Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Advancement of Learning', 'Against the Physicists (two books)' and 'Writings from Late Notebooks'

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4 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 6. Nihilism about Objects
7189 Maybe there are only subjects, and 'objects' result from relations between subjects [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The subject alone is demonstrable: hypothesis - that there are only subjects - that 'object' is only a kind of effect of subject upon subject...a mode of the subject.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 09[106])
     A reaction: This is an ultimate implication of 'perspectivism'. Elsewhere, though, (Idea 7183) he challenges the ontological status of 'subjects', suggesting that even they are purely fictional. Nietzsche wanted to relativism everything, but kept clutching lifebelts.
7207 Counting needs unities, but that doesn't mean they exist; we borrowed it from the concept of 'I' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: We need unities in order to be able to count: we should not therefore assume that such unities exist. We have borrowed the concept of unity from our concept of 'I' - our oldest article of faith.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 14[79])
     A reaction: Personally I think that counting derives from patterns, and that all creatures can discern patterns in their environment, which means discriminating the parts of the pattern, which are therefore real and existing entities.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
22744 Parts are not parts if their whole is nothing more than the parts [Sext.Empiricus]
     Full Idea: If the whole is nothing more than the sum of the parts, the parts will not be parts.
     From: Sextus Empiricus (Against the Physicists (two books) [c.180], I.343)
     A reaction: Nice. Bricks lying on the ground are not parts of a wall. For them to be parts of a wall there has to be a wall which is not just the bricks. Nihilists like Van Inwagen can deny the wall in ontology, but in thought we need walls. Conceptual dependence.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 15. Against Essentialism
7161 The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing' [Nietzsche]
     Full Idea: The essence of a thing is only an opinion about the 'thing'.
     From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Writings from Late Notebooks [1887], 02[150])
     A reaction: Nietzsche seems sympathetic to essentialism about natural laws (based on 'power'), but this is the classic rejection of Aristotelian essences, because they are unknowable or unprovable. Personally I think scientists are revealing essences.