9 ideas
| 13437 | A CAR and its major PART can become identical, yet seem to have different properties [Gallois] |
| Full Idea: At t1 there is a whole CAR, and a PART of it, which is everything except the right front wheel. At t2 the wheel is removed, leaving just PART, so that CAR is now PART. But PART was a proper part of CAR, and CAR had the front wheel. Different properties! | |
| From: André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998], 1.II) | |
| A reaction: [compressed summary] The problem is generated by appealing to Leibniz's Law. My immediate reaction is that this is the sort of trouble you get into if you include such temporal truths about things as 'properties'. |
| 16233 | Gallois hoped to clarify identity through time, but seems to make talk of it impossible [Hawley on Gallois] |
| Full Idea: A problem for Gallois is that he leaves us no way to talk about questions of genuine identity through time, and thus undercuts one motivation for his own position. | |
| From: comment on André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.8 | |
| A reaction: Gallois seems to need a second theory of identity to support his Occasional Identity theory. Two things need an identity each, before we can say that the two identities coincide. (Time to read Gallois!) |
| 14755 | Gallois is committed to identity with respect to times, and denial of simple identity [Gallois, by Sider] |
| Full Idea: Gallois's core claim is that the identity relation holds with respect to times, ...and he must claim that there is no such thing as the relation of identity simpliciter. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Theodore Sider - Four Dimensionalism 5.5 | |
| A reaction: Gallois is essentially responding to the statue and clay problem, but it seems a bit drastic to entirely change our concept of two things being identical, such as Hesperus and Phosphorus. 'Identity' seems to have several meanings; let's sort them out. |
| 16231 | Occasional Identity: two objects can be identical at one time, and different at others [Gallois, by Hawley] |
| Full Idea: Gallois' Occasional Identity Thesis is that objects can be identical at one time without being identical at all times. | |
| From: report of André Gallois (Occasions of Identity [1998]) by Katherine Hawley - How Things Persist 5.4 | |
| A reaction: The analogy is presumably with two crossing roads being identical at one place but not at others. It is a major misunderstanding to infer from Special Relativity that time is just like space. |
| 1477 | Being manly and brave is the result of convention, not of human nature [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Manliness is not a natural human attribute, otherwise women would be just as brave. It is due to pressure from laws, and this pressure has no free will, but is a slave of convention and criticism. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 988c) | |
| A reaction: This is the first glimmerings of seeing gender as a cultural creation, rather than as a fact. Presumably he takes the same view of some of the supposed feminine virtues. |
| 1478 | Animals don't value pleasure, as they cease sexual intercourse after impregnation [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Animals of both sexes cease to have intercourse after impregnation; that shows how little animals value pleasure, and that nature is all that counts. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) | |
| A reaction: A famous monkey had an implant to stimulate pleasure, and a button to trigger it. It apparently would have starved to death rather than release the button. Animal sex is dull? |
| 1479 | Animals have not been led into homosexuality, because they value pleasure very little [Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Because animals value pleasure very little, they have not been led into sex between males or between females. | |
| From: Plutarch (64: Gryllus - on Rationality in Animals [c.85], 990d) |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
| From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |