display all the ideas for this combination of texts
11 ideas
13782 | Everything gives way, and nothing stands fast [Heraclitus] |
Full Idea: Everything gives way, and nothing stands fast. | |
From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]), quoted by Plato - Cratylus 402a | |
A reaction: This is as good a summary of the Heraclitus view of things as any, and Plato appears to present it as a verbatim quotation. |
15851 | 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. |
11853 | A mixed drink separates if it is not stirred [Heraclitus] |
Full Idea: The mixed drink, of wine, cheese and barley, separates if it is not stirred. | |
From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B125) | |
A reaction: Wiggins quotes this, because it seems to be Heraclitus struggling to decide what sortal his drink falls under. I take it to be a problem of vagueness, since separation and mixing occur along a continuum, like a sorites. |
15846 | 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? |
15849 | 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. |
15850 | 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. |
13259 | 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. |
427 | It is not possible to step twice into the same river [Heraclitus] |
Full Idea: It is not possible to step twice into the same river. | |
From: Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B091), quoted by Plutarch - 24: The E at Delphi 392b10- |
11091 | You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage [Quine on Heraclitus] |
Full Idea: You can bathe in the same river twice, but not in the same river stage. | |
From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE]) by Willard Quine - Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis 1 | |
A reaction: This seems to make Quine a 'perdurantist', committed to time-slices of objects, rather than whole objects enduring through change. |
2064 | If flux is continuous, then lack of change can't be a property, so everything changes in every possible way [Plato on Heraclitus] |
Full Idea: According to Heracliteans, since things must be changing, and since lack of change can't be a property of anything, then everything is always undergoing change of every kind. | |
From: comment on Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B030) by Plato - Theaetetus 182a |
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. |