display all the ideas for this combination of texts
19 ideas
| 11379 | Substance is not a universal, as the former is particular but a universal is shared [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substance of each thing is something that is peculiar to each thing, not pertaining to anything else, whereas the universal is something common. Indeed, a thing is said to be a universal just if its nature pertains to a plurality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b10) | |
| A reaction: This should be a warning to those who talk of the 'Aristotelian' view of properties as universals instantiated in the particulars. Once one has pinpointed the substance, the subject of predication, and the essence, no room is left for universals. |
| 12096 | Universals are indeterminate and only known in potential, because they are general [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: The notion of generality provides an explanation for Aristotle's position that the universal - every universal - is indeterminate and, hence, the object of potential knowledge. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], univs) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.3 | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 12095 for knowledge of potential and actual] Now you're talking! The idea that universals are central to true knowledge seems wildly misguided. All knowledge is rooted in particulars, where the highest certainties are to be found. |
| 649 | The acquisition of scientific knowledge is impossible without universals [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The acquisition of scientific knowledge is impossible without universals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086b03) |
| 12094 | No universals exist separately from particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No universal exists over and above, and separately from, the particulars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1040b27) | |
| A reaction: [At last I have found one of Aristotle's most famous ideas!] His hallmark of a universal is that it is found in many particulars, but then we ask whether they are identical (universals) or merely resembling (tropes). |
| 10948 | Forms are said to be substances to which nothing is prior [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose that there are certain substances to which neither other substances nor other natures are prior. It is such substances that certain philosophers assert the Forms to be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1031a30) | |
| A reaction: Then there is the difficulty of explaining 'prior', which presumably must be an objective relation, not a mere priority in human understanding or explanation or definition. |
| 647 | There is a confusion because Forms are said to be universal, but also some Forms are separable and particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The root problem of the theory of Forms is that they posit Forms that are universal and at the same time Forms that are separable and therefore particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086a28) |
| 643 | How can the Forms both be the substance of things and exist separately from them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How can the Forms, while being the substances of things, have being separately from them? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1080a01) |
| 633 | If you accept Forms, you must accept the more powerful principle of 'participating' in them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you accept the theory of Forms, you must allow that there is also another more powerful principle. Only thus can you answer the question why something has come to participate, or is participating. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075b18) |
| 16110 | If partaking explains unity, what causes participating, and what is participating? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On account of the difficulty [about unity] some philosophers have espoused participation, though this plunges them into difficulties about what the cause of the participation is, or indeed what participating is anyway. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b07) | |
| A reaction: The target here is Plato, and I agree with the criticism. Exactly the same problems face those who talk of an object 'instantiating' a property. I have no idea what such a relationship could be. |
| 9483 | Forms have to be their own paradigms, which seems to fuse the paradigm and the copy [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Forms would have to function as paradigms not just for other entities, but also for themselves. ..But this produces an absurd fusion of the paradigm and the copy. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079b28) | |
| A reaction: A nice succinct statement of the problem of self-predication (which leads to the Third Man regress, if we posit another Form as a paradigm of the Form we are interested in). |
| 640 | All attempts to prove the Forms are either invalid, or prove Forms where there aren't supposed to be any [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All methods employed to demonstrate the Forms either cannot be formulated validly, or produce Forms even for those things for which there are not supposed to be any Forms. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079a04) |
| 641 | Are there forms for everything, or for negations, or for destroyed things? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Argument from Sciences produces Forms for every possible object of science! One-over-many arguments produce Forms for negations! The Argument from the Thought of a Perished Object gives Forms for destroyed things! | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079a07) |
| 16108 | If men exist by participating in two forms (Animal and Biped), they are plural, not unities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is man not Animal and Biped together? Then it will not be by participating in Man (or any other unity) that men exist but by doing so in two things, Animal and Biped. Then man would not be a unity but a plurality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045a17) | |
| A reaction: This is perhaps Aristotle's deepest metaphysical objection to the whole Plato programme, that it blocks a decent account of the unity of particulars, on which our whole understanding of the world rests. |
| 4470 | Aristotle is not asserting facts about the location of properties, but about their ontological status [Aristotle, by Moreland] |
| Full Idea: The debate between Platonists and Aristotelians about universals is not a debate about the 'location' of the properties, but about the ontological independence of the properties from their instances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082) by J.P. Moreland - Universals Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Of course, assertions about their location might have strong implications about whether they were ontologically independent. |
| 605 | The Forms have to be potentialities, not actual knowledge or movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there are Forms (as the purely logical thinkers claim), there must be something which is much more knowable than the Form of Knowledge, and something more fully moved than the Form of Movement. The Forms will be mere potentialities. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1050b32) |
| 16145 | Predications only pick out kinds of things, not things in themselves [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: None of the things predicated in common picks out a this-thing-here, but rather such-and-such a kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1039a01) | |
| A reaction: He is in the process of denying that predicates pick out real substances [real being, 'ousia'], but this is clearly aimed at Plato. |
| 618 | There is no point at all in the theory of Forms unless it contains a principle that produces movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no advantage at all in the admission of eternal substances, as in the Theory of Forms, unless there is among them a principle capable of moving something else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071b11) |
| 642 | What possible contribution can the Forms make to perceptible entities? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What possible contribution can the Forms make to perceptible entities? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079b08) |
| 645 | If two is part of three then numbers aren't Forms, because they would all be intermingled [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On our theory two is part of three….so it will not be possible for a number to be a Form, on pain of one Form's being present in another and all Forms turning out to be parts of some one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082b29) |