117 ideas
| 11159 | My account shows how the concept works, rather than giving an analysis [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: My assimilation of essence to definition ...may not provide us with an analysis of the concept, but it does provide us with a good model of how the concept works. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 3) | |
| A reaction: An example of the modern shift in analytic philosophy, away from the dream of given a complete analysis of a concept, towards giving an account of the concepts relationships. Compare Shoemaker in Idea 8559. |
| 5082 | Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Reason grasps generalities, while the senses grasp particulars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 189a06) | |
| A reaction: This does not seem to be entirely true. Sherlock Holmes reasons towards the particular. Nevertheless, we see what he means. Reason deals with universals, and reason derives principles and patterns from the particulars. |
| 11157 | Modern philosophy has largely abandoned real definitions, apart from sortals [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: In modern analytic philosophy we find that, as a result of sustained empiricist critique, the idea of real definition has been more or less given up (unless it be taken to be vestigially present in the notion of a sortal). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 3) | |
| A reaction: The account of essences as falling under sortals (roughly, categorising terms) is associated with David Wiggins. Kit Fine is in the business of reviving Aristotelian real definitions, as are fans of scientific essentialism (see under 'Nature'). |
| 11171 | Defining a term and giving the essence of an object don't just resemble - they are the same [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: There is an analogy between defining a term and giving the essence of an object. ..However, I am inclined to think that the two cases are not merely parallel but are, at bottom, the same. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p.13) | |
| A reaction: The proposal is something like the meaning of a concept being the essence of the concept. And essence is definition. The parallel is that they both lead to necessities, either derived from objects or from concepts. Sounds good to me. |
| 6343 | For Russell, both propositions and facts are arrangements of objects, so obviously they correspond [Horwich on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Given Russell's notion of a proposition, as an arrangement of objects and properties, it is hard to see how there could be any difference at all between such a proposition and the fact corresponding to it, since they each involve the same arrangement. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Paul Horwich - Truth (2nd edn) Ch.7.35 | |
| A reaction: This seems a little unfair, given that Russell (in 1912) uses the notion now referred to as 'congruence', so that the correspondence is not in the objects and properties, but in how they are 'ordered', which may differ between proposition and fact. |
| 13270 | Are a part and whole one or many? Either way, what is the cause? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is a difficulty about part and whole, ...whether the part and the whole are one or more than one, and in what way they can be one or many, and, if they are more than one, in what way they are more than one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 185b11), quoted by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 6.3 | |
| A reaction: He only states the problem here, but doesn't pursue it. I take the real question of mereology to be what makes a many into a one. I don't see a problem with a many being simultaneously a one. |
| 9790 | Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Geometry studies naturally occurring lines, but not as they occur in nature. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a09) | |
| A reaction: What a splendid remark. If the only specimen you could find of a very rare animal was maimed, you wouldn't be particularly interested in the nature of its injury, but in the animal. |
| 22962 | Two is the least number, but there is no least magnitude, because it is always divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The least number, without qualification, is the two. …but in magnitude there is no least number, for every line always gets divided. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220a27) | |
| A reaction: Showing the geometrical approach of the Greeks to number. Two is the last number because numbers are for counting, and picking out one thing is not counting. |
| 18090 | Without infinity time has limits, magnitudes are indivisible, and numbers come to an end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there is, unqualifiedly, no infinite, it is clear that many impossible things result. For there will be a beginning and an end of time, and magnitudes will not be divisible into magnitudes, and number will not be infinite. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206b09), quoted by David Bostock - Philosophy of Mathematics 1.8 | |
| A reaction: This is a commitment to infinite time, and uncountable real numbers, and infinite ordinals. Dedekind cuts are implied. Nice. |
| 22929 | Aristotle's infinity is a property of the counting process, that it has no natural limit [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle infinity is not so much a property of some set of objects - the numbers - as of the process of counting, namely of its not having a natural limit. This is 'potential' infinite | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 06 'Illusion' | |
| A reaction: I increasingly favour this view. Mathematicians have foisted fictional objects on us, such as real infinities, limits and zero, because it makes their job easier, but it makes discussion of the natural world very obscure. |
| 22930 | Lengths do not contain infinite parts; parts are created by acts of division [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says that a length does not already contain, waiting to be discovered, an infinite number of parts; such parts only come into existence once they are defined by an act of division. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 07 'Two' | |
| A reaction: If that is true of infinite parts then it must also be true of finite parts. So a cake has no parts at all until it is cut. That could play merry hell with discussions of mereology. Wholes are ontologically prior to parts. |
| 18833 | A continuous line cannot be composed of indivisible points [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No continuum can be composed of indivisibles: e.g. a line cannot be composed of points, the line being continuous and the points indivisibles. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 231a23), quoted by Ian Rumfitt - The Boundary Stones of Thought 7.4 | |
| A reaction: Rumfitt observes that ' the basic problem is to say what the ultimate parts of a continuum are, of they are not points'. Early modern philosophers had lots of proposals. |
| 9974 | Ten sheep and ten dogs are the same numerically, but it is not the same ten [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there are ten sheep and ten dogs, the number is the same (because it does not differ by a numerical difference), but it is not the same ten (because the objects it is predicated of are different - dogs in one instance, horses in the other). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 224a2-14) | |
| A reaction: Mega! Abstract objects are unique, and can't be 'added' to themselves. I think we need 'units' here, because 2+2 adds four units, so each 2 refers to something different. '2' must refer to something other than itself. |
| 5105 | The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The incommensurability of the diagonal always exists, and so it is not in time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b36) | |
| A reaction: This must make Aristotle sympathetic to Platonism in mathematics, even though he rejects the full theory of Forms. Such a view is not uncommon among modern philosophers. Presumably the incommensurability is true in all possible worlds? 'In'? |
