Tuesday, February 08, 2005

supervenience - when there could be no difference of one sort without the differences of another sort

the world has it laws of nature, its chances and causal relationships; and yet -perhaps!- all there is to the world is its point-by-point distribution of local qualitative character. we have a spatiotemporal arangement of points. at each point various local intrinsic properties may be present, instantiated perhaps by the point itself or perhaps by point-sizes bits of matter or of fields that are located there. there may be properties of mass, charge, quark colour and flavour, field strength, and the like; and maybe others besides, if physics as we know it is inadequate to its descriptive task. is that all? are the laws, chances and causal relationships nothing but patterns which supervene on this point-by-point distribution of properties?

david lewis - on the plurality of worlds

thoughts? i am undecided as of now

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