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Full Idea
What is singled out is never a bare this or that, but this or that something or other.
Gist of Idea
We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other'
Source
David Wiggins (Substance [1995], 4.5.1)
Book Ref
'Philosophy: a Guide Through the Subject', ed/tr. Grayling,A.C. [OUP 1995], p.221
A Reaction
I like, in ontological speculation, to contemplate the problem of the baffling archaeological find. 'This thing I have dug up - what the hell IS it?'. Wiggins is contemptuous of the term 'thisness', and the idea of bare particulars.
Related Idea
Idea 16482 All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell]
| 12057 | Matter underlies things, composes things, and brings them to be [Wiggins] |
| 12047 | We refer to persisting substances, in perception and in thought, and they aid understanding [Wiggins] |
| 12056 | An ancestral relation is either direct or transitively indirect [Wiggins] |
| 12055 | Sortal predications are answers to the question 'what is x?' [Wiggins] |
| 12059 | A river may change constantly, but not in respect of being a river [Wiggins] |
| 12063 | Sortal classification becomes science, with cross reference clarifying individuals [Wiggins] |
| 12064 | The category of substance is more important for epistemology than for ontology [Wiggins] |
| 12065 | Seeing a group of soldiers as an army is irresistible, in ontology and explanation [Wiggins] |
| 12049 | Naming the secondary substance provides a mass of general information [Wiggins] |
| 12050 | Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins] |
| 12052 | We never single out just 'this', but always 'this something-or-other' [Wiggins] |
| 12051 | If the kinds are divided realistically, they fall into substances [Wiggins] |
| 12053 | 'Human being' is a better answer to 'what is it?' than 'poet', as the latter comes in degrees [Wiggins] |
| 12054 | Secondary substances correctly divide primary substances by activity-principles and relations [Wiggins] |