Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Plotinus, Michael Burke and Keith Campbell

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38 ideas

5. Theory of Logic / E. Structures of Logic / 6. Relations in Logic
Relations need terms, so they must be second-order entities based on first-order tropes [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: Because there cannot be relations without terms, in a meta-physic that makes first-order tropes the terms of all relations, relational tropes must belong to a second, derivative order.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §8)
     A reaction: The admission that there could be a 'derivative order' may lead to trouble for trope theory. Ostrich Nominalists could say that properties themselves are derivative second-order abstractions from indivisible particulars. Russell makes them first-order.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / f. Primary being
Being is the product of pure intellect [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Intellectual-Principle [Nous] by its intellective act establishes Being.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.04)
     A reaction: This is a surprising view - that there is something which is prior to Being - but I take it to be Plotinus giving primacy to Plato's Form of the Good (a pure ideal), ahead of the One of Parmenides (which is Being).
The One does not exist, but is the source of all existence [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The First is no member of existence, but can be the source of all.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.07)
     A reaction: The First is the One, and this explicitly denies that it has Being. This answers the self-predication problem of Forms. Plato thought the Form of the Beautiful was beautiful, but it can't be (because of the regress). The source of existence can't exist.
The One is a principle which transcends Being [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: There exists a principle which transcends Being; this the One.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10)
     A reaction: The idea that the One transcends Being is the distinctive Plotinus doctrine. He defends the view that this was also the view of Anaxagoras, Empedocles and Plato.
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / g. Particular being
Number determines individual being [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Number is the determinant of individual being.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.05)
     A reaction: You might have thought that number was the consequence of the individualities (or units) within being, but not so. You can't get more platonic than saying that the idealised numbers are the source of the particular units.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 4. Events / c. Reduction of events
Events are trope-sequences, in which tropes replace one another [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: Events are widely acknowledged to be particulars, but they are plainly not ordinary concrete particulars. They are best viewed as trope-sequences, in which one condition gives way to another. They are changes in which tropes replace one another.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3)
     A reaction: If nothing exists except bundles of tropes, it is worth asking WHY one trope would replace another. Some tropes are active (i.e. they are best described as 'powers').
8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes
Two red cloths are separate instances of redness, because you can dye one of them blue [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: If we have two cloths of the very same shade of redness, we can show there are two cloths by burning one and leaving the other unaffected; we show there are two cases of redness in the same way: dye one blue, leaving the other unaffected.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1)
     A reaction: This has to be one of the basic facts of the problem accepted by everyone. If you dye half of one of the pieces, was the original red therefore one instance or two? Has it become two? How many red tropes are there in a red cloth?
Red could only recur in a variety of objects if it was many, which makes them particulars [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: If there are a varied group of red objects, the only element that recurs is the colour. But it must be the colour as a particular (a 'trope') that is involved in the recurrence, for only particulars can be many in the way required for recurrence.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1)
     A reaction: This claim seems to depend on the presupposition that rednesses are countable things, but it is tricky trying to count the number of blue tropes in the sky.
Tropes solve the Companionship Difficulty, since the resemblance is only between abstract particulars [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The 'companionship difficulty' cannot arise if the members of the resemblance class are tropes rather than whole concrete particulars. The instances of having a heart, as abstract particulars, are quite different from instances of having a kidney.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6)
     A reaction: The companionship difficulty seems worst if you base your account of properties just on being members of a class. Any talk of resemblance eventually has to talk about 'respects' of resemblance. Is a trope a respect? Is a mode an object?
Tropes solve the Imperfect Community problem, as they can only resemble in one respect [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The 'problem of imperfect community' cannot arise where our resemblance sets are sets of tropes. Tropes, by their very nature and mode of differentiation can only resemble in one respect.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6)
     A reaction: You arrive at very different accounts of what resemblance means according to how you express the problem verbally. We can only find a solution through thinking which transcends language. Heresy!
Trope theory makes space central to reality, as tropes must have a shape and size [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The metaphysics of abstract particulars gives a central place to space, or space-time, as the frame of the world. ...Tropes are, of their essence, regional, which carries with it the essential presence of shape and size in any trope occurrence.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §7)
     A reaction: Trope theory has a problem with Aristotle's example (Idea 557) of what happens when white is mixed with white. Do two tropes become one trope if you paint on a second coat of white? How can particulars merge? How can abstractions merge?
