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Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Logic (Port-Royal Art of Thinking)' and 'Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood'

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2 ideas

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 7. Abstract/Concrete / b. Levels of abstraction

10502	We can rise by degrees through abstraction, with higher levels representing more things [Arnauld,A/Nicole,P]
	Full Idea: I can start with a triangle, and rise by degrees to all straight-lined figures and to extension itself. The lower degree will include the higher degree. Since the higher degree is less determinate, it can represent more things.
	From: Arnauld / Nicole (Logic (Port-Royal Art of Thinking) [1662], I.5)
	A reaction: [compressed] This attempts to explain the generalising ability of abstraction cited in Idea 10501. If you take a complex object and eliminate features one by one, it can only 'represent' more particulars; it could hardly represent fewer.

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 10. Vagueness / d. Vagueness as linguistic

16458	Semantic vagueness involves alternative and equal precisifications of the language [Lewis]
	Full Idea: If vagueness is semantic indeterminacy, then wherever we have vague statements, we have several alternative precisifications of the vague language involved, all with equal claims of being 'intended'.
	From: David Lewis (Vague Identity: Evans misunderstood [1988], p.318)