A Dormitive Virtue?

2019 ◽  
pp. 195-216
Author(s):  
Neil E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Causal Powers ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
The Right

Chapter 9 considers objections to the account of persistence offered in chapter 8. The bulk of the chapter is taken up with the question of explanatory significance: according to the objection from dormitive virtues, powers cannot properly be said to be explanatory. In response, it is argued that causal explanations must reflect the ontological facts, and therefore that explanations are ontology-relative. Consequently, on the assumption that the correct ontology is one that countenances fundamental causal powers, powers come out as explanatory. Powers-based explanations—in the right contexts—are thus vindicated. Further objections regarding the possibility of random creation and gunk are considered.

Attributions of Athletes with Cerebral Palsy

1987 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 278-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gail M. Dummer ◽  
Martha E. Ewing ◽  
Rochelle V. Habeck ◽  
Sara R. Overton
Keyword(s):  
Cerebral Palsy ◽  
Subjective Outcome ◽  
Causal Explanations ◽  
Perceived Success ◽  
The Disabled ◽  
Realistic Assessment ◽  
Powerful Explanation ◽  
Achievement Behavior ◽  
The Right ◽  
Objective Outcome

The attributions of 147 athletes with cerebral palsy who participated in the 1985 National Cerebral Palsy/Les Autres Games were investigated following competition relative to their reactions to objectively and subjectively defined success or failure. Attributions were the dependent variable in a 2 × 2 (More-Disabled/Less-Disabled × Win/Loss) MANOVA. Attributions were also analyzed in a 2 × 4 (More-Disabled/Less-Disabled × Satisfied/Dissatisfied, Winner/Loser) MANOVA designed to determine the influence of perceived success or failure upon causal explanations of performance. There were no significant differences in the use of attributions by gender; however, there were differences in the use of attributions across disability classifications. Disabled winners used both internal and external explanations to a greater degree than losers, which was inconsistent with previous literature. Previous results linking persistence in sport to the use of internal and stable attributions were supported. Subjective outcome, defined in terms of satisfaction with performance, was a more powerful explanation of achievement behavior for the disabled athletes in this study than objective outcome. Satisfaction was associated with demonstration of positive qualities such as using the right strategy and ability, with realistic assessment of ability, and with enjoying competition.

Powerful Perdurance

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil E. Williams
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Temporal Parts ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Way

It is commonly held that the right sort of ‘glue’ for uniting the temporal parts of persisting objects should be causal. To date, very little has been said about the nature of this causal glue (except to give it unhelpful names like ‘immanent causation’ or ‘gen-identity’). To my mind, causal powers look well suited to the task: two consecutive object stages are part of the same persisting object just in case the latter is part of the manifestation of an appropriate power of the former. However, before any such project could hope to get off the ground, a number of prima facie objections must be dealt with. For instance: temporal parts look too short-lived to instantiate or exercise powers; the exercise of powers tends to be a mutual affair not suited to the causal line of single objects; and powers are typically thought of as incapable of having themselves as their manifestations. The aim of this paper is to answer these objections, thereby providing a greater understanding of the nature of powers and thus clearing the way for a powers-based account of perdurance.

of supposing that there are intrinsic qualitative features of mental representations—I doubt that this is a mistake—but the mistake of supposing that these intrinsic qualitative features represent the world by mirroring or picturing it so that representation goes first and foremost by way of intrinsic similarity. What could be intrinsically similar to an array of sense qualities across a sense field? Answer: an array of qualities across space and time. If this is what is primarily represented by a perceptual representation then the problem is how it is we arrive at representational contents to the effect that there are persisting objects. The natural answer is that we derive such contents; it is as if we infer them demonstratively or non-demonstratively from what is primarily represented. So persisting objects are either constructions out of distributions of qualities or the inferred causes of such distributions. It is this whole empiricist problematic which must be rejected. Representation is our characteristic activity. What justifies a particular kind of representation or judgement made immediately as a result of perceptual experience is not that it mirrors or pictures or is intrinsically similar to an independently characterizable reality but that it is the representation or judgement which we would standardly and non-collusively make under just those conditions of perceptual experience. So it is with perceptual judgements of persistence. We spontaneously and non-collusively make them on the basis of perceptual experience. Although particular judgements of persistence may be overturned by the discovery of the sort of trickery mentioned above, the overturning takes place by means of accounting for the illusory appearance of persistence as due to the causal powers of a more inclusive framework of persisting objects. The global commitment to the effect that the world is made up of persisting objects is not a reasoned consequence of some prior commitment to the effect that the world contains at least distributions of qualities over space­ time. It is something we spontaneously and dogmatically employ as a fundamental theme in our everyday representation of the way the world is. How do we earn the right to this dogmatism? How do we earn the right to spontaneously go in for representations as of persisting objects? (By what right do we so synthesize the

2013 ◽  
pp. 216-217
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Mental Representations ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Perceptual Representation ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
As If ◽  
The Way

Property Causation

2020 ◽  
pp. 245-276
Author(s):  
Paul Noordhof
Keyword(s):  
Causal Relationship ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Supervenience Base ◽  
Explanatory Virtues ◽  
Target Effect ◽  
The Right ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Explanatory Virtue ◽  
Target Effects ◽  
Base Properties

