Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'A Subject with No Object' and 'The Principles of Mathematics'

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9 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 3. Objects in Thought

7781	I call an object of thought a 'term'. This is a wide concept implying unity and existence. [Russell]
	Full Idea: Whatever may be an object of thought, or occur in a true or false proposition, or be counted as one, I call a term. This is the widest word in the philosophical vocabulary, which I use synonymously with unit, individual, entity (being one, and existing).
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §047)
	A reaction: The claim of existence begs many questions, such as whether the non-existence of the Loch Ness Monster is an 'object' of thought.

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Simples

14166	Unities are only in propositions or concepts, and nothing that exists has unity [Russell]
	Full Idea: It is sufficient to observe that all unities are propositions or propositional concepts, and that consequently nothing that exists is a unity. If, therefore, it is maintained that things are unities, we must reply that no things exist.
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §439)
	A reaction: The point, I presume, is that you end up as a nihilist about identities (like van Inwagen and Merricks) by mistakenly thinking (as Aristotle and Leibniz did) that everything that exists needs to have something called 'unity'.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / a. Intrinsic unification

14164	The only unities are simples, or wholes composed of parts [Russell]
	Full Idea: The only kind of unity to which I can attach any precise sense - apart from the unity of the absolutely simple - is that of a whole composed of parts.
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §439)
	A reaction: This comes from a keen student of Leibniz, who was obsessed with unity. Russell leaves unaddressed the question of what turns some parts into a whole.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates

14112	A set has some sort of unity, but not enough to be a 'whole' [Russell]
	Full Idea: In a class as many, the component terms, though they have some kind of unity, have less than is required for a whole.
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §070)
	A reaction: This is interesting because (among many other things), sets are used to stand for numbers, but numbers are usually reqarded as wholes.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail

16058	Dion and Theon coexist, but Theon lacks a foot. If Dion loses a foot, he ousts Theon? [Chrysippus, by Philo of Alexandria]
	Full Idea: If two individuals occupied one substance …let one individual (Dion) be thought of as whole-limbed, the other (Theon) as minus one foot. Then let one of Dion's feet be amputated. Theon is the stronger candidate to have perished.
	From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Philo (Alex) - On the Eternity of the World 48
	A reaction: [SVF 2.397 - from Chrysippus's lost 'On the Growing Argument'] This is the original of Tibbles the Cat. Dion must persist to change, and then ousts Theon (it seems). Philo protests at Theon ceasing to exist when nothing has happened to him.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism

14170	Change is obscured by substance, a thing's nature, subject-predicate form, and by essences [Russell]
	Full Idea: The notion of change is obscured by the doctrine of substance, by a thing's nature versus its external relations, and by subject-predicate form, so that things can be different and the same. Hence the useless distinction between essential and accidental.
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §443)
	A reaction: He goes on to object to vague unconscious usage of 'essence' by modern thinkers, but allows (teasingly) that medieval thinkers may have been precise about it. It is a fact, in common life, that things can change and be the same. Explain it!

9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 2. Objects that Change

16059	Change of matter doesn't destroy identity - in Dion and Theon change is a condition of identity [Chrysippus, by Long/Sedley]
	Full Idea: The Growing Argument said any change of matter is a change of identity. Chrysippus presents it with a case (Dion and Theon) where material diminution is the necessary condition of enduring identity, since the diminished footless Dion survives.
	From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by AA Long / DN Sedley - Hellenic Philosophers commentary 28:175
	A reaction: [The example, in Idea 16058, is the original of Tibbles the Cat] This is a lovely bold idea which I haven't met in the modern discussions - that identity actually requires change. The concept of identity is meaningless without change?

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

14107	Terms are identical if they belong to all the same classes [Russell]
	Full Idea: Two terms are identical when the second belongs to every class to which the first belongs.
	From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §026)

11849	It at least makes sense to say two objects have all their properties in common [Wittgenstein on Russell]
	Full Idea: Russell's definition of '=' is inadequate, because according to it we cannot say that two objects have all their properties in common. (Even if this proposition is never correct, it still has a sense).
	From: comment on Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903]) by Ludwig Wittgenstein - Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.5302
	A reaction: This is what now seems to be a standard denial of the bizarre Leibniz claim that there never could be two things with identical properties, even, it seems, in principle. What would Leibniz made of two electrons?