Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'In Defence of Three-Dimensionalism' and 'Truth and the Past'

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5 ideas

7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / c. Becoming
229 The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become [Plato]
     Full Idea: The one was and is and will be and was becoming and is becoming and will become.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 155d)
7. Existence / A. Nature of Existence / 3. Being / f. Primary being
21821 Plato's Parmenides has a three-part theory, of Primal One, a One-Many, and a One-and-Many [Plato, by Plotinus]
     Full Idea: The Platonic Parmenides is more exact [than Parmenides himself]; the distinction is made between the Primal One, a strictly pure Unity, and a secondary One which is a One-Many, and a third which is a One-and-Many.
     From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Plotinus - The Enneads 5.1.08
     A reaction: Plotinus approves of this three-part theory. Parmenides has the problem that the highest Being contains no movement. By placing the One outside Being you can give it powers which an existent thing cannot have. Cf the concept of God.
7. Existence / B. Change in Existence / 1. Nature of Change
8198 A 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east' [Dummett]
     Full Idea: The idea of 'Cambridge Change' is like saying 'the landscape changes as you travel east'.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 5)
     A reaction: The phrase was coined in Oxford. It is a useful label with which realists can insult solipsists, idealists and other riff-raff. Four Dimensionalists seem to see time in this way. Events sit there, and we travel past them. But there are indexical events.
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 3. Reality
221 Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato]
     Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c)
7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 4. Anti-realism
8192 I no longer think what a statement about the past says is just what can justify it [Dummett]
     Full Idea: In distinguishing between what can establish a statement about the past as true and what it is that that statement says, we are repudiating antirealism about the past.
     From: Michael Dummett (Truth and the Past [2001], 3)
     A reaction: This is a late shift of ground from the champion of antirealism. If Dummett's whole position is based on a 'justificationist' theory of meaning, he must surely have a different theory of meaning now for statements about the past?