2 ideas
| 16030 | 'Nominal' definitions identify things, but fail to give their essence [Jones,J-E] |
| Full Idea: In the Aristotelian tradition, a 'nominal' definition is a pseudo-definition that identifies the members of the species or genus, but fails to capture the essence, e.g. 'man is the featherless biped'. | |
| From: Jan-Erik Jones (Real Essence [2012], §2) | |
| A reaction: You can 'individuate' an object as 'the only object in that drawer', while revealing nothing about it. So what must a definition do, in addition to picking something out uniquely? |
| 7946 | The memory criterion has a problem when one thing branches into two things [Williams,B, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: The memory criterion for personal identity permits 'branching' (where two things can later meet the criteria of persistence of a single earlier thing), which presents it with serious problems. | |
| From: report of Bernard Williams (Personal Identity and Individuation [1956]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Of course, any notion of personal identity would have serious problem if people could branch into two, like fissioning amoeba. If that happened, we probably wouldn't have had a strong notion of personal identity in the first place. See Parfit. |