555 ideas
| 548 | Knowledge chosen for its own sake, rather than for results, is wisdom [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge chosen for itself and for the sake of knowledge is wisdom, more than that which is chosen for results. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0982a12) | |
| A reaction: Well something has to be for its own sake! But what about trivial knowledge? That question led Plato to the Forms. |
| 11228 | Wisdom seeks explanations, causes, and reasons why things are as they are [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle characterises wisdom as a search for explanations (aitiai, which can also be translated as 'causes') and explanatory knowledge (epistemé, knowledge why something is as it is). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Bk 01.2) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.1 | |
| A reaction: I think this idea might be a key one for modern philosophers, if they are searching for a metaphysics which can be integrated with modern science. |
| 5540 | Cleverness is shown in knowing what can reasonably be asked [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is already a great and necessary proof of cleverness or insight to know what one should reasonably ask. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B082/A58) | |
| A reaction: I admire the asking of unreasonable questions. They stretch the imagination, and the fixing of the limits of human thought requires some attempt to go beyond the limit. Kant sounds wise but conservative. |
| 545 | It is not much help if a doctor knows about universals but not the immediate particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If a doctor were to have a theoretical account without experience, knowing the universal but not the immediate particular, he will often err in treatment. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0981a25) | |
| A reaction: But acquaintance with particulars isn't the same as knowledge, which may require universals. |
| 16137 | Earlier views of Aristotle were dominated by 'Categories' [Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: For centuries 'Categories' and 'De Interpretatione' (+ Porphyry's 'Isagoge') formed the core of the philosophical corpus still being seriously studied. It is hardly surprising that our received view of Aristotle was coloured substantially by 'Categories'. | |
| From: Michael Frede (Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' [1983], I) | |
| A reaction: He adds that doubts remain about the authenticity of the second part, and the whole thing bears marks of having been edited. |
| 549 | All philosophy begins from wonder, either at the physical world, or at ideas [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All men begin to philosophise from wonder, for example at the changes of the sun, or the incommensurability of the diameter (pi) | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0983a14) | |
| A reaction: If it doesn't begin with wonder, what does it begin with? |
| 1576 | If each of us can give some logos about parts of nature, our combined efforts can be impressive [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Each of us is able to give a logos about some part of nature and even though as individuals little or nothing is added to the truth, from all of us contributing together something grand comes about. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0993b04) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle sees philosophy and science as group activities. |
| 609 | Philosophy is a kind of science that deals with principles [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy is a kind of science that deals with principles. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1059a13) | |
| A reaction: So is philosophy just part of science - the bit that tries to explain the abstract instead of the physical? |
| 624 | Absolute thinking is the thinking of thinking [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Absolute thinking is the thinking of thinking. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1074b28) | |
| A reaction: Connects to the apparently unique human ability to reflect about our own thoughts. |
| 572 | Philosophy has different powers from dialectic, and a different life from sophistry [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy differs from dialectic in the manner of its powers, and from sophistry in the choice of life that it involves. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1004b17) | |
| A reaction: Note the separation of dialectic from the heart of philosophy, and the claim that philosophy is a way of life. |
| 22171 | If only natural substances exist, science is first philosophy - but not if there is an immovable substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there is no substance other than those which are formed by nature, natural science will be the first science; but if there is an immovable substance, the science of this must be prior and must be first philosophy. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1026a28) | |
| A reaction: For Aristotle science is mainly finding the causes of everything. Does he think physical science is the way to study ethics and politics. Maybe, via essential natures and natural functions. |
| 11242 | Wisdom is knowledge of principles and causes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is knowledge having to do with certain principles [archas] and causes [aitias]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0982a02) |
| 12038 | Translate as 'humans all desire by nature to understand' (not as 'to know') [Aristotle, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says that 'humans all desire by nature to understand'. The Greek word here is often translated as 'to know', but this can be misleading. It is not a piling up of known facts, ..but mastery of a field of knowledge, and explaining why. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0980a22) by Julia Annas - Ancient Philosophy: very short introduction Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: I take this gloss of Annas's to be highly significant if we are trying to understand Aristotle, since it appears to be the single most significant remark from him of what his life's work was about. |
| 5631 | Reason is only interested in knowledge, actions and hopes [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All interest of my reason (the speculative as well as the practical) is united in the following three questions: 1) What can I know?, 2) What should I do?, and 3) What may I hope? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B833/A805) | |
| A reaction: Maybe reason is also interested in itself. And presumably it doesn't lose interest in what is clearly unknowable, or unachievable, or beyond all hope? |
| 559 | Even people who go astray in their opinions have contributed something useful [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should not only be grateful to those in whose opinions we at all share but also to those who have gone astray, for even the latter have contributed something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0993b12) | |
| A reaction: Yes, but what have they contributed? Have they revealed lines of reasoning, or are they just a terrible warning? |
| 5635 | In ordinary life the highest philosophy is no better than common understanding [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In regard to the essential ends of human nature even the highest philosophy cannot advance further than the guidance that nature has also conferred on the most common understanding. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B859/A831) | |
| A reaction: This is a very anti-elitist remark which seems to me to reflect Kant's Christian background. It seems obvious to me that in politics our best leaders are not confined to 'common understanding'. Nor in morality. Moral saints are wiser. |
| 21954 | Metaphysics is a systematic account of everything that can be known a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics can be ...the investigation of everything that can ever be cognized a priori, as well as the presentation of that which constitutues a system of pure philosophical cognitions of this kind. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B869/A841) | |
| A reaction: [He excludes mathematics from this] Moore says this is Kant's most interesting definition of metaphysics (among several versions). |
| 7918 | Kant turned metaphysics into epistemology, ignoring Aristotle's 'being qua being' [Kant, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Kant turned the question 'How is metaphysics possible?' into 'How is metaphysical knowledge possible?' He thus turned metaphysics into epistemology, obliterating Aristotle's distinction between being qua being and being qua known. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This makes Kant the number one villain in my philosophical pantheon, although the confusion of ontology and epistemology is found in Berkeley and others. Human speculations are not pointless, though they are difficult to verify. |
| 21438 | Metaphysics might do better to match objects to our cognition (and not start with the objects) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Up to now it has been assumed that all our cognition must conform to the objects; ...let us try whether we do not get farther with problems of metaphysics by assuming that the objects must conform to cognition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B Pref xvi) | |
| A reaction: Kant compares this to rethinking our viewpoint on the solar system, and Gardner calls this idea Kant's 'Copernican Revolution'. We can only applaud the idea that we should be more self-conscious when we assess reality. Just don't give up on reality! |
| 16611 | You just can't stop metaphysical speculation, in any mature mind [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In all men, as soon as their reason has become ripe for speculation, there has always existed and will always continue to exist some kind of metaphysics. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B021) | |
| A reaction: I love the word 'speculation' in this, because it is the part of metaphysics which always resists logical positivist scepticism about metaphysics. So what if you can't 'verify' it? |
| 5586 | The voyage of reason may go only as far as the coastline of experience reaches [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The voyage of our reason may proceed only as far as the continuous coastline of experience reaches. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A395) | |
| A reaction: This is a strikingly empiricist remark, coming from Kant. It is certainly a firm rejection of what we might call 'speculative metaphysics', but allows what Peter Strawson calls 'descriptive metaphysics'. Cf. Idea 3722. |
| 21462 | It is still possible to largely accept Kant as a whole (where others must be dismantled) [Kant, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Unusually, Kant's system has continued to seem possible, to some degree, to endorse as a whole, as opposed to an edifice that has most to offer by being dismantled. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 10 Intro | |
| A reaction: I think Aristotle passes this test, but Plato has to be dismantled. No one ever swallows Leibniz whole. I suppose Hume can be taken complete, but only because of his minimal commitments. |
| 5600 | Human reason considers all knowledge as belonging to a possible system [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Human reason is by nature architectonic, i.e. it considers all cognitions as belonging to a possible system, and hence it permits only such principles as do not render an intended cognition incapable of standing together with others in some system. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B502/A474) | |
| A reaction: Speak for yourself! However, there is no denying that the making connections seems basic to thought, and there is clearly an enticing magic in making lots of extended connections. Beautiful finished structures may, though, be coherent but false. |
| 21457 | Reason has two separate objects, morality and freedom, and nature, which ultimately unite [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The legislation of human reason (philosophy) has two objects, nature and freedom, and thus contains the natural law as well as the moral law, initially in two separate systems, but ultimately in a single philosophical system. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B868/A840) | |
| A reaction: Pure reason is for nature, and practical reason (which has priority) is for freedom and morality. There is a streak of religiosity in Kant which makes him give morality and normativity priority over truth and science. |
| 9752 | Kant showed that theoretical reason cannot give answers to speculative metaphysics [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: In the 'Critique of Pure Reason' Kant shows that theoretical reason is unable to answer the questions of speculative metaphysics. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I don't think I really agree with Kant. We can draw very extended inferences from experience, but the process rapidly becomes exceedingly difficult. The concepts we have built up are rather piecemeal, and not really designed for the job. |
| 6584 | A priori metaphysics is fond of basic unchanging entities like God, the soul, Forms, atoms… [Kant, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: Kant stresses that reason, when it turns dialectical, posits immutable basic entities; these are the standard inhabitants of traditional a priori metaphysics - God, souls, Platonic ideas, Democritean indestructible atoms, and the like. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This sounds like a good warning, but it just invites the meta-question in a priori metaphysics 'Are we searching for something unchanging, or is this impossible?' Aristotle certainly addressed this question. The search strikes me as sensible. |
| 9349 | A dove cutting through the air, might think it could fly better in airless space (which Plato attempted) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The light dove, in free flight cutting through the air the resistance of which it feels, could get the idea that it could do even better in airless space. ..Plato made no headway in the empty space of understanding; he had no resistance, no support. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B008/A5) | |
| A reaction: Who says Kant can't write? This is the classic image of the excesses of metaphysics which Kant wished to curtail. His attacks culminates in the contempt of logical positivism for such things, but no one would now disagree with Kant on this. |
| 12767 | Kant exposed the illusions of reason in the Transcendental Dialectic [Kant, by Fraassen] |
| Full Idea: The truly critical part of his First Critique was the Transcendental Dialectic; there Kant exposed the Illusions of Reason. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Bas C. van Fraassen - The Empirical Stance 1.1 |
| 18259 | Analysis is becoming self-conscious about our concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: To analyze a concept is to become self-conscious of the manifold that I always think in it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B011/A7) |
| 9350 | Our reason mostly analyses concepts we already have of objects [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A great part, perhaps the greatest part, of the business of our reason consists in analyses of the concepts that we already have of objects. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B009/A5) | |
| A reaction: I am quite happy to think of this as the central and crucial aspect of philosophy, though I am much more sceptical about purely linguistic analysis, as developed by Frege and Russell. It describes much of what Aristotle did. |
| 5530 | Analysis of our concepts is merely a preparation for proper a priori metaphysics [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The mere analysis of the concepts that inhabit our reason a priori, is not the end at all, but only a preparation for metaphysics proper, namely extending its a priori cognition sythetically. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B023) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be evidence that Kant is not an 'analytical' philosopher, because he is willing to speculate, but that is a narrow twentieth century view of analysis. I take the aim to be an analysis of reality, not of human thought. |
| 5604 | In reason things can only begin if they are voluntary [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In reason itself nothing begins, but as the unconditioned condition of very voluntary action. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B582/A554) | |
| A reaction: Kant's way of saying that free will is essential for pure reason. I can't quite digest 'pure' reason, but it is undeniable that rational processes seem to have rules of their own, and to arise entirely from the world of ideas, and not from the physical. |
| 5623 | If I know the earth is a sphere, and I am on it, I can work out its area from a small part [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If I know that the earth is a sphere, and its surface the surface of a sphere, then from a small part of the latter I can know the diameter, and hence the complete boundary, and in accordance with a priori principles. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B787/A757) | |
| A reaction: A nice example, though it may be optimistic in its assumption that you can know you are on a sphere rather than an egg-shape. I agree with Kant, but speculative metaphysics should always be accompanied by humility and health warnings. |
| 5622 | The boundaries of reason can only be determined a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The determination of the boundaries of our reason can only take place in accordance with a priori grounds | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B786/A758) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that this is right, and is a truth of huge importance for philosophy. If we experience limitations in our reason (a not unusual experience!) this could never show that the boundary was necessary. This supports a minimal rationalism. |
| 5578 | Pure reason deals with concepts in the understanding, not with objects [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Pure reason is never related directly to objects, but instead to concepts of them given by the understanding. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B392/A335) | |
| A reaction: Hence the keen interest of McDowell and others in the way in which concepts connect us into reality. Clearly a primrose path to anti-realism beckons here. I agree with Kant. Reason needs tokens to manipulate. |
| 5628 | Reason hates to be limited in its speculations [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason does not gladly suffer constraint in the paroxysms of its lust for speculative expansion. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B814/A786) | |
| A reaction: This uncharacteristic outburst shows Kant's great commitment to the limitations of reason, despite his constant assertions that it is 'pure', and that it is the basis of all value. |
| 5603 | Pure reason exists outside of time [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Pure reason, as a merely intelligible faculty, is not subject to the form of time, and hence not subject to the conditions of the temporal sequence. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B579/A551) | |
| A reaction: A strong assertion of the notion of 'pure' reason. If it is outside time, it is presumably outside space-time, and so outside space. If I believed in it (and you can't really, can you?), I think I would go the whole hog, and add Platonism. |
| 5616 | Pure reason is only concerned with itself because it deals with understandings, not objects [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Pure reason is concerned with nothing but itself, and it can have no other concern, because what is given to it is not objects to be unified for the concept of experience, but cognitions of understanding to be unified for the concept of reason. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B708/A680) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to accept this sharp division between 'understanding', which gets involved in experience, and this very "pure" reason, which seems in danger of solipsism, and is playing a private game. I think purity comes in degrees. |
| 21439 | Religion and legislation can only be respected if they accept free and public examination [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Religion and legislation ...excite a just suspicion against themselves, and cannot claim that unfeigned respect that reason grants only to that which has been able to withstand free and public examination. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], A Pref xi n) | |
| A reaction: A wonderful statement of a core principle of the liberal enlightenment. I can't really relate to anyone who would reject this idea (in general). Legislation might have special circumstances (such as wartime). |
| 5584 | All objections are dogmatic (against propositions), or critical (against proofs), or sceptical [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All objections are dogmatic, critical or sceptical. A dogmatic objection is directed against a proposition, but a critical one is directed against a proof. ..The sceptical objection puts the proposition and its opposite over against one another as equals. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A388) | |
| A reaction: This is a nice distinction, and I would think that the hallmark of a philosophical person is that they are always looking for critical objections, because they want beliefs to be supported by good reasons, not prejudices. |
| 18236 | Reason keeps asking why until explanation is complete [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, theoretical reason, like practical reason, seeks the unconditioned: it keeps asking why until explanation is complete. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value 8 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: I love this idea. It is so important in philosophy of science, because some theorists say we should give up before our explanations are complete. |
| 623 | It is readily agreed that thinking is the most godlike of things in our experience [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is readily agreed that thinking is the most godlike of things in our experience. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1074b11) |
| 5563 | The principle of sufficient reason is the ground of possible experience in time [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The principle of sufficient reason is the ground of possible experience, namely the objective cognition of appearances with regard to their relation in the successive series of time. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B246/A201) | |
| A reaction: The argument to this claim from the necessity of succession in time looks unconvincing to me, but the principle of sufficient reason is deeply imbedded in the human mind. However, philosophers seem to feel it more strongly than other people. |
| 5565 | Proof of the principle of sufficient reason cannot be found [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A proof of the principle of sufficient reason has often been sought, but always in vain. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B265/A217) | |
| A reaction: This might, of course, be because the principle is false. However it is quite a good candidate for an a priori, or even innate, principle of thought in rational beings. Gödel's Theorem suggests why the enterprise of proof would be doomed. |
| 11282 | Aristotle does not take the principle of non-contradiction for granted [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle goes to great lengths to defend the principle of non-contradiction, and does not at all think that it is obviously true. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], logic) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 5.1 |
| 6561 | A thing cannot be both in and not-in the same thing (at a given time) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible for the same thing at the same time both to be-in and not to be-in the same thing in the same respect. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1005b19) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is really discussing non-contradiction here, but this formulation is very close to Leibniz's Law (that two identical things must have identical properties). |
| 1601 | The most certain basic principle is that contradictories can't be true at the same time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The most certain of all basic principles is that contradictory propositions are not true at the same time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b13) | |
| A reaction: Principle of Noncontradiction |
| 11281 | We cannot say that one thing both is and is not a man [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not possible to say truly at the same time that the same thing both is and is not a man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1006b33) |
| 1602 | For Aristotle predication is regulated by Non-Contradiction, because underlying stability is essential [Roochnik on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Principle of Noncontradiction is for Aristotle the ultimate regulator of predication. In order for any predication to be significant it must refer to something definite and stable. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b13) by David Roochnik - The Tragedy of Reason p.152 |
