Plato’s Forms as powers

2021 ◽  
pp. 65-82
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Difference Makers

This chapter introduces Plato’s fundamental entities, the Forms. It focuses on his view that the Forms are causal powers, and his innovative stance that the Forms are transcendent entities; it argues that Plato’s Forms are transcendent powers. This raises the (difficult) question of what kind of causal efficacy transcendent entities can have on things in the physical world. By showing that Plato’s Forms are causal powers having constitutional causal efficacy, as difference-makers, like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, the chapter begins to build the case for what I call Plato’s Anaxagoreanism. If the Forms operate like Anaxagoras’s Opposites, by constitutional causal efficacy, except that they are transcendent, how can features of objects in the physical world be constitutionally derived from features of transcendent entities, the Forms? The chapter argues that Plato thinks of the causal efficacy of the Forms on the model of the normativity of mathematics and geometry over the sensible world.

scholarly journals Realization

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (98) ◽  
pp. 41-70
Author(s):  
Giovanna Hendel
Keyword(s):  
Physical World ◽  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Psychophysical Reduction

So far no clear explication of the notion of realization has been offered, in spite of the frequent uses of the notion in the literature to discharge important jobs, such as that of accounting for the causal efficacy of the mental in a physical world, and that of providing a viable characterization of physicalism, and/or psychophysical reduction. I put forward an account of realization as an identity-like relation. I argue that such account has the following advantages: (a) it provides a picture under which it makes sense to use the same term, i.e. 'realization', to pick out relations that differ in their relata, as it happened in the original uses of the term 'realization'; (b) it helps to understand how well, if at all, some appeals to realization in the literature can discharge the jobs mentioned; (c) more generally, it makes clear what realization can do.  

Anaxagoras’s metaphysical foundations

2021 ◽  
pp. 12-34
Author(s):  
Anna Marmodoro
Keyword(s):  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
The World

This chapter introduces Anaxagoras’s metaphysics and the relations of fundamentality and composition that hold between entities in his ontology: the Opposites (properties), stuffs, objects, the so-called seeds (i.e., reified structures), and nous with its vortex. The chapter argues that the crux of Anaxagoras’s metaphysics, which will also influence Plato the most, is the stance that parts of properties are parts of objects. Objects are qualified by properties by having parts of properties (in preponderance) within their constitution. Thus, constitutional overlap is the ‘mechanism’ by which Anaxagoras accounts for the qualification of objects. The chapter provides an account of Anaxagoras’s Opposites as causal powers and explains the type of causal efficacy the Opposites have in the world: constitutional causal efficacy.

Could Mental Causation be Invisible?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Robb
Keyword(s):  
Human Physiology ◽  
Mental Causation ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Long Term Results ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Influence ◽  
Empirical Prediction ◽  
Causal Closure ◽  
Mental Events

E. J. Lowe proposed a model of mental causation on which mental events are emergent, thus exerting a novel, downward causal influence on physical events. Yet on Lowe’s model, mental causation is at the same time empirically undetectable, and in this sense is ‘invisible’. Lowe’s model is ingenious, but I don’t think emergentists should welcome it, for it seems to me that a primary virtue of emergentism is its bold empirical prediction about the long-term results of human physiology. Here I’ll try to restore emergentism’s empirical status, but my broader aim is to use Lowe’s model to explore some central topics in the mental causation debate, including the ‘causal closure’ of the physical world and the nature of causal powers.

scholarly journals Timbre of Trash

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-229
Author(s):  
Joe Cantrell
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Collective Agency ◽  
Digital Audio ◽  
Capitalist Production ◽  
Difficult Question ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Continuous Manufacture ◽  
New Goods ◽  
Digital Equipment

Late capitalist production is highly dependent upon the continuous manufacture of new goods to be brought to market. The idea of obsolescence plays a key role in this process, as more recent commodities replace older, presumably less-effective products. This process is especially prominent in the technological sector, which routinely encourages the deliberate replacement of older devices— even when still functional. Digital audio technologies fall in line with these practices, and are often produced using exploitative labor practices. A serious consideration of these effects poses a difficult question for sonic artists who use electronic and digital equipment in their practice. Specifically, how can sound practitioners begin to account for and push against their tacit contribution to the detrimental effects of obsolescence entailed by the tools of their craft? This article explores this question through the lens of new materialist discourse, which outlines modes of engaging with the physical world that reject the assumption that objects are static. Instead, they employ an understanding of objects as collective agents in constant active assemblage of shared material actions that include the presence of human bodies as part of a continuum of objects within larger systems of capital, labor, and politics. The  electronic audio practices of American sonic artists who incorporate obsolete, broken, and discarded objects in their work will act as case studies for this exploration. Their work helps understand possible collaborative implementations of technological audio production that recognize the collective agency involved in their physical and aural production.

