34 ideas
| 23770 | Reductive analysis makes a concept clearer, by giving an alternative simpler set [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: A reductive analysis is one that provides an alternative set of concepts by which some target concept can be understood. It must be non-circular, and given in terms of concepts that are themselves better understood. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: There seem to be two aims of analysis: this one emphasises understanding, but the other one concerns ontology - by demonstrating that some concept or thing can be understood fully by what happens at a lower level. |
| 23769 | Promoting an ontology by its implied good metaphysic is an 'argument-by-display' [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The form of argument which sells an ontology on the basis a metaphysic is known as an 'argument-by-display'. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.2) | |
| A reaction: [Attributed to John Bigelow 1999] New to me, but I'm quite a fan of this. For example, my rejection of platonism is not based on specific arguments, but on looking at the whole platonic picture of reality. |
| 23783 | Change exists, it is causal, and it needs an explanation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: There is a phenomenon of change. I am starting with the assumptions that it is a causal phenomenon, and that it requires explanation. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: That is, I take it, that we need a theory which explains change, rather than just describing it. Well said. Williams says, roughly, that each stage causes the next stage. |
| 23784 | Processes don't begin or end; they just change direction unexpectedly [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: No process every really starts or ends. …A process we see as derailed is really just an expected sequence that continues in an unexpected direction. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.3) | |
| A reaction: Obviously if you cannot individuate processes, then the concept of a process is not much use in ontology. Williams rejects processes, and I think he is probably right. He breaks processes down into smaller units. |
| 23790 | Processes are either strings of short unchanging states, or continuous and unreducible events [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Processes can be modelled in two ways. They are drawn out events encompassing many changes, but dissectible into short-lived states, none including change. Or they are continuous and impenetrable, and to split them is impossible. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 09.3) | |
| A reaction: Obviously a process has temporal moments in it, so the unsplittability is conceptual. I find the concept of changeless parts baffling. But if processes are drawn out, they can't be basic to ontology. |
| 23768 | A metaphysic is a set of wider explanations derived from a basic ontology [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: A metaphysic is what you get when you embed a fundamental ontology within a larger metaphysical framework by repeatedly appealing to elements of that ontology in explaining metaphysical phenomena. …Only then do you see what the ontology is worth. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.1) | |
| A reaction: Confirming my mantra that metaphysics is an explanatory activity. I think it is important that the ontology includes relations (such as 'determinations'), and is not just an inventory of types of entity. |
| 23773 | Humeans say properties are passive, possibility is vast, laws are descriptions, causation is weak [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The main components of neo-Humean metaphysics are that properties are inherently non-modal and passive, that what is possible is restricted only by imagination and coherence, that laws are non-governing descriptions, and causation is weak and extrinsic. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 02.1) | |
| A reaction: This is Williams identifying the enemy, prior to offering the much more active and restictive powers ontology. I'm with Williams. |
| 23779 | We shouldn't posit the existence of anything we have a word for [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: There seems to be a mysterious desire to posit entities simply because certain terms pop up in our vocabulary. But we should not be so indiscriminate about our posits, even if our talk is properly vetted. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.1) | |
| A reaction: This should hardly need saying, and the familiar example is 'for the sake of' entailing sakes, but it seems to be a vice that is still found in metaphysical philosophy. The word 'nothingness' comes to mind. |
| 23786 | The status quo is part of what exists, and so needs metaphysical explanation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The status quo is part of what exists, and thus it is a proper topic of concern for the metaphysician, and so it warrants explanation. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: His point is that ontology as a mere inventory of things gives no account of why they remain unchanged, as well as their processes and connections. |
| 23775 | Powers are 'multi-track' if they can produce a variety of manifestations [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers are 'multi-track', meaning that they are capable of producing a variety of different manifestations when me with diverse stimuli. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: He later mentions magnetism. Not convinced of this. Powers probably never exist in isolation, so a different manifestation could be because a different power becomes involved. (Bird is a single-tracker). |
| 23780 | Every possible state of affairs is written into its originating powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: On the model of powers I prefer, every possible state of affairs that can arise is written into the powers that would constitute them. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 04.3) | |
| A reaction: I can't make any sense of 'written into', any more than I could when Leibniz proposed roughly the same thing about monads. I presume he means that any state of affairs which ever arises is the expression of the intrinsic nature of powers. |
