63 ideas
| 8558 | One system has properties, powers, events, similarity and substance [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a system of internally related concepts containing the notion of a property, the notion of a causal power, the concept of an event, the concept of similarity, and the concept of a persisting substance. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: A nice example of a modern metaphysical system, one which I find fairly congenial. His notion of events is Kim's, which involves his properties. The persisting substance is the one I am least clear about. |
| 8559 | Analysis aims at internal relationships, not reduction [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The goal of philosophical analysis should not be reductive analysis but rather the charting of internal relationships. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 8558 for an attempt by Shoemaker himself. The idea that there has never been a successful analysis has become a truism among pessimistic analytic philosophers. But there are wonderful relationship maps (Quine, Davidson, Lewis, Lowe). |
| 11211 | If a sound conclusion comes from two errors that cancel out, the path of the argument must matter [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If a designated conclusion follows from the premisses, but the argument involves two howlers which cancel each other out, then the moral is that the path an argument takes from premisses to conclusion does matter to its logical evaluation. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], II) | |
| A reaction: The drift of this is that our view of logic should be a little closer to the reasoning of ordinary language, and we should rely a little less on purely formal accounts. |
| 11210 | Standardly 'and' and 'but' are held to have the same sense by having the same truth table [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: If 'and' and 'but' really are alike in sense, in what might that likeness consist? Some philosophers of classical logic will reply that they share a sense by virtue of sharing a truth table. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000]) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard view which Rumfitt sets out to challenge. |
| 11212 | The sense of a connective comes from primitively obvious rules of inference [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: A connective will possess the sense that it has by virtue of its competent users' finding certain rules of inference involving it to be primitively obvious. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], III) | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt cites Peacocke as endorsing this view, which characterises the logical connectives by their rules of usage rather than by their pure semantic value. |
| 6504 | For physicalists, the only relations are spatial, temporal and causal [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Spatial, temporal and causal relations are the only respectable candidates for relations for a physicalist. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.4) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be true, and is an absolutely crucial principle upon which any respectable physicalist account of the world must be built. It means that physicalists must attempt to explain all mental events in causal terms. |
| 15092 | Formerly I said properties are individuated by essential causal powers and causing instantiation [Shoemaker, by Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My 1980 paper said properties are individuated by causal features - the contribution they make to the causal powers of things, and also how their instantiation can be caused. Collectively, these causal features are the essence of a property. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], I) by Sydney Shoemaker - Causal and Metaphysical Necessity | |
| A reaction: The later paper worries about uncertainty over individuation. The view I favour is that 'powers' is a much better term for what is basic, and this allows 'properties' to be the complex notion we use in real life, as innumberable power-combinations. |
| 8543 | Genuine properties are closely related to genuine changes [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine properties are closely related to our intuitions as to what are, and what are not, genuine changes. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: A simple but brilliant insight. Somehow we must hack through the plethora of bogus properties and get to the real ones, cutting nature at the joints. Here we have the principle needed for the task. |
| 8551 | Properties must be essentially causal if we can know and speak about them [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Only if some causal theory of properties is true can it be explained how properties are capable of engaging our knowledge, and our language, in the way they do. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Exactly. This also the reason why epiphenomenalism doesn't make sense about consciousness (Idea 7379). The fact that something has causal powers doesn't mean that it just IS a causal power. A bomb isn't an explosion. |
| 8557 | To ascertain genuine properties, examine the object directly [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a plausible way of distinguishing genuine and mere-Cambridge properties. To decide whether an emerald is green the thing to do is to examine it, but a mere-Cambridge property is settled by observations at a remote time and place. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Scientific essentialism is beautifully simple! Schoemaker is good at connecting the epistemology to the ontology. If you examined a mirror, you might think it contained reflections. |
| 6520 | If reality just has relational properties, what are its substantial ontological features? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Some thinkers claim the physical world consists just of relational properties - generally of active powers or fields; ..but an ontology of mutual influences is not an ontology at all unless the possessors of the influence have more substantial features. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: I think this idea is one of the keys to wisdom. It is the same problem with functional explanations - you are left asking WHY this thing can have this particular function. Without the buck stopping at essences you are chasing your explanatory tail. |