scholarly journals Ethical Emergentism and Moral Causation

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-362
Author(s):  
Ryan Stringer
Keyword(s):  
Causal Efficacy ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
In Virtue Of

Abstract This paper focuses on a recently articulated, emergentist conception of ethical naturalism and its commitment to causal efficacy, or the idea that moral properties have causal powers, along with its supporting commitment to moral causation. After I reconstruct the theory, I explain how it offers some interesting theoretical benefits to moral realists in virtue of its commitment to causal efficacy. Then, after locating some examples of moral causation in support of this commitment, I present and respond to five objections to such causation, which all threaten to undermine this support. Lastly, I consider a very serious problem that the theory faces in virtue of positing emergent moral properties as responsible for moral causation – namely, the problem of downward moral causation. I describe this problem in detail and argue that, as it stands, it does not spell doom for the theory.

Acquisition and Use of Mental Operators: Effects of Type of Practice

2002 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Burkhard Müller ◽  
Jürgen Gehrke
Keyword(s):  
Mental Models ◽  
Test Performance ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Test Phase ◽  
Acquisition Phase ◽  
Practice Test ◽  
Subsequent Test ◽  
Use Of Knowledge

Abstract. Planning interactions with the physical world requires knowledge about operations; in short, mental operators. Abstractness of content and directionality of access are two important properties to characterize the representational units of this kind of knowledge. Combining these properties allows four classes of knowledge units to be distinguished that can be found in the literature: (a) rules, (b) mental models or schemata, (c) instances, and (d) episodes or chunks. The influence of practicing alphabet-arithmetic operators in a prognostic, diagnostic, or retrognostic way (A + 2 = ?, A? = C, or ? + 2 = C, respectively) on the use of that knowledge in a subsequent test was used to assess the importance of these dimensions. At the beginning, the retrognostic use of knowledge was worse than the prognostic use, although identical operations were involved (A + 2 = ? vs. ? - 2 = A). This disadvantage was reduced with increased practice. Test performance was best if the task and the letter pairs were the same as in the acquisition phase. Overall, the findings support theories proposing multiple representational units of mental operators. The disadvantage for the retrognosis task was recovered in the test phase, and may be evidence for the importance of the order of events independent of the order of experience.

To Friend or Not to Friend: A Difficult Question

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Misty M. Glover ◽  
Michelle E. Ronayne ◽  
Johnny P. Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Difficult Question

Emerging Cyber-Physical Systems : An Overview

2018 ◽  
pp. 306-316
Author(s):  
Okolie S.O. ◽  
Kuyoro S.O. ◽  
Ohwo O. B
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Economic Benefit ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Cyber Physical Systems ◽  
Cyber Physical System ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
Strategic Research ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Wide Range

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) will revolutionize how humans relate with the physical world around us. Many grand challenges await the economically vital domains of transportation, health-care, manufacturing, agriculture, energy, defence, aerospace and buildings. Exploration of these potentialities around space and time would create applications which would affect societal and economic benefit. This paper looks into the concept of emerging Cyber-Physical system, applications and security issues in sustaining development in various economic sectors; outlining a set of strategic Research and Development opportunities that should be accosted, so as to allow upgraded CPS to attain their potential and provide a wide range of societal advantages in the future.

A Research Study on Event Prediction in IoT Based Upon WBAN

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 116
Author(s):  
Krittika Singh
Keyword(s):  
Research Study ◽  
Network Connectivity ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Flight Schedules ◽  
Event Prediction ◽  
Software Sensors ◽  
Medical Emergencies ◽  
Computer Based ◽  
The Internet Of Things ◽  
Exchange Data

The Internet of things is the internetworking of physical devices, vehicles, buildings, and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data. The IoT allows objects to be sensed and/or controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit in addition to reduced human intervention. In this research an expert system based upon the IOT is developed in which the next event in the flight schedules due to any kind of medical emergencies is to be predicted. For this the medical data of all the patients are to be collected through WBAN.

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