| 608 | There is no middle ground in contradiction, but there is in contrariety [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With contradiction there can be no intermediate state, whereas with contrariety there can be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1055b02) |
| 627 | If everything is made of opposites, are the opposed things made of opposites? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If all things are composed of opposites, how can the things of which the opposites are made be composed of opposites? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075a23) | |
| A reaction: A nice warning against being too simplistic in metaphysics. |
| 628 | Not everything is composed of opposites; what, for example, is the opposite of matter? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All things are not composed of opposites, because matter is not the opposite of anything. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075a28) | |
| A reaction: A nice counterexample |
| 5602 | The free dialectic opposition of arguments is an invaluable part of the sceptical method [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The sceptical method can point to the dialectic as an example of the great utility of letting the arguments of reason confront one another in the most complete freedom | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B535/A507) | |
| A reaction: An interesting link, between dialectic and the sceptical method. I would say it runs deeper, and that scepticism and the free opposition of arguments are both basic to the whole notion of reason. Reason requires freedom (though not free will). |
| 10953 | The parts of a definition are isomorphic to the parts of the entity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The definition is an account, and every account has its parts, and there is an isomorphism between the relation of the account to the entity that it concerns and the relation of a part of the account to a part of the entity. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1034b20) | |
| A reaction: This makes a definition sound like a catalogue of parts, which is likely to miss something important, such as the overall form, or the function. Aristotle has much more to say on the subject of definition. Cf. Russell's congruence view of truth. |
| 10957 | The material element may be essential to a definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One strays from the purpose of definitions if one confines oneself to a formal account and simply discards the material element. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1036b20) |
| 10960 | If we define 'man' as 'two-footed animal', why does that make man a unity? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What makes it the case that, if we call the account of something a 'definition', that thing is a unity? If 'two-footed animal' is the account of man, and a definition, why, then, is 'man' a single thing and not a plurality (viz. animal and two-footed)? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037b10) | |
| A reaction: The obvious answer, I would have thought, is that we can think of man as a unity or as a plurality, depending on which aspect we are interested in. I see no problem with this. Nature offers us unities, but we ultimately select them. |
| 5618 | Definitions exhibit the exhaustive concept of a thing within its boundaries [Kant] |
| Full Idea: To define properly means just to exhibit originally the exhaustive concept of a thing within its boundaries | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B755/A727) | |
| A reaction: There is nothing in the concept of a 'definition' that requires it to be exhaustive, because some things are too vague. Define the 'south' of England. What are the 'boundaries', if the concept could shift in its extension? |
| 16094 | You can't define particulars, because accounts have to be generalised [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible to define particulars. …The fact is that an account is general. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1040a33-) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle rejects attempts to define the Sun as possible counterexamples. Since this claims rests on the idea of an account [logos], I presume the point is actually that definitions are linguistic, and must use general words. |
| 596 | Only substance [ousias] admits of definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Only substance admits of definition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030b34) |
| 16107 | Sometimes parts must be mentioned in definitions of essence, and sometimes not [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In some instances the account of the what-it-was-to-be-that-thing contains the parts of the thing defined and in others not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037a22) | |
| A reaction: This is helpful in understanding what an essence is supposed to be. I take it to be sometimes a structure, with parts, and sometimes more like a guiding principle, more abstract in character. |
| 12360 | Definitions need the complex features of form, and don't need to mention the category [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Met. Z.10-11 is committed to the complexity of form and suggests that the complexity is expressed in definitions that articulate, in the case of 'man', the salient faculties and functions, and none of these need mention 'man'. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1034b20-1037b) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance X.5 | |
| A reaction: This is a very strong statement of the view that identifying genus and species are not at all what Aristotle wants in his final account of essence. The features mentioned here would, though, clearly count as 'differentiae'. |
| 10944 | A definition must be of something primary [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We can assign a term to any 'account' whatever, so that the Iliad would be a definition! No, a definition must be of something primary. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030a08) | |
| A reaction: At first hearing you may doubt this claim, but Aristotle's example clinches it beautifully. Are you really going to say that The Iliad is the definition of 'Iliad'? |
| 12355 | 'Plane' is the genus of plane figures, and 'solid' of solids, with differentiae picking out types of corner [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: 'Plane' is the genus of figures in the plane, and 'solid' is the genus of solids. For every figure is either a plane with abc features or a solid with xyz features, so it is the plane and solid which underlie these differentiae. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1024b01) | |
| A reaction: Thus you could hardly define a square by merely mentioning that it is a 'plane figure', and you would need pretty precise differentiae before you could be certain you were only dealing with a square, and not a parallelogram. |
| 12352 | Whiteness can only belong to man because an individual like Callias happens to be white [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If Callias is a white man, then whiteness belongs in a way to Callias, or to man, in as much as Callias, to whom it is accidental here to be a man, is white. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030b20) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that 'white' can only belong to 'man' because some individual man happens to be white. |
| 11383 | A definition is of the universal and of the kind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A definition is of the universal [tou katholou] and the form [tou eidous, kind, species]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1036a28) | |
| A reaction: [Alternative translations by Vasilis Politis] Since the essence of a thing is a particular (Idea 11382), this seems to mean that the definition is NOT giving the essence, contrary to the account of Kit Fine. I take the essence to be explanatory. |
| 10961 | Definition by division is into genus and differentiae [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The contents of definition by division are the so-called primary genus (such as 'animal') and the differentiae. ...It should always be prosecuted until the level of non-differentiation is reached, ...and the last differentia will be the substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037b30) | |
| A reaction: [Second half at 1038a14] Note that this is only one type of Aristotelian definition, the 'definition by division'. The aim of this type of definition is to analyse down to substance. Presumably you can't ignore crucial features found on the way? |
| 12356 | If the genus is just its constitutive forms (or matter), then the definition is the account of the differentiae [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the genus simpliciter does not exist over and above the specific forms constitutive of it, alternatively if it exists just as matter, it is evident what the definition is, the account derived just from the differentiae. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038a05-) | |
| A reaction: This is how I understand an Aristotelian definition - as a lengthy and fine-grained account of the details which pick out some individual within the main genus which constitutes it. |
| 17040 | If I define you, I have to use terms which are all true of other things too [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose I was trying to define you. I would say you are an animal that is lean or white or some such, all of which also apply to other things. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1040a13) | |
| A reaction: Commentators have taken this to mean that Aristotle is only interested in kinds and not individuals, but recent thinking says this is wrong. Universals prevent you from really getting at the thing you want to define. Definitions are limited. |
| 12353 | Species and genera are largely irrelevant in 'Metaphysics' [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Species and genera are largely irrelevant to the program of 'Metaphysics'. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], kind) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance III.10 | |
| A reaction: The idea seems to be that Aristotle is seeking tools for getting at the primary being of a thing, and the notion of 'form' strikes him as a better account, because it explains the genera and species, rather than just naming them. |
| 12081 | Aristotle's definitions are not unique, but apply to a range of individuals [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: I take Aristotle to be arguing that no definition applies uniquely to an individual - it is always potentially applicable to a range of individuals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], defs) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4.2 n7 | |
| A reaction: So much the worse for Aristotle, I think. Surely unique entities can be defined? No one thinks their pet dog is just any dog, even after the age and breed have been identified. |
| 11153 | A definition is an account of a what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A definition is an account of a what-it-was-to-be-that-thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1031a12) | |
| A reaction: This is cited by Kit Fine, as expounding his view that essence is definition. He gives this text as "definition is the formula of the essence". Is the account the 'logos', I wonder? I like this view. |
| 12080 | Essence is not all the necessary properties, since these extend beyond the definition [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle never thought of an essence as comprising all the necessary properties of an object. In Met VII.4 he limits per se predication appropriate to essences to the definition, and in Topics he distinguishes definition from the 'proprium'. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4.1 | |
| A reaction: [Topics 102a20-25] There seems to be consensus among scholars about this, and only a few misguided modern metaphysicians identify essences with the necessary properties (or maybe the non-trivial necessary properties). |
| 5619 | No a priori concept can be defined [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Strictly speaking no concept given a priori can be defined, e.g. substance, cause, right, equity, etc. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B756/A728) | |
| A reaction: A passing remark with large and interesting implications. A huge amount of ink has been spilled over whether to take concepts such as identity, truth, goodness and substance as 'basic', or reduce them to something else. |
| 22274 | 'Transcendent' is beyond experience, and 'transcendental' is concealed within experience [Kant, by Potter] |
| Full Idea: Kant distinguished between the 'transcendent', which is wholly beyond experience, and the 'transcendental', which, although not strictly part of experience, is a structural feature imminent in it. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B353/A296) by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 02 'Trans' | |
| A reaction: This may be the most disastrous idea in western philosophy since Plato's theory of Forms. How can he claim special insight into the imminent structural features of his own experience, while admitting that he has no experience of these features? |
| 5577 | Transcendental ideas require unity of the subject, conditions of appearance, and objects of thought [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All transcendental ideas fall under three classes: the first contains the absolute unity of the thinking subject, the second the unity of conditions of appearance, the third the unity of the condition of all objects of thought in general. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B391/A334) | |
| A reaction: This kind of claim makes me search the attic for my logical positivist shotgun. How does he KNOW these things? However we must grant him that experience 'binds' together in some way, and we think of persons and ideas as atomic. |
| 23696 | Transcendental cognition is that a priori thought which shows how the a priori is applicable or possible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Not every a priori cognition must be called transcendental, but only that by means of which we cognize that, and how certain representations (intuitions or concepts) are applied entirely a priori, or are possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B80/A56) | |
| A reaction: Kant really wasn't good at expressing himself. I would describe this as either explanation, or as meta-thought. |
| 15770 | Some things cannot be defined, and only an analogy can be given [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not right to seek a definition for everything - for some things an overview is to be had by analogy. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1048a33) | |
| A reaction: This is what David Lewis called the 'way of example' in defining what is meant by 'abstract objects'. |
| 5555 | Philosophical examples rarely fit rules properly, and lead to inflexibility [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Giving examples most commonly damages the insight of the understanding, since they only seldom fulfil the condition of the rule under consideration, ..and in the end accustom us to use those rules more like formulas than like principles. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B173/A134) | |
| A reaction: This is directly contrary to the belief of most people who study or teach philosophy in the English-speaking world, but it is an interesting challenge. Philosophy is mainly concerned with abstract ideas. Maybe we need many examples, or none. |
| 574 | Not everything can be proven, because that would lead to an infinite regress [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It must be true, quite generally, that not everything can be proven, on pain of an infinite regress. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1006a09) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 1672, where the possibility of a circular set of mutual proofs is considered. Aristotle seems committed to the present idea. |
| 10913 | Truth is a matter of asserting correct combinations and separations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That which is as being true (and that which is not as being false) have to do with composition and division, ... (for truth involves assertion in the case of combination and denial in the case of a separation). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b22) | |
| A reaction: This remark has the prospect of being spelled out precisely in terms of predication in modern logic |
| 10914 | Simple and essential truth seems to be given, with further truth arising in thinking [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not in states of affairs that truth and falsity arise but in thinking. And for things that are simple and for essences, truth and falsity do not even arise in thinking. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1027b27) | |
| A reaction: This might be viewed in the light of Tarski's theory, and the distinction between atomic sentences, which are just accepted, with a recursive account of more complex statements. Aristotle seems to have two theories of truth here (Cf. Idea 10916). |
| 10916 | Truth is either intuiting a way of being, or a putting together [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Truth is either a putting-together or, if the thing has being, it has it in a certain way. Truth for these things is intuiting them. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b30) | |
| A reaction: This seems to confirm what Aristotle says in Idea 10914, that there are two aspects to truth - the immediate grasp of atomic facts, and the assembling of complex facts. This resembles Tarski's construction of truth for complex sentences. |
| 575 | If one error is worse than another, it must be because it is further from the truth [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The man who mistakes a tetrad for a pentad is not as erroneous as he who takes it for a chiliad. But then, if they are not equally erroneous, this can only mean that one has less, and so one more, of the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1008b32) |
| 15775 | Truth-thinking does not make it so; it being so is what makes it true [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not on account of our truly thinking that you are white that you are white; rather it is on account of your being white that we who assert as much are telling the truth. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b10) | |
| A reaction: Some philosophers say this makes truth a derivative property, and is central to truth-maker theories. Kit Fine claims the reverse - that things exist because of the truths - but I don't really understand that (or agree with it). |
| 10915 | The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The truth or falsity of a belief will be in terms of something that is always this way not that. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a12) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to take 'beliefs' to be the truth-bearers. |
| 5539 | We must presuppose that truth is agreement of cognition with its objects [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The nominal definition of truth, namely that it is agreement of cognition with its objects, is here granted and presupposed; but one demands to know what is the general and certain criterion of the truth of any cognition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B082/A58) | |
| A reaction: I am puzzled by the second part of this, as the demand for a criterion (or justification) seems to me to have no part at all in our notion of what truth is in itself. It is a puzzle that Kant seems to accept the concept of truth used by simple realists. |
| 586 | Falsity says that which is isn't, and that which isn't is; truth says that which is is, and that which isn't isn't [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Falsity is the assertion that that which is is not or that that which is not is, and truth is the assertion that that which is is and that that which is not is not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b20) | |
| A reaction: It was very startling to discover Plato's Idea 13776, and realise that this famous and much-quoted idea of Aristotle's was not original to him. I find it very hard to disagree with any aspect of the idea. |
| 19165 | Aristotle's truth formulation concerns referring parts of sentences, not sentences as wholes [Aristotle, by Davidson] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's formulation postulates no entities like facts. The things of which we say that they are or that they are not are the entities adverted to by the referring parts of sentences, not by sentences as wholes. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011b21) by Donald Davidson - Truth and Predication 6 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to refer to the existences or non-existences of things. Presumably this would mean referring not to an apple, but to a red apple or a green apple, seen as two different things, even though they were the 'same' apple? |
| 562 | Axioms are the underlying principles of everything, and who but the philosopher can assess their truth? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Axioms are more general, and the principles of all things. If this does not belong to the philosopher, who else will have the job of considering truth and falsity in their case? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0997a09) |
| 573 | The axioms of mathematics are part of philosophy [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A single science, that of the philosopher, also covers the axioms of mathematics. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1005a15) |
| 5620 | Philosophy has no axioms, as it is just rational cognition of concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Since philosophy is merely rational cognition in accordance with concepts, no principle is to be encountered in it that deserves the name of axiom. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B760/A732) | |
| A reaction: This is an attack on traditional rationalism, which aspires to do philosophy in the style of Euclid. Kant offers, however, a very conservative view, in which all concepts are 'given'. Nowadays we want to play with new axioms, as they did in geometry. |
| 18794 | Logic has precise boundaries, and is the formal rules for all thinking [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The boundaries of logic are determined quite precisely by the fact that logic is the science that exhaustively presents and strictly proves nothing but the formal rules of all thinking. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B Pref ix) | |
| A reaction: Presumably it does not give the rules for ridiculous thinking, so more will be required. The interesting bit is the universality of the claim. |
| 22154 | For Aristotle bivalence is a feature of reality [Aristotle, by Boulter] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle the principle of bivalence is primarily a principle of metaphysics, not logic. It applies to entities in the real order first, and to propositions in the rational order second. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Stephen Boulter - Why Medieval Philosophy Matters 5 | |
| A reaction: This is because nothing is vague. Boulter says this is also the case with non-contradiction. I like this idea very much. I reject the Fregean picture of the autonomy of the rational order. Logic is powerful because it reflects reality. |
| 5542 | There must be a general content-free account of truth in the rules of logic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Concerning the mere form of cognition (setting aside all content), it is equally clear that a logic, so far as it expounds the general and necessary rules of understanding, must present criteria of truth in these very rules. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B084/A59) | |
| A reaction: A vital point, used by Putnam (Idea 2332) in his critique of machine functionalism. It is hard to see how we can think of logic as pure syntax if the concept of truth is needed. We may observe one Venn circle inside another, but interpretaton is required. |
| 11264 | Aporia 3: Does one science investigate all being, or does each kind of being have a science? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 3: Is it the task of a single science to investigate all beings, or is it the task of fundamentally different sciences to investigate different kinds of being? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0997a15-25) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: One might ask whether neuroscience is entirely distinct from psychology, or partical physics from biology. |
| 11258 | We must start with our puzzles, and progress by solving them, as they reveal the real difficulty [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should first address those puzzles ('aporiai') that first arise. ..Subsequent progress depends on the resolution of the first puzzles, and one cannot solve these without knowing the difficulty, and our confusion shows this to be the case. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0995a27-) | |
| A reaction: This stands in nice opposition to the Wittgenstein view, that confusion is largely a self-inflicted wound arising from our language, having little to do with reality. For Aristotle it is reality which is the source of our mental confusion. He's right. |
