display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 19399 | Prime matter is nothing when it is at rest [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Primary matter is nothing if considered at rest. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Aristotle and Descartes on Matter [1671], p.90) | |
| A reaction: This goes with Leibniz's Idea 13393, that activity is the hallmark of existence. No one seems to have been able to make good sense of prime matter, and it plays little role in Aristotle's writings. |
| 11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: One could be an essentialist about natural kinds (of tigers, or water) while holding that every actual instance or sample of a natural kind is only accidentally an instance or a sample of that kind. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: You wonder, then, in what the necessity of the kind consists, if it is not rooted in the instances, and presumably it could only result from a stipulative definition, and hence be conventional. |