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Ideas of C.B. Martin, by Text

[American, 1924 - 2008, Based in Australia. Later at the University of Calgary.]

2008 The Mind in Nature
01.2 p.2 Structures don't explain dispositions, because they consist of dispositions
02.3 p.15 'The wire is live' can't be analysed as a conditional, because a wire can change its powers
02.4 p.16 Powers depend on circumstances, so can't be given a conditional analysis
02.6 p.19 Causal counterfactuals are just clumsy linguistic attempts to indicate dispositions
02.7 p.20 Dispositions in action can be destroyed, be recovered, or remain unchanged
02.8 p.21 Causal laws are summaries of powers
03.1 p.24 Truth is a relation between a representation ('bearer') and part of the world ('truthmaker')
03.3 p.26 It is pointless to say possible worlds are truthmakers, and then deny that possible worlds exist
04.1 p.35 Properly understood, wholes do no more causal work than their parts
04.3 p.38 The concept of 'identity' must allow for some changes in properties or parts
04.3 p.39 Structural properties involve dispositionality, so cannot be used to explain it
04.6 p.42 Properties endow a ball with qualities, and with powers or dispositions
04.6 p.42 Properties are the respects in which objects resemble, which places them in classes
04.6 p.42 Ontology is highly abstract physics, containing placeholders and exclusions
04.6 p.44 We can't think of space-time as empty and propertyless, and it seems to be a substratum
04.6 p.44 Properties are ways particular things are, and so they are tied to the identity of their possessor
04.6 p.44 Objects are not bundles of tropes (which are ways things are, not parts of things)
04.6 p.44 A property is a combination of a disposition and a quality
04.6 p.44 I favour the idea of a substratum for properties; spacetime seems to be just a bearer of properties
05.1 p.46 Instead of a cause followed by an effect, we have dispositions in reciprocal manifestation
05.2 n1 p.47 Only abstract things can have specific and full identity specifications
06.4 p.60 If unmanifested partnerless dispositions are still real, and are not just qualities, they can explain properties
06.6 p.65 Qualities and dispositions are aspects of properties - what it exhibits, and what it does
06.6 p.66 A property that cannot interact is worse than inert - it isn't there at all
07.8 p.91 Causation should be explained in terms of dispositions and manifestations
10.2 p.132 Explanations are mind-dependent, theory-laden, and interest-relative
10.3 p.134 Memory requires abstraction, as reminders of what cannot be fully remembered
12.2 p.160 Analogy works, as when we eat food which others seem to be relishing