| 11265 | Aporia 4: Does metaphysics just investigate pure being, or also the characteristics of being? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 4: Is the task of metaphysics only to investigate the (primary) beings or also to investigate the common characteristics of the (primary) beings? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0997a25-34) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Politis points out that metaphysics would then be in danger of collapsing into all sorts of special sciences. |
| 11262 | Aporia 1: is there one science of explanation, or many? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 1: Is it the task of a single science to investigate all the different causes and explanations of things, or is this the task of fundamentally different sciences? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0996a18-b26) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: [This is the 10,000th idea to be entered into this database - 1st February 2010, at 7:21pm] I think there are two sorts of philosopher - those, like myself, who cling on to the idea of one science, and the pluralists, perfectly happy with many. |
| 11263 | Aporia 2: Does one science investigate both ultimate and basic principles of being? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 2: Is it the task of a single science to investigate both the ultimate principles of being and the basic principles of reasoning (e.g. non-contradiction)? Or is this the task of fundamentally different sciences? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0996b26-997a15) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Although I favour the dream of one science dealing with everything, I hesitate over this aporia. I like the unity of modern science and metaphysics, but maybe logic precedes them both and has a different basis. Nice question! |
| 11266 | Aporia 5: Do other things exist besides what is perceptible by the senses? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 5: Do only sense-perceptible things exist or do non-sense-perceptible things exist, too, in addition to or besides (para) sense-perceptible ones? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0997a34-998a19) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we have discovered so much that is beyond our natural perceptions that it is obvious that there may be stuff we can never detect. ...And yet if 'to exist is to have causal powers' then everything would be detectable in principle. Hm. |
| 11270 | Aporia 9: Is there one principle, or one kind of principle? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 9: Are principles one in kind, or one in number? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0999b24-1000a04) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: A key aporia, which can be answered in both directions. In what respects are the essences of two different human beings identical? It is a key question for any essentialist. |
| 11267 | Aporia 6: Are the basic principles of a thing the kinds to which it belongs, or its components? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 6: Are the principles of a thing the kinds to which the thing belongs or are they rather the ultimate elements that are present in the thing and compose the thing? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0998a20-b13) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the heart of the modern debate on essentialism, between sortal essentialists (Brody and Wiggins) and those basing essences on powers and basic stuff (Ellis, Fine). I say the sortal bunch are wrong, wrong, wrong. |
| 11268 | Aporia 7: Is a thing's kind the most general one, or the most specific one? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 7: If a thing's principle is its general kind, is that the most general kind to which it belongs, or the least general kind to which it belongs? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0998b13-999a23) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This is a question for the sortal essentialists. I think it amounts to an argument against sortal essentialism, because there are nested kinds, and nothing to decide which one of them matters, |
| 11269 | Aporia 8: Are there general kinds, or merely particulars? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 8: Do general kinds exist at all, in addition to the sense-perceptible particulars? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0999a24-b24) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is beginning to confront the whole issue of natural kinds. It seems OK to say that the elements are natural kinds, but things get more difficult when you talk about 'planets' or 'tigers'. Aristotle decides there are natural kinds. |
| 11271 | Aporia 10: Do perishables and imperishables have the same principle? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 10: Are the principles of perishable and imperishable things the same, or different? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1000a05-1001a03) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Locke proposed that having a 'life' was an essential distinction between these two, but this has been rather undermined by modern biochemistry. Aristotle wants to know if nature is a unity. |
| 11272 | Aporia 11: Are primary being and unity distinct, or only in the things that are? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 11: Is primary being simply being itself and unity itself, or is primary being rather things that are and are one? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1001a04--b25) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: I can't make sense of 'being' in itself, though Heidegger seems to have devoted his life to the idea. It appears that Aristotle agrees with me. |
| 11273 | Aporia 12: Do mathematical entities exist independently, or only in objects? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 12: Are numbers, solids, surfaces and points themselves the primary beings or are they primary beings only because other things (e.g. this horse) have such geometrical and in general mathematical properties? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1001b26-1002b11) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: The thinking of Pythagoras and Plato hovers behind this question. Aristotle seems to be groping for a compromise view. |
| 11274 | Aporia 13: Are there kinds, as well as particulars and mathematical entities? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 13: Are there kinds ('eidé') in addition to or besides both sense-perceptible things and the entities postulated by mathematics? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1002b12-32) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: This seems close to Aporia 8 (Idea 11269). I can't make sense of a kind which has no particulars, except as a fond memory, like the dodo, and a fictional entity like the gryphon. ...Or perhaps something we aim to bio-engineer. |
| 11276 | Aporia 15: Are the causes of things universals or particulars? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 15: Are the principles of things universals or particulars? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1003a05-17) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle seems to be groping for a compromise answer. Explanations must be universal, but primary being seems to reside in the particulars. The modern idea of Aristotelianism is universals-only-in-particulars. |
| 11275 | Aporia 14: Are ultimate causes of things potentialities, or must they be actual? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aporia 14: Are the elements of things potentialities and capacities for causing and generating those things or are they what actually causes and generates those things? | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1002b32-1003a05) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 3.4 | |
| A reaction: We would now call this a question about 'dispositions', and the consensus seems to be that they are potential rather than actual, since a vase may be fragile without having to actually break. |
| 21454 | The battle of the antinomies is usually won by the attacker, and lost by any defender [Kant] |
| Full Idea: These sophistical assertions [the antinomies] open us a dialectical battlefield where each party will keep the upper hand as long as it is allowed to attack, and will certainly defeat that which is compelled to conduct itself merely defensively. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B450/A423) | |
| A reaction: This seems related to the interesting question of where the 'onus of proof' lies in a major dispute. Kant's implication is that the battles are not rational, if they are settled in such a fashion. |
| 560 | Mathematical precision is only possible in immaterial things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should not see mathematical exactitude in all things, but only for things that do not have matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0995a14) |
| 9076 | Mathematics studies the domain of perceptible entities, but its subject-matter is not perceptible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematics does not take perceptible entities as its domain just because its subject-matter is accidentally perceptible; but neither does it take as its domain some other entities separable from the perceptible ones. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a03) | |
| A reaction: This implies a very naturalistic view of mathematics, with his very empiricist account of abstraction deriving the mathematical concepts within the process of perceiving the physical world. And quite right too. |
| 8740 | Geometry would just be an idle game without its connection to our intuition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Were it not for the connection to intuition, geometry would have no objective validity whatever, but be mere play by the imagination or the understanding. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B298/A239), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.2 | |
| A reaction: If we pursue the idealist reading of Kant (in which the noumenon is hopelessly inapprehensible), then mathematics still has not real application, despite connection to intuition. However, Kant would have been an intuitionist, and not a formalist. |
| 16899 | Geometrical truth comes from a general schema abstracted from a particular object [Kant, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Kant explains the general validity of geometrical truths by maintaining that the particularity is genuine and ineliminable but is used as a schema. One abstracts from the particular elements of the objects of intuition in forming a general object. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B741/A713) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 4 | |
| A reaction: A helpful summary by Burge of a rather wordy but very interesting section of Kant. I like the idea of being 'abstracted', but am not sure why that must be from one particular instance [certainty?]. The essence of triangles emerges from comparisons. |
| 8739 | Geometry studies the Euclidean space that dictates how we perceive things [Kant, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, geometry studies the forms of perception in the sense that it describes the infinite space that conditions perceived objects. This Euclidean space provides the forms of perception, or, in Kantian terms, the a priori form of empirical intuition. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.2 | |
| A reaction: We shouldn't assume that the discovery of new geometries nullifies this view. We evolved in small areas of space, where it is pretty much Euclidean. We don't perceive the curvature of space. |
| 10958 | Perhaps numbers are substances? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We should consider whether there is some other sort of substance, such as, perhaps, numbers. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037a11) | |
| A reaction: I don't think Aristotle considers numbers to be substances, but Pythagoreans seem to think that way, if they think the world is literally made of numbers. |
| 13273 | Pluralities divide into discontinous countables; magnitudes divide into continuous things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A plurality is a denumerable quantity, and a magnitude is a measurable quantity. A plurality is what is potentially divisible into things that are not continuous, whereas what is said to be a magnitude is divisible into continuous things. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1020a09) | |
| A reaction: This illuminating distinction is basic to the Greek attitude to number, and echoes the distinction between natural and real numbers. |
| 12074 | The one in number just is the particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It makes no difference whether we speak of the particular or the one in number. For by the one in number we mean the particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0999b33) | |
| A reaction: This is the Greek view of 'one', quite different from the Frege or Dedekind view. I prefer the Greek view, because 'one' is the place where numbers plug into the world, and the one indispensable feature of numbers is that they can count particulars. |
| 17844 | The unit is stipulated to be indivisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The unit is stipulated to be indivisible in every respect. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052b35) |
| 17845 | If only rectilinear figures existed, then unity would be the triangle [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose that all things that are ...were rectilinear figures - they would be a number of figures, and unity the triangle. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054a03) | |
| A reaction: This is how they program graphics for computer games, with profusions of triangles. The thought that geometry might be treated numerically is an obvious glimpse of Descartes' co-ordinate geometry. |
| 17859 | Units came about when the unequals were equalised [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The original holder of the theory claimed ...that units came about when the unequals were equalised. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1081a24) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you could count the things that were already equal. You can count days and count raindrops. The genius is to see that you can add the days to the raindrops, by treating them as equal, in respect of number. |
| 17861 | Two men do not make one thing, as well as themselves [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A pair of men do not make some one thing in addition to themselves. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082a18) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contrast nicely with Frege's claim about whether two boots are two things or one pair. |
| 646 | When we count, are we adding, or naming numbers? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is a vexed question whether, when we count and say 'one, two, three…', we are doing so by addition or by separate modules. We are, of course, doing both. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082b32) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is almost Benacerraf's famous problem about whether or not 3 is a member of 4. |
| 9632 | Kant only accepts potential infinity, not actual infinity [Kant, by Brown,JR] |
| Full Idea: For Kant the only legitimate infinity is the so-called potential infinity, not the actual infinity. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by James Robert Brown - Philosophy of Mathematics Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: This is part of what leads on the the Constructivist view of mathematics. There is a procedure for endlessly continuing, but no procedure for arriving. That seems to make good sense. |
| 3343 | Euclid's could be the only viable geometry, if rejection of the parallel line postulate doesn't lead to a contradiction [Benardete,JA on Kant] |
| Full Idea: The possible denial of the parallel lines postulate does not entail that Kant was wrong in considering Euclid's the only viable geometry. If the denial issued in a contradiction, then the postulate would be analytic, and Kant would be refuted. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 8737 | Kant suggested that arithmetic has no axioms [Kant, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Kant suggested that arithmetic has no axioms. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B204-6/A164) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.2 | |
| A reaction: A hundred years later a queue was forming to spell out the axioms of arithmetic. The definitions of 0 and 1 always look to me more like logicians' tricks than profound truths. Some notions of successor and induction do, however, seem needed. |
| 5557 | Axioms ought to be synthetic a priori propositions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Concerning magnitude ...there are no axioms in the proper sense. ....Axioms ought to be synthetic a priori propositions. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B205/A164) | |
| A reaction: This may be a hopeless dream, but it is (sort of) what all philosophers long for. Post-modern relativism may just be the claim that all axioms are analytic. Could a posteriori propositions every qualify as axioms? |
| 17843 | The idea of 'one' is the foundation of number [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One is the principle of number qua number. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052b21) |
| 17850 | Each many is just ones, and is measured by the one [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The reason for saying of each number that it is many is just that it is ones and that each number is measured by the one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1056b16) |
| 17851 | Number is plurality measured by unity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Number is plurality as measured by unity. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1057a04) |
| 9793 | Mathematics studies abstracted relations, commensurability and proportion [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Mathematicians abstract perceptible features to study quantity and continuity ...and examine the mutual relations of some and the features of those relations, and commensurabilities of others, and of yet others the proportions. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1061a32) | |
| A reaction: This sounds very much like the intuition of structuralism to me - that the subject is entirely about relations between things, with very little interest in the things themselves. See Aristotle on abstraction (under 'Thought'). |
| 13738 | It is a simple truth that the objects of mathematics have being, of some sort [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since there are not only separable things but also inseparable things (such as, for instance, things which are moving), it is also true to say simpliciter that the objects of mathematic have being and that they are of such a sort as is claimed. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1077b31) | |
| A reaction: This is almost Aristotle's only discussion of whether mathematical entities exist. They seem to have an 'inseparable' existence (the way properties do), but he evidently regards a denial of their existence (Field-style) as daft. |
| 12339 | Aristotle removes ontology from mathematics, and replaces the true with the beautiful [Aristotle, by Badiou] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, the de-ontologization of mathematics draws the beautiful into the place of the true. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Alain Badiou - Briefings on Existence 14 |
| 12421 | Kant's intuitions struggle to judge relevance, impossibility and exactness [Kitcher on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant's intuitions have the Irrelevance problem (which structures of the mind are just accidental?), the Practical Impossibility problem (how to show impossible-in-principle?), and the Exactness problem (are entities exactly as they seem?). | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 03.1 | |
| A reaction: [see Kitcher for an examination of these] Presumably the answer to all three must be that we have meta-intuitions about our intuitions, or else intuitions come with built-in criteria to deal with the three problems. We must intuit something specific. |
| 17617 | Maths is a priori, but without its relation to empirical objects it is meaningless [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Although all these principles .....are generated in the mind completely a priori, they would still not signify anything at all if we could not always exhibit their significance in appearances (empirical objects). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B299/A240) | |
| A reaction: This is the subtle Kantian move that we all have to take seriously when we try to assert 'realism' about anything. Our drive for meaning creates our world for us? |
| 12458 | Kant taught that mathematics is independent of logic, and cannot be grounded in it [Kant, by Hilbert] |
| Full Idea: Kant taught - and it is an integral part of his doctrine - that mathematics treats a subject matter which is given independently of logic. Mathematics, therefore, can never be grounded solely in logic. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by David Hilbert - On the Infinite p.192 | |
| A reaction: Presumably Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems endorse the Kantian view, that arithmetic is sui generis, and beyond logic. |
| 2795 | If 7+5=12 is analytic, then an infinity of other ways to reach 12 have to be analytic [Kant, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Kant claimed that 7+5=12 is synthetic a priori. If the concept of 12 analytically involves knowing 7+5, it also involves an infinity of other arithmetical ways to reach 12, which is inadmissible. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B205/A164) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 14.3 |
| 4475 | Saying a thing 'is' adds nothing to it - otherwise if my concept exists, it isn't the same as my concept [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We do not make the least addition to a thing when we declare the thing 'is'. Otherwise it would not be exactly the same thing that exists, but something more than we had thought in the concept, so we could not say the exact object of my concept exists. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B628/A600) | |
| A reaction: This still strikes me as a wonderful objection to the ontological argument for God. It raises the question of what 'is' does mean. Is it a 'quantifier'? What is the ontological status of a quantifier? |
| 568 | Some things exist as substances, others as properties of substances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some things are called things that are because they are substances, other things are called things that are because they are affections of a substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1003b07) |
| 12348 | There are four kinds of being: incidental, per se, potential and actual, and being as truth [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Δ.7 Aristotle lists four kinds of being ('to on'): incidental being, per se being, potential and actual being, and being as truth. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1017a07-) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance III.1 | |
| A reaction: These don't seem to be mutually exclusive, though the first two are, and potential and actual are. They look like three ways of getting at being. |
| 11194 | Being is either what falls in the categories, or what makes propositions true [Aristotle, by Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle says there are two proper uses of the term 'being': firstly, for whatever falls into one of Aristotle's ten basic categories of thing, and secondly for whatever makes a proposition true. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1017a21-35) by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) p.91 | |
| A reaction: The first sounds circular, because the categories must be selected for whatever has being (see Idea 11196). The first sounds Fregean, and very congenial to modern philosophy (though you need a clear notion of 'true'). Or it is being as truth-makers. |
| 11288 | Things are predicated of the basic thing, which isn't predicated of anything else [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The subject [to hupokeimenon, the underlying thing] is that of which other entities are said, it itself never being said-of anything else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029b36) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the core or basis of being in 'Categories', which is rejected in favour of the more substantial (and determinate and explanatory) 'essence' in 'Metaphysics'. |
| 15776 | There is only being in a certain way, and without that way there is no being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the thing has being, it has it in a certain way and, if it does not have being in a certain way, it does not have being at all. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051b34) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a key remark in ontology, and one that may not have been sufficiently heeded by Hegel and Heidegger. The only way to investigate being qua being is to investigate ways of being, which involves identity, categories etc. |
| 611 | Being, taken simply as being, is the domain of philosophy [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being qua being, taken universally and not in regard to some part of it, is the domain of the science of philosophy. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1060b23) |