| 23789 | Naming powers is unwise, because that it usually done by a single manifestation [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Naming powers is unwise; the main reason is that there is a long tradition of naming powers according to the manifestations they can produce, and that does not square well with multi-track powers. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.4) | |
| A reaction: On the other hand there must be some attempt to individuate powers (by scientists, if not by philosophers), and that can only rely on the manifestations. Describe them, rather than name them? Just assign them a number! |
| 23771 | Fundamental physics describes everything in terms of powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Physics describes fundamental entities exclusively in terms of what sound like powers. 'Charge' names the power to produce electromagnetic fields; 'spin' the power to contribute to the angular momentum of of system; 'mass' to produce gravitational force. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.4) | |
| A reaction: These are the three basic properties of an electron, which is fundamental in the standard model. You can say that their field is more fundamental than the particles, but the field is also only known as a set of powers. Powers rule! |
| 23776 | Rather than pure powers or pure categoricals, I favour basics which are both at once [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Power Monism: all properties are powers. Categoricalism: all fundamentals are categorical. Dualism allows both types. I defend Mixed Monism - that there is a single class of fundamental properties that are at once powerful and categorical. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the main dilemma for the powers ontology - of how powers can be basic, if there needs to be some entity which possesses the power. But what possesses the powers of an electron? I like Williams's idea, without being clear about it. |
| 23777 | Powers are more complicated than properties which are always on display [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: The mode in which a power presents itself is more complicated than those properties that have (strictly) nothing more to them than that which is always on display. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: This is the key idea that nature is dynamic, and so must consist of potentials as well as actuals. Interesting distinction. A basic division between those properties 'always on display', and those that are not? |
| 23774 | There are basic powers, which underlie dispositions, potentialities, capacities etc [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: It is no surprise that talk of dispositions, capacities, abilities, tendencies, powers, and potentialities are part of our everyday interactions. …I have in mind a basic set of powers, the sort which underlie all of these. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.1) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the correct picture. It is misleading say that a ball has a 'power' to roll smoothly. The powers are inside the ball. |
| 23791 | Dispositions are just useful descriptions, which are explained by underlying powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers are the properties at the core of the powers ontology, and dispositions are more like useful talk. …Dispositions are the phenomena to be explained by the power metaphysic. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: The picture I subscribe to. The first step is to see nature as dynamic (as Aristotle does with his 'potentialities'), and the next step to understand what must ground these dynamic dispositional properties. He calls dispositions 'process initiators'. |
| 23772 | If objects are property bundles, the properties need combining powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: If objects are bundles of properties …they must be robust enough to enter into building relations with one another such that they can form objects. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 01.5) | |
| A reaction: A very nice point. The Humean bundle view of objects just seems to take properties to be 'impressions' or verbal predicates, but they must have causal powers to be a grounding for ontology. |
| 23788 | Four-Dimensional is Perdurantism (temporal parts), plus Eternalism [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: 'Perdurantism' is the view that objects persist by being composed of temporal parts. When it is commonly combined with the eternalist account of the ontology of time, the result is known as 'four-dimensionalism'. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 08.1) | |
| A reaction: At last, a clear account of the distinction between these two! They're both wrong. He says the result is the spatiotemporal 'worm' view (i.e. one temporal extended thing, rather than a collection of parts). |
| 19682 | Internalists are much more interested in evidence than externalists are [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: The notion of evidence generally plays a much more significant role in internalist epistemologies than it does in various forms of externalism. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: I'm guessing that this is because evidence needs a certain amount of interpretation, whereas raw facts (which externalists seem to rely on) may never even enter a mind. |
| 19687 | Absence of evidence proves nothing, and weird claims need special evidence [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Two well know slogans (popularised by Carl Sagan) are 'absence of evidence is not evidence of absence', ...and 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence'. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Absence') | |
| A reaction: [Sagan was a popular science writer and broadcaster] The second one is something like Hume's argument against miracles. The old problem of the 'missing link' for human evolution embodied the first idea. |
| 19684 | Does spotting a new possibility count as evidence? [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Does the sudden realization of a heretofore unrecognized possibility count as evidence? | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
| A reaction: [Nice use of 'heretofore'! Why say 'previously' when you can keep these wonderful old English words alive?] This means that we can imagine new evidence ('maybe the murderer was a snake'!). Wrong. The evidence is what suggests the possibility. |