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 2. Resemblance Nominalism
Nominalism has the problem that without humans nothing would resemble anything else [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The objection to nominalism is its consequence that if there were no human race (or other living things), nothing would be like anything else.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §6)
     A reaction: Anti-realists will be unflustered by this difficulty. Personally it strikes me as obvious that some aspects of resemblance are part of reality which we did not contribute. This I take to be a contingent fact, founded on the existence of natural kinds.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 1. Physical Objects
Tropes are basic particulars, so concrete particulars are collections of co-located tropes [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: If tropes are basic particulars, then concrete particulars count as dependent realities. They are collections of co-located tropes, depending on these tropes as a fleet does upon its component ships.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §2)
     A reaction: If I sail my yacht through a fleet, do I become part of it? Presumably trope theory could avoid a bundle view of objects. A bare substratum could be a magnet which attracts tropes.
Bundles must be unique, so the Identity of Indiscernibles is a necessity - which it isn't! [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: Each individual is distinct from each other individual, so the bundle account of objects requires each bundle to be different from every other bundle. So the Identity of Indiscernibles must be a necessary truth, which, unfortunately, it is not.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5)
     A reaction: Clearly the Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth (consider just two identical spheres). Location and time must enter into it. Could we not add a further individuation requirement to the necessary existence of a bundle? (Quinton)
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind
Persistence conditions cannot contradict, so there must be a 'dominant sortal' [Burke,M, by Hawley]
     Full Idea: Burke says a single object cannot have incompatible persistence conditions, for this would entail that there are events in which the object would both survive and perish. He says one sortal 'dominates' the other (sweater dominates thread).
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.3
     A reaction: This I take to be the most extreme version of sortal essentialism, and strikes me as incredibly gerrymandered and unacceptable. It is just too anthropocentric to count as genuine metaphysics. I may care more about the thread.
The 'dominant' of two coinciding sortals is the one that entails the widest range of properties [Burke,M, by Sider]
     Full Idea: Burke claims that the 'dominant' sortal is the one whose satisfaction entails possession of the widest range of properties. For example, the statue (unlike the lump of clay) also possesses aesthetic properties, and hence is dominant.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4
     A reaction: [there are three papers by Burke on this; see all the quotations from Burke] Presumably one sortal could entail a single very important property, and the other sortal entail a huge range of trivial properties. What does being a 'thing' entail?
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates
'The rock' either refers to an object, or to a collection of parts, or to some stuff [Burke,M, by Wasserman]
     Full Idea: Burke distinguishes three different readings of 'the rock'. It can be a singular description denoting an object, or a plural description denoting all the little pieces of rock, or a mass description the relevant rocky stuff.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 5
     A reaction: Idea 16068 is an objection to the second reading. Only the first reading seems plausible, so we must just get over all the difficulties philosophers have unearthed about knowing exactly what an 'object' is. I offer you essentialism. Rocks have unity.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail
Tib goes out of existence when the tail is lost, because Tib was never the 'cat' [Burke,M, by Sider]
     Full Idea: Burke argues that Tib (the whole cat apart from its tail) goes out of existence when the tail is lost. His essentialist principle is that if something is ever of a particular sort (such as 'cat') then it is always of that sort. Tib is not initially a cat.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4
     A reaction: This I take to be a souped up version of Wiggins, and I just don't buy that identity conditions are decided by sortals, when it seems obvious that sortals are parasitic on identities.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
Sculpting a lump of clay destroys one object, and replaces it with another one [Burke,M, by Wasserman]
     Full Idea: On Burke's view, the process of sculpting a lump of clay into a statue destroys one object (a mere lump of clay) and replaces it with another (a statue).
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Ryan Wasserman - Material Constitution 5
     A reaction: There is something right about this, but how many intermediate objects are created during the transition. It seems to make the notion of an object very conventional.
Burke says when two object coincide, one of them is destroyed in the process [Burke,M, by Hawley]
     Full Idea: Michael Burke argues that a sweater is identical with the thread that consitutes it, that both were created at the moment when they began to coincide, and that the original thread was destroyed in the process.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.3
     A reaction: [Burke's ideas are spread over three articles] It is the thread which is destroyed, because the sweater is the 'dominant sortal' (which strikes me as a particularlyd desperate concept).