| 11232 | Primary being ('proté ousia') exists in virtue of itself, not in relation to other things [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For something to be a primary being ('proté ousia') is for it to be a being, something that is, simply in virtue of itself ('kath' hauto') and not in virtue of its relation to other things. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.3 |
| 11234 | The three main candidates for primary being are particular, universal and essence; essence is the answer [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks there are three main candidates for primary being: the particular, the universal and the essence, and Aristotle will defend the third of these. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1028a33-6) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.4 | |
| A reaction: If you really want to understand this idea, you must study this bit of the text carefully, and examine the translation of key terms like 'ousia'. Lawson-Tancred's translation gives a very different picture from Politis's commentary! |
| 11279 | Primary being is either universals, or the basis of predication, or essence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle distinguishes three different answers to the question 'What is primary being?'; it is universals (which he thinks is Plato's answer); or it is the ultimate subject of predication (his answer in 'Categories'); or the essence (in 'Metaphysics'). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1028b25-) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 4.4 | |
| A reaction: I note that Michael Wedin argues that 'Metaphysics' is a development of 'Categories' rather than a change of view. The middle view has been unpacked nicely in modern discussions. The claim of essences needs more clarification. |
| 11293 | Non-primary beings lack essence, or only have a derived essence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle argues that non-primary beings either do not have an essence at all, or they have an essence only in a derived way. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: While I presume that Aristotle takes 'being' to be a univocal concept, he nevertheless divides it into 'primary' (or independent) and 'non-primary' (or dependent) being. His main subject of study is the primary version. |
| 11297 | Primary being is both the essence, and the subject of predication [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: On any interpretation, Aristotle argues that primary being with regard to each thing is both the essence of that thing and the ultimate subject of predication with regard to that thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: This is Politis's prelude to an account of conflicting interpretations over whether 'ousia' has one or two meanings for Aristotle. |
| 566 | If nothing exists except individuals, how can there be a science of infinity? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there is nothing else besides individuals, how is it possible to have a science of infinity? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0999a25) |
| 16090 | Being must be understood with reference to one primary sense - the being of substance [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Aristotle argues that the various senses of being must be understood with reference to being in one primary sense, the being of substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1 Intro) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance | |
| A reaction: This I take (with limited knowledge of such things) to be the key message that needs to be grasped by the followers of Hegel and Heidegger, who seem to think you can grasp Being either directly, or through human experience of it. |
| 570 | Nothing is added to a man's existence by saying he is 'one', or that 'he exists' [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is plausible that one man and a man in existence and a man simpliciter are the same thing. Nothing is added by extending the expression to 'He is one man' and 'He is one man that is'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1003b28) | |
| A reaction: A suggestion of a redundancy theory of truth. |
| 12061 | The primary subject seems to be substance, to the fullest extent [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A strong case can be made for the claim that it is the primary subject (to hupokeimenon) that is substance (ousia) to the fullest extent. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a01) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that 'ousia' is best translated as 'being'. Aristotle eventually rejects the view in this idea, which is roughly the idea of that being is mainly the bare substratum. |
| 10946 | Existence requires thisness, as quantity or quality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That which is means a thing with thisness, a quantity or a quality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030b12) | |
| A reaction: I'm happy with a 'quantity' to exist, either in countable or in non-countable form, but not totally convinced that we should treat 'qualities' as fully existing, given their dependence. |
| 16152 | Other types of being all depend on the being of substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The accounts of the other bearers of being depend on the account of substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b26) | |
| A reaction: This is the distinctively Aristotelian approach to the problem of Being. |
| 11295 | There is no being unless it is determinate and well-defined [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Apparently Aristotle thinks that if something is not a determinate and well-defined thing ..then it is not a being at all. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], id) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics | |
| A reaction: See Aristotle's account of 'matter', which seems to fit Politis's view. It is hard to go all the way with Aristotle on this, as indeterminate gunk (e.g. mud, which Plato so disliked!) seems to thoroughly exist. But for us it rests on determinate atoms. |
| 13735 | Aristotle discusses fundamental units of being, rather than existence questions [Aristotle, by Schaffer,J] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' virtually no existence questions are posed, and the whole discussion is about substances (fundamental units of being). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], id) by Jonathan Schaffer - On What Grounds What 1 | |
| A reaction: This means that the basic metaphysical question is actually about identity, though Schaffer claims that it is about grounding. Why would we care about grounding? Aristotle cares most about what makes a thing the thing it is. |
| 16118 | Nature is an active principle of change, like potentiality, but it is intrinsic to things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nature [phusis] is in the same genus as dunamis [power/potential], for it is an active principle of change, but not in another thing but in the thing itself qua itself. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1049a09) | |
| A reaction: [Gill's translation; Lawson-Tancred refers to 'A nature' rather than 'nature', which implies an essence]. It seems like phusis is intrinsic, and dunamis is relational. Two sorts of power? |
| 15768 | An actuality is usually thought to be a process [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: An actuality is thought most normally to be a process. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a30) | |
| A reaction: He comments of this that he wishes to include entelechies (unified items) in the general account, and not just processes. To present everything as fundamentally a process is a hard story to tell with full coherence, I think. |
| 11154 | Prior things can exist without posterior things, but not vice versa [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Prior things can have being without posterior things, without the posterior being able to have being without the prior, to adopt Plato's distinction. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019a04) | |
| A reaction: Fine quotes this, in expounding Aristotle's account of essence. |
| 7416 | Kant is read as the phenomena being 'contrained' by the noumenon, or 'free-floating' [Talbot on Kant] |
| Full Idea: The two readings of Kant depend on whether the world of phenomena is 'constrained' by the noumenon, or whether it is 'free-floating'. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Marianne Talbot - talk | |
| A reaction: The free-floating reading leads to idealism, since the noumenon then becomes a quite irrelevant part of Kant's theory, and can be dropped (since its existence means nothing if it has no causal role). On the first reading, constraint becomes interesting. |
| 12095 | Knowledge of potential is universal and indefinite; of the actual it is definite and of individuals [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Knowledge is a double thing, being both potential and actual. It is universal and indefinite and it is the potentiality of something that is universal and indefinite. But actuality is definite and of something definite, being the this-such of a this-such. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1087a12) | |
| A reaction: Charlotte Witt identifies this as a key idea in 'Metaphysics', since the metaphysics is built on the epistemology, and this idea justifies the claim that Aristotle gives priority to particulars. I thoroughly approve. Not all knowledge is of the universal. |
| 19386 | Without the subject or the senses, space and time vanish, as their appearances disappear [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If we remove our own subject or even ....the senses in general, then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B059/A42) | |
| A reaction: This is as clear a statement of anti-realist idealism as I have ever found in Kant. You can interpret him as a thorough scientific realist, but you have to put a tricky spin on passages like this. Or maybe only the 'appearances' of space and time vanish? |
| 21445 | Even the most perfect intuition gets no closer to things in themselves [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Even if we could bring this intuition of ours to the highest degree of distinctiveness we would not thereby come any closer to the constitution of objects in themselves. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B060/A43) | |
| A reaction: Either slightly ridiculous anti-realism, or a self-evident platitude. Personally I think I know the reality of trees pretty well, but to totally embrace their constitution I would have to become a tree (an Ent). My experience of me is only partial. |
| 11256 | Materialists cannot explain change [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's main objection against the materialists (such as Thales and Anaximenes) is that they cannot explain why things change as they do. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0988b23-) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 |
| 21448 | Categories are general concepts of objects, which determine the way in which they are experienced [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The categories are the concepts of an object in general, by means of which its intuition is regarded as determined with regard to one of the logical functions of government. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B128/A95) | |
| A reaction: These are Kant's 'transcendental' categories. I'm wondering what he made of our more normal categories, such as animal species, genera etc. |
| 5554 | Categories are necessary, so can't be implanted in us to agree with natural laws [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If one proposed a middle way, that categories are subjective predispositions for thinking, implanted in us so that their use would agree exactly with the laws of nature,..then the categories would lack the necessity which is essential to their concept. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B167) | |
| A reaction: Kant might want to rethink this once he got the hang of the theory of evolution. If we have innate categories, they must have some survival value. I don't understand Kant's claim that the categories are necessary. They just reflect nature. |
| 6160 | Does Kant say the mind imposes categories, or that it restricts us to them? [Rowlands on Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is unclear whether Kant says the mind imposes space and time and categories, such as substance and cause and effect, on empirical objects, or whether our mind restricts our cognition to such features of noumenal objects. Imposition, say the majority. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Mark Rowlands - Externalism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: Rowlands says, rightly, that Kant probably thought the mind imposed categories, but that he should have said that it restricts us to them. The imposition view leads to idealism, anti-realism and madness; restriction is common sense, really. |
| 12347 | The immediate divisions of that which is are genera, each with its science [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The immediate divisions of that which is are genera, and there will be one science for each genus. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1004a04) | |
| A reaction: This is robustly realist, and right at the heart of Aristotle's philosophy. It explains why essences and forms must be given through genera and differentiae, even though essences are individual. Genera are the only way to identify things. |
| 7935 | There cannot be uninstantiated properties [Aristotle, by Macdonald,C] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle held that there could be no uninstantiated properties. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Bk 04) by Cynthia Macdonald - Varieties of Things | |
| A reaction: This is obviously a right hook aimed at Plato. Clearly we can think about uninstantiated properties, but the literal truth of Aristotle's view I would take to be tautological. To exist is to be instantiated. |
| 16161 | Properties are just the ways in which forms are realised at various times [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: On Aristotle's new theory it is forms that exist in their own right, whereas properties merely constitute the way forms of a certain kind are realized at some point of time in their existence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Michael Frede - Substance in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' p.80 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure that 'merely' gives us enough of a story here. I never understand the word 'realised' (or 'instantiated', come to that). What does x have to do to realise y? Is that a relation between a real and a non-real thing? |
| 15109 | The 'propriae' or 'necessary accidents' of a thing are separate, and derived from the essence [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle conceives of the necessary features of objects, traditionally known as the 'propria' or 'necessary accidents', as being distinct and derivate from, the essential features of objects. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Kathrin Koslicki - Essence, Necessity and Explanation 13.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a vague area, because Aristotle says very little about it. See Ideas 12266 and 12262. A particular shape of mole might be yours alone, but not part of your essence. That may be an 'idion' rather than a 'propria' (or are they the same?). |
| 17849 | For two things to differ in some respect, they must both possess that respect [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: That which is different is different from something under some aspect, so that there must be something the same in respect of which they differ. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054b26) |
| 7686 | For Aristotle, there are only as many properties as actually exist [Aristotle, by Jacquette] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's metaphysics of substance, there are only as many properties as actually inhere in existent spatiotemporal particulars. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Dale Jacquette - Ontology Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This would mean, oddly, that squareness ceased to be a property if the last square thing vanished. But then how do we establish the existence of unrealised properties? Is 'bigger than the biggest existent object' a property? |
| 10947 | Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whiteness can be explained without man, but femaleness cannot be explained without animal. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030b28) | |
| A reaction: This has to be a key basic distinction in any discussion of properties. But does the difference in explanation entail a difference in fundamental nature? Femaleness is structural. |
| 10956 | If we only saw bronze circles, would bronze be part of the concept of a circle? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose we only ever saw bronze circles - would that make the bronze a formal part of the circle? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1036b01) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle spotting the problem of coextensionality (the renate/cordate problem) 2300 years ago. Don't underestimate those Greeks. |
| 16113 | Potentiality is a principle of change, in another thing, or as another thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality [dunamis] is a principle of change either (a) for something else or (b) for the thing that it is in qua something else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1046a10) | |
| A reaction: Gill emphasises that it is partly an active principle of change. It seems like an ability to affect, or to be affected. |
| 16114 | Active 'dunamis' is best translated as 'power' or 'ability' (rather than 'potentiality') [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: When Aristotle uses the word 'dunamis' in the active sense, we might prefer the translation 'power', 'ability', or 'capacity' to 'potentiality'. He uses the same word to indicate both active power and passive responsiveness. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Theta) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.6 | |
| A reaction: This gives licence to a direct link between Aristotle's account of potential and modern ascriptions of powers in scientific essentialism. |
| 11387 | The main characteristic of the source of change is activity [energeia] [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle undoubtedly considered the central characteristic of the ultimate cause of change to be activity [energeia]. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Bk 12) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 8.8 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle identifies this, of course, with his 'God', but it strikes me that the word 'power' (as in Molnar) seems to capture Aristotle's concept. We just need some fundamental active force to get the whole shebang going. |
| 15773 | Actualities are arranged by priority, going back to what initiates process [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: One actuality always has temporal priority over another, going back to that which always, and in a primary way, initiates process. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1050b05) | |
| A reaction: I am not clear from the context whether he is referring to things which have fundamental powers, or whether he is referring to the one great First Cause. |
| 16753 | Giving the function of a house defines its actuality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those who propose that a house is 'a receptacle to shelter chattels and living beings', or something of the sort, speak of the actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1043a16) | |
| A reaction: This, with Idea 16752, endorses the idea that the function is the essence of something. The eye is natural, the house is an artifact. This seems different from the concept of form implied elsewhere. He says materials of a house are just potential. |
| 15780 | Potentiality in geometry is metaphorical [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Potentiality in geometry is spoken of metaphorically. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019b31) | |
| A reaction: The point here is that if one wanted to give an account of properties in an active way (perhaps in accord with causation, as Shoemaker suggests), then the properties of mathematics could also be included in this Aristotelian way. |
| 11938 | The Megarans say something is only capable of something when it is actually doing it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is a popular view in Megara, that x is capable of being/doing the F only when it actually is/does the F. So the non-builder is no bearer of a potentiality for building - but only when the builder is engaged in his building. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1046b28) | |
| A reaction: This Megaran view is the extreme denial of dispositions are real features of the world. They seem to reduce to mere descriptions, when the reality is the actual activity itself. Megarans would now be called 'actualists'. |
| 15766 | Megaran actualism is just scepticism about the qualities of things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In the Megaran view, there will be nothing cold or hot or pleasant or perceptible at all unless someone is currently observing it. So this Megaran wisdom turns out to boil down to rehashed Protagoras. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a10) | |
| A reaction: I don't think you can defeat the rejection of modal features of reality that easily. The Megarans might, I suppose, be called verificationists. What is the semantic value of a statement about potential? |
| 15767 | Megaran actualists prevent anything from happening, by denying a capacity for it to happen! [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: I take it that anything deprived of its potential lacks capacity. But then anything not currently happening will lack the capacity to happen. ...Our brilliant Megaran friends will now have done away with all process and generation! | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047a15) | |
| A reaction: The reply, implied in Idea 15490, is that you answer this by examining more closely exactly what is meant by a 'capacity', and showing that it can only boil to down to what is actual. |
| 17772 | Kant claims causal powers are relational rather than intrinsic [Kant, by Bayne] |
| Full Idea: Kant argues that an object's causal powers are not intrinsic to it but feature among its relational properties. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tim Bayne - Thought: a very short introduction Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: [He doesn't give a reference for this] Put in this simple way, rather than obfuscated by Kant's arcane lexis, this sounds utterly false to me. Giving relations and functions explains nothing. How are those relations and functions possible? |
| 11379 | Substance is not a universal, as the former is particular but a universal is shared [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substance of each thing is something that is peculiar to each thing, not pertaining to anything else, whereas the universal is something common. Indeed, a thing is said to be a universal just if its nature pertains to a plurality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b10) | |
| A reaction: This should be a warning to those who talk of the 'Aristotelian' view of properties as universals instantiated in the particulars. Once one has pinpointed the substance, the subject of predication, and the essence, no room is left for universals. |
| 12096 | Universals are indeterminate and only known in potential, because they are general [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: The notion of generality provides an explanation for Aristotle's position that the universal - every universal - is indeterminate and, hence, the object of potential knowledge. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], univs) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.3 | |
| A reaction: [See Idea 12095 for knowledge of potential and actual] Now you're talking! The idea that universals are central to true knowledge seems wildly misguided. All knowledge is rooted in particulars, where the highest certainties are to be found. |
| 649 | The acquisition of scientific knowledge is impossible without universals [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The acquisition of scientific knowledge is impossible without universals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086b03) |
| 12094 | No universals exist separately from particulars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No universal exists over and above, and separately from, the particulars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1040b27) | |
| A reaction: [At last I have found one of Aristotle's most famous ideas!] His hallmark of a universal is that it is found in many particulars, but then we ask whether they are identical (universals) or merely resembling (tropes). |
| 10948 | Forms are said to be substances to which nothing is prior [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose that there are certain substances to which neither other substances nor other natures are prior. It is such substances that certain philosophers assert the Forms to be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1031a30) | |
| A reaction: Then there is the difficulty of explaining 'prior', which presumably must be an objective relation, not a mere priority in human understanding or explanation or definition. |
