Lexicon of Arguments

 

I 380
Abstractions/Figures/Armstrong/Bigelow/Pargetter: Numbers are causally inactive.

Mathematics/Realism/Bigelow/Pargetter: some mathematical entities are even observable.
>Mathematical entities, >Theoretical entities.
I 381
Causation/Mathematics/BigelowVsArmstrong/Bigelow/Pargetter: in fact, people are not causes, but they are involved in causal processes.
Numbers: they are also involved in causal processes. If objects did not instantiate the quantities they instanced, other changes would have occurred. Thus at least proportions are causally involved. ((s) FieldVsNumbers as causal agents, but not Vs proportions).
>Propositions, >Hartry Field, >Causality.
I 382
Counterfactual dependence/Bigelow/Pargetter: one can again set up consequences of counterfactual conditionals, e.g. For the lever laws of Archimedes. This also provides why-explanations.
>Dependence/Bigelow, >Counterfactual dependence.
I 383
Numbers/causality/Bigelow/Pargetter: this shows that numbers play a fundamental role in causal explanations.
>Platonism, >Causal explanations.
BigelowVsField: (ad Field, Science without numbers)⁽¹⁾: he falsely assumes that physics first starts with pure empiricism, in order to convert the results into completely abstract mathematics.
Field/Bigelow/Pargetter: wants to avoid this detour.
BigelowVsField: his project is superfluous when we realize that mathematics is only a different description of the physical proportions and relations and no detour.
>Proportions.

1. H. Field, Science without numbers Princeton New Jersey 1980.