Maybe the clay becomes a different lump when it becomes a statue [Burke,M, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: Burke has argued in a series of papers that the lump of clay which constitutes the statue is numerically distinct from the lump of clay which exists before or after the statue exists. The first is a statue, while the second is merely a lump of clay.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects
     A reaction: Koslicki objects that this introduces radically different persistence conditions from normal. It would mean that a pile of sugar was a different pile of sugar every time a grain moved (even slightly). You couldn't step into the same sugar twice.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
Two entities can coincide as one, but only one of them (the dominant sortal) fixes persistence conditions [Burke,M, by Sider]
     Full Idea: Michael Burke has given an account that avoids distinguishing coinciding entities. ...The statue/lump satisfies both 'lump' and 'statue', but only the latter determines that object's persistence conditions, and so is that object's 'dominant sortal'.
     From: report of Michael Burke (Dion and Theon: an essentialist solution [1994]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.4
     A reaction: Presumably a lump on its own can have its own persistance conditions (as a 'lump'), but those would presumably be lost if you shaped it into a statue. Burke concedes that. Can of worms. Using a book as a doorstop...
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects
Two pure spheres in non-absolute space are identical but indiscernible [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The Identity of Indiscernibles is not a necessary truth. It fails in possible worlds where there are two identical spheres in a non-absolute space, or worlds without beginning or end where events are exactly cyclically repeated.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §5)
     A reaction: The principle was always very suspect, and these seem nice counterexamples. As so often, epistemology and ontology had become muddled.
15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 5. Unity of Mind
If soul was like body, its parts would be separate, without communication [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: If the soul had the nature of the body, it would have isolated members each unaware of the condition of the other;..there would be a particular soul as a distinct entity to each local experience, so a multiplicity of souls would administer an individual.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 4.2.2), quoted by R Martin / J Barresi - Introduction to 'Personal Identity' p.15
     A reaction: Of course, the modern 'modularity of mind' theory does suggest that we are run by a team, but a central co-ordinator is required, with a full communication network across the modules.
15. Nature of Minds / B. Features of Minds / 2. Unconscious Mind
The movement of Soul is continuous, but we are only aware of the parts of it that are sensed [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The Soul maintains its unfailing movement; for not all that passes in the soul is, by that fact, perceptible; we know just as much as impinges on the faculty of the sense.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12)
     A reaction: This is a straightforward argument in favour of an unconscious aspect to the mind - and a rather good argument too. No one thinks that our minds ever stop working, even in sleep.
16. Persons / D. Continuity of the Self / 2. Mental Continuity / b. Self as mental continuity
A person is the whole of their soul [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Man is not merely a part (the higher part) of the Soul but the total.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.12)
     A reaction: The soul is psuche, which includes the vegetative soul. The higher part is normally taken to be reason. This seems pretty close to John Locke's view of the matter.
17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 1. Dualism
Our soul has the same ideal nature as the oldest god, and is honourable above the body [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Our own soul is of that same ideal nature [as the oldest god of them all], so that to consider it, purified, freed from all accruement, is to recognise in ourselves which we have found soul to be, honourable above the body. For what is body but earth?
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02)
     A reaction: The strongest versions of substance dualism are religious in character, because the separateness of the mind elevates us above the grubby physical character of the world. I'm with Nietzsche on this one - this view is actually harmful to us.
The soul is outside of all of space, and has no connection to the bodily order [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: We may not seek any point in space in which to seat the soul; it must be set outside of all space; its distinct quality, its separateness, its immateriality, demand that it be a thing alone, untouched by all of the bodily order.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.10)
     A reaction: You can't get more dualist than that. He doesn't seem bothered about the interaction problem. He likens such influence to the radiation of the sun, rather than to physical movement.
18. Thought / E. Abstraction / 3. Abstracta by Ignoring
Abstractions come before the mind by concentrating on a part of what is presented [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: An item is abstract if it is got before the mind by an act of abstraction, that is, by concentrating attention on some, but not all, of what is presented.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §1)
     A reaction: I think this point is incredibly important. Pure Fregean semantics tries to leave out the psychological component, and yet all the problems in semantics concern various sorts of abstraction. Imagination is the focus of the whole operation.