| 16115 | Change is the implied actuality of that which exists potentially [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Change is the actuality of that which exists potentially, in so far as it is potentially this actuality. Thus, the actuality of a thing's capacity for alteration, in so far as it is a capacity for alteration, is alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10) | |
| A reaction: Not very informative, until you add Idea 16114, telling us that potentiality is best seen as 'power'. Then we have 'all change is the active expression of powers', which strikes me as rather interesting. |
| 22960 | The sophists thought a man in the Lyceum is different from that man in the marketplace [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The sophists assume that being Coriscus-in-the-Lyceum is different from being Coriscus-in-the-marketplace. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b19) | |
| A reaction: This is what has now been called 'Cambridge change', which is merely change in relations, with no intrinsic change. It is laughed at, but it is a phenomenon worth pointing out, as long as it is not mislabelled, or misunderstood. |
| 17262 | Aristotle's formal and material 'becauses' [aitiai] arguably involve grounding [Aristotle, by Correia/Schnieder] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's distinction between four different kinds of aitia ('becauses'?) arguably involves the recognition of grounding in the formal and material aitia. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) by Correia,F/Schnieder,B - Grounding: an opinionated introduction 2 | |
| A reaction: Insofar as the other two (efficient and final) involve explanation, one might say that they too involve a different sort of grounding. Is a statue 'grounded' in the sculptor, or in the purpose of the statue? |
| 11151 | An object is dependent if its essence prevents it from existing without some other object [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: One object depends upon another (in one sense of the term) if its essence prevents it from existing without the other object. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 2) | |
| A reaction: I take the interest of this to be that essences are usually thought to be intrinsic, but this seems to involve the object in necessary external relations. |
| 16656 | The separation from here to there is not the same as the separation from there to here [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even though two separated things have a single interval between them, still the separation from here to there is not one and the same as the separation from there to here. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 202b19) | |
| A reaction: His example is the road from Athens to Thebes. Since we tend to quantify distances between places more than Aristotle did, we are less impressed by this distinction, which seems a bit subjective. Aristotle seems to be thinking of vectors. |
| 16644 | The features of a thing (whether quality or quantity) are inseparable from their subjects [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to separate [affections/accidents], both in respect of quantity and of quality - of quantity, because there is no minimum magnitude, and of quality, because affections are inseparable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 188a11) | |
| A reaction: This is an aspect of his famous view that universals, if there are such, are inherent in objects, and can't float free. It was important for scholastic philosophers, who need accidents to float free for the doctrine of Transubstantiation. |
| 5117 | Heavy and light are defined by their tendency to move down or up [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is the nature of light and heavy things to tend in certain directions, and this is what it is to be light or heavy; to be light is defined by an upwards tendency, and to be heavy is defined by a downwards tendency. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 255b14) | |
| A reaction: The discredited 'teleological' view of gravity, and yet if we define 'heavy' in Newtonian terms we are in danger of circularity, and of proposing laws which are bafflingly imposed from outside. Hence the 'New Essentialists' prefer Aristotle's view. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 17043 | Form, not matter, is a thing's nature, because it is actual, rather than potential [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Form is a more plausible candidate for being nature than matter is because we speak of a thing as what it actually is at the time, rather than what it then is potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b07) | |
| A reaction: Note that matter remains potential, even when it is part of an actual thing. This seems to be the obvious point that a statue isn't potentially anything else, but its clay is potentially other objects. Does Aristotle think clay is thereby less real? |
| 16970 | A thing's form and purpose are often the same, and form can be the initiator of change too [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In many cases, the last three of the causes [aition] come to the same thing. What a thing is and its purpose are the same, and the original source of change is, in terms of form, the same as these two. After all, it is a man who generates a man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a24) | |
| A reaction: One of the few illuminating remarks about what the 'form' in hylomorphism is supposed to do. This may be the key to virtue ethics - that the form of man, which we learn elsewhere is the psuché, is also man's drive and man's very purpose. |
| 16104 | Unity of the form is just unity of the definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being one in form is just another way of saying one 'in definition'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190a16) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be highly significant in understanding Aristotle. The crucial notion of form is tied to the way in which we understand the world, and does not refer to some independent fact about how it might really be. |
| 11255 | In feature-generation the matter (such as bronze) endures, but in generation it doesn't [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: There is a fundamental distinction between feature-change and generation. ..Materials such as bronze cannot by themselves explain why they are the particular material things they are. But matter which generates things does not endure. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: This very nice distinction is rather undermined by our modern understanding of generation, but it still might work at a lower level. Transmuting an element by bombarding it is different from reshaping the stuff. |
| 16791 | There is no whole except for the parts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no whole over and above the parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 210a16) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau says Aristotle contradicts this at Met. 1041b12, where the syllable is more than its elements. |
| 9071 | We first sense whole entities, and then move to particular parts of it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We have to progress from the general to the particular, because whole entities are more intelligible to the senses, and anything general is a kind of whole, in the sense that it includes a number of things which we could call its parts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a22) | |
| A reaction: This is the first step in the process of abstraction, which Aristotle describes further in Posterior Analytics. It is common sense that a child will be aware of a horse before it is aware of its hoof, or its colour, or its strength. |
| 11152 | Essences are either taken as real definitions, or as necessary properties [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Essence has been conceived either on the model of definition, involving the 'real' as opposed to 'nominal' definitions, or it is elucidated in modal terms, located in de re cases of modal attributions (an object being necessarily a certain way). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 2) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Fine sets out to defend the definitional view, which derives from Aristotle, his line being that necessity depends on essence, and so cannot be used to define it. I think I agree. |
| 11161 | Essentially having a property is naturally expressed as 'the property it must have to be what it is' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We have an informal way of saying an object essentially has a property, as 'the object must have the property if it is to be the object that it is', and this form of words manages to convey what we wish to convey. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 4) | |
| A reaction: The importance of this claim is that it makes no mention of 'necessity'. Fine's view is plausible, but hard to evaluate once he has said. We seem to then divide an object's properties into identity properties, causal properties and peripheral properties. |
| 11160 | Simple modal essentialism refers to necessary properties of an object [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The simplest form of the modal account takes an object to have a property essentially just in case it is necessary that the object has the property. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 3) | |
| A reaction: Fine wants to reverse the account, explaining necessities in terms of prior essences. |
| 11158 | Essentialist claims can be formulated more clearly with quantified modal logic [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: With the advent of quantified modal logic, philosophers have been in a better position to formulate essentialist claims. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 3) | |
| A reaction: A nice illustration of the role which logic plays in modern analytic philosophy. It is not an unreasonable assumption that we will understand a theoretical problem more clearly if we can articulate it more accurately. |
| 11167 | Metaphysical necessity is a special case of essence, not vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Far from viewing essence as a special case of metaphysical necessity, we should view metaphysical necessity as a special case of essence. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 9) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as one of the most powerful proposals in modern philosophy (even if it is a reiteration of Aristotle!). |
| 16537 | Essence as necessary properties produces a profusion of essential properties [Fine,K, by Lowe] |
| Full Idea: If an essence is a sum of essential properties (had in all possible worlds where it exists), Fine points out that it seems grossly to overgenerate essential properties ('S is either a man or a mouse', or 'S is such that 2+2=4'). | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994]) by E.J. Lowe - What is the Source of Knowledge of Modal Truths? 6 | |
| A reaction: To me this is the sort of mess you get into when you accept that 'being such that p' is a property. Defenders of the modal approach always have to eliminate 'trivial' properties from essences, but non-trivial is a defining feature of an essence. |
| 11163 | The nature of singleton Socrates has him as a member, but not vice versa [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Can we not recognise a sense of 'what an object is', according to which it lies in the nature of a singleton to have Socrates as a member, even though it does not lie in the nature of Socrates to belong to the singleton? | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 5) | |
| A reaction: Important and persuasive. It echoes the example in Idea 11162, that the necessary relation is not part of the essence. Socrates is necessarily in {Socrates}, but that is because of the set, not because of Socrates. Essences causes necessities. |
| 11164 | It is not part of the essence of Socrates that a huge array of necessary truths should hold [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Necessarily any necessary truth will hold if Socrates exists. But it is no part of Socrates' essence that there be infinitely many prime numbers, ..or that objects like the Eiffel Tower have their own necessary essence. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 5-6) | |
| A reaction: This and the 'singleton Socrates' example (Idea 11165) are the twin prongs of Fine's attack on the modal account of essentialism. I think they constitute one of the best single pages in the whole of recent philosophy. Bravo. |
| 16972 | The four explanations are the main aspects of a thing's nature [Aristotle, by Moravcsik] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle sees as the main types of aitia (explanation) those that are also to be construed as the main aspects of the physis (nature) of anything. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julius Moravcsik - Aristotle on Adequate Explanations 1 | |
| A reaction: Interestingly, this suggests that having rejected the Four Causes in favour of the Four Explanations, we might even consider them as the Four Natures, which ties explanation very closely to essence. |
| 5084 | A thing's nature is what causes its changes and stability [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is a certain principle and cause of change and stability in the thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b20) | |
| A reaction: A helpful contribution to the discussion, as most thinkers just boggle when asked to specify the core of something's identity. Aristotle's proposal links identity to causation, which is very appealing to a physical account of all of reality. Cf 5086. |
| 10935 | An essential property of something must be bound up with what it is to be that thing [Fine,K, by Rami] |
| Full Idea: Fine's view is that the notion of an essential property of a thing should be bound up with the notion of what it is to be that thing (unlike, for example, Socrates being such that there are infinitely many primes). | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994]) by Adolph Rami - Essential vs Accidental Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: I would think that Fine is so obviously right that it was hardly worth saying, but philosophers are a funny lot, and are quite likely to claim that features of prime numbers are part of the essence of a long-dead philosopher. |
| 10936 | Essential properties are part of an object's 'definition' [Fine,K, by Rami] |
| Full Idea: According to Fine's definitional characterization of essential properties, they are those of an object's properties that are part of the object's 'definition'. | |
| From: report of Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994]) by Adolph Rami - Essential vs Accidental Properties §2 | |
| A reaction: This demands not just an account of what a definition is, but also the notion that there is only one fixed and correct definition (since the object presumably only has one essence) - but there seems to be something relative about a good definition. |
| 16173 | Coming to be is by shape-change, addition, subtraction, composition or alteration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things that come to be without further qualification do so either by change of shape (a statue) or by addition (growing things) or by subtraction (a carving) or by composition (a house) or by alteration (things changing their matter). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 190b06) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Aristotle observes that in each case there is clearly some 'underlying thing'. |
| 17042 | Natural things are their own source of stability through change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The obvious difference between natural and non-natural things is that each of the natural ones contains within itself a source of change and of stability, in respect of either movement or increase and decrease or alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192b14) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Aristotle places so much emphasis on lives, though elements also have persistence in a similar way. We now have atoms and molecules as well. |
| 16691 | A day, or the games, has one thing after another, actually and potentially occurring [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When we say 'it is day' or 'it is the games', one thing after another is always coming into existence. …There are Olympic Games, both in the sense that they may occur and that they are actually occurring. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 206a22) | |
