Combining Texts

Ideas for 'De Corpore (Elements, First Section)', 'How the Laws of Physics Lie' and 'The Putney Debates'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


3 ideas

9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / c. Individuation by location
Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: A body is that, which having no dependence on our thought, is coincident or coextended with some part of space.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.01)
     A reaction: This rather Cartesian view doesn't seem to offer any distinction between empty space and space containing an 'object'. Presumably it is the ancestor of the Quinean account just in terms of space-time points. Don't like it.
If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: One body cannot be in two places at the same time, ...for the place that a body fills being divided into two, the placed body will also be divided into two; the place and the body that fills that place are divided both together.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.08)
     A reaction: If every time you manipulated one body it affected both of them, you might say that one body was in two places, rather like a mirror image.
If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes]
     Full Idea: Two bodies cannot be together in the same place, ..because when a body that fills its whole place is divided into two, the place itself is divided into two also, so that there will be two places.
     From: Thomas Hobbes (De Corpore (Elements, First Section) [1655], 2.08.08)
     A reaction: The wonderful things about philosophy is that you are faced with obvious truths of the world, and cannot begin to think why they are true - and then up steps a philosopher and offers you a reason.