Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Metaphysics', 'Writing the Book of the World' and 'Universals'

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7 ideas

27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 4. Substantival Space
Space has real betweenness and congruence structure (though it is not the Euclidean concepts) [Sider]
     Full Idea: In metaphysics, space is intrinsically structured; the genuine betweenness and congruence relations are privileged in a way that Euclidean-betweenness and Euclidean-congruence are not.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 03.4)
     A reaction: I note that Einstein requires space to be 'curved', which implies that it is a substance with properties.
27. Natural Reality / C. Space / 6. Space-Time
The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space? [Sider]
     Full Idea: The central question in the philosophy of time is: How alike are time and space?
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.1)
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / f. Eternalism
The spotlight theorists accepts eternal time, but with a spotlight of the present moving across it [Sider]
     Full Idea: The spotlight theorist accepts the block universe, but also something in addition: a joint-carving monadic property of presentness, which is possessed by just one moment of time, and which 'moves', to be possessed by later and later times.
     From: Theodore Sider (Writing the Book of the World [2011], 11.9)
     A reaction: This seems better than the merely detached eternalist view, which seems to ignore the key phenomenon. I just can't comprehend any theory which makes the future as real as the past.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 3. Parts of Time / a. Beginning of time
It is hard to see how either time or movement could come into existence or be destroyed [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: It is impossible that movement should either come-to-be or be destroyed. The same can be said for time itself, since it is not even possible for there to be an earlier and a later if time does not exist.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071b06)
27. Natural Reality / E. Cosmology / 3. The Beginning
The first mover is necessary, and because it is necessary it is good [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The existence of the first mover is necessary, and in that it is necessary it is good.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072b10)
     A reaction: This is the direct antithesis of David Hume's is/ought distinction (that the universe is value-free).
Even if the world is caused by fate, mind and nature are still prior causes [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Even if luck or the automatic are the cause of the world, mind and nature are prior causes still.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1065b03)
Something which both moves and is moved is intermediate, so it follows that there must be an unmoved mover [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Since that which is moved and which also moves is an intermediate, it follows that there must be something that moves without being moved.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072a19)