| A reaction: This is, according the Pasnau, the origin of the scholastic concept of an 'entia successiva'. I haven't seen much discussion of this in modern metaphysics, but in what sense does a day exist? |
| 16574 | Coming-to-be may be from nothing in a qualified way, as arising from an absence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We agree that nothing can be said without qualification to come from what is not, …but it may in a qualified sense. For a thing comes to be from a privation, which in its own nature is not-being - this not surviving as a constituent in the result. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191b13) | |
| A reaction: Not sure I understand this, but it seems to say that genuine creation from nothing at all is impossible. |
| 11165 | If Socrates lacks necessary existence, then his nature cannot require his parents' existence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing in the nature of Socrates which demands that he exists, then presumably there is nothing in the nature of Socrates which demands that his parents exist. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 6) | |
| A reaction: This sounds conclusive to me, against any claim that Socrates necessarily had those parents, if the claim is based on the identity or esssence of Socrates. |
| 11254 | Matter is potentiality [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle conceives of matter (hulé) as potentiality. ...He has a process-based notion of matter. ...It is something which has the power ('dunamis') to generate a thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis says that 'dunamis' is usually translated as 'potentiality', but he prefers to translate it as 'power'. I take this to be highly significant in connecting Aristotle to modern scientific essentialism. |
| 13110 | Intrinsic cause is prior to coincidence, so nature and intelligence are primary causes, chance secondary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause in its own right is prior to a coincidental cause. So spontaneity and chance are posterior to intelligence and nature. Hence however much spontaneity is the cause of the universe, intelligence and nature are more primary causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be Aristotle's final word on chance - that it is a genuine sort of causation, but only a secondary one. I take 'nature' to refer to the powers of essences. Aristotle does not accept meetings in the market as uncaused events. |
| 13106 | Maybe there is no pure chance; a man's choices cause his chance meetings [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some people find there is no such thing as a chance event. ..If someone chanced to come into the city square and met someone he wanted to meet but had not expected, they say the cause was his wanting to go and do business in the square. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 195b39) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle spends the book discussing the problem. There is a clear candidate for an uncaused event here, in the chance meeting of two people. See Idea 13108. |
| 13108 | Chance is a coincidental cause among events involving purpose and choice [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Clearly chance is a coincidental cause in the sphere of events which have some purpose and are the subject of choice. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a05) | |
| A reaction: This is the culmination of his discussion of going to the market place and happening to meet your debtor (196b33). We must now decide whether a 'coincidental cause' is a true case of causation. |
| 11166 | The subject of a proposition need not be the source of its necessity [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: We naturally suppose, if a subject-predicate proposition is necessary, that the subject of the proposition is the source of the necessity. But that singleton 2 contains 2 is necessary, whether the number or the set is the subject of the proposition. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 9) | |
| A reaction: A very nice addition to his general attack on the idea that essence should be accounted for in terms of his necessity. He asks a beautifully simple question: for each necessity that we accept, what is the source of that necessity? |
| 11169 | Conceptual necessities rest on the nature of all concepts [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Conceptual (and logical) necessities can be taken to be the propositions which are true in virtue of the nature of all concepts (or just the logical concepts). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 9-10) | |
| A reaction: The idea that something might be true simply because of the nature of a concept sounds good, and a slightly better formulation than traditional accounts of analytic truth. |
| 11162 | Socrates is necessarily distinct from the Eiffel Tower, but that is not part of his essence [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: It is necessary that Socrates and the Eiffel Tower be distinct. But it is not essential to Socrates that he be distinct from the Tower, for there is nothing in his nature which connects him in any special way to it. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 5) | |
| A reaction: I find this simple argument very persuasive in separating out necessary facts about an object from the essence of that object. |
| 11168 | Metaphysical necessities are true in virtue of the nature of all objects [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: The metaphysically necessary truths can be identified with the propositions which are true in virtue of the nature of all objects whatever. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p. 9) | |
| A reaction: This is part of Fine's proposal that necessities are derived from the essences or natures of things, which view I find very congenial. |
| 8331 | To know something we need understanding, which is grasp of the primary cause [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The point of our investigation is to acquire knowledge, and a prerequisite for knowing [eidenai] anything is understanding why it is as it is - in other words, grasping its primary cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b18) | |
| A reaction: He then proceeds to identify four types of cause (Idea 8332). I can't think of a better account of knowledge. If we want to know that cigarettes cause cancer, we must get beyond the statistical correlation, and grasp the physical mechanisms. |
| 5080 | We know a thing if we grasp its first causes, principles and basic elements [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We think we know a thing only when we have grasped its first causes and principles and have traced it back to its elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 184a12) | |
| A reaction: A nice Aristotelian analysis. It is hard to see what else you need to know about a thunderstorm, once you know what causes it, the principles which guide its operation, and the elements of which it is composed. But doesn't Aristotle seek its purpose…? |
| 11250 | Four Explanations: the essence and form; the matter; the source; and the end [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle gives us four explanations (or causes) of things: the essence (to ti estin, to ti en einai) and the form (he morphe, to eidos); the matter (hule); the source of change and generation (to kinoun); and the end (telos) at which change is directed. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis presents these as primarily the Four Explanations, rather than under the better-known label of the 'Four Causes'. It is interesting that essence and form are lumped in together, under what is normally labelled the 'formal cause'. |
| 12045 | Aristotle's four 'causes' are four items which figure in basic explanations of nature [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: The four so-called 'causes' are the different types of item which figure in what Aristotle thinks are the four fundamental types of explanation of nature. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This interpretation now seems to be standard among modern scholars. The word 'aitia' translates as 'explanation', but it is important to remember that it also translates as 'cause'. Aristotelian explanations are essentially causal. |
