Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Locke on Human Understanding', 'The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930' and 'Mental Files'

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2 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 4. Formal Relations / c. Ancestral relation
'Greater than', which is the ancestral of 'successor', strictly orders the natural numbers [Potter]
     Full Idea: From the successor function we can deduce its ancestral, the 'greater than' relation, which is a strict total ordering of the natural numbers. (Frege did not mention this, but Dedekind worked it out, when expounding definition by recursion).
     From: Michael Potter (The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 [2020], 07 'Def')
     A reaction: [compressed]
8. Modes of Existence / E. Nominalism / 2. Resemblance Nominalism
Two things can only resemble one another in some respect, and that may reintroduce a universal [Lowe]
     Full Idea: A problem for resemblance nominalism is that in saying that two particulars 'resemble' one another, it is necessary to specify in what respect they do so (e.g. colour, shape, size), and this threatens to reintroduce what appears to be talk of universals.
     From: E.J. Lowe (Locke on Human Understanding [1995], Ch.7)
     A reaction: We see resemblance between faces instantly, long before we can specify the 'respects' of the resemblance. This supports the Humean hard-wired view of resemblance, rather than some appeal to Platonic universals.