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2 ideas
| 5831 | The new view is that "water" is a name, and has no definition [Schwartz,SP] |
| Full Idea: Perhaps the modern view is best expressed as saying that "water" has no definition at all, at least in the traditional sense, and is a proper name of a specific substance. | |
| From: Stephen P. Schwartz (Intro to Naming,Necessity and Natural Kinds [1977], §III) | |
| A reaction: This assumes that proper names have no definitions, though I am not clear how we can grasp the name 'Aristotle' without some association of properties (human, for example) to go with it. We need a definition of 'definition'. |
| 12915 | Definitions can only be real if the item is possible [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Definitions to my mind are real, when one knows that the thing defined is possible; otherwise they are only nominal, and one must not rely on them. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1686.07.4/14 XI) | |
| A reaction: It is interesting that things do not have to actual to have real definitions. For Leibniz, what is possible will exist in the mind of God. For me what is possible will exist in the potentialities of the powers of what is actual. |