| 15761 | We should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I think we should abandon the idea that properties are the meanings of predicate expressions. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Right. I have Shoemaker on my side, and he is a distinguished and senior member of the philosophical community. I don't just prefer not to use 'predicate' and 'property' indistinguishably - philosophers should really really give it up! |
| 15756 | Some truths are not because of a thing's properties, but because of the properties of related things [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Sometimes a predicate is true of a thing, not because (or only because) of any properties it has, but because something else, perhaps something related to it in certain ways, has certain properties. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: I'm on mission to prize predicates and properties apart, and the strategy is to focus on what is true of something, given that this may not ascribe a property to the thing. |
| 15758 | Things have powers in virtue of (which are entailed by) their properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a distinction between powers, and the properties in virtue of which things have they powers they have (n8: 'in virtue of' means that there is a lawlike truth, which turns out to be the properties entailing the powers). | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: To me this is an ontology which rests something very clear (a power) on something very indeterminate (a 'property'). |
| 8547 | One power can come from different properties; a thing's powers come from its properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to have the same power (e.g. being poisonous) in virtue of having very different properties. ..So it is in virtue of a thing's properties that the thing has the powers that it has. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as an accurate and helpful picture. It means that true properties give rise to powers, and categorial or relational or whimsical properties must have their ontological status judged by that standard. |
| 8549 | Properties are functions producing powers, and powers are functions producing effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Powers are functions from circumstances to causal effects, and properties (on which powers depend) can be thought of as functions from sets of properties to sets of powers. Maybe we should call properties 'second-order powers', as they produce powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: He presents property as both a function, and a component of the function. This is the core picture on which modern scientific essentialism is built. See under Natural Theory|Laws of Nature. |
| 12678 | Shoemaker says all genuine properties are dispositional [Shoemaker, by Ellis] |
| Full Idea: I am against Shoemaker's strong dispositionalism, according to which all genuine properties are dispositional. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Brian Ellis - The Metaphysics of Scientific Realism 3 | |
| A reaction: This is because Ellis argues that some properties are categorical, and are needed to underly the active dispositional ones. I think I side with Shoemaker, but this needs more thought. |
| 8545 | A causal theory of properties focuses on change, not (say) on abstract properties of numbers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My account of properties concerns those with respect to which change is possible; it is not intended to apply to such properties of numbers as being even and being prime. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §02) | |
| A reaction: You could argue that while these properties may not cause change, they are abstract powers. Being even allows division by 2, and being prime blocks it. I say patterns are the basis, and dividing groups of physical objects is involved. |
| 15757 | 'Square', 'round' and 'made of copper' show that not all properties are dispositional [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Surely we make a distinction beween dispositional and nondispositional properties, and can mention paradigms of both sorts. ....It seems plain that predicates like 'square', 'round' and 'made of copper' are not dispositional. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: It might be possible to account for squareness and roundness in dispositional ways, and it is certainly plausible to say that 'made of copper' is not a property (even when it is a true predicate). |
| 15759 | The identity of a property concerns its causal powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: What makes a property the property it is, what determines its identity, is its potential for contributing to the causal powers of the things that have it. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: Does this mean that the 'potential' to act is the essence of the property, or is a property of the property, or is wholly identical with the property? Or is this just epistemological - whatever individuates the property for observers? |
| 15760 | Properties are clusters of conditional powers [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: A thing has a 'conditional power' when it has a power conditionally upon the possession of certain properties. ...We can then express my view by saying that properties are clusters of conditional powers. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: His example is a knife-shaped thing, which conditionally cuts wood if it is made of steel. Shoemaker rejected this in 1998. Mumford/Anjum prefer the earlier view. Which is fundamental? Powers are simple and primitive. Properties are complex. |
| 15762 | Could properties change without the powers changing, or powers change without the properties changing? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Could a thing undergo radical change with respect to its properties without undergoing any change in its causal powers, or undergo radical change in its causal powers without undergoing any change in the properties that underlie these powers? | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept properties underlying powers, but these two questions at least force us to see how closely the two are linked. |
