tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post1104372452308978003..comments2024-03-27T20:37:09.185-05:00Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Truth, logic and explanationAlexander R Prusshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-37489619161500446482009-07-30T15:56:21.217-05:002009-07-30T15:56:21.217-05:00How odd that I didn't notice that (6b) is just...How odd that I didn't notice that (6b) is just (4)! But doesn't that just show that (6) reprises the original problem? (I'm kind of lost, too.)<br /><br />What I meant by (1) and (4) being parallel is not that they share the same logical form--they don't--but that it seems that we have a parallelism between explanatory relations between claims about sentences and explanatory relations between claims about the world.<br /><br />As for overdermination, I don't think an overdetermination problem disappears just because both explanations come back to a single ultimate explanation. When A causes both B and C, and B is sufficient for D and C is sufficient for D, and the path from B to D doesn't go through C, and the path from C to D doesn't go through B, then this seems to be a case of overdetermination even though there is a single ultimate cause. (If determinism were true, one could still have overdetermination, even though everything would be ultimately causally explained by the conditions at the time of the Big Bang.)Alexander R Prusshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05989277655934827117noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3891434218564545511.post-71591171264106809522009-07-30T11:32:52.100-05:002009-07-30T11:32:52.100-05:00Alex,
I am pretty thoroughly lost. First, AFAIC...Alex, <br /><br />I am pretty thoroughly lost. First, AFAICT, (1) and (4) are not parallel. The left half of (1) is a disjunction, while the left half of (4) is not. (1) and (3) are parallel but they are instances of the same general principle.<br /><br />Second, there seems like a pretty easy way to reconcile the explanatory overdetermination of (4) and (5), so long as we allow some fairly innocuous transitivity. (4) plus (6c) yields ‘“Roses are flowers or violets are yellow” is true because roses are flowers.’ (5) plus (1) yields the same thing. So I would say that ‘ “roses are flowers or violets are yellow” is true [ultimately] because roses are flowers’ and this determination goes through two different routes. That doesn’t really seem problematic to me.<br /><br />Also, your allegedly problematic (6b) is just (4), which I thought had a pretty good justification. <br /><br />All of this leaves me thinking that I’m missing something important in your post.Heath Whitehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13535886546816778688noreply@blogger.com