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Full Idea
Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion.
Gist of Idea
Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation
Source
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1)
Book Ref
Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J: 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz' [CUP 1999], p.274
A Reaction
This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job.
Related Idea
Idea 14601 Individuation aims to count entities, by saying when there is one [Schaffer,J]
13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |