Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford' and 'Queries to the 'Opticks''

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 4. Intentionality / b. Intentionality theories

18088	Intentionality is the mark of dispositions, not of the mental [Place]
	Full Idea: My thesis is that intentionality is the mark, not of the mental, but of the dispositional.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 1)
	A reaction: An idea with few friends, but I really like it, because it offers the prospect of a unified account of physical nature and the mind/brain. It seems reasonable to say my mind is essentially a bunch of dispositions. Mind is representations + dispositions.

21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality

468	Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.]
	Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice.
	From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where?

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 1. Laws of Nature

16746	Principles of things are not hidden features of forms, but the laws by which they were formed [Newton]
	Full Idea: The (active) principles I consider not as occult qualities, supposed to result from the specific forms of things, but as general laws of nature, by which the things themselves are formed.
	From: Isaac Newton (Queries to the 'Opticks' [1721], q 31), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.6
	A reaction: This is the external, 'imposed' view of laws (with the matter passive) at its most persuasive. If laws arise out the stuff (as I prefer to think), what principles went into the formulation of the stuff?

26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / c. Essence and laws

18089	Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place]
	Full Idea: Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are.
	From: Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6)
	A reaction: [He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world.