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Ideas for 'works', 'Tropes' and 'De Natura Corporis'

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4 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / B. Properties / 13. Tropes / a. Nature of tropes
Individuals consist of 'compresent' tropes [Bacon,John]
     Full Idea: 'Qualitons' or 'relatons' (quality and relation tropes) are held to belong to the same individual if they are all 'compresent' with one another.
     From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §4)
     A reaction: There is a perennial problem with bundles - how to distinguish accidental compresence (like people in a lift) from united compresence (like people who make a family).
A trope is a bit of a property or relation (not an exemplification or a quality) [Bacon,John]
     Full Idea: A trope is an instance or bit (not an exemplification) of a property or a relation. Bill Clinton's eloquence is not his participating in the universal eloquence, or the peculiar quality of his eloquence, but his bit, and his alone, of eloquence.
     From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], Intro)
     A reaction: If we have identified something as a 'bit' of something, we can ask whether that bit is atomic, or divisible into something else, and we can ask what are the qualities and properties and powers of this bit, we seems to defeat the object.
Trope theory is ontologically parsimonious, with possibly only one-category [Bacon,John]
     Full Idea: A major attraction of tropism has been its promise of parsimony; some adherents (such as Campbell) go so far as to proclaim a one-category ontology.
     From: John Bacon (Tropes [2008], §2)
     A reaction: This seems to go against the folk idiom which suggests that it is things which have properties, rather than properties ruling to roost. Maybe if one identified tropes with processes, the theory could be brought more into line with modern physics?
8. Modes of Existence / C. Powers and Dispositions / 2. Powers as Basic
As well as extension, bodies contain powers [Leibniz]
     Full Idea: Over and above what can be deduced from extension, we must add and recognise in bodies certain notions or forms that are immaterial, so to speak, or independent of extension, which you can call powers [potentia], by which speed is adjusted to magnitude.
     From: Gottfried Leibniz (De Natura Corporis [1678], A6.4.1980), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3
     A reaction: He boldly asserts that the powers are 'immaterial', but is then forced to qualify it (as he often does) with 'so to speak'. The notion that bodies just have extension (occupy space) comes from Descartes, and is firmly opposed by Leibniz.