| 16969 | Science refers the question Why? to four causes/explanations: matter, form, source, purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the natural scientist refers the question 'Why?' to this set of four causes [aition] - matter, form, source of change, purpose - he will be explaining things in the way a natural scientist should. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a23) | |
| A reaction: This is even more conclusive than Idea 16968 in showing that we have the Four Modes of Explanation, not the so-called Four Causes. |
| 16968 | There are as many causes/explanations as there are different types of why-question [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are causes [aition] and there are as many of them as we have been saying, since there are just as many different kinds of question covered by the question 'Why?'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198a16) | |
| A reaction: He goes on to split the questions into 'what is it?' and 'what initiated the change?'. This, along with Idea 16969, is Exhibit A for saying Aristotle has the Four Explanations, not the Four Causes (which are so famous). |
| 13109 | Chance is inexplicable, because we can only explain what happens always or usually [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Chance is inexplicable, because explanations can only be given for things that happen either always or usually, but the province of chance is things which do not happen always or usually. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 197a19) | |
| A reaction: This seems wrong. We can explain perfectly well a chance meeting in the market place - it is just that the explanation is not of much use in making future predictions. But we may avoid the market place because of the danger of chance meetings. |
| 9789 | You can't abstract natural properties to make Forms - objects and attributes are defined together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those who say there are Forms abstract natural properties, even though they are less separable than mathematical properties. This is clear if you try to define both the objects themselves and their attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b36) | |
| A reaction: (Compare Idea 9788) This is Frege's black and white cats, where you cannot abstract the black without thinking of the cat, but Aristotle thinks mathematical abstraction is more feasible. |
| 9788 | Mathematicians study what is conceptually separable, and doesn't lead to error [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians abstract properties which are conceptually separable from the world of change. It makes no difference if you treat them as separate, in the sense that it does not result in error. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b33) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as a crucial point to make against Frege (if Aristotle is right). Frege hates abstractionism precisely because it is psychological, and hence admits subjective error, instead of objective truth. Does 'pure' abstraction avoid error? |
| 5107 | Predicates are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The categories of predication are substance, quality, place, relation, quantity and action or affection. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 225b06) | |
| A reaction: A note says this omits time from the 'familiar list' of eight predicates. |
| 7534 | In 1906, Russell decided that propositions did not, after all, exist [Russell, by Monk] |
| Full Idea: With a characteristic readiness to abandon views that he had previously considered definitively correct, Russell declared in 1906 that there were, after all, no such 'things' as propositions. It is judgements that are true or false. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Ray Monk - Bertrand Russell: Spirit of Solitude Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: Written 1906. Russell developed a 'multiple relation theory of judgement'. But if a judgement is an assessment of truth or falsehood, what is it that is being assessed? |
| 11170 | Analytic truth may only be true in virtue of the meanings of certain terms [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Just as a necessary truth may be true in virtue of the identity of certain objects as opposed to others, so an analytic truth may be true in virtue of the meanings of certain terms as opposed to others (such as 'bachelor' rather than 'unmarried'). | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p.10) | |
| A reaction: This is a beautifully simple observation, that the necessity of 'bachelors are unmarried men' derives from part of the proposition, not from the whole of it. So what is it about the part that generates the apparent necessity? The nature of the concept! |
| 11172 | The meaning of 'bachelor' is irrelevant to the meaning of 'unmarried man' [Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking it is irrelevant to the meaning of 'bachelor' that the phrase 'unmarried man' means what it does. | |
| From: Kit Fine (Essence and Modality [1994], p.13) | |
| A reaction: His point is that the necessary truth here derives from the meaning of 'bachelor', and not from the meaning of 'unmarried man'. But is also true that 'unmarried man' means 'bachelor' (for those familiar with the latter, but not the former). |
| 20042 | We assign the cause of someone's walking when we say why they are doing it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is he going for a walk? We say 'to be healthy', and having said that we have assigned the cause. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b33-5) | |
| A reaction: Stout gives this as the predecessor of Anscombe's account of intentions. The thought is that the explanation of the act is its purpose. Such teleology is more plausible than the Aristotelian teleology about non-human events. |
| 5110 | Goodness is when a thing (such as a circle) is complete, and conforms with its nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Goodness is a kind of completion: it is when something becomes as good as it may be that we say that it is complete, because that is when it pre-eminently conforms with its nature. A circle is complete when it is as good a circle as there could be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 246a12) | |
| A reaction: This, in turn, is said by Aristotle to result from the telos (purpose) of the thing. This won't eliminate the problem of relativism, unless we say that something cannot have an evil 'nature'. Was the Black Death good, by this definition? |
| 5111 | All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All moral virtue is concerned with bodily pleasure and pain. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 247a08) | |
| A reaction: Not to be misunderstood. The 'intellectual virtues' are different, for one thing. And he is not implying hedonism, but that moral virtue concerns our judgements and habits in relation to pleasure and pain. What do we count as acceptable pleasures? |
| 5085 | 'Nature' refers to two things - form and matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'Nature' refers to two things - that is, both to form and to matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a12) | |
| A reaction: The 'New Essentialism' (e.g. book by Brian Ellis) seems to imply that matter is basic, and that form is the result of the essence of matter. They seem to have parted company with Aristotle. Does he think matter is created on Thursday, and form on Friday? |
| 5113 | Nothing natural is disorderly, because nature is responsible for all order [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nothing natural - nothing due to nature - is disorderly, because in all things nature is responsible for order. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252a11) | |
| A reaction: This sounds dangerously tautological. What is responsible for disorder? If a forest is smashed up by an earthquake, 'order' doesn't sound like a good description of the result. It is certainly no more orderly than if people smash the forest. |
