display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: An accident is a mode of conceiving a body. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.02) | |
A reaction: In contrast to the other thinkers who followed Suárez on modes in the early 17th century, Hobbes thinks they are just ways of 'conceiving' bodies, rather than actual features of them. |
16621 | Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: An accident's being in a body is not to be taken as something contained in that body - as if redness were in blood like blood in a bloody cloth, as part of the whole, for then accident would be a body. It is like body having size or rest or movement. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.03) | |
A reaction: [compressed] Hobbes is fishing for something like the Quinean view of properties, but no one seems to be able to articulate this sceptical view very well. Pasnau says he means to talk of 'the mode of conceiving a body' (De C 8.2). |
16734 | The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: The power of agent and patient taken together, which may be called the complete power, is the same as the complete cause, for each consists in the aggregation together of all the accidents that are required to produce an effect in both agent and patient. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.10.01) | |
A reaction: They treat powers as macro phenomena, and don't seem to have a sense of the basic powers that build up the big picture. |
16755 | The possible Aristotelian view that forms are real and active principles is clearly wrong [Fine,K, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Aristotle seems to have a possible basis for the belief [in individual forms], namely that forms are real and active principles in the world, which is denied by any right-minded modern. | |
From: report of Kit Fine (A Puzzle Concerning Matter and Form [1994], p.19) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.3 n8 | |
A reaction: Pasnau says this is the view of forms promoted by the scholastics, whereas Aristotle's own view should be understood as 'metaphysical'. |
17247 | The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes] |
Full Idea: Nothing is general or universal besides names or signs. | |
From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.05) | |
A reaction: This is the perfect motto for nominalists, among which I am inclined to include myself. Hobbes had a fabulous gift for economy of phrasing. This website is dedicated to that ideal. Reality does not contain generalities (obviously!!). |