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Ideas for 'works', 'On the Nature of Mathematical Reasoning' and 'Varieties of Things'

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6 ideas

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 / C. Structure of Objects / 7. Substratum

7929	A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: The three main theories of substance are the bundle theory (Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Ayer), the bare substratum theory (Locke and Bergmann), and the essentialist theory.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: Macdonald defends the essentialist theory. The essentialist view immediately appeals to me. Properties must be OF something, and the something must have the power to produce properties. So there.

7941	Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: A rival to the bundle theory says that, for each substance, there is a constituent of it that is not a property but is both essential and unique to it, this constituent being referred to as a 'bare particular' or 'substratum'.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: This doesn't sound promising. It is unclear what existence devoid of all properties could be like. How could it 'have' its properties if it was devoid of features (it seems to need property-hooks)? It is an ontological black hole. How do you prove it?

7942	The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: If there is a substratum or bare particular within a substance, this gives an explanation of the unity of substances, and it is something which can survive intact when a substance changes.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: [v. compressed wording] Many problems here. The one that strikes me is that when things change they sometimes lose their unity and identity, and that seems to be decided entirely from observation of properties, not from assessing the substratum.

7943	A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: There seems to be no way of identifying a substratum as the bearer of qualities without qualifiying it as bare (having the property of being bare?), ..and they cannot be used to individuate things, because they are necessarily indiscernible.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: The defence would probably be a priori, claiming an axiomatic necessity for substrata in our thinking about the world, along with a denial that bareness is a property (any more than not being a contemporary of Napoleon is a property).