| 5092 | Nature is a principle of change, so we must understand change first [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature is the subject of our enquiry, and nature is a principle of change, so if we do not understand the process of change, we will not understand nature either. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b12) | |
| A reaction: This is a very distinctively Greek attitude which doesn't seem to concern us much, but perhaps it should. Movement is just as fundamental as forces, particles and the rest that physicist talk about. Why do particles respond to forces? |
| 5089 | Nature has purpose, and aims at what is better. Is it coincidence that crops grow when it rains? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is wrong with the idea that nature does not act purposively, and does not do things because they are better? The proper analogy is the idea that it is sheer coincidence that the crops grow when it rains. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 198b16) | |
| A reaction: In this context, it simply never occurred to Aristotle to give a causal explanation instead of a purposive one. Or that he had got it the wrong way round - growth of crops is 'for the better' only because we eat them, but are we 'for the better'? |
| 5091 | Teeth and crops are predictable, so they cannot be mere chance, but must have a purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things such as teeth and crops turn out as they do either always or usually, whereas no chance or spontaneous event does. ..So, given that these things cannot be accidents or spontaneous events, they must have some purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 199b33) | |
| A reaction: This is a good argument, and Darwin's theory does not destroy it. We have no idea why there is order, regularity and pattern in nature. Aristotle does not leap to a divine explanation. The 'purpose' of things might be non-conscious. |
| 5086 | The nature of a thing is its end and purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The nature of a thing is its end and purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a29) | |
| A reaction: Cf 5084. This is the teleologists' manifesto, but it is very hard to find out why Aristotle took this view. He seems to offer it as self-evident. What would he have made of the proposal that there is no ultimate purpose to anything? |
| 5087 | A thing's purpose is ambiguous, and from one point of view we ourselves are ends [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: From one point of view we too are ends. What a thing is for is ambiguous. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194a35) | |
| A reaction: A really interesting concession from the great teleologist. This opens up what I think of as the 'existentialist' possibility - that we can invent our own purposes. If there are two types of 'telos', which one matters for morality? |
| 5108 | Is ceasing-to-be unnatural if it happens by force, and natural otherwise? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If what happens by force is unnatural, then forced ceasing-to-be is unnatural, and is opposed to natural ceasing to be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 230a29) | |
| A reaction: This is an important matter for Aristotle, who needs a concept of 'unnatural' behaviour for his ethics. Our law enshrines the idea of 'death by natural causes'. But 'force' needs discussion. Why is a hitman unnatural, and lightning natural? |
| 5093 | Continuity depends on infinity, because the continuous is infinitely divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In defining continuity one is almost bound to rely on the notion of infinity; it is because the continuous is what is infinitely divisible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 200b18) | |
| A reaction: Parmenides and the Achilles Paradox lie behind this view, and the fact that Aristotle was opposed to the view that some things are indivisible ('atomism'). Nice point, though - that space and time immediately imply the infinite. |
| 5095 | The heavens seem to be infinite, because we cannot imagine their end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The region beyond the heavens seems to be infinite because it does not give out in our thoughts. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 203b25) | |
| A reaction: An interesting case of inconceivability (of a limit) implying impossibility. But it is undeniable that the outer limit of the cosmos is unimaginable for us. Is there a 'Road Closed' sign? |
| 16762 | Matter desires form, as female desires male, and ugliness desires beauty [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What desires the form is matter, as the female the male, and the ugly the beautiful. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 192a22) | |
| A reaction: Wow! This is a very active view of matter. The drive in nature (the 'conatus' in Spinoza) can be discerned in all sorts of levels. It is Nietzsche's will to power. It seems to be the opposite of entropy. |
| 17464 | When Aristotle's elements compound they are stable, so why would they ever separate? [Weisberg/Needham/Hendry on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to understand what would induce a compound to dissociate into its elements on Aristotle's theory, which seems entirely geared to showing how a stable equilibrium results from mixing. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Weisberg/Needham/Hendry - Philosophy of Chemistry 1.1 |
| 11252 | The 'form' of a thing explains why the matter constitutes that particular thing [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: By the form of a thing, such as a changing human being, Aristotle means that which explains why the matter of this particular thing constitutes the thing that it constitutes: a particular human being. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 | |
| A reaction: If Politis is right then clearly the so-called 'formal cause' is much better understood as the 'formal explanation'. The Greek word for cause/explanation is 'aitia'. |
| 11253 | A 'material' cause/explanation is the form of whatever is the source [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: In the 'material cause/explanation', it is especially important to emphasise Aristotle's view that it is not simply the parent that generates the offspring, but the form of the parent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 |
| 13107 | Causes produce a few things in their own right, and innumerable things coincidentally [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A cause may be a cause either in its own right or coincidentally. The cause in its own right of a house is house-building ability, but a house may coincidentally be caused by something pale or educated. ..There could be infinite coincidental causes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 196b25) | |
| A reaction: If we seriously want to identify THE cause of an event, this distinction seems useful, even though a cause 'in its own right' is a rather loose locution. It leads on to analyses of necessary and sufficient conditions. |
| 8332 | The four causes are the material, the form, the source, and the end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The first type of cause is that from which a thing is made (bronze of a statue); the second type is the form or pattern (ratio 2:1 for the octave); the third is the source (the deviser of a plan); the fourth type is the end (as health causes walking). | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 194b23-) | |
| A reaction: [Compressed quotation] These four became known as the Material Cause, the Formal Cause, the Efficient Cause, and the Final Cause. For a statue they are the bronze, the shape, the sculptor, and the beauty. We now focus on the Efficient Cause. |
| 9787 | Scientists must know the essential attributes of the things they study [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It would be strange for a natural scientist to know what the sun and the moon are, but to be completely ignorant about their necessary attributes. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 193b27) | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures the common sense idea of essentialism - that we must know the essential features of things, and ignore the incidental ones (like sunspots, or phases of the moon). |
