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Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'Logic (Encyclopedia I)' and 'Getting Causes from Powers'

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12 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / b. Unifying aggregates
Parts must belong to a created thing with a distinct form [Plato]
     Full Idea: The part would not be the part of many things or all, but of some one character ['ideas'] and of some one thing, which we call a 'whole', since it has come to be one complete [perfected] thing composed [created] of all.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157d)
     A reaction: A serious shot by Plato at what identity is. Harte quotes it (125) and shows that 'character' is Gk 'idea', and 'composed' will translate as 'created'. 'Form' links this Platonic passage to Aristotle's hylomorphism.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance
The one substance is formless without the mediation of dialectical concepts [Hegel]
     Full Idea: As intuitively accepted by Spinoza without a previous mediation by dialectic, substance is as it were a dark shapeless abyss which engulfs all definite content as radically null, and produces from itself nothing that has a positive substance of its own.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], I §151Z p.215), quoted by A.W. Moore - The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics 07.6
     A reaction: This seems to be an expression of idealism, since only what is conceptualised can exist.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay
If statue and clay fall and crush someone, the event is not overdetermined [Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: If both the statue and the clay fall on someone and crush them to death, we would not say that the death is overdetermined.
     From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 2.7)
     A reaction: I don't need many reasons to give up the idea that the statue and the clay are two objects, but this will do nicely as one of them.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 1. Structure of an Object
Pandispositionalists say structures are clusters of causal powers [Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: A pandispositionalist has to defend the view that even a property such as sphericity is in reality a cluster of causal powers.
     From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 1.1)
     A reaction: Is sphericity even a 'property'? I think 'feature' might be the best word for it. 'Quality' is quite good, but is too suggestive of qualia and secondary qualities. 'Mode' is not bad. Things have 'modes of existence' and 'powers'? Powers create modes.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 5. Composition of an Object
In Parmenides, if composition is identity, a whole is nothing more than its parts [Plato, by Harte,V]
     Full Idea: At the heart of the 'Parmenides' puzzles about composition is the thesis that composition is identity. Considered thus, a whole adds nothing to an ontology that already includes its parts
     From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE]) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 2.5
     A reaction: There has to be more to a unified identity that mere proximity of the parts. When do parts come together, and when do they actually 'compose' something?
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / a. Parts of objects
Plato says only a one has parts, and a many does not [Plato, by Harte,V]
     Full Idea: In 'Parmenides' it is argued that a part cannot be part of a many, but must be part of something one.
     From: report of Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) by Verity Harte - Plato on Parts and Wholes 3.2
     A reaction: This looks like the right way to go with the term 'part'. We presuppose a unity before we even talk of its parts, so we can't get into contradictions and paradoxes about their relationships.
Anything which has parts must be one thing, and parts are of a one, not of a many [Plato]
     Full Idea: The whole of which the parts are parts must be one thing composed of many; for each of the parts must be part, not of a many, but of a whole.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c)
     A reaction: This is a key move of metaphysics, and we should hang on to it. The other way madness lies.
9. Objects / C. Structure of Objects / 8. Parts of Objects / c. Wholes from parts
It seems that the One must be composed of parts, which contradicts its being one [Plato]
     Full Idea: The One must be composed of parts, both being a whole and having parts. So on both grounds the One would thus be many and not one. But it must be not many, but one. So if the One will be one, it will neither be a whole, nor have parts.
     From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137c09), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 5.2
     A reaction: This is the starting point for Plato's metaphysical discussion of objects. It seems to begin a line of thought which is completed by Aristotle, surmising that only an essential structure can bestow identity on a bunch of parts.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 6. Essence as Unifier
Essence is the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation [Hegel]
     Full Idea: The entire second part of the 'Logic', the doctrine of Essence, deals with the essential self-positing unity of immediacy and mediation.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §65)
     A reaction: He is referring to his book 'Science of Logic'. I don't really understand this, but that essence 'posits' the unity of a thing catches my attention.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences
Real cognition grasps a thing from within itself, and is not satisfied with mere predicates [Hegel]
     Full Idea: In genuine cognition ...an object determines itself from within itself, and does not acquire its predicates in an external way. If we proceed by way of predication, the spirit gets the feeling that the predicates cannot exhaust what they are attached to.
     From: Georg W.F.Hegel (Logic (Encyclopedia I) [1817], §28 Add)
     A reaction: I take this to be a glimpse of Hegel's notoriously difficult account of essence. Place this alongside Locke's distinction between Nominal and Real essences. Once we have the predicates, we want to grasp their source.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 5. Temporal Parts
Perdurantism imposes no order on temporal parts, so sequences of events are contingent [Mumford/Anjum]
     Full Idea: Perdurantism tends to go with the view that it is essentially contingent what follows what, because it is no part of the essence of temporal parts that they be arranged in any particular order.
     From: S.Mumford/R.Lill Anjum (Getting Causes from Powers [2011], 5.5 1)
     A reaction: Nice. There is nothing illogical, then, in elderly me intervening between childish me and middle-aged me. Essentialists like me must clearly oppose this view. Elderly me must be preceded and caused by middle-aged me.
9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 6. Identity between Objects
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.