Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity' and 'On the Genealogy of Ethics'

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8 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity

14508	A 'thisness' is a thing's property of being identical with itself (not the possession of self-identity) [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: A thisness is the property of being identical with a certain particular individual - not the property that we all share, of being identical with some individual, but my property of being identical with me, your property of being identical with you etc.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1)
	A reaction: These philosophers tell you that a thisness 'is' so-and-so, and don't admit that he (and Plantinga) are putting forward a new theory about haecceities, and one I find implausible. I just don't believe in the property of 'being-identical-to-me'.

14511	There are cases where mere qualities would not ensure an intrinsic identity [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: I have argued that there are possible cases in which no purely qualitative conditions would be both necessary and sufficient for possessing a given thisness.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 6)
	A reaction: Are we perhaps confusing our epistemology with our ontology here? We can ensure that something has identity, or ensure that its identity is knowable. If it is 'something', then it has identity. Er, that's it?

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 / 9. Essence and Properties

12031	Essences are taken to be qualitative properties [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: Essences have normally been understood to be constituted by qualitative properties.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 1)
	A reaction: I add this simple point, because it might be challenged by the view that an essence is a substance, rather than the properties of anything. I prefer that, and would add that substances are individuated by distinctive causal powers.

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

12034	If the universe was cyclical, totally indiscernible events might occur from time to time [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: There is a temporal argument for the possibility of non-identical indiscernibles, if there could be a cyclical universe, in which each event was preceded and followed by infinitely many other events qualitatively indiscernible from itself.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
	A reaction: The argument is a parallel to Max Black's indiscernible spheres in space. Adams offers the reply that time might be tightly 'curved', so that the repetition was indeed the same event again.

14510	Two events might be indiscernible yet distinct, if there was a universe cyclical in time [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: Similar to the argument from spatial dispersal, we can argue against the Identity of Indiscernibles from temporal dispersal. It seems there could be a cyclic universe, ..and thus there could be distinct but indiscernible events, separated temporally.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
	A reaction: See Idea 14509 for spatial dispersal. If cosmologists decided that a cyclical universe was incoherent, would that ruin the argument? Presumably there might even be indistinguishable events in the one universe (in principle!).

16455	Black's two globes might be one globe in highly curved space [Adams,RM]
	Full Idea: If God creates a globe reached by travelling two diameters in a straight line from another globe, this can be described as two globes in Euclidean space, or a single globe in a tightly curved non-Euclidean space.
	From: Robert Merrihew Adams (Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity [1979], 3)
	A reaction: [my compression of Adams's version of Hacking's response to Black, as spotted by Stalnaker] Hence we save the identity of indiscernibles, by saying we can't be sure that two indiscernibles are not one thing, unusually described.