There is a good reason for thinking that the existence of a strictly uncausable thing (the sort of thing that composes any First Cause of the Universe) would have to be atemporal, beyond the limits of time. Any time-bound entity would be the sort of thing that could change and that could conceivably even beginContinue reading “Strictly Uncausable Things”
Category Archives: Definition, Real
From Quantum Entanglement to a Cosmic Substance?
Non-Locality: Action vs. Influence at a Distance It is true that, as Bell’s theorem demonstrated, quantum theory is deeply committed to superluminal influence or coordination. But we have to distinguish between violations of Parameter Independence and violations of Outcome Independence (to use Abner Shimony’s distinction, Shimony 1984). Mere violations of Outcome Independence require only aContinue reading “From Quantum Entanglement to a Cosmic Substance?”
The Survival of Accidents and Material Parts
I will assume that individual accidents have real definitions, but that these definitions are shared by all the members of an infima species of quality, quantity, or whatever. These definitions include some predication of properties to an external entity (the substance in which an accident must inhere). But the definition won’t include any particular substanceContinue reading “The Survival of Accidents and Material Parts”
Defining ‘Substance’ Using Ontological Dependence
I want to propose here an alternative approach to defining ‘substance’: using Fine’s notion of ontological dependence (1995), instead of relying exclusively on grounding (as in this previous post). A thing x ontologically depends on y iff the essence (real definition) of x includes y. Fine believes in individual essences –the essence of an individualContinue reading “Defining ‘Substance’ Using Ontological Dependence”
The Analytic Thomist 