19 ideas
4748 | Anselm of Canterbury identified truth with God [Anselm, by Engel] |
Full Idea: Anselm of Canterbury identified truth with God. | |
From: report of Anselm (De Veritate (On Truth) [1095]) by Pascal Engel - Truth §1.6 | |
A reaction: An interesting claim, perhaps, depending on what it means. God decrees truth, God knows all truth, God makes truth possible, God connects us to the world, God is the world…? |
10397 | Abelard's mereology involves privileged and natural divisions, and principal parts [Abelard, by King,P] |
Full Idea: Abelard's theory of substantial integral wholes is not a pure mereology in the modern sense, since he holds that there are privileged divisions; ..the division of a whole must be into its principal parts. Some wholes have a natural division. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
A reaction: This is a mereology that cuts nature at the joints, rather than Lewis's 'unrestricted composition', so I find Abelard rather appealing. |
10396 | If 'animal' is wholly present in Socrates and an ass, then 'animal' is rational and irrational [Abelard, by King,P] |
Full Idea: Abelard argued that if the universal 'animal' were completely present in both Socrates and an ass, making each wholly an animal, then the same thing, animal, will be simultaneously rational and irrational, with contraries present in the whole thing. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
A reaction: If we have universals for rationality and irrationality, they can distinguish the two. But we must also say that rationality is not an aspect of animal, which seems to mean that mind isn't either. What is the essence of an animal? Not reason? |
10395 | Abelard was an irrealist about virtually everything apart from concrete individuals [Abelard, by King,P] |
Full Idea: Abelard was an irrealist about universals, but also about propositions, events, times other than the present, natural kinds, relations, wholes, absolute space, hylomorphic composites, and the like. The concrete individual is enough to populate the world. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
A reaction: If a Nominalist claims that 'only particulars exist', this makes him an extreme nominalist, and remarkably materialistic for his time (though he accepted the soul, as well as God). |
15384 | Only words can be 'predicated of many'; the universality is just in its mode of signifying [Abelard, by Panaccio] |
Full Idea: Abelard concluded that only words can be 'predicated of many'. A universal is nothing but a general linguistic predicate, and its universality depends not on its mode of being, but on its mode of signifying. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter' | |
A reaction: Abelard seems to be the originator of what is now called Predicate Nominalism, with Nelson Goodman as his modern representative. If it is just words, is there no fact of two things having the 'same' property? |
8481 | The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard [Abelard, by Orenstein] |
Full Idea: The de dicto-de re modality distinction dates back to Abelard. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.7 | |
A reaction: Most modern philosophers couldn't (apparently) care less where a concept originated, but one of the principles of this database is that such things do matter. I'm not sure why, but if we want the whole picture, we need the historical picture. |
15385 | Abelard's problem is the purely singular aspects of things won't account for abstraction [Panaccio on Abelard] |
Full Idea: Abelard's problem is that it is not clear how singular forms could do the job they are supposed to do - to account for abstraction, namely - if they were purely singular aspects. | |
From: comment on Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter' | |
A reaction: A very nice question! If we say that abstracta are just acquired by ignoring all but that feature in some objects, how do we identify 'that' feature in order to select it? The instances must share something in common to be abstracted. |
15383 | Nothing external can truly be predicated of an object [Abelard, by Panaccio] |
Full Idea: Abelard argued from the commonly accepted definition of a universal as 'what can be predicated of man', that no external thing can ever be predicated of anything. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Claude Panaccio - Medieval Problem of Universals 'Peter' | |
A reaction: It sounds to me as if Abelard is confusing predicates with properties! Maybe no external can be a property of anything, but I take predicates to just be part of what you can say about anything, and that had better included external facts. |
10398 | Natural kinds are not special; they are just well-defined resemblance collections [Abelard, by King,P] |
Full Idea: In Abelard's view a natural kind is a well-defined collection of things that have the same features, so that natural kinds have no special status, being no more than discrete integral wholes whose principle of membership is similarity. | |
From: report of Peter Abelard (works [1135]) by Peter King - Peter Abelard 2 | |
A reaction: I take a natural kind to be a completely stable and invariant class of things. Presumably this invariance has an underlying explanation, but Abelard seems to take the Humean line that we cannot penetrate beyond the experienced surface. |
651 | Eurytus showed that numbers underlie things by making pictures of creatures out of pebbles [Eurytus, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Eurytus assigned numbers to things by taking some pebbles and using them to create likeness of the shapes of living things, such as a man or a horse. | |
From: report of Eurytus (fragments/reports [c.400 BCE]) by Aristotle - Metaphysics 1092b | |
