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18470
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Maybe truth-making is an unanalysable primitive, but we can specify principles for it [Smith,B]
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Full Idea:
The signs are that truth-making is not analysable in terms of anything more primitive, but we need to be able to say more than just that. So we ought to consider it as specified by principles of truth-making.
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From:
Barry Smith (Truth-maker Realism: response to Gregory [2000], p.20), quoted by Fraser MacBride - Truthmakers 1.5
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A reaction:
This is the axiomatic approach to such problems - treat the target concept as an undefinable, unanalysable primitive, and then give rules for its connections. Maybe all metaphysics should work like that, with a small bunch of primitives.
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16703
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God could make a successive thing so that previous parts cease to exist [Albert of Saxony]
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Full Idea:
Something can be conceived of as successive simpliciter, with respect to both its substance and its state. For example, if Socrates were continually made and made again by the First Cause, as the Seine flow, so nothing of what preexists remains.
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From:
Albert of Saxony (On 'Physics' [1357], III.3), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.4
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A reaction:
This is precisely the problem that modern stage theory faces, of knowing how to connect the stages together.
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16699
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Successive entities just need parts to succeed one another, without their existence [Albert of Saxony]
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Full Idea:
For existence to hold of completely successive entities it is not required that their parts exist, but that one part succeed another, as a future part succeeds a past part.
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From:
Albert of Saxony (On 'Physics' [1357], III.3 ad 2), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.3
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A reaction:
A nice move, but it doesn't quite solve it. How can non-existent things 'succeed one another'? It is worrying for metaphysics that some things have entirely different concepts of persistence from other things.
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20653
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Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson]
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Full Idea:
There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles.
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From:
report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro'
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A reaction:
I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture?
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