If one set of properties supervenes upon another, then the former have causal powers if: first, the supervenience base properties minimally metaphysically necessitate the supervening properties; second, part of the minimal supervenience base causes the target effect; third, instances of the supervening properties would all cause certain target effects in the right kind of circumstances, as a result of this. When these conditions are met, the causal relationship holds not only in virtue of the supervenience base properties but also the supervening ones. Two further explanatory virtues that citing property causes may display are: when a property has a distinctive causal profile (when it makes a causal contribution that no other property would) and when an instance of the property supplies the precise contribution required for a certain effect. Pragmatic appeal to the second explanatory virtue explains away our tendency to hear certain explicitly contrastive statements mistakenly as true.

scholarly journals Kant’s Causal Power Argument Against Empirical Affection

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-51
Author(s):  
Jonas Jervell Indregard
Keyword(s):  
Causal Power ◽  
Causal Powers ◽  
Spatial Effects ◽  
Decisive Reason ◽  
The Right

AbstractA well-known trilemma faces the interpretation of Kant’s theory of affection, namely whether the objects that affect us are empirical, noumenal or both. I argue that, according to Kant, the things that affect us and cause representations in us are not empirical objects. I articulate what I call the Causal Power Argument, according to which empirical objects cannot affect us because they do not have the right kind of power to cause representations. All the causal powers that empirical objects have are moving powers, and such powers can only have spatial effects. According to Kant, however, the representations that arise in us as a result of the affection of our sensibility are non-spatial. I show that this argument is put forward by Kant in a number of passages, and figures as a decisive reason for rejecting empirical affection and instead endorsing affection by the things in themselves.

Investor-State Dispute Settlement under NAFTA Chapter 11: The Shape of Things to Come?

1998 ◽  
Vol 35 ◽  
pp. 263-290
Author(s):  
J. Anthony VanDuzer
Keyword(s):  
Free Trade Agreement ◽  
Dispute Settlement ◽  
Trade Agreement ◽  
Minimum Standards ◽  
The North ◽  
State Behaviour ◽  
Nafta Chapter 11 ◽  
To Come ◽  
The Right

SummaryRecently, there has been a proliferation of international agreements imposing minimum standards on states in respect of their treatment of foreign investors and allowing investors to initiate dispute settlement proceedings where a state violates these standards. Of greatest significance to Canada is Chapter 11 of the North American Free Trade Agreement, which provides both standards for state behaviour and the right to initiate binding arbitration. Since 1996, four cases have been brought under Chapter 11. This note describes the Chapter 11 process and suggests some of the issues that may arise as it is increasingly resorted to by investors.

What face familiarity feelings say about the lateralization of specific entities within the core system

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guido Gainotti
Keyword(s):  
Temporal Lobe ◽  
Memory System ◽  
Core System ◽  
The Core ◽  
Memory Traces ◽  
Specific Memory ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Temporal Structures ◽  
The Right

Abstract The target article carefully describes the memory system, centered on the temporal lobe that builds specific memory traces. It does not, however, mention the laterality effects that exist within this system. This commentary briefly surveys evidence showing that clear asymmetries exist within the temporal lobe structures subserving the core system and that the right temporal structures mainly underpin face familiarity feelings.

Study of charge transfer in FeTi

1983 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
pp. 296-297
Author(s):  
J. Taft∅
Keyword(s):  
Charge Transfer ◽  
Charge Distribution ◽  
Electron Scattering ◽  
Periodic System ◽  
Electron Distribution ◽  
Scattering Amplitude ◽  
Transition Elements ◽  
Hartree Fock ◽  
Cscl Structure ◽  
The Right

It is well known that for reflections corresponding to large interplanar spacings (i.e., sin θ/λ small), the electron scattering amplitude, f, is sensitive to the ionicity and to the charge distribution around the atoms. We have used this in order to obtain information about the charge distribution in FeTi, which is a candidate for storage of hydrogen. Our goal is to study the changes in electron distribution in the presence of hydrogen, and also the ionicity of hydrogen in metals, but so far our study has been limited to pure FeTi. FeTi has the CsCl structure and thus Fe and Ti scatter with a phase difference of π into the 100-ref lections. Because Fe (Z = 26) is higher in the periodic system than Ti (Z = 22), an immediate “guess” would be that Fe has a larger scattering amplitude than Ti. However, relativistic Hartree-Fock calculations show that the opposite is the case for the 100-reflection. An explanation for this may be sought in the stronger localization of the d-electrons of the first row transition elements when moving to the right in the periodic table. The tabulated difference between fTi (100) and ffe (100) is small, however, and based on the values of the scattering amplitude for isolated atoms, the kinematical intensity of the 100-reflection is only 5.10-4 of the intensity of the 200-reflection.

New Dimensions in Freeze-Etching

1969 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
pp. 202-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell L. Steere ◽  
Michael Moseley
Keyword(s):  
Fracture Surfaces ◽  
Aluminum Specimen ◽  
Specimen Holder ◽  
Freeze Etching ◽  
The Right

A redesigned specimen holder and cap have made possible the freeze-etching of both fracture surfaces of a frozen fractured specimen. In principal, the procedure involves freezing a specimen between two specimen holders (as shown in A, Fig. 1, and the left side of Fig. 2). The aluminum specimen holders and brass cap are constructed so that the upper specimen holder can be forced loose, turned over, and pressed down firmly against the specimen stage to a position represented by B, Fig. 1, and the right side of Fig. 2.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document