Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'On the Very Idea of a Third Dogma', 'Free Will as Involving Determinism' and 'Causation in a Physical World'

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8 ideas

16. Persons / F. Free Will / 6. Determinism / a. Determinism
Determinism threatens free will if actions can be causally traced to external factors [Foot]
19. Language / F. Communication / 6. Interpreting Language / a. Translation
Translation is too flimsy a notion to support theories of cultural incommensurability [Quine]
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / b. Intellectualism
Not all actions need motives, but it is irrational to perform troublesome actions with no motive [Foot]
23. Ethics / C. Virtue Theory / 2. Elements of Virtue Theory / e. Character
People can act out of vanity without being vain, or even vain about this kind of thing [Foot]
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]