| 5114 | If movement can arise within an animal, why can't it also arise in the universe? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Movement can arise within a motionless animal out of the object itself, rather than being due to some external agent. But why should this not also be true of the universe? | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 252b24) | |
| A reaction: A nice objection to the Unmoved Mover concept of God. Unfortunately it is ruined by the modern realisation that an animal is never 'motionless', because brain activity is continuous, and ceases only with death. |
| 5116 | When there is unnatural movement (e.g. fire going downwards) the cause is obvious [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Examples of unnatural movements are something earthy moving upwards and fire moving downwards. …When they are moved unnaturally it is obvious what they are moved by, but this is not obvious in the case of their natural movements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 254b21) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle always struggles when he tries to give an account of 'unnatural' events. It is hard to see how it is unnatural when a wind blows a flame down, or volcanoes blow earth up. There is hardly a natural distinction of causes which are 'obvious'. |
| 20063 | Motion fulfils potentiality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Motion is the fulfilment of what exists potentially, in so far as it exists potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 201a10-11), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Two' | |
| A reaction: We might put that as 'all motion is the fulfilment of a natural power'. But that gives the source of motion, and not its intrinsic nature. |
| 5099 | The universe as a whole is not anywhere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The universe as a whole is not anywhere. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 212b14) | |
| A reaction: This is what we pay philosophers for! Point out all the things which are staring us in the face, but we have never actually noticed. 'Everything that exists must have a location'? Can this truism really be false? |
| 5097 | If everything has a place, this causes an infinite regress, because each place must have place [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If place is an existing thing, then it will exist somewhere. For Zeno's puzzle needs explaining: if every existing thing is in place, an infinite regress occurs, because there will clearly have to be a place for place. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 209a23) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the basic dilemma with space. If it exists independently, it requires a location, but if it doesn't exist, how can anything have a location? Neither Newton, Leibniz nor Einstein seem to have solved the dilemma. |
| 5098 | Place is not shape, or matter, or extension between limits; it is the limits of a body [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Place must be one of four things: shape, or matter, or some kind of extension between the limits of the container, or the limits themselves. …The first three can evidently be ruled out…so it must be the limit of the containing body. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 211b06) | |
| A reaction: As it stands this doesn't have much intuitive appeal. It is rather difficult to define a 'limit' without making some reference to 'space' and 'place'. One must read this chunk of Aristotle to see his drift. |
| 20920 | If there were many cosmoses, each would have its own time, giving many times [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there were a plurality of heavens, in the same way the movement of each of them would be a time, so that many times would coexist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b3) | |
| A reaction: I take it that for Aristotle this is an absurdity, but for a modern cosmologist this is a real possibility. So which one is fastest? Can God rank them according to speed? |
| 22967 | It is unclear whether time depends on the existence of soul [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One might find it a difficult question, whether if there were no soul there would be time or not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a22) | |
| A reaction: If only we could arrange a meeting with Kant. Personally I take it to be simple - obviously time passed before minds emerged in the universe. Our whole modern account of reality realies on it. His problem is that only souls count things. |
| 5106 | Would there be time if there were no mind? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It might be wondered whether or not there would be time if there were not mind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223a21) | |
| A reaction: I like his caution. Some people leap to the conclusion that time is a product of mind. Personally (with my strongly realist tendencies) I don't believe it. |
| 22885 | For Aristotle time is not a process but a means for measuring processes [Aristotle, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle time is not a process: It is a kind of 'number' or unit that can be used to describe processes in nature, analagous to the way ordinary numbers can be used to count things. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Aristotle's' | |
| A reaction: Bardon cites this when discussing Aristotle on Zeno's paradoxes. If the equivalent idea of length is that length is merely rulers for measuring it, this sounds like a bad idea. But if processes occur in time, how could time be a process? |
| 8590 | Time does not exist without change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time does not exist without change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b32) | |
| A reaction: His reasons are epistemological, and are nicely attacked by Shoemaker, in 'Time without Change'. There is something intuitively wrong about Aristotle's claim. If reality freezes, then 'how long was it frozen?' is a quite reasonable question. |
| 5104 | Time is an aspect of change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change, but it is an aspect of change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219a09) | |
| A reaction: I can't think of a better definition of time. Intuition says that time could continue when all change stopped (the 'frozen worlds' thought experiment), so that we can distinguish time from the change that gave rise to it (or the idea of it). |
| 22965 | Time measures rest, as well as change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since time is the measure of change, it will be measure of rest also. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221b07) | |
| A reaction: The thought seems to be that change leads us to a system of temporal measurement, which is then available fro measurement periods of rest. But totally eventless time would be a problem. Aristotle had no clocks. |
| 22959 | Time is not change, but the number we associate with change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is a number of change in respect of the before and after. So time is not change but in the way in which change has a number. We discern the greater and the less by number, and greater and less change by time. Hence time is a kind of number. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b01) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's firmest assertion of the nature of time. It seems to be false to say that we need number in order to discern size (e.g. seeing who was given the biggest slice of cake). Surely we discern time before we measure it? |
| 22964 | Change only exists in time through its being temporally measure [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time measures at once the change and the being of change, and this is what it is, for the change, to be in time, viz. its being's being measured. …This is what it is to be in time: their being's being measured by time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 221a05) | |
