display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
25 ideas
| 12850 | To individuate something we must pick it out, but also know its limits of variation [Simons] |
| Full Idea: We have not finished deciding what Fido is when we can pick him out from his surroundings at any one time. ...Knowing what Fido is depends on knowing roughly within what limits his flux of parts is tolerable. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: I like this. We don't know the world until we know its modal characteristics (its powers or dispositions). Have you 'individuated' a hand grenade if you think it is a nice ornament? |
| 12860 | Sortal nouns for continuants tell you their continuance- and cessation-conditions [Simons] |
| Full Idea: A sortal noun for a kind of continuant tells us, among other things, under what conditions the object continues to exist and under what conditions it ceases to exist. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.3) | |
| A reaction: This sounds blatantly false. If you know something is a 'snake', that doesn't tell you how hot it must get before the snakes die. Obviously if you know all about snakes (from studying individual snakes!), then you know a lot about the next snake. |
| 12886 | A whole requires some unique relation which binds together all of the parts [Simons] |
| Full Idea: A whole must at least approximate to this condition: every member of some division of the object stands in a certain relation to every other member, and no member bears this relation to anything other than members of the division. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 9.2) | |
| A reaction: Simons proceeds to formalise this, and I suspect that he goes for this definition because (unlike looser ones) it can be formalised. See Simons's Idea 12865. We'll need to know whether these are internal or external relations. |
| 12857 | Tibbles isn't Tib-plus-tail, because Tibbles can survive its loss, but the sum can't [Simons] |
| Full Idea: There mere fact that Tibbles can survive the mutilation of losing a tail, whereas the sum of Tib and the tail cannot, is enough to distinguish them, even if no such mutilation ever occurs. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.1) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 12835 for details of the Tibbles example. Either we go for essentialism here, or the whole notion of identity collapses. But the essential features of a person are not just those whose loss would kill them. |
| 12835 | Does Tibbles remain the same cat when it loses its tail? [Simons] |
| Full Idea: The cat is 'Tibbles' with a tail; 'Tib' is Tibbles after the loss of the tail. 1) Tibbles isn't Tib at t; 2) Tibbles is Tib at t'; 3) Tibbles at t is Tibbles at t'; 4) Tib at t is Tib at t'; so 5) Tibbles at t is Tib at t (contradicting 1). What's wrong? | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 3.3) | |
| A reaction: [The example is in Wiggins 1979, from Geach, from William of Sherwood] Simons catalogues nine assumptions which are being made to produce the contradiction. 1) rests on Leibniz's law. Simons says two objects are occupying Tibbles. |
| 12820 | Without extensional mereology two objects can occupy the same position [Simons] |
| Full Idea: If we reject extensionality in mereology, it has as a consequence that more than one object may have exactly the same parts at the same time, and hence occupy the same position. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Simons defends this claim. I'm unconvinced that we must choose between the two views. The same parts should ensure the same physical essence, which seems to guarantee the same identity. Not any old parts generate an essence. |
| 12866 | Composition is asymmetric and transitive [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Composition is asymmetric and transitive: if a is made up of b, and b of c, then a is made up of c; and if a is made of b, then b is not made up of a. We cannot say the snow is made up of the snowball. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: ...And snowballs composed of snow can then compose a snowman (transitivity). |
| 12867 | A hand constitutes a fist (when clenched), but a fist is not composed of an augmented hand [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Composition entails constitution, but does the converse hold? A hand constitutes a fist in virtue of being clenched, but it is not obvious that it composes a fist, and certainly a fist is not composed of a hand plus some additional part. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: There are subtleties of ordinary usage in 'compose' and 'constitute' which are worth teasing apart, but that isn't the last word on such relationships. 'Compose' seems to point towards matter, while 'constitute' seems to point towards form. |
| 12864 | We say 'b is part of a', 'b is a part of a', 'b are a part of a', or 'b are parts of a'. [Simons] |
| Full Idea: There are four cases of possible forms of expression when a is made up of b: we say 'b is part of a', or 'b is a part of a', or 'b are a part of a', or 'b are parts of a'. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 6.4) | |
| A reaction: Personally I don't want to make much of these observations of normal English usage, but they are still interesting, and Simons offers a nice discussion of them. |
| 12814 | Classical mereology says there are 'sums', for whose existence there is no other evidence [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Either out of conviction or for reasons of algebraic neatness, classical extensional mereology asserts the existence of certain individuals, mereological sums, for whose existence in general we have no evidence outside the theory itself. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Observing that we have no evidence for sums 'outside the theory' is nice. It is a nice ontological test, with interesting implications for Quinean ontological commitment. |
| 12817 | 'Mereological extensionality' says objects with the same parts are identical [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Classical extensional mereology won't extend well to temporal and modal facts, because of 'mereological extensionality', which is the thesis that objects with the same parts are identical (by analogy with the extensionality of sets). | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Simons challenges this view, claiming, for example, that the Ship of Theseus is two objects rather than one. I suppose 'my building bricks' might be 'your sculpture', but this is very ontologically extravagant. This is a mereological Leibniz's Law. |
| 12833 | If there are c atoms, this gives 2^c - 1 individuals, so there can't be just 2 or 12 individuals [Simons] |
| Full Idea: In classical mereology, if there are c atoms, where c is any cardinal number, there are 2^c - 1 individuals, so the cardinality of models is restricted. There are no models with cardinality 2, 12 or aleph-0, for example. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 1.2) | |
| A reaction: The news that there is no possible world containing just 2 or just 12 individuals ought to worry fans of extensional mereology. A nice challenge for God - create a world containing just 12 individuals. |
| 12849 | Sums are more plausible for pluralities and masses than they are for individuals [Simons] |
