Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Two Chief World Systems' and 'Identity and Existence in Logic'

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6 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 4. Impossible objects

18766	's is non-existent' cannot be said if 's' does not designate [Anderson,CA]
	Full Idea: The paradox of negative existentials says that if 's' does not designate something, then the sentence 's is non-existent' is untrue.
	From: C. Anthony Anderson (Identity and Existence in Logic [2014], 2.1)
	A reaction: This only seems be a problem for logicians. Everyone else can happily say 'my coffee is non-existent'.

18768	We cannot pick out a thing and deny its existence, but we can say a concept doesn't correspond [Anderson,CA]
	Full Idea: Parmenides was correct - one cannot speak of that which is not, even to say that it is not. But one can speak of concepts and say of them that they do not correspond to anything real.
	From: C. Anthony Anderson (Identity and Existence in Logic [2014], 2.5)
	A reaction: [This summarises Alonso Church, who was developing Frege] This sounds like the right thing to say about non-existence, but then the same principle must apply to assertions of existence, which will also be about concepts and not things.

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation

18765	Individuation was a problem for medievals, then Leibniz, then Frege, then Wittgenstein (somewhat) [Anderson,CA]
	Full Idea: The medieval philosophers and then Leibniz were keen on finding 'principles of individuation', and the idea appears again in Frege, to be taken up in some respects by Wittgenstein.
	From: C. Anthony Anderson (Identity and Existence in Logic [2014], 1.6)
	A reaction: I take a rather empirical approach to this supposed problem, and suggest we break 'individuation' down into its component parts, and then just drop the word. Discussions of principles of individuations strike me as muddled. Wiggins and Lowe today.

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 2. Hylomorphism / a. Hylomorphism

13276	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

13277	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 / F. Identity among Objects / 7. Indiscernible Objects

18764	The notion of 'property' is unclear for a logical version of the Identity of Indiscernibles [Anderson,CA]
	Full Idea: In the Identity of Indiscernibles, one speaks about properties, and the notion of a property is by no means clearly fixed and formalized in modern symbolic logic.
	From: C. Anthony Anderson (Identity and Existence in Logic [2014], 1.5)
	A reaction: The unclarity of 'property' is a bee in my philosophical bonnet, in speech, and in metaphysics, as well as in logic. It may well be the central problem in our attempts to understand the world in general terms. He cites intensional logic as promising.