A reaction: Pythagorean. Digitising reality. |
21243 | An existing thing is even greater if its non-existence is inconceivable [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Something can be thought of as existing, which cannot be thought of as not existing, and this is greater than that which cannot be thought of as not existing. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) | |
A reaction: This is a necessary addition, to single out the concept of God as special. But you really must give reasons for saying God's non-existence is inconceivable. Atheists seem to manage. |
21244 | Conceiving a greater being than God leads to absurdity [Anselm] |
Full Idea: If some mind could think of something better than thou, the creature would rise above the Creator and judge its Creator; but this is altogether absurd. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) | |
A reaction: An error, revealing a certain desperation. If a greafer being could be conceived than the being so far imagined as God (a necessarily existing being), that being would BE God, by his own argument (and not some arrogant 'creature'). |
21241 | Even the fool can hold 'a being than which none greater exists' in his understanding [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Even the fool must be convinced that a being than which none greater can be thought exists at least in his understanding, since when he hears this he understands it, and whatever is understood is in the understanding. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) | |
A reaction: Psalm 14.1: 'The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God'. But how does the fool interpret the words, if he has limited imagination? He might get no further than an attractive film star. He would need prompting to think of a spiritual being. |
21242 | If that than which a greater cannot be thought actually exists, that is greater than the mere idea [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Clearly that than which a greater cannot be thought cannot exist in the understanding alone. For it it is actually in the understanding alone, it can be thought of as existing also in reality, and this is greater. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) | |
A reaction: The suppressed premise is 'something actually existing is greater than the mere conception of it'. As it stands this is wrong. I can imagine a supreme evil. But see Idea 21243. |
1421 | A perfection must be independent and unlimited, and the necessary existence of Anselm's second proof gives this [Malcolm on Anselm] |
Full Idea: Anselm's second proof works, because he sees that necessary existence (or the impossibility of non-existence) really is a perfection. This is because a perfection requires no dependence or limit or impediment. | |
From: comment on Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 3) by Norman Malcolm - Anselm's Argument Sect II | |
A reaction: I have the usual problem, that it doesn't seem to follow that the perfect existence of something bestows a perfection. It may be necessary that 'for every large animal there exists a disease'. Satan may exist necessarily. |
21245 | The word 'God' can be denied, but understanding shows God must exist [Anselm] |
Full Idea: We think of a thing when we say the world, and in another way when we think of the very thing itself. In the second sense God cannot be thought of as nonexistent. No one who understands can think God does not exist. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 4) | |
A reaction: It seems open to the atheist to claim the exact opposite - that you can commit to God's existence if it is just a word, but understanding shows that God is impossible (perhaps because of contradictions). How to arbitrate? |
21246 | Guanilo says a supremely fertile island must exist, just because we can conceive it [Anselm] |
Full Idea: Guanilo supposes that we imagine an island surpassing all lands in its fertility. We might then say that we cannot doubt that it truly exists is reality, because anyone can conceive it from a verbal description. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Reply 3) | |
A reaction: Guanilo was a very naughty monk, who must have had sleepless nights over this. One could further ask whether an island might have necessary existence. Anselm needs 'a being' to be a special category of thing. |
21247 | Nonexistence is impossible for the greatest thinkable thing, which has no beginning or end [Anselm] |
Full Idea: If anyone does think of something a greater than which cannot be thought, then he thinks of something which cannot be thought of as nonexistent, ...for then it could be thought of as having a beginning and an end. And this is impossible. | |
From: Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Reply 3) | |
A reaction: A nice idea, but it has a flip side. If the atheist denies God's existence, then it follows that (because no beginning is possible for such a being) the existence of God is impossible. Anselm adds that contingent existents have parts (unlike God). |
1420 | Anselm's first proof fails because existence isn't a real predicate, so it can't be a perfection [Malcolm on Anselm] |
Full Idea: Anselm's first proof fails, because he treats existence as being a perfection, which it isn't, because that would make it a real predicate. | |
From: comment on Anselm (Proslogion [1090], Ch 2) by Norman Malcolm - Anselm's Argument Sect I | |
A reaction: Not everyone accepts Kant's claim that existence cannot be a predicate. They all seem to know what a perfection is. Can the Mona Lisa (an object) not be a perfection? Must it be broken down into perfect predicates? |