| 8552 | If properties are separated from causal powers, this invites total elimination [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The disassociation of property identity from causal potentiality is an invitation to eliminate reference to properties from our explanatory hypotheses altogether. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Just as epiphenomenalism about consciousness is a step towards eliminativism. This seems to describe Quine's reaction to Goodman, in moving from predicate nominalism to elimination of properties. I agree with Shoemaker. |
| 4040 | The notions of property and of causal power are parts of a single system of related concepts [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The notion of a property and the notion of a causal power belong to a system of internally related concepts, no one of which can be explicated without the use of the other. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §07) | |
| A reaction: Sounds good. It is hard to conceive of a property which has no causal powers, or a causal power that doesn't arise from a property. |
| 15765 | Actually, properties are individuated by causes as well as effects [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: I should probably modify my view, and say that properties are individuated by their possible causes as well as by their possible effects. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §11) | |
| A reaction: (This is in an afterword responding to criticism by Richard Boyd) He doesn't use the word 'individuate' in the essay. That term always strikes me as smacking too much of epistemology, and not enough of ontology. Who cares how you individuate something? |
| 8548 | Dispositional predicates ascribe powers, and the rest ascribe properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: By and large, dispositional predicates ascribe powers while nondispositional monadic predicates ascribe properties that are not powers in the same sense. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §03) | |
| A reaction: The powers are where the properties come into contact with the rest of the world, so you would expect dispositions to be found at that level, rather than at the deeper level of properties. Sounds good to me. |
| 9485 | Universals concern how things are, and how they could be [Shoemaker, by Bird] |
| Full Idea: Shoemaker contends that universals concern the way things could be, not merely the way any things actually are. | |
| From: report of Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980]) by Alexander Bird - Nature's Metaphysics 3.2.2 | |
| A reaction: If you want to retain universals within a scientific essentialist view (and I would rather not), then this seems like the only way to go. |
| 8550 | Triangular and trilateral are coextensive, but different concepts; but powers and properties are the same [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is natural to say that 'being triangular' and 'being trilateral', though necessarily coextensive, are different properties. But what are distinct are the concepts and meanings. If properties are not meanings of predicates, these are identical. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §04) | |
| A reaction: A good test example. Being renate (kidney) and being cordate (heart) are different, because being cordate produces a thumping noise. Shoemaker's example is pretty much Phosphorus/Hesperus. |
| 8555 | There is no subset of properties which guarantee a thing's identity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is, putting aside historical properties and 'identity properties', no subset of the properties of a thing which constitutes an individual essence, so that having those properties is necessary and sufficient for being that particular thing. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: He asserts this rather dogmatically. If he says a thing can lose its essence, I agree, but it seems to me that there must be a group of features which will guarantee that (if they are present) it has that identity. |
| 8554 | Possible difference across worlds depends on difference across time in the actual world [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: The ways in which a given thing can be different in different possible worlds depend on the ways in which such a thing can be different at different times in the actual world. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: Where change in a thing is possible across time in the actual world seems to require a combination of experiment and imagination. Unimaginability does not entail necessity, but it may be the best guide we have got. |
| 15764 | 'Conceivable' is either not-provably-false, or compatible with what we know? [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: We could use 'conceivable' to say it is not provable that it is not the case, or we could use it to say that it is compatible with what we know. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: Rather significant, since the first one would seem to allow in a great deal that the second one would rule out. Any disproof of some natural possibility founders on the remark that 'you never know'. |
| 8562 | It is possible to conceive what is not possible [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: It is possible to conceive what is not possible. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §10) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that, while we cannot clearly conceive the impossible in a world like mathematics, we can conceive of impossible perceptions in the physical world, such as a bonfire burning under water. |
| 6485 | When a red object is viewed, the air in between does not become red [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: When the form of red passes from an object to the eye, the air in between does not become red. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a crucial and basic fact which must be faced by any philosopher offering a theory of perception. I would have thought it instantly eliminated any sort of direct or naïve realism. The quale of red is created by my brain. |
