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5 ideas
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 20826 | How is separateness possible, if separated things are always said to be united? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could one avoid the inconsistency of saying that adjacent objects that can easily be separated are all the same united with each other, being coherent and never able o be separated from each other without division? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: In general my sympathies are with Alexander on this. If you abandon all principles of unity apart from unrestricted mereological composition, you save yourself a lot of bother, but you abandon the most useful concepts in ontology. |
| 20825 | How is divisibility possible, if stoics say things remain united when they are divided? [Alexander on Stoic school] |
| Full Idea: How could the divisibility of bodies be preserved if division is the separation of what is united, and according to them all things stay united with each other, all the same even when they are divided? | |
| From: comment on Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Alexander - On Mixture 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Evidently the stoics were committed to unrestricted mereological composition (that any parts make a whole, no matter how scattered). Alexander points out that this makes the concept of 'division' of an entity meaningless. |
| 20872 | Stoics say wholes are more than parts, but entirely consist of parts [Stoic school, by Sext.Empiricus] |
| Full Idea: Stoics say the wholes are not the same as their parts, for a human being is not his hand, nor are they other than their parts, for they do not exist without the parts. | |
| From: report of Stoic school (fragments/reports [c.200 BCE]) by Sextus Empiricus - Outlines of Pyrrhonism 3.170 | |
| A reaction: 'A human being is not his hand' is not much of a reason. Surely some holistic claim is needed here? The conflict of these two ideas was spotted by Plato. |