12696
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Bodies are recreated in motion, and don't exist in intervening instants [Leibniz]
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Full Idea:
I have demonstrated that whatever moves is continuously created and that bodies are nothing at any time between the instants in motion.
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From:
Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Thomasius [1669], 1669.04), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 1
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A reaction:
Leibniz is a little over-confident about what he has 'demonstrated', but I think (from this remark) that he would not have been displeased with quantum theory, and the notion of a 'quantum leap' and a 'Planck time'. A 'conatus' is a 'smallest motion'.
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22742
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Socrates either dies when he exists (before his death) or when he doesn't (after his death) [Sext.Empiricus]
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Full Idea:
Socrates either dies when existing, or when not existing. …He does not die when he exists, for he is alive, and he does not die when he has died, for then he will be dying twice, which is absurd. So then, Socrates does not die.
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From:
Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.269)
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A reaction:
A nice dramatisation of a major dilemma. The present moment is just the boundary between the past and the future, and so has no magnitude, and hence nothing can occur during the present. Perhaps my favourite philosophical dilemma.
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22751
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If the present is just the limit of the past or the future, it can't exist because they don't exist [Sext.Empiricus]
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Full Idea:
If the present is the limit of the past, and the limit of the past has passed away together with that of which it is the limit, the present no longer exists. And if the present begins the future, which doesn't exist, the present does not yet exist.
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From:
Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], II.201)
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A reaction:
If I mark a line on the ground where the wall will begin, the limit seems prior to the object. The gun starts the race, but is not part of it. That said, I cannot think of any more mysterious entity than the present moment. It isn't a line or a bang.
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