| A reaction: Among other things, this would presumably mean that animals are unaware of change, which seems unlikely. He may have a relaxed and intuitive (rather than precise) concept of 'measured'. |
| 22956 | How can time exist, when it is composed of what has ceased to be and is yet to be? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some of time has been and is not, some of it is to be and is not yet. …But it would seem to be impossible that what is composed of things that are not should participate in being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b33) | |
| A reaction: This is his opening remark in the discussion of time, and he seems to be endorsing it, since he thinks of time as a form of measurement of change. |
| 5102 | If all of time has either ceased to exist, or has not yet happened, maybe time does not exist [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some suspicion arises that time does not exist, since some of it has happened and does not exist, and some of it is in the future and does not yet exist. It appears impossible for anything that consists of things that do not exist to exist itself. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 217b34) | |
| A reaction: This generates the popular paradox that Socrates cannot die, because no moment exists when his death could occur. It may be (as David Marshall has pointed out) that we do not experience the present, but only a vivid memory of the immediate past. |
| 5103 | Time is not change, but requires change in our minds to be noticed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time is not change … but time is not without change, for without any change (or any noticeable change) in our minds, time does not seem to pass. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b19) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle has spotted what seems to be a key problem in understanding time, which is disentangling what occurs in nature from what occurs in our consciousness. The extreme views (naïve realism about time, or the view that it is imaginary) both seem wrong. |
| 22961 | The present moment is obviously a necessary feature of time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is manifest that if time were not, the now would not be either, and if the now were not, time would not be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 219b33) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be Aristotle's commitment to the A-series view, which needs a moving present moment. Despite Einstein and B-series eternalism, I remain in agreement with Aristotle. B-series fans struggle like theologians to explain 'now'. |
| 22916 | Unlike time, change goes at different rates, and is usually localised [Aristotle, by Le Poidevin] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says time could not be the same thing as change, for first change can go at different rates, but not so time, and secondly change is confined to a part of space whereas time is universal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218b11-) by Robin Le Poidevin - Travels in Four Dimensions 02 'As Change' | |
| A reaction: The observation that the speed of change varies seems to need a belief in uniform time. Le Poidevin doubts Aristotle's objections, because the theory concerns change in general, and not particular instances of it. |
| 16693 | Time has parts, but the now is not one of them, and time is not composed of nows [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Time has parts, some of which have been, others of which are going to be, but no part of it is. The now is not a part, because a part is a measure of the whole, which must be composed of parts. Time, however, does not seem to be composed of nows. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a05), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 18.1 | |
| A reaction: As good an expression as you will ever find of the baffling nature of time. Only the past and the future seem substantial enough to exist. Only the now can be real, and yet it seems to be a nothing. In Phys IV.14 time is mind-dependent. |
| 22958 | Nows can't be linked together, any more than points on a line [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We take it that it is impossible for the nows to be adjoining one another, as it is for a point to be adjoining a point. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a18) | |
| A reaction: This implies that instants are abstractions, rather than physical realities. Aristotle rejects atoms, so presumably sees prime matter as the underlying uniter of matter. Insistence on linking the smallest parts leads to modern physics. |
| 22963 | We measure change by time, and time by change, as they are interdefined [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Not only do we measure change by time, but time by change also, because they are defined by one another. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 220b14) | |
| A reaction: He defends the idea that time is the 'number' of change, but this idea should sound a warning bell. He rejects the idea that time IS change. It is seems instrumentalist to make the existence of time depend on its measurement. |
| 22968 | Circular motion is the most obvious measure of time, and especially the celestial sphere [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Uniform circular motion is most of all a measure, because the number of this is most easily known. …This is why time is thought to be the motion of the [celestial] sphere, because the other changes are measured by this one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 223b14) | |
| A reaction: This makes the year the basic unit of time for the human race. Apparently minutes only became of interest when railway timetables appeared in the 1850s. |
| 22957 | We can't tell whether the changing present moment is one thing, or a succession of things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not easy to see whether the now, which appears to be the boundary between past and future, remains always one and the same or is different from time to time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 218a08) | |
| A reaction: [also 219b13] Presumably the A-series view suggests that each present moment is different, but Broad's moving spotlight analogy gives the impression of a single present instant moving through time. If the present is one, what sort of thing is it? |
| 22966 | The present moment is a link (of past to future), and also a limit (of past and of future) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The now is a link of time, for it links together past and future time, and is a limit of time, since it is a beginning of one and an end of the other. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 222a10) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear how a limit (such as the boundary between two overlapping bits of paper) can also be a 'link'. He noticed the problem in Idea 22958. |
| 5083 | Do things come to be from what is, or from what is not? Both seem problematical. [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Early thinkers made the mistake of claiming that nothing comes to be or ceases to be, on the grounds that for anything to come to be it would have to come either from what is or from what is not, but that neither of these is possible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 191a27) | |
| A reaction: Nothing in modern physics has (I think) solved this problem. On the one hand we have the conservation of energy, and on the other the Big Bang. Some talk of 'quantum fluctuations' triggering coming-to-be. Hm. |
| 5119 | The source of all movement must be indivisible and have no magnitude [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We proved that there cannot be an infinite magnitude, and that it is impossible for something finite to have infinite power, but the first agent of movement causes eternal movement for an infinite time, so it must be indivisible and have no parts or size. | |
| From: Aristotle (Physics [c.337 BCE], 267b19) | |
| A reaction: Note that Aristotle is already attributing 'infinite power' to this special thing. It is more than just a first domino to fall over. Its having no size quickly takes it outside of space, and makes it a 'spirit'. We are watching the construction of God. |