Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Works of Love', 'The World' and 'Essential Attribution'

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2 ideas

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 6. Early Matter Theories / f. Ancient elements
The Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry of the philosophers need themselves to be explained [Descartes]
     Full Idea: If you find it strange that in explaining these elements I do not use the qualities called Hot, Cold, Wet and Dry - as the philosophers do - I shall say to you that these qualities themselves seem to me to need explanation.
     From: René Descartes (The World [1631], 9:25-6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 1.3
     A reaction: Nice. I take pushing the boundaries of explanation back (or down) to be the basic driving force of all human thought, in metaphysics as well as in physics.
26. Natural Theory / D. Laws of Nature / 8. Scientific Essentialism / a. Scientific essentialism
Dispositional essences are special, as if an object loses them they cease to exist [Marcus (Barcan)]
     Full Idea: Being gold or being a man is not accidental. ..Such essences are dispositional properties of a very special kind: if an object had such a property and ceased to have it, it would have ceased to exist or have changed (as if gold is transmuted to lead).
     From: Ruth Barcan Marcus (Essential Attribution [1971], p.202)
     A reaction: Ruth Marcus is an important founder of modern scientific essentialism, by not only proposing the notion we call rigid designation, but by explicitly defending the essential identities that seem to emerge from modal logic.