display all the ideas for this combination of texts
4 ideas
14481 | Wherever an object exists, there are intrinsic properties instantiating every modal profile [Thomasson] |
Full Idea: In a 'modally plenitudinous' ontology, wherever there is an object at all, there are objects with intrinsic modal properties instantiating every consistent modal profile. | |
From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 03.5) | |
A reaction: [She cites K.Bennett, Hawley, Rea, Sidelle] I love this. At last a label for the view I have been espousing. I am a Modal Plenitudinist. I must get a badge made. |
18981 | 'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience [James] |
Full Idea: 'Substance' appears now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are actually grouped and given in coherent forms. | |
From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |
A reaction: This is the strongly empirical strain in James's empiricism. This sounds like a David Lewis comment on the Humean mosaic of experience. We Aristotelians at least believe that the groups run much deeper than the surface of experience. |
14482 | If the statue and the lump are two objects, they require separate properties, so we could add their masses [Thomasson] |
Full Idea: An objection to the idea that statues are not identical to material lumps of stuff is the proliferation of instances of properties shared by those objects. If the mass of the statue is 500kg, and the mass of the lump is 500kg, do we have 1000kg? | |
From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 04.3) | |
A reaction: [compressed; she cites Rea 1997 and Zimmerman 1995] To wriggle out of this we would have to understand 'object' rather differently, so that an independent mass is not intrinsic to it. I leave this as an exercise for the reader. |
14483 | Given the similarity of statue and lump, what could possibly ground their modal properties? [Thomasson] |
Full Idea: The 'grounding problem' is that given all that the statue and the lump have in common, what could possibly ground their different modal properties? | |
From: Amie L. Thomasson (Ordinary Objects [2007], 04.4) | |
A reaction: Their modal properties are, of course, different, because only one of them could survive squashing. Thomasson suggests their difference of sort, but I'm not sure what that means, separately from what they actually are. |