| 19688 | Every event is highly unlikely (in detail), but may be perfectly plausible [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: At a certain level of detail, almost any claim is unprecedented. How likely is 'Matilda won at Scrabble on Thursday with a score of 438 while drinking mint tea'? But there is nothing particularly unbelievable about the claim. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Extraordinary') | |
| A reaction: A striking idea, which rules out the simplistic idea that we can just assess evidence by its isolated likelihood. Context is crucial. How good is 438? What if she smoked opium? What if there is no Scrabble set on her island? |
| 19686 | Criminal law needs two separate witnesses, but historians will accept one witness [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: An ancient rule in law is that a criminal conviction needs evidence of two independent witnesses, but in history it is assumed that a document deserves the benefit of the doubt if it cannot be independently verified. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
| A reaction: [compressed; McGrew's full account qualifies it a bit] A nice observation. One might even be suspicious of the two 'independent' witnesses, if there were lots of other reasons to doubt someon's guilt. A single weird document is also dubious. |
| 19680 | Maybe all evidence consists of beliefs, rather than of facts [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers have been attracted to the view that, strictly speaking, what counts as evidence is not a set of physical objects or even experiences, but rather a set of believed propositions. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: This may be right. However, as always, I think animals are a key test. Do animals respond to evidence? Even if they did, they might need to 'make sense' of what they experienced, and even formulate a non-linguistic proposition. |
| 19681 | If all evidence is propositional, what is the evidence for the proposition? Do we face a regress? [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Taking evidence as propositional may trade one problem for another. If the bloodstain isn't evidence, but 'this is a bloodstain' is evidence, then what serves as evidence for the belief about the bloodstain? Is there an infinite regress? | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Prop..') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I quite like evidence being propositional, but then find this. I'll retreat to my beloved coherence. I do not endorse Sellars's 'only a belief can justify a belief', because raw experience has to be part of what is coherent. |
| 19689 | Several unreliable witnesses can give good support, if they all say the same thing [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: The testimony of a number of independent witnesses, none of them particularly reliable, who give substantially the same account of some event, may provide a strong argument in its favor. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Testimonial') | |
| A reaction: A striking point. It obviously works well for panicking people in a crowd during an incident. Does it also apply to independent scientists who are known to cheat? They may not collaborate, but may all want the same result. |
| 19683 | Narrow evidentialism relies wholly on propositions; the wider form includes other items [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Evidentialism comes in both narrow and wide forms depending on whether evidence is taken to consist only of propositions or of a wider range of items. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Evid..') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Conee and Feldman for the wide view, which is not restricted to beliefs] You can hardly rely on occurrent beliefs as evidence, so we often have good knowledge with forgotten justification. But such knowledge has been 'weakened'. |
| 19685 | Falsificationism would be naive if even a slight discrepancy in evidence killed a theory [McGrew] |
| Full Idea: Data do not quite speak for themselves, which speaks against a naive form of falsificationism according to which even the slightest mismatch between theory and evidence suffices to overturn a theory. | |
| From: Timothy McGrew (Evidence [2011], 'Interp..') | |
| A reaction: [He cites Robert Boyle wisely ignoring some data to get a good fit for his graph] |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 23785 | Causation needs to explain stasis, as well as change [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: I believe that it is also the job of a theory of causation to explain non-change | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.2) | |
| A reaction: Good point. Most attempts to pin down causation refer only to changes and differences. Two playing cards propping one another up is his example. |
| 23782 | Causation is the exercise of powers [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Causation is the exercising of powers. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 06.1) | |
| A reaction: Job done. Get over it. This is the view I prefer. |
| 23787 | If causes and effects overlap, that makes changes impossible [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: It would be shocking if an account of causation ruled out the possibility of change. But if a cause perfectly overlaps its effect in time, then the rejection of change is precisely what follows. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 07.6) | |
| A reaction: He cites Kant, Martin, Heil and Mumford/Anjum for this view. The latter seem to see causation as a 'process' (allowing change), which Williams as ruled out. The Williams point must be correct. |
| 23778 | Powers contain lawlike features, pointing to possible future states [Williams,NE] |
| Full Idea: Powers carry their lawlike features within them: it is part of their essence, qua power. Their pointing at future states just is their internal law-like nature; it is what gets expressed in such and such conditions. | |
| From: Neil E. Williams (The Powers Metaphysics [2019], 03.3) | |
| A reaction: Modern writers on powers seem unaware that Leibniz got there first. This seems to me the correct account of the ontology of laws. The formulation of laws is probably the best descriptive system for nature's patterns (over time as well as space). |