Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Parmenides', 'The Metaphysics of Modality' and 'On the Nature of the Gods ('De natura deorum')'

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2 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 / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects
If we combined two clocks, it seems that two clocks may have become one clock. [Forbes,G]
     Full Idea: If we imagine a possible world in which two clocks in a room make one clock from half the parts of each, the judgement 'these two actual clocks could have been a single clock' does not seem wholly false.
     From: Graeme Forbes (The Metaphysics of Modality [1985], 7.4)
     A reaction: You would, of course, have sufficient parts left over to make a second clock, so they look like a destroyed clock, so I don't think I find Forbes's intuition on this one very persuasive.