itself changing. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 6) | |
A reaction: Obviously Dummett attempts to sidestep this problem, but it strikes me as powerful support for the realist view about the past. How can we not be committed to the view that there are facts about the past quite unconnected to our verifying abilities? |
8176 | We could only guess the meanings of 'true' and 'false' when sentences were used [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Even if we guessed that the two words denoted the two truth-values, we should not know which stood for the value 'true' and which for the value 'false' until we knew how the sentences were in practice used. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 4) | |
A reaction: These types of problem are always based on the idea that some one item must have logical priority in the process, but there is a lot of room for benign circularity in the development of mental and linguistic functions. |
8170 | Sentences are the primary semantic units, because they can say something [Dummett] |
Full Idea: While words are semantic atoms, sentences remain the primary semantic units, in the sense of the smallest bits of language by means of which it is possible to say anything. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 3) | |
A reaction: Syncategorematic terms (look it up!) may need sentences, but most nouns and verbs can communicate quite a lot on their own. Whether words or sentences come first may not be a true/false issue. |
8169 | We can't distinguish a proposition from its content [Dummett] |
Full Idea: No distinction can be drawn between a proposition and its content; no two distinct propositions can have the same content. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 3) | |
A reaction: And one proposition cannot have two possible contents (ambiguity). Are we to say that a proposition supervenes on its content, or that proposition and content are identical? Ockham favours the latter. |
6538 | We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees [Lycan] |
Full Idea: We need a notion of teleology that comes in degrees. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 4.4) | |
A reaction: Anyone who says that key concepts, such as those concerning the mind, should come 'in degrees' wins my instant support. A whole car engine requires a very teleological explanation, the spark in the sparkplug far less so. |
8388 | Causation is either direct realism, Humean reduction, non-Humean reduction or theoretical realism [Tooley] |
Full Idea: The main approaches to causation I shall refer to as direct realism, Humean reductionism, non-Humean reductionism, and indirect or theoretical realism. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
A reaction: The first simply observes causation (Anscombe), the second reduces it to regularity (Hume), the third reduces it to other natural features (Fair, Salmon, Dowe), the fourth takes an instrumental approach (Armstrong, Tooley). I favour the third approach. |
8389 | Causation distinctions: reductionism/realism; Humean/non-Humean states; observable/non-observable [Tooley] |
Full Idea: The three main distinctions concerning causation are between reductionism and realism; between Humean and non-Humean states of affairs; and between states that are immediately observable and those that are not. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 2) | |
A reaction: I favour reductionism over realism, because I like the question 'If x is real, what is it made of?' I favour non-Humean states of affairs, because I think constant conjunction is very superficial. I presume the existence of non-observable components. |
8393 | We can only reduce the direction of causation to the direction of time if we are realist about the latter [Tooley] |
Full Idea: A reductionist can hold that the direction of causation is to be defined in terms of the direction of time; but this response is only available if one is prepared to adopt a realist view of the direction of time. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.2.1.2) | |
A reaction: A nice illustration of the problems that arise if we try to be reductionist about everything. Personally I prefer my realism to be about time rather than about causation. Time, I would say, makes causation possible, not the other way around. |
8390 | Causation is directly observable in pressure on one's body, and in willed action [Tooley] |
Full Idea: The arguments in favour of causation being observable appeal especially to the impression of pressure upon one's body, and to one's introspective awareness of willing, together with the perception of the event which one willed. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 3) | |
A reaction: [He cites Evan Fagels] Anscombe also cites words which have causality built into their meaning. This would approach would give priority to mental causation, and would need to demonstrate that similar things happen out in the world. |
8392 | Probabilist laws are compatible with effects always or never happening [Tooley] |
Full Idea: If laws of causation are probabilistic then the law does not entail any restrictions upon the proportion of events that follow a cause: ...it can have absolutely any value from zero to one. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.3) | |
A reaction: This objection applies to an account of laws of nature, and also to definitions of causes as events which increase probabilities. One needn't be fully committed to natural necessity, but it must form some part of the account. |
8399 | The actual cause may not be the most efficacious one [Tooley] |
Full Idea: A given type of state may be causally efficacious, but not as efficacious as an alternative states, so it is not true that even a direct cause need raise the probability of its effect. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 6.2.4) | |
A reaction: My intuition is that explaining causation in terms of probabilities entirely misses the point, which mainly concerns explaining the sense of necessitation in a cause. This idea give me a good reason for my intuition. |
8391 | In counterfactual worlds there are laws with no instances, so laws aren't supervenient on actuality [Tooley] |
Full Idea: If a counterfactual holds in a possible world, that is presumably because a law holds in that world, which means there could be basic causal laws that lack all instances. But then causal laws cannot be totally supervenient on the history of the universe. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 4.1.2) | |
A reaction: A nice argument, which sounds like trouble for Lewis. One could deny that the laws have to hold in the counterfactual worlds, but then we wouldn't be able to conceive them. |
8394 | Explaining causation in terms of laws can't explain the direction of causation [Tooley] |
Full Idea: The most serious objection to any account of causation in terms of nomological relations alone is that it can't provide any account of the direction of causation. | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.1) | |
A reaction: Cf. Idea 8393. I am not convinced that there could be an 'account' of the direction of causation, so I am inclined to take it as given. If we take 'powers' (active properties) as basic, they would have a direction built into them. |
8398 | Causation is a concept of a relation the same in all worlds, so it can't be a physical process [Tooley] |
Full Idea: Against the view that causation is a particular physical process, might it not be argued that the concept of causation is the concept of a relation that possesses a certain intrinsic nature, so that causation must be the same in all possible worlds? | |
From: Michael Tooley (Causation and Supervenience [2003], 5.4) | |
A reaction: This makes the Humean assumption that laws of nature might be wildly different. I think it is perfectly possible that physical processes are the only way that causation could occur. Alternatively, the generic definition of 'cause' is just very vague. |
6551 | 'Physical' means either figuring in physics descriptions, or just located in space-time [Lycan] |
Full Idea: An object is specifically physical if it figures in explanations and descriptions of features of ordinary non-living matter, as in current physics; it is more generally physical if it is simply located in space-time. | |
From: William Lycan (Consciousness [1987], 8.5) | |
A reaction: This gives a useful distinction when trying to formulate a 'physicalist' account of the mind, where type-type physicalism says only the 'postulates of physics' can be used, whereas 'naturalism' about the mind uses the more general concept. |
8186 | Time is the measure of change, so we can't speak of time before all change [Dummett] |
Full Idea: Time is the measure of change, and it makes no sense to speak of how things were before there was anything that changed. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 8) | |
A reaction: Something creating its own measure sounds like me marking my own exam papers. If an object appears, then inverts five seconds later, how can the inversion create the five seconds? How does that differ from inverting ten seconds later? |
8167 | If Presentism is correct, we cannot even say that the present changes [Dummett] |
Full Idea: If Presentism is correct - the doctrine that there is nothing at all, save what holds good at the present moment - then we cannot even say that the present changes, because that requires that things are not now as they were some time ago. | |
From: Michael Dummett (Thought and Reality [1997], 2) | |
A reaction: Presumably we can compare our present memory with our present experience. See Idea 6668. The logic (very ancient!) is that the present has not duration at all, and so no experiences can occur during it. |