Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Writings from Late Notebooks' and 'talk'

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5 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis - that there are only subjects - that 'object' is only a kind of effect of subject upon subject...a mode of the subject.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[106])
     A reaction: This is an ultimate implication of 'perspectivism'. Elsewhere, though, (Idea 7183) he challenges the ontological status of 'subjects', suggesting that even they are purely fictional. Nietzsche wanted to relativism everything, but kept clutching lifebelts.
Counting needs unities, but that doesn't mean they exist; we borrowed it from the concept of 'I' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: We need unities in order to be able to count: we should not therefore assume that such unities exist. We have borrowed the concept of unity from our concept of 'I' - our oldest article of faith.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79])
     A reaction: Personally I think that counting derives from patterns, and that all creatures can discern patterns in their environment, which means discriminating the parts of the pattern, which are therefore real and existing entities.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism
The unmoved mover and the soul show Aristotelian form as the ultimate mereological atom [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: Aristotle's discussion of the unmoved mover and of the soul confirms the suspicion that form, when it is not thought of as the object represented in a definition, plays the role of the ultimate mereological atom within his system.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.6
     A reaction: Aristotle is concerned with which things are 'divisible', and he cites these two examples as indivisible, but they may be too unusual to offer an actual theory of how Aristotle builds up wholes from atoms. He denies atoms in matter.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / d. Form as unifier
The 'form' is the recipe for building wholes of a particular kind [Aristotle, by Koslicki]
     Full Idea: Thus in Aristotle we may think of an object's formal components as a sort of recipe for how to build wholes of that particular kind.
     From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 7.2.5
     A reaction: In the elusive business of pinning down what Aristotle means by the crucial idea of 'form', this analogy strikes me as being quite illuminating. It would fit DNA in living things, and the design of an artifact.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150])
     A reaction: Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences.