Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Axiomatic Theories of Truth', 'Four Dimensionalism' and 'Physics'

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7 ideas

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 1. Unifying an Object / a. Intrinsic unification

17041	Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants, and the simple elements [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Natural objects include animals and their parts, plants and simple bodies like earth, fire, air, and water.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b09)
	A reaction: Interestingly, he seems to include lives, and elements, but nothing in between, like planets or stones.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance

16172	Substance is not predicated of anything - but it still has something underlying it, that originates it [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: The only thing which is not predicated of some underlying thing is substance, while everything is predicated of it. But the same goes for substances too: there is something underlying them too, which they come from. Plants from seeds, for example.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b01)
	A reaction: [compressed] I presume 'substance' here is 'ousia'. Aristotle's quest is to pin down 'that which lies under', but this shows that if he identified it, he wouldn't have located what is ultimate. The explanation of a plant extends beyond the plant.

16623	We only infer underlying natures by analogy, observing bronze of a statue, or wood of a bed [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: The underlying nature is an object of knowledge, by an analogy. For as bronze is to a statue, wood to a bed, or matter and the formless before receiving form to any thing which has form, so is the underlying nature of substance, the 'this' or existent.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a08)
	A reaction: Scholastics were perfectly aware of this cautious approach. It is only the critics who jeer at Aristotelians for claiming to know all about the essences of things. Essence is like the Unmoved Mover, inferred but unknown.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / b. Cat and its tail

14740	If Tib is all of Tibbles bar her tail, when Tibbles loses her tail, two different things become one [Sider]
	Full Idea: This powerful puzzle (known to the Stoics, introduced by Geach, popularised by Wiggins) has a cat Tibbles and a proper part Tib, which is all of Tibbles except the tail. If Tibbles loses her tail, the two were distinct, but they now coincide.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1)
	A reaction: [compressed] Compare a few people leave a football ground, and what was a large part of the crowd becomes the whole of the crowd. Which suggests that there is no problem if cats are like crowds. But we don't like that view of cats.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / c. Statue and clay

14752	Artists 'create' statues because they are essentially statues, and so lack identity with the lump of clay [Sider]
	Full Idea: Presumably it is claimed that the artist 'created' the statue because the object created is essentially a statue, and thus cannot be identified with the unformed lump of clay with which the artist began.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001])
	A reaction: This is based on Burke's views. This is sortal essentialism, rather than my own view of essence as an inner explanatory mechanism or form. If an old abstract sculpture was no longer recognised as a statue, would it necessarily still be a statue?

16174	A nature is related to a substance as shapeless matter is to something which has a shape [Aristotle]
	Full Idea: What it is to be shapeless is different from what it is to be bronze. …An underlying nature is related to substance as, in general, matter (which is to say, something shapeless), before it gains shape, is to something with shape.
	From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b39-)
	A reaction: This is an interesting take on the modern problem that the bronze seems to be a separate 'object' from the statue. If bronze is amorphous stuff, it has no shape, presumably because it has no significant shape.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects

14743	The stage view of objects is best for dealing with coincident entities [Sider]
	Full Idea: There are numerous cases in which there is pressure to admit coincident entities. The best way of coming to grips with this, I think, invokes the stage view. ...In the worm theory, coincident objects are no more mysterious than overlapping roads.
	From: Theodore Sider (Four Dimensionalism [2001], 5.1)
	A reaction: At this point I get nervous if in order to 'get to grips' with a phenomenon which is hard to articulate but obvious to common sense, we have to invoke a rather startling metaphysics that completely upends the common sense we started with.