Movement Ontology

    Elder 2004

    Notes on Elder (2004) Real Natures.pdf.

    This was the first book I read that connects to the original sound-ontological line of research, discovered at the end of a quick chain of philosophical research on what an "artifact" was, which began after encountering the term in Sound Studies.

    Effectively refutes most forms of conventionalism, then presents a model for what types of artifacts might be reasonably included in an ontology which includes everyday-sized objects. This model of "copied kinds" is particularly interesting because the examples Elder uses include non-human artifacts (stickleback mating dances) and performances (a rain dance). This model cannot account for individual musical works, but can account for e.g. the institution of concert performance, making it particularly interesting to this project.

    Use not for individuation, but for larger discussions works

    Suppose then that the members of natural kind K—Ks— are essentially characterized at least by property f, which contrasts with contrary properties/' and/". Can it be argued

    Diff. between "all K's have f and "f is essential to K-ness" is whether lacking f implies other properties

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    members of no other kind. But need there be, for each natural kind, some one property that individually is found in members of no other kind? That would follow if each essential nature had to incorporate some one property which underlies, is responsible for, all the rest. But that requirement is unmotivated. All that is required by the tra­

    Is carbon-14 a natural kind?

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    The central question is whether my taking drug A played a necessary part in a set of events sufficient, given the cir­ cumstances, for my being alive today. The answer is No. The

    willing to accept for now; should pick apart later

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    But are microparticles ever really influenced by such rela­ tions? In chapter 3 we noted that individual microparticles are almost never influenced even by the fact itself that they are contained in their host medium-sized object. In other

    I feel like this might be a bit of a confusion of scale—but I don't think that refutes the underlying idea or consequent argument
    Oh wait—that's exactly the thing—in order to account for the movements of the microparticles you need to resort to human-scale objects (?)

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    Kinds of artifacts picked out by the sortals of ordinary lan­ guage often amount to copied kinds, but not invariably: chairs do not compose a copied kind, and neither do neck­ ties or nose rings (see 7.3). I will be content if I have staked out a place in ontology for at least some artifacts.

    What might this mean for e.g. compositions?
    in restrospect: that's fucking hilarious that I wrote that like 6 months ago lmao

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    believe. The "working" genotypic parts of all genomes in our lineage—the parts that are not just "junk DNA"—all do have something distinctive in common. This "something" is not qualitative but dispositional. These parts can to a strik­

    further analyze

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    Followings of conventions have specific shapes, they often have proper functions, and they have historically estab­ lished conventional settings. They too are then copied kinds.

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