Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'The Psychophysical Nexus', 'Causation in a Physical World' and 'Many, but almost one'

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9 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 5. Supervenience / c. Significance of supervenience
Pure supervenience explains nothing, and is a sign of something fundamental we don't know [Nagel]
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic
Semantic indecision explains vagueness (if we have precisifications to be undecided about) [Lewis]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail
If cats are vague, we deny that the many cats are one, or deny that the one cat is many [Lewis]
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
We have one cloud, but many possible boundaries and aggregates for it [Lewis]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / c. Principle of charity
Basic to pragmatics is taking a message in a way that makes sense of it [Lewis]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 1. Causation
Explain single events by general rules, or vice versa, or probability explains both, or they are unconnected [Field,H]
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 5. Direction of causation
Physical laws are largely time-symmetric, so they make a poor basis for directional causation [Field,H]
Identifying cause and effect is not just conventional; we explain later events by earlier ones [Field,H]
The only reason for adding the notion of 'cause' to fundamental physics is directionality [Field,H]