| 6521 | Representative realists believe that laws of phenomena will apply to the physical world [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: One thing which is meant by saying that the phenomenal world represents or resembles the transcendental physical world is that the scientific laws devised to apply to the former, if correct, also apply (at least approximately) to the latter. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: This is not, of course, an argument, or a claim which can be easily substantiated, but it does seem to be a nice statement of a central article of faith for representative realists. The laws of the phenomenal world are the only ones we are going to get. |
| 6509 | Representative realists believe some properties of sense-data are shared by the objects themselves [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: A representative realist believes that at least some of the properties that are ostensively demonstrable in virtue of being exemplified in sense-data are of the same kind as some of those exemplified in physical objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to pin down exactly what is being claimed here. Locke's primary qualities will obviously qualify, but could properties be 'exemplified' in sense-data without them actually being the same as those of the objects? |
| 6522 | Phenomenalism can be theistic (Berkeley), or sceptical (Hume), or analytic (20th century) [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: It is useful to identify three kinds of phenomenalism: theistic, sceptical and analytic; the first is represented by Berkeley, the second by Hume, and the third by most twentieth-century phenomenalists. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.4) | |
| A reaction: In Britain the third group is usually represented by A.J.Ayer. My simple objection to all phenomenalists is that they are intellectual cowards because they won't venture to give an explanation of the phenomena which confront them. |
| 6502 | Can we reduce perception to acquisition of information, which is reduced to causation or disposition? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Many modern physicalists first analyse perception as no more than the acquisition of beliefs or information through the senses, and then analyse belief and the possession of information in causal or dispositional terms. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.1) | |
| A reaction: (He mentions Armstrong, Dretske and Pitcher). A reduction to dispositions implies behaviourism. This all sounds more like an eliminativist strategy than a reductive one. I would start by saying that perception is only information after interpretation. |
| 6513 | Would someone who recovered their sight recognise felt shapes just by looking? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Molyneux's Problem is whether someone who was born blind and acquired sight would be able to recognise, on sight, which shapes were which; that is, would they see which shape was the one that felt so-and-so? | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VIII.7) | |
| A reaction: (Molyneux wrote a letter to John Locke about this). It is a good question, and much discussed in modern times. My estimation is that the person would recognise the shapes. We are partly synaesthetic, and see sharpness as well as feeling it. |
| 6512 | Secondary qualities have one sensory mode, but primary qualities can have more [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Primary qualities and secondary qualities are often distinguished on the grounds that secondaries are restricted to one sensory modality, but primaries can appear in more. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VIII.7) | |
| A reaction: This distinction seems to me to be accurate and important. It is not just that the two types are phenomenally different - it is that the best explanation is that the secondaries depend on their one sense, but the primaries are independent. |
| 6497 | We say objects possess no intrinsic secondary qualities because physicists don't need them [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The idea that objects do not possess secondary qualities intrinsically rests on the thought that they do not figure in the physicist's account of the world; ..as they are causally idle, no purpose is served by attributing them to objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: On the whole I agree with this, but colours (for example) are not causally idle, as they seem to affect the behaviour of insects. They are properties which can only have a causal effect if there is a brain in their vicinity. Physicists ignore brains. |
| 6494 | If objects are not coloured, and neither are sense-contents, we are left saying that nothing is coloured [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: If there are good reasons for thinking that physical objects are not literally coloured, and one also refuses to attribute them to sense-contents, then one will have the bizarre theory (which has been recently adopted) that nothing is actually coloured. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.7) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that objects are not literally coloured, that the air in between does not become coloured, and that my brain doesn't turn a funny colour, so that only leaves colour as an 'interior' feature of certain brain states. That's how it is. |
| 6499 | Shape can be experienced in different ways, but colour and sound only one way [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Shape can be directly experienced by either touch or sight, which are subjectively different; but colour and sound can be directly experienced only through experiences which are subjectively like sight and hearing. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key argument in support of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities. It seems to me that the distinction may be challenged and questioned, but to deny it completely (as Berkeley and Hume do) is absurd. |
| 6500 | If secondary qualities match senses, would new senses create new qualities? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: As secondary qualities are tailored to match senses, a proliferation of senses would lead to a proliferation of secondary qualities. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], III.1) | |
| A reaction: One might reply that if we experienced, say, magnetism, we would just be discerning a new fine grained primary quality, not adding something new to the ontological stock of properties in the world. It is a matter of HOW we experience the magnetism. |
| 6484 | Most moderate empiricists adopt Locke's representative theory of perception [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The representative theory of perception is found in Locke, and is adopted by most moderate empiricists. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: This is, I think, my own position. Anything less than fairly robust realism strikes me as being a bit mad (despite Berkeley's endless assertions that he is preaching common sense), and direct realism seems obviously false. |
| 6508 | Sense-data leads to either representative realism or phenomenalism or idealism [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The sense-datum theorist is either a representative realist or a phenomenalist (with which we can classify idealism for present purposes). | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative to these two positions seems to be some sort of direct realism. I class myself as a representative realist, as this just seems (after a very little thought about colour blindness) to be common sense. I'm open to persuasion. |
| 6480 | Sense-data do not have any intrinsic intentionality [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: I understand sense-data as having no intrinsic intentionality; that is, though it may suggest, by habit, things beyond it, in itself it possesses only sensible qualities which do not refer beyond themselves. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This seems right, as the whole point of proposing sense-data was as something neutral between realism and anti-realism |
| 6482 | For idealists and phenomenalists sense-data are in objects; representative realists say they resemble objects [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: For idealists and phenomenalists sense-data are part of physical objects, for objects consist only of actual or actual and possible sense-data; representative realists say they just have an abstract and structural resemblance to objects. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: He puts Berkeley, Hume and Mill in the first group, and Locke in the second. Russell belongs in the second. The very fact that there can be two such different theories about the location of sense-data rather discredits the whole idea. |
| 6505 | Sense-data are rejected because they are a veil between us and reality, leading to scepticism [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Resistance to the sense-datum theory is inspired mainly by the fear that such data constitute a veil of perception which stands between the observer and the external world, threatening scepticism, or even solipsism. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.1) | |
| A reaction: It is very intellectually dishonest to reject any theory because it leads to scepticism or relativism. This is a common failing among quite good professional philosophers. See Idea 241. |
| 6506 | 'Sense redly' sounds peculiar, but 'senses redly-squarely tablely' sounds far worse [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: 'Sense redly' sounds peculiar, but 'senses redly-squarely' or 'red-squarely' or 'senses redly-squarely-tablely' and other variants sound far worse. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This is a comment on the adverbial theory, which is meant to replace representative theories based on sense-data. The problem is not that it sounds weird; it is that while plain red can be a mode of perception, being a table obviously can't. |
| 6507 | Adverbialism sees the contents of sense-experience as modes, not objects [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The defining claim of adverbialism is that the contents of sense-experience are modes, not objects, of sensory activity. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This seems quite a good account of simple 'modes' like colour, but not so good when you instantly perceive a house. It never seems wholly satisfactory to sidestep the question of 'what are you perceiving when you perceive red or square?' |
| 6511 | If there are only 'modes' of sensing, then an object can no more be red or square than it can be proud or lazy. [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: If only modes of sensing are ostensively available, ..then it is a category mistake to see any resemblance between what is available and properties of bodies; one could as sensibly say that a physical body is proud or lazy as that it is red or square. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], VII.5) | |
| A reaction: This is an objection to the 'adverbial' theory of perception. It looks to me like a devastating objection, if the theory is meant to cover primary qualities as well as secondary. Red could be a mode of perception, but not square, surely? |
| 8556 | Grueness is not, unlike green and blue, associated with causal potential [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Grueness, as defined by Goodman, is not associated in the way greenness and blueness are with causal potentialities. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §06) | |
| A reaction: Expressed rather more simply in Idea 7296. 'Grue' is a characteristic production of a predicate nominalist (i.e. Goodman), and that theory is just wrong. The account of properties must mesh with the account of induction. |
| 6515 | An explanation presupposes something that is improbable unless it is explained [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Any search for an explanation presupposes that there is something in need of an explanation - that is, something which is improbable unless explained. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: Elementary enough, but it underlines the human perspective of all explanations. I may need an explanation of baseball, where you don't. |
