Combining Texts

Ideas for 'works', 'Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong' and 'fragments/reports'

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7 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
Everything gives way, and nothing stands fast [Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: Everything gives way, and nothing stands fast.
     From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 402a
     A reaction: This is as good a summary of the Heraclitus view of things as any, and Plato appears to present it as a verbatim quotation.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / e. Vague objects
A mixed drink separates if it is not stirred [Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: The mixed drink, of wine, cheese and barley, separates if it is not stirred.
     From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B125)
     A reaction: Wiggins quotes this, because it seems to be Heraclitus struggling to decide what sortal his drink falls under. I take it to be a problem of vagueness, since separation and mixing occur along a continuum, like a sorites.
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 / E. Objects over Time / 8. Continuity of Rivers
It is not possible to step twice into the same river [Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: It is not possible to step twice into the same river.
     From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B091), quoted by Plutarch - 24: The E at Delphi 392b10-
You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage [Quine on Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage.
     From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis 1
     A reaction: This seems to make Quine a 'perdurantist', committed to time-slices of objects, rather than whole objects enduring through change.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 13. No Identity over Time
If flux is continuous, then lack of change can't be a property, so everything changes in every possible way [Plato on Heraclitus]
     Full Idea: According to Heracliteans, since things must be changing, and since lack of change can't be a property of anything, then everything is always undergoing change of every kind.
     From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B030) by Plato - Theaetetus 182a