12812
|
Things have real essences, but we categorise them according to the ideas we receive [Locke]
|
|
Full Idea:
This I do say, that there are real constitutions in things from whence simple ideas flow, which we observe combin'd in them. But we distinguish particular substances into sorts or genera not by real essences or constitutions, but by observed simple ideas.
|
|
From:
John Locke (Letters to William Molyneux [1692], 1693.01.20)
|
|
A reaction:
This is the clearest statement I can find of Locke's position on essences. He is totally committed to their reality, but strongly aware of the empirical constraints which keep us from direct knowledge of them. He would be amazed by modern discoveries.
|
18089
|
Dispositions are not general laws, but laws of the natures of individual entities [Place]
|
|
Full Idea:
Dispositions are the substantive laws, not, as for Armstrong, of nature in general, but of the nature of individual entities whose dispositional properties they are.
|
|
From:
Ullin T. Place (Intentionality and the Physical: reply to Mumford [1999], 6)
|
|
A reaction:
[He notes that Nancy Cartwright 1989 agrees with him] I like this a lot. I tend to denegrate 'laws', because of their dubious ontological status, but this restores laws to the picture, in the place where they belong, in the stuff of the world.
|