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Causation and laws of nature in early modern philosophy / Walter Ott.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Ott, Walter R., author.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Causation.
- Philosophy of nature.
- Necessity (Philosophy).
- Natural law.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource (xii, 260 pages)
- Place of Publication:
- Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2009.
- Language Note:
- English
- Summary:
- Some philosophers think physical explanations stand on their own: what happens, happens because things have the properties they do. Others think that any such explanation is incomplete: what happens in the physical world must be partly due to the laws of nature. Causation and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Philosophy examines the debate between these views from Descartes to Hume. Ott argues that the competing models of causation in the period grow out of the scholastic notion of power. On this Aristotelian view, the connection between cause and effect is logically necessary. Causes are 'intrin
- Contents:
- Introduction
- Themes
- The origin and status of laws of nature
- The ontology of powers
- Necessity
- Models of causation
- Plan of the book
- The Aristotelian background
- The ontology of relations
- Manifest and occult qualities
- The Cartesian predicament
- What mechanism isn't
- The rejection of Aristotelianism
- The nude wax : Cartesian ontology
- The laws of nature
- Force
- Occasionalism
- The concurrentist reading
- The argument from laws of nature
- Thoroughgoing occasionalism
- The problem of mental causation
- The dialectic of occasionalism
- Malebranche and the cognitive model of causation
- The argument from nonsense
- The argument from elimination
- The divine concursus argument
- 'Little souls' revisited
- The 'no necessary connection' argument
- The epistemic argument
- Laws and divine volitions
- The content of divine volitions
- The problem of efficacious laws
- Causation and explanation
- A scholastic mechanism
- Regis against the occasionalists
- Power and necessity
- A dead cadaverous thing
- Relations and powers
- Boyle's paradox
- Boyle and the concurrentists
- Locke on relations
- Locke on powers : the geometrical model
- Locke's mechanisms
- Hume
- The two Humes
- Intentionality
- Meaning
- Against the positivist reading
- Signification
- Judgment and belief
- Semiotic empiricism
- Relative ideas
- Finding Hume's target
- Against the cognitive and geometrical models
- The neighboring fields
- The practicality requirement
- Relations
- The status of relations
- Two kinds of relations
- The nature of necessity
- The definition of causation
- The problem
- Subjectivism or projectivism?
- Conclusion.
- Notes:
- Description based upon print version of record.
- Description based on print version record.
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 251-258) and index.
- ISBN:
- 0-19-966468-4
- 9786612348884
- 1-282-34888-4
- 0-19-157140-7
- OCLC:
- 495092251
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