structure for 'Existence'    |     alphabetical list of themes    |     expand these ideas

7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change

[how existence can persist even when becoming different]

29 ideas
All our concepts of change and permanence are just names, not the truth [Parmenides]
Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle]
Nothing comes from non-existence, or passes into it [Democritus, by Diog. Laertius]
How can beauty have identity if it changes? [Plato]
The best things (gods, healthy bodies, good souls) are least liable to change [Plato]
There seem to be two sorts of change: alteration and motion [Plato]
There are six kinds of change: generation, destruction, increase, diminution, alteration, change of place [Aristotle]
True change is in a thing's logos or its matter, not in its qualities [Aristotle]
A change in qualities is mere alteration, not true change [Aristotle]
If the substratum persists, it is 'alteration'; if it doesn't, it is 'coming-to-be' or 'passing-away' [Aristotle]
Nature is an active principle of change, like potentiality, but it is intrinsic to things [Aristotle]
Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle]
The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle]
The totality is complete, so there is no room for it to change, and nothing extraneous to change it [Epicurus]
Everything is changing, including yourself and the whole universe [Aurelius]
Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes]
How could change consist of a conjunction of changeless facts? [McTaggart, by Le Poidevin]
Change is not just having two different qualities at different points in some series [McTaggart]
A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett]
Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden]
You can't deny temporary intrinsic properties by saying the properties are relations (to times) [Lewis]
Maybe particles are unchanging, and intrinsic change in things is their rearrangement [Lowe, by Lewis]
Heraclitus says change is new creation, and Spinoza that it is just phases of the one substance [Lowe]
Four theories of qualitative change are 'a is F now', or 'a is F-at-t', or 'a-at-t is F', or 'a is-at-t F' [Lowe, by PG]
Change can be of composition (the component parts), or quality (properties), or substance [Lowe]
Traditionally, the four elements are just what persists through change [Harte,V]
Four-dimensional ontology has no change, since that needs an object, and time to pass [Simons]
There are real relational changes, as well as bogus 'Cambridge changes' [Simons]
Change exists, it is causal, and it needs an explanation [Williams,NE]