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2 ideas
23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |
15543 | How do things combine to make states of affairs? Constituents can repeat, and fail to combine [Lewis] |
Full Idea: To me it is mysterious how a state of affairs is made out of its particular and universal constituents. Different states of affairs may have the very same constituents, and the existence of constituents by no means entails the existence of the states. | |
From: David Lewis (Armstrong on combinatorial possibility [1992], 'What is there') | |
A reaction: He is rejecting the structure of states of affairs as wholes made of parts. But then mereology was never going to explain the structure of the world. |