| 643 | How can the Forms both be the substance of things and exist separately from them? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How can the Forms, while being the substances of things, have being separately from them? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1080a01) |
| 633 | If you accept Forms, you must accept the more powerful principle of 'participating' in them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you accept the theory of Forms, you must allow that there is also another more powerful principle. Only thus can you answer the question why something has come to participate, or is participating. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075b18) |
| 16110 | If partaking explains unity, what causes participating, and what is participating? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On account of the difficulty [about unity] some philosophers have espoused participation, though this plunges them into difficulties about what the cause of the participation is, or indeed what participating is anyway. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b07) | |
| A reaction: The target here is Plato, and I agree with the criticism. Exactly the same problems face those who talk of an object 'instantiating' a property. I have no idea what such a relationship could be. |
| 647 | There is a confusion because Forms are said to be universal, but also some Forms are separable and particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The root problem of the theory of Forms is that they posit Forms that are universal and at the same time Forms that are separable and therefore particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086a28) |
| 9483 | Forms have to be their own paradigms, which seems to fuse the paradigm and the copy [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Forms would have to function as paradigms not just for other entities, but also for themselves. ..But this produces an absurd fusion of the paradigm and the copy. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079b28) | |
| A reaction: A nice succinct statement of the problem of self-predication (which leads to the Third Man regress, if we posit another Form as a paradigm of the Form we are interested in). |
| 640 | All attempts to prove the Forms are either invalid, or prove Forms where there aren't supposed to be any [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All methods employed to demonstrate the Forms either cannot be formulated validly, or produce Forms even for those things for which there are not supposed to be any Forms. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079a04) |
| 641 | Are there forms for everything, or for negations, or for destroyed things? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The Argument from Sciences produces Forms for every possible object of science! One-over-many arguments produce Forms for negations! The Argument from the Thought of a Perished Object gives Forms for destroyed things! | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079a07) |
| 16108 | If men exist by participating in two forms (Animal and Biped), they are plural, not unities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Why is man not Animal and Biped together? Then it will not be by participating in Man (or any other unity) that men exist but by doing so in two things, Animal and Biped. Then man would not be a unity but a plurality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045a17) | |
| A reaction: This is perhaps Aristotle's deepest metaphysical objection to the whole Plato programme, that it blocks a decent account of the unity of particulars, on which our whole understanding of the world rests. |
| 4470 | Aristotle is not asserting facts about the location of properties, but about their ontological status [Aristotle, by Moreland] |
| Full Idea: The debate between Platonists and Aristotelians about universals is not a debate about the 'location' of the properties, but about the ontological independence of the properties from their instances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082) by J.P. Moreland - Universals Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Of course, assertions about their location might have strong implications about whether they were ontologically independent. |
| 605 | The Forms have to be potentialities, not actual knowledge or movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If there are Forms (as the purely logical thinkers claim), there must be something which is much more knowable than the Form of Knowledge, and something more fully moved than the Form of Movement. The Forms will be mere potentialities. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1050b32) |
| 645 | If two is part of three then numbers aren't Forms, because they would all be intermingled [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On our theory two is part of three….so it will not be possible for a number to be a Form, on pain of one Form's being present in another and all Forms turning out to be parts of some one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082b29) |
| 16145 | Predications only pick out kinds of things, not things in themselves [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: None of the things predicated in common picks out a this-thing-here, but rather such-and-such a kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1039a01) | |
| A reaction: He is in the process of denying that predicates pick out real substances [real being, 'ousia'], but this is clearly aimed at Plato. |
| 618 | There is no point at all in the theory of Forms unless it contains a principle that produces movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is no advantage at all in the admission of eternal substances, as in the Theory of Forms, unless there is among them a principle capable of moving something else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071b11) |
| 642 | What possible contribution can the Forms make to perceptible entities? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What possible contribution can the Forms make to perceptible entities? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1079b08) |
| 21449 | The a priori concept of objects in general is the ground of experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Concepts of objects in general lie at the ground of all experiential cognition as a priori conditions. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B126/A93) | |
| A reaction: Does Kant have an a priori insight that process philosophy, or philosophy based entirely on relations, are wrong? |
| 5533 | Objects in themselves are not known to us at all [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Objects in themselves are not known to us at all. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B045/A30) | |
| A reaction: It is the phrase "at all" which is interesting. It suggests that Kant is in no way a representative realist, though it is hard to place him within the labels of phenomenalism/idealism/anti-realism. |
| 16158 | Form and matter may not make up a concrete particular, because there are also accidents like weight [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The concrete, particular object actually is a composite not just of matter and form, but also a large number of accidents, like size, weight, colour. So we should not assume that the composite of matter and form is identified with the concrete particular. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Michael Frede - Substance in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' p.74 | |
| A reaction: That gives a nice well-rounded picture of how we should understand a physical object, to fit it into the rest of our conceptual scheme, and the way we think about it. |
| 16086 | Objects lacking matter are intrinsic unities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With things that do not have matter, they are all unities of a kind simpliciter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b24) | |
| A reaction: Are all abstract objects unities? Are all sets Aristotelian unities? Only the brackets unify a disparate bunch of things. Are the primes one object or many? If many, each one needs an intrinsic unity to pick it out. The group of primes lacks matter. |
| 10945 | Some philosophers say that in some qualified way non-existent things 'are' [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers treat that is which not by making the logical point that that which is not is - not without qualification, but just that it is a thing which is not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030a22) | |
| A reaction: He is mainly refer to the mature works of Plato, especially 'Parmenides', in which he seems to have been mesmerised by that problem of referring to what doesn't exist. Key question: is there more than one way to 'exist'? |
| 11247 | To know a thing is to know its primary cause or explanation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Each man has knowledge when we think that he knows the primary cause or explanation ('proté aitia'). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0983a25) | |
| A reaction: This seems to me to be the best starting point for individuation. Finding the 'origin' is not quite the same as finding the cause, and finding the 'role' or 'function' is parasitic on the underlying explanation or cause. |
| 12062 | Aristotle's form improves on being non-predicable as a way to identify a 'this' [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Later in 'Metaphysics' Aristotle sees form as offering better prospects of separability and being a this, and treats separability and being a 'this' as better indicators of substancehood than not being a predicable. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], hylom) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.5 | |
| A reaction: 'Form' will be the word 'eidos', which is also Plato's word for his 'Forms'. I'm thinking that form will bestow individual identity, as in the snubness of a particular nose, where merely being 'a nose' only gives general identity. |
| 16160 | For Aristotle, things are not made individual by some essential distinguishing mark [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It just is not the case that individuals are the individuals they are by virtue of some intrinsic essential distinguishing mark. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], id) by Michael Frede - Substance in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' p.78 | |
| A reaction: That invites the question what does distinguish qualitatively identical things from one another. I'm not sure if Aristotle even bothers about that question. |
| 16156 | Individuals within a species differ in their matter, form and motivating cause [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even things in the same species have different causes, differing not, evidently, by species but in as much as particular things have different causes. For instance, your matter, form and motive cause are all different from mine. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071a27) | |
| A reaction: Yes! This is the answer to my problem of the docile tiger, which has its own character, as well as the generic form of a tiger. Aristotle is firmly committed to the priority of individual over species. |
| 16163 | Aristotle says that the form is what makes an entity what it is [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Z it seems that it is the form that provides the object with its identity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics | |
| A reaction: See Aristotle on 'Hylomorphism' for what this means. By form he means a combination of structure, dispositions and controlling principles. |
| 590 | Things are one numerically in matter, formally in their account, generically in predicates, and by analogy in relations [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are numerically one in matter, formally one in their account, generically one in their pattern of predication [genos], and one by analogy if related to a further one. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1016b30) | |
| A reaction: Very subtle distinctions. What I like is that the notion of numerical unity is comprehensively tied to the notion of individual identity. 'To be is to be countable' may be wrong, but it is better than Quine's 'to be is to be the value of a variable' |
| 603 | How is man a unity of animal and biped, especially if the Forms of animal and of biped exist? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What makes man a unity, and not a plurality of, say, animal and biped? Especially if, as some claim, Animal Itself and Biped Itself exist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045a13) |
| 10949 | Primary things just are what-it-is-to-be-that-thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Our conclusion is as follows: with things that are primary and spoken of per se, the what-it-was-to-be-that-thing and the thing itself are one and the same. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1032a05) | |
| A reaction: It is tantalizing to know whether or not Aristotle has really said anything here. It might be clearer if we said 'a thing is its essence', but that may not be quite what he is saying. [P.S. V.Politis translates as 'essence'!] |
| 17838 | Things may be naturally unified because they involve an indivisible process [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Among things naturally simple those [may] have unity and priority fully whose processes are relatively indivisible and simple. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a20) | |
| A reaction: This is the first of four theories of unity which he offers for discussion. If the process bestows unity, you then have to judge the process as unified. If the indivisibility bestows unity, then things other than processes can be indivisible. |
| 17841 | The formal cause may be what unifies a substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A thing may be formally indivisible, something cognitively and scientifically indivisible. Hence what cause substances to be single things should be thought of as the primary unity. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a31) | |
| A reaction: This is his fourth and final proposal for unity, and it is obviously his preferred theory, because it is the hylomorphic view, that the form or nature of the thing bestows the unity. It is sort of right, but a rather thin theory as it stands. |
| 17840 | A unity may just be a particular, a numerically indivisible thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: [A thing may be unified because it is] the numerically indivisible, the particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a30) | |
| A reaction: One of four possible theories of unity. This one seems to beg the question, or only to offer unity as a primitive, unanalysable concept. Only abstract objects strike us as utterly indivisible. |
| 17860 | Things are unified by contact, mixture and position [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some things are one by contact, some by mixture, and some by position. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1082a16) | |
| A reaction: So if several things are stuck together, or mixed together, or in the same location, that can unify them? They sound rather weak modes of unification. |
| 13272 | Things are one to the extent that they are indivisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In general those things that do not admit of division [diairesis] are one insofar as they do not admit of it. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1016b03) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle gives a man, an animal and a magnitude as examples. The interesting thing here is that being 'one' seems to come in degrees, where most metaphysicians long for oneness to be an absolute. |
| 17842 | Indivisibility is the cause of unity, either in movement, or in the account or thought [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The reason why all things are unities is indivisibility. In some, it is indivisibility with regard to movement, in others with regard to thought and the account. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a35) | |
| A reaction: This is puzzling, since Aristotle wasn't an atomist, and therefore thought that everything was endlessly divisible. He might better have said that unified things 'strongly resist division'. |
| 17839 | Some things are unified by their account, which rests on a unified thought about the thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Other things get to be unities by dint of the fact that the account [logos] of them is single, ...a thought about which is a single thought, ...which is an indivisible thought, ..which is a thought about a formally or numerically indivisible object. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a28) | |
| A reaction: This highlights the distinction between things that seem intrinsically unified, and things on which we bestow unity. But note that towards the end of the quotation Aristotle elides the two together. |
| 12076 | Substance is prior in being separate, in definition, and in knowledge [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian substance is prior in three ways: it is prior to nonsubstance in being separate, it is prior in definition, and it is prior in knowledge. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 2.4 | |
| A reaction: 'Being separate' means it doesn't dependent on anything else, so it is prior because it is fundamental, in relations of ontological dependence. |
| 11284 | It is wrong to translate 'ousia' as 'substance' [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: It is wrong to translate 'ousia' as 'substance', or 'proté ousia' as 'primary substance'. 'Substance' is a particular answer to the question 'What is proté ousia?' The Latin 'substantia' means 'that which lies under', translating 'to hupokeimenon'. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], subst) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be rather important in the exegesis of Aristotle's metaphysics, but Politis seems to hold a minority view, even though what he says here is very persuasive. |
| 592 | The baffling question of what exists is asking about the nature of substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Philosophers have endlessly discussed and been baffled by the question 'What is that which is?' Now this question just is the question 'What is substance (ousia)?' | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1028b04) | |
| A reaction: Vasilis Politis says 'ousia' is 'primary being'. 'Substance' is a theory about the nature of primary being. |
| 11231 | 'Ousia' is 'primary being' not 'primary substance' [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: We choose to translate 'proté ousia' (often simply 'ousia') as 'primary being' and not as 'primary substance'. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: His point, explained later, is that the idea that 'ousia' is substance is a theory being proposed by Aristotle, not the meaning of the word. |
| 569 | If substance is the basis of reality, then philosophy aims to understand substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If, in the case of things that are, the primary object is substance, then we can state the fundamental duty of the philosopher: it is to gain possession of the principles and causes of substances. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1003b19) |
| 615 | The Pre-Socratics were studying the principles, elements and causes of substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The enquiries of the pre-Socratic philosophers were really into the principles, elements and causes of substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1069a20) |
| 5550 | A substance could exist as a subject, but not as a mere predicate [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A substance is something that could exist as a subject but never as a mere predicate. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B149) | |
| A reaction: Interesting to see Kant asserting the idea of substance a century after many philosophers thought they had dispensed with this Aristotelian notion (e.g. Ideas 3628 and Idea 2714). It has crept back into modern metaphysics too (e.g. in Wiggins). |
| 599 | We may have to postulate unobservable and unknowable substances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It may well be necessary that certain unobserved substances exist as it is, even if we cannot know which they are. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041a02) |
| 16778 | Mature Aristotle sees organisms as the paradigm substances [Aristotle, by Pasnau] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's mature ontology takes biological organisms as its paradigm substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 26.1 | |
| A reaction: 'Mature' is here to eliminate 'Categories' where, I take it, any coherent object counts as a substance, with the categories giving the essence. Organism are more clearly categorised, but that's all. Van Inwagen makes this idea a key one. |
| 16084 | Is a primary substance a foundation of existence, or the last stage of understanding? [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: In Categories a primary substance has ontological priority, where other things depend on its existence, ..but in Metaphysics he emphasizes conceptual priority, where the primary is what is understood through itself (a definable unity). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], book) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Intro | |
| A reaction: Interesting for my view of essence as rooted in explanation. It is the Metaphysics version that appeals to me. A metaphysics is constructed from our modes of understanding. 'Concavity' is his example of a primary unity. |
| 600 | Elements and physical objects are substances, but ideas and mathematics are not so clear [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Fire, earth, water and air, and other simple bodies are agreed to be substances, as are plants, plant parts, animals, animal parts, and the heavens and their parts. Forms and mathematicals are more controversial. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1042a07) |
| 595 | It is matter that turns out to be substance [ousia] [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: On this account as it stands, it is matter that turns out to be substance [ousia] | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a10) |
| 11299 | Substance [ousia] is the subject of predication and cause [aitia?] of something's existence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are said to be substance [ousia] because, far from being predicated of some subject, other things are predicated of them; in another way, for an intrinsic thing, it is the cause of being for it, as the soul is for the animal | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1017a13-23) | |
| A reaction: This passage is used by M. Woods and others to argue that Aristotle has two different meanings for 'ousia' [substance, being]. Vasilis Politis argues against this view (pp.228). Aristotle is probably making two observations about a single thing. |
| 12060 | Essence (fixed by definition) is also 'ousia', so 'ousia' is both ultimate subject, and a this-thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The essence (to ti en einai), whose account (logos) is a definition, is also said to be the substance (ousia) of the particular. So there are two accounts of 'ousia' - as ultimate subject (hupokeimenon), never predicated of others, or as a this (tode ti). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1017a22-) | |
| A reaction: This slightly muddling assertion seems to be a report of how people use 'ousia', rather than Aristotle's theory. Attempts to translate this idea into English make fascinating reading! Hang on to the Greek, or you'll never get the hang of it! |
| 10941 | A substance is what-it-is-to-be, or the universal, or the genus, or the subject of saying [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substance of a particular thing is variously held to be that which it was to be that thing, or the universal, or the genus, or the subject, which is that of which other entities are said, but is never itself being said-of anything else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1028b30) | |
| A reaction: This formulation sounds worryingly verbal to me, but I don't suppose Aristotle meant it entirely that way. |
| 11290 | Matter is not substance, because substance needs separability and thisness [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It may seem that matter is substance, but this cannot be so, because what we think to be the central features of substance are separability and thisness. Then it seems more plausible to say that the form and the composite are substance than matter is. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a27) | |
| A reaction: This is an important basic point, because modern materialism takes matter (of some sort) to be basic, but Aristotle seems to take identity (and form and essence) to be basic, and matter to be merely at their service. |
| 10959 | The substance is the form dwelling in the object [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substance is the form dwelling in the object, and from it the substance that is a composite of the form and of matter is said to be a substance. So concavity is a substance, the composite of which and of nose are snub nose and snubness. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037a29) | |
| A reaction: So there is simple substance [ousia?] and composite substance. Notice the startling example that concavity is a substance. Think hard about that. Substance, but not as we know it, Jim. |
