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2 ideas
13920 | Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe] |
Full Idea: Any individual thing must be a thing of some general kind - because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category. | |
From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2) | |
A reaction: Where does the law that 'everything must have a category' come from? I'm baffled by remarks of this kind. Where do we get the categories from? From observing the individuals. So which has priority? Not the categories. Is God a kind? |
15847 | Two things relate either as same or different, or part of a whole, or the whole of the part [Plato] |
Full Idea: Everything is surely related to everything as follows: either it is the same or different; or, if it is not the same or different, it would be related as part to whole or as whole to part. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 146b) | |
A reaction: This strikes me as a really helpful first step in trying to analyse the nature of identity. Two things are either two or (actually) one, or related mereologically. |