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Single Idea 14555

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic ]

Full Idea

In respect of explanation the powers view does little better than the laws view.

Gist of Idea

Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do

Source

S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 4.3c)

Book Ref

Anjum,R.J./Mumford,S.: 'Getting Causes from Powers' [OUP 2011], p.99


A Reaction

Quite so. Powers are primitive, so they offer no elucidation of nature, but constitute the building blocks for explanations. Essences are, I think, clusters of powers, and the way in which they cluster is where we find the explanations.

Related Idea

Idea 14554 Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum]


The 46 ideas from 'Getting Causes from Powers'

Causation doesn't have two distinct relata; it is a single unfolding process [Mumford/Anjum]
We say 'power' and 'disposition' are equivalent, but some say dispositions are manifestable [Mumford/Anjum]
Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
Powers explain properties, causes, modality, events, and perhaps even particulars [Mumford/Anjum]
Coincidence is conjunction without causation; smoking causing cancer is the reverse [Mumford/Anjum]
Nature can be interfered with, so a cause never necessitates its effects [Mumford/Anjum]
Events are essentially changes; property exemplifications are just states of affairs [Mumford/Anjum]
If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum]
Maybe truths are necessitated by the facts which are their truthmakers [Mumford/Anjum]
We assert causes without asserting that they necessitate their effects [Mumford/Anjum]
If causation were necessary, the past would fix the future, and induction would be simple [Mumford/Anjum]
Necessary causation should survive antecedent strengthening, but no cause can always survive that [Mumford/Anjum]
There may be necessitation in the world, but causation does not supply it [Mumford/Anjum]
Weak emergence is just unexpected, and strong emergence is beyond all deduction [Mumford/Anjum]
Powers offer no more explanation of nature than laws do [Mumford/Anjum]
Laws are nothing more than descriptions of the behaviour of powers [Mumford/Anjum]
Strong emergence seems to imply top-down causation, originating in consciousness [Mumford/Anjum]
Powers are not just basic forces, since they combine to make new powers [Mumford/Anjum]
A collision is a process, which involves simultaneous happenings, but not instantaneous ones [Mumford/Anjum]
Does causation need a third tying ingredient, or just two that meet, or might there be a single process? [Mumford/Anjum]
If laws are equations, cause and effect must be simultaneous (or the law would be falsified)! [Mumford/Anjum]
A process is unified as an expression of a collection of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum]
Causation is the passing around of powers [Mumford/Anjum]
Sugar dissolving is a process taking time, not one event and then another [Mumford/Anjum]
Causation by absence is not real causation, but part of our explanatory practices [Mumford/Anjum]
Privileging one cause is just an epistemic or pragmatic matter, not an ontological one [Mumford/Anjum]
A structure won't give a causal explanation unless we know the powers of the structure [Mumford/Anjum]
It is tempting to think that only entailment provides a full explanation [Mumford/Anjum]
The only full uniformities in nature occur from the essences of fundamental things [Mumford/Anjum]
Nature is not completely uniform, and some regular causes sometimes fail to produce their effects [Mumford/Anjum]
Is a cause because of counterfactual dependence, or is the dependence because there is a cause? [Mumford/Anjum]
Occasionally a cause makes no difference (pre-emption, perhaps) so the counterfactual is false [Mumford/Anjum]
Cases of preventing a prevention may give counterfactual dependence without causation [Mumford/Anjum]
A 'ceteris paribus' clause implies that a conditional only has dispositional force [Mumford/Anjum]
Relations are naturally necessary when they are generated by the essential mechanisms of the world [Mumford/Anjum]
Smoking disposes towards cancer; smokers without cancer do not falsify this claim [Mumford/Anjum]
Causation may not be transitive. Does a fire cause itself to be extinguished by the sprinklers? [Mumford/Anjum]
The simple conditional analysis of dispositions doesn't allow for possible prevention [Mumford/Anjum]
Possibility might be non-contradiction, or recombinations of the actual, or truth in possible worlds [Mumford/Anjum]
Dispositionality is the core modality, with possibility and necessity as its extreme cases [Mumford/Anjum]
Dispositions may suggest modality to us - as what might not have been, and what could have been [Mumford/Anjum]
Might dispositions be reduced to normativity, or to intentionality? [Mumford/Anjum]
Dispositionality is a natural selection function, picking outcomes from the range of possibilities [Mumford/Anjum]
We have more than five senses; balance and proprioception, for example [Mumford/Anjum]
We take causation to be primitive, as it is hard to see how it could be further reduced [Mumford/Anjum]
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