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Full Idea
An account of events just in terms of physical bodies does not distinguish between events that happen to take up just the same portion of space-time. A man's whistling and walking would be identified with the same temporal segment of the man.
Gist of Idea
Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time
Source
Willard Quine (On Multiplying Entities [1974], p.260)
Book Ref
Quine,Willard: 'Ways of Paradox and other essays' [Harvard 1976], p.260
A Reaction
We wouldn't want to make his 'walking' and his 'strolling' two events. Whistling and walking are different because different objects are involved (lips and legs). Hence a man is not (ontologically) a single object.
| 8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
| 8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |
| 8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
| 8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |