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3 ideas
| 13079 | A substance contains the laws of its operations, and its actions come from its own depth [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Each indivisible substance contains in its nature the law by which the series of its operations continues, and all that has happened and will happen to it. All its actions come from its own depths, except for dependence on God. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Antoine Arnauld [1686], 1688.01.4/14) | |
| A reaction: I take the combination of 'laws' and 'forces', which Leibniz attributes to Aristotelian essences, to be his distinctive contribution towards giving us an Aristotelian metaphysic which is suitable for modern science. |
| 10532 | We can understand universals by studying predication [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: It is by the study of the character of predication that we shall come to understand the essential nature of universals. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) [1973], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: I haven't founded a clearer manifesto for linguistic philosophy than that! Personally I find it highly dubious, given the shifting nature of linguistic forms, and the enormous variation between remote languages. |
| 10534 | 'Nominalism' used to mean denial of universals, but now means denial of abstract objects [Dummett] |
| Full Idea: The original sense of 'nominalism' is the denial of universals, that is the denial of reference to either predicates or to abstract nouns. The modern sense (of Nelson Goodman) is the denial of the existence of abstract objects. | |
| From: Michael Dummett (Frege Philosophy of Language (2nd ed) [1973], Ch.14) | |
| A reaction: This is why you find loads of modern philosophers vigorous attacking nominalism, only to gradually realise that they don't actually believe in universals, as traditionally understood. It's hard to keep up, when words shift their meaning. |