display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 12319 | What is not truly one being is not truly a being either [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: What is not truly one being is not truly a being either. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1687.04.30), quoted by Alain Badiou - Briefings on Existence 1 | |
| A reaction: Badiou quotes this as identifying Being with the One. I say Leibniz had no concept of 'gunk', and thought everything must have a 'this' identity in order to exist, which is just the sort of thing a logician would come up with. |
| 5992 | Chrysippus says action is the criterion for existence, which must be physical [Chrysippus, by Tieleman] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus regarded power to act and be acted upon as the criterion for existence or being - a test satisfied by bodies alone. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Teun L. Tieleman - Chrysippus | |
| A reaction: This defines existence in terms of causation. Is he ruling out a priori a particle (say) which exists, but never interacts with anything? If so, he is inclining towards anti-realism. |
| 12922 | A thing 'expresses' another if they have a constant and fixed relationship [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: One thing 'expresses' another (in my terminology) when there exists a constant and fixed relationship between what can be said of one and of the other. This is the way that a perspectival projection expresses its ground-plan. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1687.10.09) | |
| A reaction: Arnauld was puzzled by what Leibniz might mean by 'express', and it occurs to me that Leibniz was fishing for the modern concept of 'supervenience'. It also sounds a bit like the idea of 'covariance' between mind and world. Maybe he means 'function'. |
| 21673 | There are simple and complex facts; the latter depend on further facts [Chrysippus, by Cicero] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says there are two classes of facts, simple and complex. An instance of a simple fact is 'Socrates will die at a given date', ...but 'Milo will wrestle at Olympia' is a complex statement, because there can be no wrestling without an opponent. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by M. Tullius Cicero - On Fate ('De fato') 13.30 | |
| A reaction: We might say that there are atomic and complex facts, but our atomic facts tend to be much simpler, usually just saying some object has some property. |
| 16652 | Stoics categories are Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation [Chrysippus, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: The Stoics proposed a rather modest categorisation of Substrate, Quality, Disposition, and Relation. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 12.1 |