22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / b. Rational ethics
The Soul reasons about the Right, so there must be some permanent Right about which it reasons [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Since there is a Soul which reasons upon the right and good - for reasoning is an enquiry into the rightness and goodness of this rather than that - there must exist some pemanent Right, the source and foundation of this reasoning in our soul.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.11)
     A reaction: This is pretty close the Kant's concept of 'the moral order within me', and Plotinus even sees it as rational. Presumably this right is 'permanent' because the revelatlons of reason about it are necessary truths.
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / a. Nature of happiness
Ecstasy is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man [Plotinus, by Feuerbach]
     Full Idea: Ecstasy or rapture is for the neo-Platonist the highest psychological state of man.
     From: report of Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §29
     A reaction: See Bernini's statue of St Theresa. Personally I find this very unappealing because of its utter irrationality, but what is the 'highest' human psychological state? Doing mental arithmetic? Doing what is morally right? Dignity under pressure?
26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / e. The One
How can multiple existence arise from the unified One? [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The problem endlessly debated is how, from such a unity as we have declared the One to be, does anything at all come into substantial existence, any multiplicity, dyad or number?
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06)
     A reaction: This was precisely Aristotle's objection to the One of Parmenides, and especially the problem of the source of movement (which Plotinus also notices).
Soul is the logos of Nous, just as Nous is the logos of the One [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The soul is an utterance [logos] and act of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], as that is an utterance and act of the One.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06)
     A reaction: Being only comes into the picture at the secondary Nous stage. Nous is the closest to the modern concept of God.
Because the One is immobile, it must create by radiation, light the sun producing light [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Given this immobility of the Supreme ...what happened then? It must be a circumradiation, which may be compared to the brilliant light encircling the sun and ceaselessly generating from that unchanging substance,
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.06)
     A reaction: This is the answer given to the problem raised in Idea 21814. The sun produces energy, without apparent movement. Not an answer that will satisfy a physicist, but an interesting answer.
26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 8. Particular Causation / b. Causal relata
Causal conditions are particular abstract instances of properties, which makes them tropes [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: The conditions in causal statements are usually particular cases of properties. A collapse results from the weakness of this cable (not any other). This is specific to a time and place; it is an abstract particular. It is, in short, a trope.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3)
     A reaction: The fan of universals could counter this by saying that the collapse results from this unique combination of universals. Resemblance nominalist can equally build an account on the coincidence of certain types of concrete particulars.
Davidson can't explain causation entirely by events, because conditions are also involved [Campbell,K]
     Full Idea: Not all singular causal statements are of Davidson's event-event type. Many involve conditions, so there are condition-event (weakness/collapse), event-condition (explosion/movement), and condition-condition (hot/warming) causal connections.
     From: Keith Campbell (The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars [1981], §3)
     A reaction: Fans of Davidson need to reduce conditions to events. The problem of individuation keeps raising its head. Davidson makes it depend on description. Kim looks good, because events, and presumably conditions, reduce to something small and precise.
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
Soul is author of all of life, and of the stars, and it gives them law and movement [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Soul is the author of all living things, ...it has breathed life into them all, whatever is nourished by earth and sea, the divine stars in the sky; ...it is the principle distinct from all of these to which it gives law and movement and life.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.02)
     A reaction: This seems to derive from Anaxagoras, who is mentioned by Plotinus. The soul he refers to his not the same as our concept of God. Note the word 'law', which I am guessing is nomos. Not, I think, modern laws of nature, but closer to guidelines.
29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / b. Soul
Even the soul is secondary to the Intellectual-Principle [Nous], of which soul is an utterance [Plotinus]
     Full Idea: Soul, for all the worth we have shown to belong to it, is yet a secondary, an image of the Intellectual-Principle [Nous]; reason uttered is an image of reason stored within the soul, and similarly soul is an utterance of the Intellectual-Principle.
     From: Plotinus (The Enneads [c.245], 5.1.03)
     A reaction: It then turns out that Nous is secondary to the One, so there is a hierarchy of Being (which only enters at the Nous stage).