| 6517 | If all possibilities are equal, order seems (a priori) to need an explanation - or does it? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: The fact that order requires an explanation seems to be an a priori principle; ..we assume all possibilities are equally likely, and so no striking regularities should emerge; the sceptic replies that a highly ordered sequence is as likely as any other. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: An independent notion of 'order' is required. If I write down '14356', and then throw 1 4 3 5 6 on a die, the match is the order; instrinsically 14356 is nothing special. If you threw the die a million times, a run of six sixes seems quite likely. |
| 6481 | If intentional states are intrinsically about other things, what are their own properties? [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Intentional states are mysterious things; if they are intrinsically about other things, what properties, if any, do they possess intrinsically? | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: A very nice question, which I suspect to be right at the heart of the tendency towards externalist accounts of the mind. Since you can only talk about the contents of the thoughts, you can't put forward a decent internalist account of what is going on. |
| 6503 | Physicalism cannot allow internal intentional objects, as brain states can't be 'about' anything [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: It is generally conceded by reductive physicalists that a state of the brain cannot be intrinsically about anything, for intentionality is not an intrinsic property of anything, so there can be no internal objects for a physicalist. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], V.4) | |
| A reaction: Perhaps it is best to say that 'aboutness' is not a property of physics. We may say that a brain state 'represents' something, because the something caused the brain state, but representations have to be recognised |
| 11214 | We learn 'not' along with affirmation, by learning to either affirm or deny a sentence [Rumfitt] |
| Full Idea: The standard view is that affirming not-A is more complex than affirming the atomic sentence A itself, with the latter determining its sense. But we could learn 'not' directly, by learning at once how to either affirm A or reject A. | |
| From: Ian Rumfitt ("Yes" and "No" [2000], IV) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] This seems fairly anti-Fregean in spirit, because it looks at the psychology of how we learn 'not' as a way of clarifying what we mean by it, rather than just looking at its logical behaviour (and thus giving it a secondary role). |
| 6519 | Locke's solidity is not matter, because that is impenetrability and hardness combined [Robinson,H] |
| Full Idea: Notoriously, Locke's filler for Descartes's geometrical matter, solidity, will not do, for that quality collapses on examination into a composite of the dispositional-cum-relational propery of impenetrability, and the secondary quality of hardness. | |
| From: Howard Robinson (Perception [1994], IX.3) | |
| A reaction: I would have thought the problem was that 'matter is solidity' turns out on analysis to be a tautology. We have a handful of nearly synonymous words for matter and our experiences of it, but they boil down to some 'given' thing for which we lack words. |
| 8542 | If causality is between events, there must be reference to the properties involved [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: Any account of causality as a relation between events should involve, in a central way, reference to the properties of the constituent objects of the events. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §01) | |
| A reaction: This remark, with which I wholeheartedly agree, is aimed at Davidson, who seems to think you need know no more about an event than the way in which someone chooses to describe it. Metaphysics must dig deeper, even if science can't. |
| 8560 | If causal laws describe causal potentialities, the same laws govern properties in all possible worlds [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: To the extent that causal laws can be viewed as propositions describing the causal potentialities of properties, it is impossible that the same properties should be governed by different causal laws in different possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §08) | |
| A reaction: [He has just asserted that causal potentialities are essential to properties] This is the dramatic basic claim of scientific essentialism, which grows out of Shoemaker's causal account of properties. Note that the laws are just descriptions. |
| 15763 | If properties are causal, then causal necessity is a species of logical necessity [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: My theory of properties as causal appears to have the consequence that causal laws are logically necessary, and that causal necessity is just a species of logical necessity. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: Where he writes 'logical' necessity I would claim that he really means 'metaphysical' necessity. The point, I take it, is that given the existence of those properties, certain causal efforts must always follow from them. I agree. |
| 8561 | If a world has different causal laws, it must have different properties [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: If there are worlds in which the causal laws are different from those that prevail in this world, ..then the properties will have to be different as well. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §09) | |
| A reaction: The next question is whether the same stuff (e.g. gold or water) could have different properties, and I take the the scientific essentialism answer to be 'no'. So the actual stuff (substances?) would have to be different. |
| 8553 | It looks as if the immutability of the powers of a property imply essentiality [Shoemaker] |
| Full Idea: There is a prima facie case for saying that the immutability of the causal potentialities of a property implies their essentiality. ...If they cannot vary across time, they also cannot vary across possible worlds. | |
| From: Sydney Shoemaker (Causality and Properties [1980], §05) | |
| A reaction: This is only the beginning of scientific essentialism, but one of the targets is to save the phenomena. It is also involves unimaginability (of different powers from a given property) implying necessity. |