display all the ideas for this combination of texts
3 ideas
12282 | An individual property has to exist (in past, present or future) [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: If it does not at present exist, or, if it has not existed in the past, or if it is not going to exist in the future, it will not be a property [idion] at all. | |
From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 129a27) | |
A reaction: This seems to cramp our style in counterfactual discussion. Can't we even mention an individual property if we believe that it will never exist. Utopian political discussion will have to cease! |
12264 | An 'accident' is something which may possibly either belong or not belong to a thing [Aristotle] |
Full Idea: An 'accident' [sumbebekos] is something which may possibly either belong or not belong to any one and the self-same thing, such as 'sitting posture' or 'whiteness'. This is the best definition, because it tells us the essential meaning of the term itself. | |
From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 102b07) | |
A reaction: Thus a car could be red, or not red. Accidents are contingent. It does not follow that necessary properties are essential (see Idea 12262). There are accidents [sumbebekos], propria [idion] and essences [to ti en einai]. |
16639 | Only individual bodies exist [Bacon] |
Full Idea: Nothing truly exists in nature beyond individual bodies. | |
From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 182 | |
A reaction: [Unusually, Pasnau gives no reference in the text; possibly II:1-2] What this leaves out, from even an auster nominalist ontology, is undifferentiated stuff like water. Even electrons don't seem quite distinct from one another. |