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| 13074 | Only natural kinds and their members have real essences |
| Full Idea: On Suarez's account, only natural kinds and their members have real essences. | |||
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (works [1588]) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 1.3.1 n21 | |||
| A reaction: Interesting. Rather than say that everything is a member of some kind, we leave quirky individuals out, with no essence at all. What is the status of the very first exemplar of a given kind? |
| 7563 | The old 'influx' view of causation says it is a flow of accidental properties from A to B |
| Full Idea: The 'influx' model of causation says that causes involve a process of contagion, as it were; when the kettle boils, the gas infects the water inside the kettle with its own 'individual accident' of heat, which literally flows from one to the other. | |||
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (works [1588]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.2 | |||
| A reaction: This nicely captures the scholastic target of Hume's sceptical thinking on the subject. However, see Idea 2542, where the idea of influx has had a revival. It is hard to see how the water could change if it didn't 'catch' something from the gas. |