Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Topics', 'Philosophy of Mind' and 'Elements of Intuitionism'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 9. Ship of Theseus
If you can have the boat without its current planks, and the planks with no boat, the planks aren't the boat [Heil]
     Full Idea: If a boat can continue to exist after the planks that currently make it up have ceased to exist, and if the planks could continue to exist when the boat does not, then a boat cannot be identified with the planks that make it up at a given time.
     From: John Heil (Philosophy of Mind [1998], Ch.2)
     A reaction: This seems obvious, but it opposes Locke's claim that the particles of an object are its identity. Does this mean identities are entirely in our heads, and not a feature of nature? I want to resist that.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 11. End of an Object
Destruction is dissolution of essence [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: Destruction is a dissolution of essence.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 153b30)
     A reaction: [plucked from context!] I can't think of a better way to define destruction, in order to distinguish it from damage. A vase is destroyed when its essential function cannot be recovered.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
If two things are the same, they must have the same source and origin [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: When things are absolutely the same, their coming-into-being and destruction are also the same and so are the agents of their production and destruction.
     From: Aristotle (Topics [c.331 BCE], 152a02)
     A reaction: Thus Queen Elizabeth II has to be the result of that particular birth, and from those particular parents, as Kripke says? The inverse may not be true. Do twins have a single origin? Things that fission and then re-fuse differently? etc