display all the ideas for this combination of texts
7 ideas
15959 | If the substantial form of brass implies its stability, how can it melt and remain brass? [Alexander,P] |
Full Idea: If we account for the stability of a piece of brass by reference to the substantial form of brass, then it is mysterious how it can be melted and yet remain brass. | |
From: Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 02.3) | |
A reaction: [Alexander is discussing Boyle] |
15956 | The peripatetics treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter, and non-material [Alexander,P] |
Full Idea: The peripatetic philosophers, in spite of their disagreements, all treated forms and real qualities as independent of matter and not to be understood in material terms. | |
From: Peter Alexander (Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles [1985], 54) | |
A reaction: This is the simple reason why hylomorphism became totally discredited, in the face of the 'mechanical philosophy'. But there must be a physical version of hylomorphism, and I don't think Aristotle himself would reject it. |
16765 | Humans only have a single substantial form, which contains the others and acts for them [Aquinas] |
Full Idea: A human being has no substantial form other than the intellective soul alone, and it contains the sensitive and nutritive souls, and all lower forms, and it alone brings about whatever it is that less perfect forms bring about in other things. | |
From: Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theologicae [1265], Ia Q76 4c), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 25.1 | |
A reaction: He says brutes and plants also have a single soul. Pasnau says this is Aquinas's most distinctive doctrine, because other thinkers postulate a whole hierarchy of substantial forms. |
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. |