| Full Idea: We are on stronger grounds in asserting the general existence of sums when considering pluralities and masses than when considering individuals. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 5.2) | |
| A reaction: I was thinking that the modern emphasis on referring to plurals was precisely to resist the idea that we must 'sum' them into one thing. If so, we wouldn't want to then sum several plurals. If a mass isn't a sum, how can we sum some masses? |
| 12877 | Sums of things in different categories are found within philosophy. [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Cross-categorial sums are not unknown in philosophy. A body and the events which befall it are intimately connected, and the mysterious four-dimensional blocks might be mereological sums of the body and its life. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 8.1) | |
| A reaction: Simons here ventures into the territory of abstracta, which he said he wouldn't touch. Presumably his first example has 'a biography' as its whole, which is not just a philosophical notion. Why will some categories sum, and others won't? |
| 12888 | The wholeness of a melody seems conventional, but of an explosion it seems natural [Simons] |
| Full Idea: The example of a melody shows that what counts as a temporal individual is partly a matter of human stipulation. But with a natural event like an explosion there is little or no room for decision about what is a part, and whether it is a single event. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 9.6) | |
| A reaction: You could have a go at giving a natural account of the wholeness of a melody, in terms of the little aesthetic explosion that occurs in the brain of a listener. |
| 12871 | Objects have their essential properties because of the kind of objects they are [Simons] |
| Full Idea: An object has the essential properties it has in virtue of being the kind of object it is. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: He attributes this to Husserl and Wiggins. I just don't get it. What makes something the 'kind of object it is'? They've got it the wrong way round. Does God announce that this thing is a tiger, and is then pleasantly surprised to discover its stripes? |
| 12870 | We must distinguish the de dicto 'must' of propositions from the de re 'must' of essence [Simons] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish the 'must' of necessity as applied to a proposition or state of affairs (de dicto) from the 'must' of essence, concerning the way in which an object has an attribute (de re). | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.1) | |
| A reaction: A helfpful distinction, but a possible confusion of necessity and essentiality (Simons knows this). Modern logicians seem to run them together, because they only care about identity. I don't, because I care about explanations. |
| 12873 | Original parts are the best candidates for being essential to artefacts [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Original parts are the best candidates for being essential to artefacts. It is hard to conceive how an object could have as essential a part which was attached at some time after the object had come into being. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Without its big new memory upgrade my computer would be hopelessly out of date. Simons is awesome in some ways, but seems rather confused when it comes to discussing essence. I think Wiggins may have been a bad influence on him. |
| 12874 | An essential part of an essential part is an essential part of the whole [Simons] |
| Full Idea: An essential part of an essential part is an essential part of the whole. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.4) | |
| A reaction: Sounds beyond dispute, but worth pondering. It seems to be only type-parts, not token-parts, which are essential. Simons is thinking of identity rather than function, but he rejects Chisholm's idea that all parts are essential. So which ones are? |
| 12837 | Four dimensional-objects are stranger than most people think [Simons] |
| Full Idea: The strangeness of four-dimensional objects is almost always underestimated in the literature. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 3.4) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 12836, where he has criticised process ontologists for smuggling in stages and process as being OF conventional objects. |
| 12856 | Intermittent objects would be respectable if they occurred in nature, as well as in artefacts [Simons] |
| Full Idea: If we could show that intermittence could occur not only among artefacts and higher-order objects, but also among natural things, then we should have given it a secure place on the ontological map. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 5.7) | |
| A reaction: Interesting ontological test. Having identified fairly clear intermittent artefacts (Idea 12851), if we then fail to find any examples in nature, must we revisit the artefacts and say they are not intermittents? He suggests freezing an organ in surgery. |
| 12885 | Objects like chess games, with gaps in them, are thereby less unified [Simons] |
| Full Idea: Temporal objects which are scattered in time - i.e. have temporal gaps in them, like interrupted discussions or chess games - are less unified than those without gaps. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 9.2) | |
| A reaction: Is he really saying that a discussion or a chess game is less unified if there is even the slightest pause in it? Otherwise, how long must the pause be before it disturbs the unity? Do people play internet chess, as they used to play correspondence chess? |
| 12854 | An entrepreneur and a museum curator would each be happy with their ship at the end [Simons] |
| Full Idea: At the end of the Ship of Theseus story both an entrepreneur and a museum curator can be content, each having his ship all to himself, ..because each was all along claiming a different object from the other. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: Simons has the entrepreneur caring about function (for cruises), and the curator caring about matter (as a relic of Theseus). It is bold of Simons to say on that basis that it starts as two objects, one 'matter-constant', the other 'form-constant'. |
| 12855 | The 'best candidate' theories mistakenly assume there is one answer to 'Which is the real ship?' [Simons] |
| Full Idea: The 'best candidate' theories get into difficulty because it is assumed that there is a single uniquely correct answer to the question 'Which is the real ship?' | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 5.5) | |
| A reaction: My own example supports Simons. If Theseus discards the old planks as rubbish, then his smart new ship is the original. But if he steals his own ship (to evade insurance regulations) by substituting a plank at a time, the removed planks are the original. |
| 12872 | The zygote is an essential initial part, for a sexually reproduced organism [Simons] |
| Full Idea: It is essential to an organism arising from sexual reproduction that it has its zygote as initial improper part. | |
| From: Peter Simons (Parts [1987], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: It can't be necessary that an organism which appears to be sexually reproduced actually is so (if you don't believe that, read more science fiction). It may well just be analytic that sexual reproduction involves a zygote. Nothing to do with essence. |