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Single Idea 16767

[filed under theme 8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 4. Powers as Essence ]

Full Idea

One could empirically reject a centralised power within a substance - and still think a genuine substance requires a form of some more abstract kind, not for a physical explanation, but for a full metaphysical understanding of how things are.

Gist of Idea

There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding

Source

Robert Pasnau (Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 [2011], 25.2)

Book Ref

Pasnau,Robert: 'Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671' [OUP 2011], p.580

A Reaction

This divorce of the 'metaphysical' from the physical is a running theme in Pasnau, and he cites support from Leibniz. I'm not sure I understand 'metaphysical' understanding, if it is actually contrary to physics. I take it to be 'psychological'.

The 24 ideas with the same theme [powers as giving the essential nature of each thing]:

15658 The hidden harmony is stronger than the visible [Heraclitus]
16752 Sight is the essence of the eye, fitting its definition; the eye itself is just the matter [Aristotle]
16753 Giving the function of a house defines its actuality [Aristotle]
17206 The essence of a thing is its effort to persevere [Spinoza]
15976 What is the texture - the real essence - which makes substances behave in distinct ways? [Locke]
12750 The question is whether force is self-sufficient in bodies, and essential, or dependent on something [Lenfant]
12714 The substantial form is the principle of action or the primitive force of acting [Leibniz]
5056 Material or immaterial substances cannot be conceived without their essential activity [Leibniz]
13168 My formal unifying atoms are substantial forms, which are forces like appetites [Leibniz]
13169 I call Aristotle's entelechies 'primitive forces', which originate activity [Leibniz]
12722 Thought terminates in force, rather than extension [Leibniz]
12778 There is active and passive power in the substantial chain and in the essence of a composite [Leibniz]
12783 Primitive force is what gives a composite its reality [Leibniz]
13095 Essence is primitive force, or a law of change [Leibniz]
12713 Forms have sensation and appetite, the latter being the ability to act on other bodies [Leibniz, by Garber]
13087 The essence of a thing is its real possibilities [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne]
12050 Substances contain a source of change or principle of activity [Wiggins]
16755 The possible Aristotelian view that forms are real and active principles is clearly wrong [Fine,K, by Pasnau]
21350 If properties are powers, then causal relations are internal relations [Heil]
12256 We need to distinguish the essential from the non-essential powers [Oderberg]
16767 There is no centralised power, but we still need essence for a metaphysical understanding [Pasnau]
17954 Essence is a thing's necessities, but what about its possibilities (which may not be realised)? [Vetter]
23711 A power is a property which consists entirely of dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]
23712 Powers are qualitative properties which fully ground dispositions [Friend/Kimpton-Nye]