| 12093 | Substance is unified and universals are diverse, so universals are not substance [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's argument is that if we understand the substance of a thing to be that which unifies it, and if we understand that a universal is predicated of many things, then we will see that a universal cannot be the substance of a thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b1-15) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle | |
| A reaction: Presumably if universals are predicated of something, or something 'partakes' of the universal, then we want to know about the 'something', not about the universal. But do we end up with substances being 'bare particulars'? |
| 12362 | A thing's substance is its primary cause of being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substance of each thing ...is the primary cause of being for it. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041b27) | |
| A reaction: Wedin says that here Aristotle announces this 'with finality'. This is 'for each thing', and hence is essence at the level of the individual, not of the kind. Identifying the 'cause of being' of a thing is taken to be its best possible explanation. |
| 607 | None of the universals can be a substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: None of the universals can be a substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1053b13) |
| 11233 | In Aristotle, 'proté ousia' is 'primary being', and 'to hupokeimenon' is 'that which lies under' (or 'substance') [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The claim that 'proté ousia' is substance is a particular answer to 'What is proté ousia?', so 'substance' is not what it means. The Latin 'substantia' translates Aristotle's 'to hupokeimenon' ('that which lies under'). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: It seems that in 'Categories' Aristotle identified 'primary being' with 'that which lies under', but the notion of 'essence' comes into the picture in 'Metaphysics'. Big problems of textual exegesis. |
| 12079 | Substance is distinct being because of its unity [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle holds that substances are distinct from other beings by virtue of their high degree of unity. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4 | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that the notion of 'substance' (translating 'ousia' thus) can't mean anything more than 'being with identity'. Then 'essence' is offered as that which bestows the identity on the being. |
| 21451 | All appearances need substance, as that which persists through change [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All appearances contain that which persists (substance) as the object itself, and that which can change as its mere determination (i.e. the way in which the object exists). ...[2nd ed] In all change of appearances substance persists. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B224/A182) | |
| A reaction: This is a full-blooded commitment by Kant to the traditional Aristotelian concept of a substance which endures through the change in its accidental features. Though in Kant's case the commitment is 'transcendental', not realist. |
| 5564 | Substance must exist, as the persisting substratum of the process of change [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Since all effect consists in that which happens, consequently in the changeable, which indicates succession in time, the ultimate subject of the changeable is therefore that which persists, as the substratum of everything that changes, i.e. the substance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B250/A205) | |
| A reaction: The idea that 'something' changes seems to involve a commitment to substances, but not if one thing is replaced by another. It is not clear that the abandonment of the concept of substance leads to a total collapse of our metaphysics. |
| 10951 | The statue is not called 'stone' but 'stoney' [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The statue is not called 'stone' but 'stoney'. ...The building is said to be 'bricked', not 'bricks'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1033a08) | |
| A reaction: We have the same distinction in English (best expressed as 'made of stone'). The point is that in thought we identify a statue as primarily something other than the stone of which it is made, though that may not prove anything about reality. |
| 16096 | Statues depend on their bronze, but bronze doesn't depend on statues [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: The form of a statue depends upon bronze (or some similar stuff) for its existence, while the bronze has no comparable need for the form of the statue. The bronze can exist before acquiring the form, and continue after the form has been removed. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z.3) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Some would cite this as precisely the modal difference between them that seems to suggest they are two objects. I would say that their different status shows that they shouldn't be thought of as two 'objects'. An object with two natures? |
| 16085 | Primary matter and form make a unity, one in potentiality, the other in actuality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The last [primary] matter and the shape-form [morphe] are the same and a unity, the one in potentiality and the other in actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b19) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be exactly the statue/clay problem, that they have different modal properties, although coinciding in actuality. |
| 11285 | The form of a thing is its essence and its primary being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: By form [eidos] I mean the essence [to ti en einai] of each thing and its primary being [prote ousia]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1032b01) | |
| A reaction: [Tr. Vasilis Politis. Lawson-Tancred has 'what-it-was-to-be-that-thing' instead of 'essence', and 'substance' instead of 'being']. This may be the single most important sentence in 'Metaphysics' for understanding his theory of being. Cf. 'formal cause'. |
| 11251 | Plato says changing things have no essence; Aristotle disagrees [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Plato argues that changing things, even if they are somehow real, do not have an essence; but Aristotle argues that changing things have a changeless essence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.4 |
| 12345 | In 'Metaphysics' Z substantial primacy (as form) is explanatory rather than ontological [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Z substantial primacy, in the guise of form, has an explanatory rather than an ontological role. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance Intro | |
| A reaction: I take this to be the correct way to understand Aristotle, and the correct way to understand the concept of essence. We don't observe essences, but the concept of essence is forced upon us when we seek the best explanation of things. |
| 16147 | In 'Metaphysics' substantial forms take over from objects as primary [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Though he retains objects from the 'Categories', in 'Metaphysics' these yield their status as primary substances to their substantial forms. Concrete particulars are now secondary, and that which underlies everything is the substantial form. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], book) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: Frede says he moved from realism about substances to nominalism. Presumably substances within objects are real concreta, but forms are abstract, leaving the the object as a purely material thing. |
| 12084 | Essential form is neither accidental nor necessary to matter, so it appears not to be a property [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Form is not an accidental property of matter, and it is not a necessary property of matter. These considerations make it unlikely that Aristotle holds form or essence to be a property of matter in the composite substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4.5 | |
| A reaction: I suppose form bestows the identity, and the identity gives rise to the properties. But you don't create identity on Monday, and add the properties on Tuesday, so forming an entity and giving it properties seem to coincide. |
| 16119 | Aristotle's cosmos is ordered by form, and disordered by matter [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian universe is a world of tension and commotion - ordered and preserved by form, disordered by matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], hylom) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: This connects Aristotle quite strongly with presocratic predecessors like Heraclitus and Empedocles. But then it fits perfectly with modern discussions of entropy, and the forces that hold entropy back. |
| 16148 | Aristotle moved from realism to nominalism about substances [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's earlier 'Categories' theory of substance, and his later 'Metaphysics' theory, are radically different. The first is realistic, and the second nominalistic. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: Frede claims that 'Categories' is clearly earlier. It is certainly profoundly different from 'Metaphysics'. |
| 16112 | A substance is a proper subject because the matter is a property of the form, not vice versa [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: In Aristotle's theory a substantial form can count as a proper subject, since the generic matter of which the form is predicated is in fact a property of the form rather than the form's being a property of it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ousia) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.5 | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure if I understand the idea of matter being the 'property' of a form, but 'matter' [hule] seems to be a particular way of thinking about stuff when it participates in an object, rather than just the amorphous stuff. Just 'predicated of'? |
| 12002 | Aristotle doesn't think essential properties are those which must belong to a thing [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: Aristotelian essentialism is not correctly portrayed as the view that an essential property is such that it must belong to everything to which it belongs at all. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation VII | |
| A reaction: The view I am arriving at is that essences are rather fluid things, which change their balance and constitution continually. Old people differ essentially from their younger selves. Chemical natural kinds have stable essences, but that is contingent. |
| 16164 | Forms of sensible substances include unrealised possibilities, so are not fully actual [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: The forms of sensible substances are not pure actualities; they in part are constituted by unrealized possibilities and in that sense are not fully real. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics p.90 | |
| A reaction: Frede suggests that the form of the Unmoved Mover is the ideal case, because it is fully actual. I like the present idea, because it includes modal truths (i.e. dispositions and powers) in the form which gives a thing its nature. |
| 12071 | Essences are not properties (since those can't cause individual substances) [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: An essence is not a property (or a cluster of properties) of the substance whose essence it is, ...because no property (no Aristotelian property) can be the cause of being of an actual individual substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: This is the third of Witt's three unorthodox theses, mainly in defence of individual essences in Aristotle. The first two seem to me to be correct, and the third one is interesting. I'm inclined to think that essences are powers, found below properties. |
| 16095 | Some forms, such as the Prime Mover, are held by Aristotle to exist without matter [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's theory also includes a special group of forms that can exist without matter, of which the Prime Mover is an instance, and these forms are separate not only in account but also in existence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch 1 | |
| A reaction: I am curious about her other examples. This must be the closest that Aristotle gets to his teacher's view of the Forms. |
| 15853 | A true substance is constituted by some nature, which is a principle [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Only those objects are substances which are being constituted under, and by, some nature, ..so that this nature, which is a principle rather than an element, is their substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041b31) | |
| A reaction: My view is that Aristotle never got to the point of articulating his hylomorphism, so this is just him fishing around, and pointing to where others should investigate. What sort of 'principle'? |
| 16109 | Things are a unity because there is no clash between potential matter and actual shape/form [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The problem of unity disappears if our account is adopted. We allow a matter component and a shape/form component, one existing potentially the other in actuality. …The account is of a unity because one component is material, the other shape/form. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045a24) | |
| A reaction: It sounds as though the solution is that matter is material and form is abstract, so there is no rivalry. Elsewhere form seems more like a mechanism or a set of powers. |
| 16088 | Aristotle's solution to the problem of unity is that form is an active cause or potentiality or nature [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: The solution to the problem of unity will finally depend upon Aristotle's doctrine of form as an active cause, or, as he refers to form within his broader theory of potentiality and actuality, an active potentiality [dunamis] or nature [phusis]. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], hylom) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Intro | |
| A reaction: Her intermediate proposal to the solution of the problem in Idea 16083 is that matter only survives through change potentially and not actually. |
| 12301 | Every distinct thing has matter, as long as it isn't an essence or a Form [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Everything has a sort of matter [hule], provided only that it is not a what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [ti en einai] and a per se Form Itself [eidos auto kath' auto] but a possessor of thisness [tode ti]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1037a01) | |
| A reaction: Kit Fine quotes this to support the claim that Aristotelian 'matter' is not confined to physical objects. Aristotle's essence is the form which imposes identity on the matter. |
| 16092 | In Aristotle, bronze only becomes 'matter' when it is potentially a statue [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle implies that matter is parasitic on the being of what it potentially is. …Hence if something is treated as bronze it is regarded as a composite and not as matter; only if it is treated as potentially a statue is it regarded as matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Note the distinction we should make of bronze as indeterminate 'stuff', and a lump of specific bronze, which might be a precondition for casting a statue. On Gill's reading, Greek 'matter' is much more specific than the modern word. |
| 12300 | Aristotle's conception of matter applies to non-physical objects as well as physical objects [Aristotle, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter is comprehensive in its scope. It applies, not merely to physical, but also to non-physical objects; for they may have non-physical objects as their matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Kit Fine - Aristotle on Matter §1 | |
| A reaction: My plea about bizarre ontological claims is always 'If you claim it exists, tell me what it is made of!' This Aristotle chap now offers them an instant answer to which I have no reply. They are made of 'matter', but not as we know it, Jim. |
| 12077 | Aristotle's matter is something that could be the inner origin of a natural being's behaviour [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's notion of matter, unlike ours, is of something that could be the inner origin of a natural being's behaviour. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 3.1 | |
| A reaction: This conforms with my idea of matter, as something active, containing powers, not some inert stuff waiting for the hand of God to bring it into life. |
| 12103 | Matter is secondary, because it is potential, determined by the actuality of form [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's characterization of matter as potentiality and of form as actuality means that the form or essence determines what the matter is. So matter does not have any independent contribution to make to the definition and essence of the substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6.2 | |
| A reaction: We might say that of the wood which constitutes a lectern, but in the case of a magnet it seems that we are directly encountering the powers of the matter. ...though you might say that iron is the matter and magnetisation the form? |
| 597 | Is there a house over and above its bricks? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is there a house over and above its bricks? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1033b19) |
| 10962 | It is unclear whether Aristotle believes in a propertyless subject, his 'ultimate matter' [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred] |
| Full Idea: A subject which has no properties of its own at all is called by Aristotle 'ultimate matter', and it is hotly disputed whether Aristotle acknowledges that such matter exists. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Introductions to 'Metaphysics' p.174 |
| 16142 | A substrate is either a 'this' supporting qualities, or 'matter' supporting actuality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There are two ways of being a substrate [to hupokeimenon], either as possessor of thisness (as the animal is a substrate for its properties) or as matter is a substrate for the actuality. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b05) | |
| A reaction: A bit confusing, since the possessor of thisness will obviously have what we call 'identity', whereas matter cannot have identity on its own (because it also needs form). |
| 16103 | A subject can't be nothing, so it must qualify as separate, and as having a distinct identity [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: To avoid the outcome (possible in 'Categories') that the subject might be nothing at all, Aristotle insists that a legitimate subject must be separate and a 'this' [tode ti]. Forms and composites satisfy the revised criterion in different ways. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z.3) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: I take it that we would say that a 'this' is an entity which possesses 'identity', and is perhaps countable. For Aristotle being a 'this' seems to require a possibility of definition. This is a powerful Aristotelian thought, needed in modern metaphysics. |
| 16575 | Something must pre-exist any new production [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that anything should be produced if there were nothing existing before. Obviously then some part of the result will pre-exist of necessity. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1032b30) | |
| A reaction: This is arguing for a substrate on the basis of the ex nihilo principle. Creation needs raw materials as a basis. This may be the obscure 'prime matter'. |
| 10942 | If you extract all features of the object, what is left over? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If you extract all other features of the object, what is revealed as being left over? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key question in matters of identity, which leads us to talk of substrata, or essences, or substance, none of which seem graspable. |
| 13274 | The contents of an explanatory formula are parts of the whole [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The contents of the formula which explains a thing are parts of the whole. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1023a24) | |
| A reaction: This is part of a catalogue of ways in which things can be parts [1023b08-25]. I like this, because it fits my general thesis, that the desire for explanation is the driving force behind our metaphysics. |
| 15852 | A 'whole' (rather than a mere 'sum') requires an internal order which distinguishes it [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In the case of a quantity that has a beginning, a middle and an end, there are those instances in which the order does not create a differentia, which are said to be 'sums', and those is which it does, which are said to be 'wholes'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1024a01-5) | |
| A reaction: This is the reason why Aristotle is so much better than the run-of-the-mill naïve modern metaphysician. |
| 15840 | If a syllable is more than its elements, is the extra bit also an element? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The syllable is something - not only its elements (the vowel and the consonant) but also something else; ...that something must itself be either an element or composed of elements. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041b16-19) | |
| A reaction: This pinpoints the key initial question, not just about the claims of 'holism', but about the whole puzzle of what give objects their identity? |
| 16136 | A syllable is something different from its component vowels and consonants [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The syllable is something in its own right, not just a heap of vowel and consonant but something different. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041b16) | |
| A reaction: This is the classic Greek example of a whole, and a slogan for claims that wholes are not merely collections of parts. |
| 12878 | Wholes are continuous, rigid, uniform, similar, same kind, similar matter [Aristotle, by Simons] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle gives certain samples of 'hanging together', notably continuity, rigidity, uniformity, qualitative similarity, being of a like kind, being of like matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1015b05-) by Peter Simons - Parts 8.1 | |
| A reaction: Families are scattered, lakes aren't rigid, cakes aren't uniform, complex gadgets have dissimilar parts, two kinds can be united, and only boring things are made of one sort of matter. Nice try, though. Simons rightly adds causation. |
| 11199 | Aristotelian essence underlies behaviour, or underlies definition, or is the source of existence [Aristotle, by Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle calls a substance a nature. This expresses essence as what underlies a thing's characteristic behaviour, whereas whatness expresses it as underlying the definition, and essence refers to it as that through which and in which it has existence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Thomas Aquinas - De Ente et Essentia (Being and Essence) p.92 | |
| A reaction: I don't really understand the third one, unless it is what gives something its identity, which probably then reduces to the second one. The big choice is between essence explaining behaviour and essence explaining definition. Interesting. |
| 12304 | Aristotelian essence is retained with identity through change, and bases our scientific knowledge [Aristotle, by Copi] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, the essential properties of an object are those which are retained by it during any change through which the object remains identifiable; and they are the properties which are most important in our scientific knowledge of it. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Irving M. Copi - Essence and Accident p.712 | |
| A reaction: This pioneering thought of Copi's (at least, he was a pioneer in that he read Aristotle properly) strikes me as the key to understanding the concept of essence. |
| 11294 | Aristotle says changing, material things (and not just universals) have an essence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle wanted to argue (against Plato) that changing, material things, and not only universals that are true of them, have an essence. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: This is the huge idea which Aristotle contributes to our understanding of the world, and which I take to be one of the most important ideas in philosophy (though I accept that defending essences is a little precarious). |
| 11298 | Are essences actually universals? [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Some critics say that Aristotle conceives of essences as universals. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: [He cites M.Woods for this view] Politis opposes this view of Aristotle, and I think I do (with limited scholarship!). It seems to be an unorthodox view when discussing Aristotelian essences, but a very common view when discussing properties. |
| 12099 | Aristotelian essences are causal, not classificatory [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: The primary role of essences in Aristotle's theory of substance is causal, rather than classificatory. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.4 | |
| A reaction: This is the nicest summary of the view which I wish to champion. Classification results from patterns of causation, just as laws of nature result from regularities in the behaviour of causal powers. |
| 17846 | The essence of a single thing is the essence of a particular [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai] for a single thing is what-it-was-to-be-that-thing for a particular. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054a16) | |
| A reaction: This seems to give clear support for the view I favour, that Aristotle believes in individual essences, and not just generic kinds. |
| 12311 | Particulars are not definable, because they fluctuate [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Particular perceptible substances are excluded from definition. ...An object that admits of being in a variety of states is an object of opinion, and thus incontrovertibly not of definition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1039b30) | |
| A reaction: This more or less demolishes my original reading of Aristotle, so back to the drawing board. We need to revise Aristotle. He says differentiae home in the individual but never get there. I (now) say cross-referencing of universals gets you there. |
| 12069 | Essence is the cause of individual substance, and creates its unity [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle describes form or essence as the cause of there being an actual individual substance, and as the cause of its being a unity rather than a heap. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: Wiggins defends the species-essence view (Idea 12068) by preferring the 'secondary substance' account in 'Categories' to Aristotle's ideas about 'form' which emerge later in 'Metaphysics'. I prefer Witt to Wiggins. |
| 12070 | Individual essences are not universals, since those can't be substances, or cause them [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle the essences of individual substances are individual rather than universal, ...since nothing universal can be a substance, nor can it be a principle or cause of a substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: This is the second of Witt's three theses which she offers in opposition to the orthodox interpretation of Aristotle, and again I think she is right. |
| 12088 | Aristotelian essence is not universal properties, but individual essence [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: We should replace the traditional interpretation of Aristotelian essences - as clusters of universal properties - with an interpretation according to which an essence is an individual substance, though not a composite or sensible substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5 | |
| A reaction: I get the impression that this is a growing view amongst Aristotle scholars, which really ruins a widespread view which I associate with Wiggins, that essences are to do with categories, sortals and kinds. I associate essences with explanations. |
| 11998 | Aristotle does not accept individual essences; essential properties are always general [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle does not label 'essential' what are now called 'individual essences'. The properties which belong essentially to an individual are always general properties, capable of belonging to more than one thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: [She offers four references from 'Metaphysics' in support] I think I want to disagree with Aristotle on this one (gulp). Thus his essential properties are one-over-many - his version of universals. I say individuals explain universals, and are prior. |
| 12083 | Aristotle's essence explains the existence of an individual substance, not its properties [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's notion of form or essence is meant to explain why there is an individual substance there at all, not what features constitute the identity of a given individual substance within a domain of individual substances. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], hylom) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 4.4 | |
| A reaction: I begin to think that the notion of 'essence' is extremely useful in aiding our grasp of reality, but the notion of 'substance' is not. We can just talk of 'identity', without implying some stuff that constitutes that identity. Essence is powers. |
| 11382 | Aristotle takes essence and form as a particular, not (as some claim) as a universal, the species [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: It seems that Aristotle thinks that the essence and the form is a particular, ...though a very different interpretation argues that, for Aristotle, the essence and form of a changing, material thing is a universal, namely the species of the thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: I am fairly thoroughly persuaded that Politis's view (the first half of this idea) is the correct interpretation, and it is certainly the one I find more congenial. The second one I associate with the erroneous idea of sortal essentialism, as in Wiggins. |
| 16097 | To be a subject a thing must be specifiable, with some essential properties [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle shows that, for something to be a subject at all, it must be specifiable as something in itself, with essential properties that are mentioned in its defining account, since no subject can be the bearer of accidental properties alone. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z.3) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle supporting the very modern necessary-properties view of essentialism. Notice that it emerges from being 'specifiable' - that is, from Aristotle's requirement that a logos and definition be available. He rejects bare particulars. |
| 12091 | If definition is of universals, many individuals have no definition, and hence no essence [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: If definition is of the universal rather than of the particular, ...it begins to appear that individual material substances do not have definitions and, hence, do not have essences at all. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.1 | |
| A reaction: This is a very challenging claim against my own defence (and Witt's) of individual essences. In switching to individual essences, one has to make them unstable and variable, and lacking necessity, and hence maybe not essential. |
| 11292 | Things have an essence if their explanation is a definition [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A what-it-was to-be-that-thing only belongs to those things for whom an account just is a definition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030a06) | |
| A reaction: That seems to be that 'to ti en einai' (aka essence) only has a 'logos' if it has a 'horismos'. It seems that having a definition as its account is a necessary condition for an essence, but not sufficient. It looks to me as if essence must be explanatory. |
| 10963 | A thing's essence is what is mentioned in its definition [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle believes that the essence of a thing is those per se features of it that are mentioned in a definition. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030a02) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Introductions to 'Metaphysics' p.177 | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 11291. |
| 11287 | Essence is what is stated in the definition [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, the essence of a thing is what is stated in the definition of that thing. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], defs) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 |
| 11188 | The Aristotelian view is that the essential properties are those that sort an object [Aristotle, by Marcus (Barcan)] |
| Full Idea: The Aristotelian view is that essential properties sort entities in some fashion. ...Being an entity, or being self-identical, or being a unity, fail to sort Socrates from anything else, but being identical with Socrates sorted him from everything. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Ruth Barcan Marcus - Essential Attribution p.196 | |
| A reaction: [She cites Daniel Bennett 1969 for this] This doesn't feel right. I take it that sorting things is posterior to discovering that they have different causal powers, as with H2O and XYZ, or jadeite and nephrite. |
| 11291 | A thing's essence is its intrinsic nature [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai, essence] is, for each thing, what it is taken to be [kath' hauto, in virtue of itself] per se. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029b13) | |
| A reaction: [Translations is brackets from Vasilis Politis] Aristotle's other definition of essence is in terms of definition - Idea 10963 and Idea 11292. |
| 12098 | An essence causes both its own unity and its kind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai] is a unity of a kind straight off, just as it is a being of a kind. And that is why none of these things has some other cause of their being a unity, any more than they do of their being a being of a kind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1045b04) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the key importance of the notion of essence - it is what both bestows unity on things in the world (which is basic to ontology and epistemology), and what enables us to categorise things (basic to epistemology). |
| 10964 | Having an essence is the criterion of being a substance [Aristotle, by Lawson-Tancred] |
| Full Idea: For Aristotle, having an essence is the criterion of being a substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1030a) by Hugh Lawson-Tancred - Introductions to 'Metaphysics' p.178 |
| 15107 | Aristotle doesn't see essential truths or essential properties as necessary [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle did not subscribe to the modal conception of essence. The essential truths are not even included among the necessary truths; and the essential features of an object are similarly not included among its necessary features. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE]) by Kathrin Koslicki - Essence, Necessity and Explanation 13.1 | |
| A reaction: I take this point to be hugely important. There is no real role for essences in metaphysics if they are not of the Aristotelian type. The necessities just lead you to trivialities, or to conventions. Aristotelian essences lead you to facts. |
| 11244 | Metaphysics is the science of ultimate explanation, or of pure existence, or of primary existence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: In 'Metaphysics' Aristotle characterises metaphysics in three ways: as the science of the first or ultimate explanation of things; as the science of being qua being; and the science of primary being ('ousia'). | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], book) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.1 | |
| A reaction: I am a bit baffled about how anything worthwhile can be said about 'being qua being', but the other two seem worth pursuing, and may boil down to the same thing. |
| 16143 | It is absurd that a this and a substance should be composed of a quality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is it not impossible, even outrageous, that a this and a substance (even if it can be composed of constituents) should be composed not of substances and the this-thing-here but of a quality? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b25) | |
| A reaction: This is to show Aristotle's deep hostility to anyone who thinks an essence is just a set of special properties (and the 'anyone' means just about anyone these days). |
| 16106 | Generalities like man and horse are not substances, but universal composites of account and matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Man and horse and items similarly imposed on the particulars but themselves general are not substances but a kind of composite of the relevant account in the relevant matter, considered universally. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1035b27) | |
| A reaction: Notice that these concepts are 'imposed' on particulars. This seems close to Locke's 'nominal' essence. It take this quotation to reinforce the priority of the particular in Aristotle's account. |
| 16144 | Genera are not substances, and do not exist apart from the ingredient species [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If 'man' and any other item similarly specified is a substance, then none of the contents of the account of man is a substance of anything. 'Animal', for instance, does not exist over and above particular animals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b31) | |
| A reaction: [I think 'particular animals' refers to species, not individuals, here] I take it as self-evident that this implies that species do not exist, apart from the individuals that constitute them. |
| 12359 | 'Categories' answers 'what?' with species, genus, differerentia; 'Met.' Z.17 seeks causal essence [Aristotle, by Wedin] |
| Full Idea: Although what-is-it [ti esti] questions serve the classificatory project in 'Categories', they are no help in the causal enquiries of 'Metaphysics' Z.17. The essence of interest can't be the species or the differentia-cum-genus complex. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041a05-b36) by Michael V. Wedin - Aristotle's Theory of Substance X.4 | |
| A reaction: Wedin's view is that these are compatible. The implication is that the nature of essence depends entirely on what it is you want to explain. Explain the category, or explain the behaviour? |
| 12068 | Standardly, Aristotelian essences are taken to be universals of the species [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: The standard interpretation holds that Aristotelian essences are species-essences, which are universal essences shared by all members of the same species. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: Her aim is to refute this standard view, in defence of the view that Aristotle really wanted to pinpoint individual essences. I think Witt is correct. |
| 16141 | In 'Met.' he says genera can't be substances or qualities, so aren't in the ontology [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: In the central books of 'Metaphysics' there are no longer any genera or species. In Z.13 he argues that genera and universals can't be substances. Since genera are not qualities either, they disappear completely from the ontology. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Z.13) by Michael Frede - Title, Unity, Authenticity of the 'Categories' V | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears. It is so obvious to me that creatures are classified into genera, so genera can't exist separately, that I am bewildered anyone would believe or imply it. |
| 16508 | Things are more unified if the unity comes from their own nature, not from external force [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: More unified is whatever is a whole with a certain shape and form, especially if it is by nature and not by force (e.g. by gluing or nailing or tying up), when, that is, it contains in itself the cause of its being continuous. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1052a24) | |
| A reaction: [see also Phys 192b] This is about the only principle available for saying why the essence of an artefact is lesser than a natural essence. The healing of wounds shows that animals have a greater unity than tables? |
| 16117 | The hallmark of an artefact is that its active source of maintenance is external [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: There is a critical line to be drawn between those entities whose active source of maintenance is internal and those whose source is external. This is the chief line that Aristotle draws between organisms and artefacts. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.7 | |
| A reaction: Plants need water and sunlight, so I'm not sure that this marks the line quite clearly enough. |
| 12092 | Aristotle claims that the individual is epistemologically prior to the universal [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle could have claimed that the universal is prior to the individual in the epistemic realm, but the individual is prior in the realm of being. ...Instead, he claims that the individual is epistemologically prior to the universal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], partic) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 5.1 | |
| A reaction: This point strikes me as fairly self-evident. We only learn about the universal by induction from the individuals. |
| 12090 | Actual knowledge is of the individual, and potential knowledge of the universal [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle resolves his aporia about substances and universals by distinguishing between actual knowledge, which is of the individual, and potential knowledge, which is of the universal. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], potent) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle | |
| A reaction: [See Witt 145-9 for the aporia] A vital piece in the jigsaw I am assembling. I connect this way of thinking with modern modal thinking, and actual and possible worlds. It obviously results in individual essences taking priority. |
| 5626 | An a priori principle of persistence anticipates all experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The principle of persistence is one that anticipates experience just as much as that of causality. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B795/A767) | |
| A reaction: This is the notion that identity is an indefinable basic of our understanding. He is objecting to Hume, who, of course, thought persistance was just an experience. Personally I persistance to be a posteriori, but how else could things exist? |
| 16159 | For animate things, only the form, not the matter or properties, must persist through change [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: If we analyze an ordinary physical object into matter, form and properties, the only item in the case of animate objects that has to stay the same as long as we can talk about the same thing is, on his account, the form. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], change) by Michael Frede - Substance in Aristotle's 'Metaphysics' p.76 | |
| A reaction: I would have thought that might work for inanimate natural things, and for artefacts, to a considerable extent. The Ship of Theseus retains its form. |
| 11378 | How a thing is generated does not explain its essence [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle thinks that the explanation of how a thing is generated does not contribute to the explanation of why the thing is the very thing it is. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 7.5 | |
| A reaction: Good for him. The origin of a thing strikes me as an entirely different matter from the intrinsic nature of the thing, and I don't see how the origin of something can be necessary, if it is in any way possible that it originated differently. |
| 12101 | Aristotle wants definition, not identity, so origin is not essential to him [Aristotle, by Witt] |
| Full Idea: Properties of origin are not essential for Aristotle, because he determines what is essential not by reflecting on the identity of an individual, but by considering how to define the individual. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], id) by Charlotte Witt - Substance and Essence in Aristotle 6.2 | |
| A reaction: [see also Idea 12102] This spells out my intuition, or rather my understanding of the normal usage of the word 'essence'. You can fully know the essence of something (e.g. a person), while having no knowledge of the origin. |
| 11380 | Two things with the same primary being and essence are one thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If any two items have a single substance [ousia, primary being] and a single what-it-is-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai, essence], then they are themselves a single thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1038b14) | |
| A reaction: [alternative translations by Vasilis Politis] This isn't quite the identity of indiscernibles, because it allows superficial identity along with deep difference (H2O and XYZ, for example, or jadeite and nephrite). |
| 17848 | Things such as two different quadrangles are alike but not wholly the same [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are alike if they are not just the same simpliciter, exhibiting differences in their substrate substance but being formally the same. Examples are larger and smaller quadrangles and unequal straight lines, which are alike but not the same. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054b06) |
| 16134 | We can't understand self-identity without a prior grasp of the object [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: To ask why a thing is identical with itself is not to ask a real question in the absence of a clear grasp of the fact ….or of the object. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041a12) | |
| A reaction: This seems a very nice response to Lewis's attempt to sweep difficulties of identity aside, when he rests identity on primitive self-identity. |
| 17847 | You are one with yourself in form and matter [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: You are one with yourself both in form and in matter. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1054a35) |
| 7576 | The Identity of Indiscernibles is true of concepts with identical properties, but not of particulars [Kant, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Kant said that the principle of the Identity of Indiscernibles is true only at the level of concepts; two concepts having identical properties are the same concept; the principle is not true at the level of particulars given in sensory experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Good. I would think that should be the last word on that particular subject. ...Suppose, though, that two people had identical concepts with identical properties, but believed that the extensions (application to particulars) were different? |
| 14509 | If we ignore differences between water drops, we still distinguish them by their location [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the case of two drops of water one can completely abstract from all inner difference (of quality and quantity), and it is enough that they be intuited in different places at the same time in order for them to be held to be numerically different. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B319/A263) | |
| A reaction: Adams points out that this is the same idea as Max Black's famous two spheres thought experiment. We assume that all the water drops are distinct from one another, even if we are unable to perceive the fact. Best explanation. |
| 18797 | Modalities do not augment our concepts; they express their relation to cognition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The categories of modality have this peculiarity: as a determination of the object they do not augment the concept to which they are ascribed in the least, but rather express only the relation to the faculty of cognition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B266/A219) | |
| A reaction: A nice summary of Kant's view of modality. It does not arise out of reality, or even out of the nature of our concepts, but out of the relations which our concepts enter into, in the processes of understanding. (Do I understand that?) |
| 12611 | Necessity makes alternatives impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Necessity is what makes it impossible for something to be other than it is. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1015b03) | |
| A reaction: Note that necessity here seems like an active force, rather than a mere description of a logical or metaphysical state of affairs. The underlying idea seems to be that essences enforce necessities, but it doesn't say that here. |
| 17852 | A thing has a feature necessarily if its denial brings a contradiction [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If anything has the property of being perishable it has it of necessity, on pain of one and the same thing being perishable and imperishable. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1059a05) | |
| A reaction: Of course the perishable could become imperishable over time, without contradiction. This illustrates the foundational idea that a proposition is necessary if its negation is a contradiction. [...actually this argument is invalid as it stands!] |
| 5594 | Natural necessity is the unconditioned necessity of appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The unconditioned necessity of appearances can be called natural necessity. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B447/A419) | |
| A reaction: Kant can call it what he likes, but this isn't what we mean by 'natural necessity'. We mean a feature of reality, even if we can only use appearances to infer that feature. As usual, they can't tell their ontology from their epistemology. |
| 15779 | Possibility is when the necessity of the contrary is false [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The potential occurs when it is not necessary that its contrary be false. For example, it is potential that a man should be seated, since it is not false of necessity that he is not seated. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019b26) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard point in modal logic that possibly is equivalent to not-necessarily-not (◊p → ¬□¬p). |
| 18795 | A concept is logically possible if non-contradictory (but may not be actually possible) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The concept is always possible if it does not contradict itself (the logical mark of possibility). Yet it can be an empty concept. ...We cannot infer from the possibility of the concept (logical possibility) to the possibility of the thing (real). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B624/A596 n) |
