Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Analogy of Religion' and 'A Theory of Universals'

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3 ideas

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity

10024	The type-token distinction is the universal-particular distinction [Armstrong, by Hodes]
	Full Idea: Armstrong conflates the type-token distinction with that between universals and particulars.
	From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978], xiii,16/17) by Harold Hodes - Logicism and Ontological Commits. of Arithmetic 147 n23
	A reaction: This seems quite reasonable, even if you don’t believe in the reality of universals. I'm beginning to think we should just use the term 'general' instead of 'universal'. 'Type' also seems to correspond to 'set', with the 'token' as the 'member'.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 5. Self-Identity

10728	A thing's self-identity can't be a universal, since we can know it a priori [Armstrong, by Oliver]
	Full Idea: Armstrong says that if it can be proved a priori that a thing falls under a certain universal, then there is no such universal - and hence there is no universal of a thing being identical with itself.
	From: report of David M. Armstrong (A Theory of Universals [1978], II p.11) by Alex Oliver - The Metaphysics of Properties 11
	A reaction: This is a distinctively Armstrongian view, based on his belief that universals must be instantiated, and must be discoverable a posteriori, as part of science. I'm baffled by self-identity, but I don't think this argument does the job.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 9. Sameness

21315	A tree remains the same in the popular sense, but not in the strict philosophical sense [Butler]
	Full Idea: When a man swears to the same tree having stood for fifty years in the same place, he means ...not that the tree has been all that time the same in the strict philosophical sense of the word. ...In a loose and popular sense they are said to be the same.
	From: Joseph Butler (Analogy of Religion [1736], App.1)
	A reaction: A helpful distinction which we should hang on. Of course, by the standards of modern physics, nothing is strictly the same from one Planck time to the next. All is flux. So we either drop the word 'same' (for objects) or relax a bit.