Combining Philosophers

Ideas for Empedocles, Heraclitus and Roger M. White

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4 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 8. Continuity of Rivers
You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage [Quine on Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage.
     From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis 1
     A reaction: This seems to make Quine a 'perdurantist', committed to time-slices of objects, rather than whole objects enduring through change.
It is not possible to step twice into the same river [Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: It is not possible to step twice into the same river.
     From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B091), quoted by Plutarch - 24: The E at Delphi 392b10-
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 10. Beginning of an Object
Substance is not created or destroyed in mortals, but there is only mixing and exchange [Empedocles]
     Full Idea: There is no creation of substance in any one of mortal existence, nor any end in execrable death, but only mixing and exchange of what has been mixed.
     From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B008), quoted by Plutarch - 74: Reply to Colotes 1111f
     A reaction: also Aristotle 314b08
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 13. No Identity over Time
If flux is continuous, then lack of change can't be a property, so everything changes in every possible way [Plato on Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: According to Heracliteans, since things must be changing, and since lack of change can't be a property of anything, then everything is always undergoing change of every kind.
     From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B030) by Plato - Theaetetus 182a