Combining Texts

Ideas for 'The Middle Works (15 vols, ed Boydston)', 'The Individual, the State, and the Common Good' and 'Varieties of Things'

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15 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / c. Individuation by location

7961	A 'thing' cannot be in two places at once, and two things cannot be in the same place at once [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: The so-called 'laws of thinghood' govern particulars, saying that one thing cannot be wholly present at different places at the same time, and two things cannot occupy the same place at the same time.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.6)
	A reaction: Is this an empirical observation, or a tautology? Or might it even be a priori synthetic? What happens when two water drops or clouds merge? Or an amoeba fissions? In what sense is an image in two places at once? Se also Idea 2351.

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / e. Individuation by kind

7926	We 'individuate' kinds of object, and 'identify' particular specimens [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: We can usefully refer to 'individuation conditions', to distinguish objects of that kind from objects not of that kind, and to 'identity conditions', to distinguish objects within that kind from one another.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2)
	A reaction: So we individuate types or sets, and identify tokens or particulars. Sounds good. Should be in every philosopher's toolkit, and on every introductory philosophy course.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance

7936	Unlike bundles of properties, substances have an intrinsic unity [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: Substances have a kind of unity that mere collocations of properties do not have, namely an instrinsic unity. So substances cannot be collocations - bundles - of properties.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: A team is a unity. Compare a similar thought, Idea 1395, about personal identity. How can something which is a pure unity have more than one property? What distinguishes substances? Why can't a substance have a certain property?

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / d. Substance defined

7930	The bundle theory of substance implies the identity of indiscernibles [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: The bundle theory of substance requires unconditional commitment to the truth of the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles: that things that are alike with respect to all of their properties are identical.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: Since the identity of indiscernibles is very dubious (see Ideas 1365, 4476, 5746, 7928), this is bad news for the bundle theory. I suspect that all of these problems arise because no one seems to have a clear concept of a property.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / e. Substance critique

7932	A phenomenalist cannot distinguish substance from attribute, so must accept the bundle view [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: Commitment to the view that only what can be an object of possible sensory experience can exist eliminates the possibility of distinguishing between substance and attribute, leaving only one alternative, namely the bundle view.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: Phenomenalism strikes me as a paradigm case of confusing ontology with epistemology. Presumably physicists (even empiricist ones) are committed to the 'interior' of quarks and electrons, but no one expects to experience them.

7937	When we ascribe a property to a substance, the bundle theory will make that a tautology [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: The bundle theory makes all true statements ascribing properties to substances uninformative, by making them logical truths. The property of being a feline animal is literally a constituent of a cat.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: The solution would seem to a distinction between accidental and essential properties. Compare 'that plane is red' with 'that plane has wings'. 'Of course it does - it's a plane'. We might still survive without a plane-substance.

7939	Substances persist through change, but the bundle theory says they can't [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: Substances are capable of persisting through change, where this involves change in properties; but the bundle theory has the consequence that substances cannot survive change.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: Her example is an apple remaining an apple when it turns brown. It doesn't look, though, as if there is a precise moment when the apple-substance ceases. The end of an apple seems to be more a matter of a loss of crucial properties.

7940	A substance might be a sequence of bundles, rather than a single bundle [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: Maybe a substance is not itself a bundle of properties, but a sum or sequence of bundles of properties, a bundle of bundles of properties (which 'perdures' rather than 'endures').
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: There remains the problem of deciding when the bundle has drifted too far away from the original to perdure correctly. A caterpillar can turn into a butterfly (which is pretty bizarre!), but not into a cathedral. Why? She says this idea denies change.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay

7948	A statue and its matter have different persistence conditions, so they are not identical [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: Because a statue and the lump of matter that constitute it have different persistence conditions, they are not identical.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.4)
	A reaction: Maybe being a statue is a relational property? All the relational properties of a thing will have different persistence conditions. Suppose I see a face in a bowl of sugar, and you don't?

9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 7. Substratum

7929	A substance is either a bundle of properties, or a bare substratum, or an essence [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: The three main theories of substance are the bundle theory (Leibniz, Berkeley, Hume, Ayer), the bare substratum theory (Locke and Bergmann), and the essentialist theory.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: Macdonald defends the essentialist theory. The essentialist view immediately appeals to me. Properties must be OF something, and the something must have the power to produce properties. So there.

7941	Each substance contains a non-property, which is its substratum or bare particular [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: A rival to the bundle theory says that, for each substance, there is a constituent of it that is not a property but is both essential and unique to it, this constituent being referred to as a 'bare particular' or 'substratum'.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: This doesn't sound promising. It is unclear what existence devoid of all properties could be like. How could it 'have' its properties if it was devoid of features (it seems to need property-hooks)? It is an ontological black hole. How do you prove it?

7942	The substratum theory explains the unity of substances, and their survival through change [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: If there is a substratum or bare particular within a substance, this gives an explanation of the unity of substances, and it is something which can survive intact when a substance changes.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: [v. compressed wording] Many problems here. The one that strikes me is that when things change they sometimes lose their unity and identity, and that seems to be decided entirely from observation of properties, not from assessing the substratum.

7943	A substratum has the quality of being bare, and they are useless because indiscernible [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: There seems to be no way of identifying a substratum as the bearer of qualities without qualifiying it as bare (having the property of being bare?), ..and they cannot be used to individuate things, because they are necessarily indiscernible.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.3)
	A reaction: The defence would probably be a priori, claiming an axiomatic necessity for substrata in our thinking about the world, along with a denial that bareness is a property (any more than not being a contemporary of Napoleon is a property).

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

7927	At different times Leibniz articulated three different versions of his so-called Law [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: There are three distinct versions of Leibniz's Law, all traced to remarks made by Leibniz: the Identity of Indiscernibles (same properties, same thing), the Indiscernibility of Identicals (same thing, same properties), and the Substitution Principle.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2)
	A reaction: The best view seems to be to treat the second one as Leibniz's Law (and uncontroversially true), and the first one as being an interesting but dubious claim.

7928	The Identity of Indiscernibles is false, because it is not necessarily true [Macdonald,C]
	Full Idea: One common argument to the conclusion that the Principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is false is that it is not necessarily true.
	From: Cynthia Macdonald (Varieties of Things [2005], Ch.2 n32)
	A reaction: This sounds like a good argument. If you test the Principle with an example ('this butler is the murderer') then total identity does not seem to necessitate identity, though it strongly implies it (the butler may have a twin etc).