| 15769 | Anything which is possible either exists or will come into existence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If what we have stated either is the possible or something connected to it, there can of course be no question of its being true to say that x is capable of being but will not be. ...What is not but is capable of being either is or comes into being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1047b05) | |
| A reaction: I'm a bit startled to find the great Aristotle spouting this nonsense. It's possible that every bird in England could simultaneously land in my home town, but it ain't never going to happen. Modern women could bear 50 children, but won't. |
| 5566 | Is the possible greater than the actual, and the actual greater than the necessary? [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Whether the field of possibility is greater than the field that contains everything actual, and whether the latter is in turn greater than the set of that which is necessary, are proper questions. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B282/A230) | |
| A reaction: A good overview. Is the actual necessary (i.e. is only the actual possible?)? Why is the non-actual possible? What would a theory look like which explains why the necessary is necessary, the actual actual, and the possible possible? A religion? |
| 5613 | The analytic mark of possibility is that it does not generate a contradiction [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The analytic mark of possibility is the fact that mere positings (realities) do not generate a contradiction. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B630/A602) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. I would offer self-evident absurdity (but with no actual contradiction) as another analytic mark of possibility. Natural possibility may coincide with metaphysical possibility. Human thought does not determine possibilities. |
| 14544 | Potentialities are always for action, but are conditional on circumstances [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The possession of a potentiality just is the possession of a potentiality to act, and such a potentiality is not unconditional but depends on the obtaining of propitious circumstances, which includes the satisfaction of a ceteris paribus condition. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1048a18) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be pretty exactly what we mean by a 'power', as something which requires no other driving force, but which only expresses itself with the endless complexity of the rest of nature. |
| 15774 | We recognise potentiality from actuality [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is from the actuality that the potentiality is recognised. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1051a29) | |
| A reaction: I presume it is from this simple fact that Sider and others draw the mistaken inference that there are no potentialities in the actual world. |
| 15778 | Things are destroyed not by their powers, but by their lack of them [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are broken, compressed, bent and, in a word, destroyed not by dint of having a potentiality but by dint of not having one and by missing out on something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019a27) | |
| A reaction: Presumably an ontology entirely based on powers would not also need to catalogue absence of powers. The positive ones do the job. No power, no destruction. |
| 15777 | A 'potentiality' is a principle of change or process in a thing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What is a principle of change or process is said to be a 'potentiality' [dunamis], whether in something else or in the thing itself qua something else. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1019a18) |
| 18796 | Formal experience conditions show what is possible, and general conditions what is necessary [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Whatever agrees with the formal conditions of experience is possible, ...and that whose connection with the actual is determined in accordance with general conditions of experience is (exists) necessarily. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B266/A218) | |
| A reaction: This is the Kantian view of necessity, as more concerned with how we think than with how the world is. I think there are necessities in reality, and philosophy endeavours to discern what they are (despite the mockery of scientists). |
| 12612 | Some things have external causes of their necessity; others (the simple) generate necessities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For some things, the cause of their necessity is something other than themselves, whereas for others there is no such external cause, but rather they are themselves the necessary cause of other things being the case. The simple is fundamentally necessary. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1015b14) | |
| A reaction: What is 'simple' is what terminates an explanation, and that is what-it-is-to-be each thing (its essence). The Greek view of necessity always seems to be a power to which we submit, rather than a passive state like true-in-all-worlds. |
| 15108 | Aristotle's says necessary truths are distinct and derive from essential truths [Aristotle, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle conceives of the necessary truths as being distinct and derivative from the essential truths. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], ess) by Kathrin Koslicki - Essence, Necessity and Explanation 13.1 | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the view promoted by Kit Fine in 1994. It seems to fragment necessity, because there are many different necessities based on many different foundations. |
| 23461 | Kant thought worldly necessities are revealed by what maths needs to make sense [Kant, by Morris,M] |
| Full Idea: It struck Kant (to put it crudely) that there are some things which are necessarily true of the world, revealed when we consider what is required for mathematics - indeed, thinking in general - to make sense. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michael Morris - Guidebook to Wittgenstein's Tractatus Intro | |
| A reaction: This is given as background the Wittgenstein's Tractatus. He disagrees with Kant because logic is not synthetic. I see a strong connection with the stoic belief that the natural world is intrinsically rational. |
| 14710 | Necessity is always knowable a priori, and what is known a priori is always necessary [Kant, by Schroeter] |
| Full Idea: The Kantian rationalist view is that what is necessary is always knowable a priori, and what is knowable a priori is always necessary. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Laura Schroeter - Two-Dimensional Semantics 2.3.1 | |
| A reaction: Nice to get a clear spelling out of the two-way relationship here. Why couldn't Kant put it as clearly as this? See Kripke for the first big challenges to Kant's picture. I like aposteriori necessities. |
| 16256 | For Kant metaphysics must be necessary, so a priori, so can't be justified by experience [Kant, by Maudlin] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintained that metaphysics must be a body of necessary truths, and that necessary truths must be a priori, so metaphysical claims could not be justified by experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tim Maudlin - The Metaphysics within Physics 3 | |
| A reaction: I'm coming to the view that there is no a priori necessity, and that all necessities are entailments from the nature of reality. The apparent a priori necessities are just at a very high level of abstraction. |
| 5524 | Maths must be a priori because it is necessary, and that cannot be derived from experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Mathematical propositions are always a priori judgments and are never empirical, because they carry necessity with them, which cannot be derived from experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B014) | |
| A reaction: Personally I like the idea that maths is the 'science of patterns', but then I take it that the features of patterns will be common to all possible worlds. Presumably a proposition could be contingent, and yet true in all possible worlds. |
| 547 | The ability to teach is a mark of true knowledge [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The ability to teach is a distinguishing mark between the knowledgeable and the ignorant man. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0981b04) |
| 20944 | Knowledge is threefold: apprehension, reproduction by imagination, recognition by concepts [Kant, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: Kant describes knowledge in terms of a 'threefold synthesis', in which something is first 'apprehended' as affecting the mind, then is 'reproduced' in the imagination, and finally is 'recognised' via a concept which classifies it. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 1 'Judgement' | |
| A reaction: Helpful. How does this distinguish knowledge from error (as Russell would enquire)? Is the 'apprehended', then, the unconceptualised 'Given'? I think that is what later German philosophers rebelled against in Kant. |
| 5617 | Knowledge begins with intuitions, moves to concepts, and ends with ideas [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All human cognition begins with intuitions, goes from there to concepts, and ends with ideas. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B730/A702) | |
| A reaction: 'Ideas' is a vague term. 'Propositions' might fit better. The question is whether concept-free intuitions are possible. They sound here like Humean 'impressions'. The brain phenomenon of re-entry suggests that ideas in turn influence intuitions. |
| 15627 | Kant showed that the understanding (unlike reason) concerns what is finite and conditioned [Kant, by Hegel] |
| Full Idea: Kant was the first to emphasize the distinction between understanding and reason in a definite way, establishing the finite and conditioned as the subject-matter of the former, and the infinite and unconditioned as that of the latter. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Georg W.F.Hegel - Logic (Encyclopedia I) §45 Add | |
| A reaction: This seems to match Plato's division of reality into the realm of experience and of the mind. I am inclined to see them as a unity, united by the many levels of abstraction. Frege is the modern spokesman for the Plato/Hegel view. |
| 16898 | Understanding essentially involves singular elements [Kant, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: For Kant understanding essentially involves singular elements (and reason is essentially general). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 3 |
| 5573 | Reason is distinct from understanding, and is the faculty of rules or principles [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the first part of our transcendental logic we defined the understanding as the faculty of rules; here we will distinguish reason from understanding by calling reason the faculty of principles. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B356/A299) | |
| A reaction: If we narrow the concept of rationality down to a concern with rules or principles, the concept of 'understanding' has to widen out to cover inferences from experience. Personally I think we can be rational about particulars as well as principles. |
| 5634 | Opinion is subjectively and objectively insufficient; belief is subjective but not objective; knowledge is both [Kant] |
| Full Idea: An 'opinion' is taking something to be true which is subjectively and objectively insufficient. 'Believing' is when it is subjectively sufficient and objectively insufficient. 'Knowing' is subjective and objective sufficiency (for myself, and everyone). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B850/A822) | |
| A reaction: He defines objectivity as being 'sufficient' for 'everyone'. Compare Aristotle's Idea 95. This implies a rather social criterion for knowledge, but doesn't deal with 'sufficient for a majority, but not everyone'. How high to set the bar? |
| 10950 | Things are produced from skill if the form of them is in the mind [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Things are produced from skill if the form of them is in the mind. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1032a33) | |
| A reaction: This resembles the legal notion of 'mens rea', the conscious intention to commit the deed. |
| 544 | Experience knows particulars, but only skill knows universals [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Experience is the knowledge of particulars and skill that of universals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0981a14) |
| 546 | It takes skill to know causes, not experience [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The skilled know the cause, whereas the experienced do not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0981a29) |
| 5590 | 'I think therefore I am' is an identity, not an inference (as there is no major premise) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: My existence cannot be regarded as inferred from the proposition "I think" (for otherwise the major premise "Everything that thinks, exists" would have to precede it), but rather it is identical with it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B422) | |
| A reaction: "I think" can hardly be identical with "I exist". One is an activity, the other a state. I prefer: within the unified activity of thinking which is clearly occurring, it is self-evident that there must be an 'I' which holds it together. |
| 5601 | There are possible inhabitants of the moon, but they are just possible experiences [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That there could be inhabitants of the moon, even though no human being has ever perceived them, must of course be admitted; but this means only that in the possible progress of experience we could encounter them. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B521/A493) | |
| A reaction: This seems a fairly precise statement of phenomenalism (compare A.J. Ayer's Idea 5170). Kant calls himself a 'transcendental idealist', which seems something like a true idealist who acknowledges Humean 'natural beliefs' in reality. |
| 22003 | We have no sensual experience of time and space, so they must be 'ideal' [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Time and space, Kant concluded, were 'ideal' since they could not be objects of direct sensory experience, and therefore had to be available only as 'pure' representations. ...Hence time and space were not 'objects' out there in the world. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Put like this it sounds like a crazy application of empiricism, but demanding that space and time are experienced by the 'senses'. Can't we way that we experience them, but not through any particular sense? Kant at his most idealist. |
| 21456 | Objects having to be experiencable is not the same as full idealism [Gardner on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Being subject to the condition of experienceability - that is, necessarily related in some manner to intuition - is not the same as being composed of experiences in any sense (and particularly Berkeley's sense). | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 08 'Non-phenom' | |
| A reaction: This is Gardner's best explanation of why Kant is definitely not a Berkeleyan idealist (who claims objects ARE conscious experiences) |
| 21446 | If we disappeared, then all relations of objects, and time and space themselves, disappear too [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If we remove our own subject ...then all the constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in themselves, but only in us. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B059/A42) | |
| A reaction: Apart from over-cautious 'as appearances', this seems like simple Berkleyean idealism, and hence rather silly. The first commitment of realism (mine, anyway) is that at least time and space would survive our disappearance. |
| 6909 | In Kantian idealism, objects fit understanding, not vice versa [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: In Kantian idealism, the objects conform to the understanding, and not the understanding to the objects. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
| A reaction: This labels Kant as an idealist, but he was also a realist (of a very minimal sort). Modern cognitive science shows clearly that Kant is at least partially correct. Personally I think I see squares as square because they are square. |
| 6910 | Kant's idealism is a limited idealism based on the viewpoint of empiricism [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Kant's idealism is a limited idealism - idealism based on the viewpoint of empiricism. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §17 | |
| A reaction: This would place Kant as closer to Berkeley than to Hegel. Good for Kant, I say. He had the good sense to see that the crucial challenge to understanding is that offered by David Hume. |
| 21440 | For Kant experience is either structured like reality, or generates reality's structure [Kant, by Gardner] |
| Full Idea: On the analytic interpretation of Kant (by Strawson) ...the structure of experience ultimately reduces to the structure of what is experienced. ...In the idealist view (of D. Heinrich) experience itself has an inherent structure. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Sebastian Gardner - Kant and the Critique of Pure Reason 02 'Interpretations' | |
| A reaction: Gardner thinks Strawson has got it wrong, and makes a good case for his view. Strawson's view sounds more like the empiricist view of concepts. I prefer that view, but I doubt whether it is Kant's. |
| 22006 | The concepts that make judgeable experiences possible are created spontaneously [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: The concepts that make sensory experience possible are not innate, but are generated by the spontaneity of the human mind itself as it shapes our experiences in to judgemental form. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Pinkard emphasises this creative spontaneity of the mind as a key idea in Kant, and in the generation that followed him. An account is needed of how the spontaneity matches reality, rather than being private. What about words (like 'telephone'). |
| 21442 | 'Transcendental' cognition concerns what can be known a priori of its mode [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I call all cognition 'transcendental' that is occupied not so much with objects but rather with our mode of cognition of objects insofar as this is to be possible a priori. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B025/A11) | |
| A reaction: Kant thinks this enquiry is a highly rational affair, but it sounds more like hopeful introspective psychology to me. If you find some prerequisites for an activity, how do you know there aren't others you have missed? |
| 5568 | We cannot know things in themselves, but are confined to appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We have no insight into the possibility of noumena (things in themselves), and the domain outside the sphere of appearances is empty (for us). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B310/A255) | |
| A reaction: Yet another philosopher confusing ontology and epistemology! Every day we go beyond our experiences by inference (smoke means fire). Metaphysics is the inference of the nature of things in themselves, from within our prison of appearances. |
| 5581 | We have proved that bodies are appearances of the outer senses, not things in themselves [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the transcendental aesthetic we have undeniably proved that bodies are mere appearances of our outer senses, and not things in themselves. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A357) | |
| A reaction: This seems a strongly idealistic remark, which is a bit qualified when he talks of the existence of the unknowable 'noumenon' behind appearances, and he rejects idealism when he labels it a 'paralogism' at A367, preferring 'transcendental idealism'. |
| 21956 | Everything we intuit is merely a representation, with no external existence (Transcendental Idealism) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We have proved that everything intuited in space or time, hence all possible objects of experience, are nothing but appearances, mere representations, which ...have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. I call this Transcendental Idealism. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B519/A491) | |
| A reaction: It is only 'transcendental' idealism because it is what can be learned from deconstructing our own cognition, while remaining neutral (I assume) about whether the things-in-themselves are mere ideas. He is notoriousy ambivalent. |
| 9156 | Kant's shift of view enables us to see a priority in terms of mental capacity, not truth and propositions [Burge on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant's shift in his understanding of apriority from the content of truth and of proof-sequences of propositions to the character of cognitive procedures opens more possibilities for understanding the sources of apriority, in capacities and mental acts. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority I | |
| A reaction: [Burge attributes the alternative view to Leibniz and Frege] This harmless-looking thought seems to me right at the heart of what I take to be a discrete cold war going on between logicians and philosophers. Logic is in retreat! |
| 7575 | A priori knowledge is limited to objects of possible experience [Kant, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: Kant says that a priori knowledge is limited to objects of possible experience, and this is the core thesis of his distinctive doctrine of transcendental idealism. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: Some people would even challenge this bold claim for a priori knowledge, but this idea shows why Kant was said to have put an end to old fashioned speculative metaphysics. For Kant, a priori knowledge seems to be something like introspection. |
| 12414 | A priori knowledge occurs absolutely independently of all experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We will understand by a priori cognitions not those that occur independently of this or that experience, but rather those that occur absolutely independently of all experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B003) | |
| A reaction: Kitcher quotes this, and raises questions about how widely we should understand 'experience', and how strongly we can assert total 'independence'. But then he is attacking the whole idea of a priori knowledge. He modifies Kant's formulation (Idea 12415). |
| 9351 | One sort of a priori knowledge just analyses given concepts, but another ventures further [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Analysis of concepts affords us a multitude of cognitions which are illuminations or clarifications of what is already thought, and yields a priori cognition. Reason also surreptitiously makes a priori assertions, which add something alien to the concept. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B009/A5) | |
| A reaction: This is at the heart of Kant's programme, to disentangle these two, and especially to turn a strong critical light on the second one. He does not deny the possibility of a priori knowledge beyond conceptual analysis, but is wary. |
| 9348 | Experienceless bodies have space; propertyless bodies have substance; this must be seen a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Remove from your experiential concept of a body everything empirical (colour, hardness etc), and there still remains its space. If you remove all the properties which experience teaches you, there remains substance. This shows your a priori faculty. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B006) | |
| A reaction: Presumably you can also 'remove' the space and the substance. Maybe there are no actual items such as spaces or substances, so getting both of them wrong wouldn't be a good advertisement for the faculty. It's just imagination? |
| 5404 | Two plus two objects make four objects even if experience is impossible, so Kant is wrong [Russell on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Two physical objects and two other physical objects must make four physical objects, even if physical objects cannot be experienced, so Kant's solution unduly limits the scope of a priori propositions. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: The point seems good, though it is doubtful whether Russell is entitled to be so confident. If the basis of a priori certainty is pushed outside the mind, our ontology becomes dramatically more complicated. |
| 9345 | Propositions involving necessity are a priori, and pure a priori if they only derive from other necessities [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If a proposition is thought along with its necessity, it is an a priori judgement; if it is, moreover, also not derived from any proposition except one that in turn is valid as a necessary proposition, then it is absolutely a priori. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B003) | |
| A reaction: The misunderstanding behind this is that we can obtain certainty in this way. I presume that consistency with empirical experience would increase our certainty of (say) maths or logic. There is no 'pure' a priori, delivering 'pure' necessity. |
| 16893 | The apriori is independent of its sources, and marked by necessity and generality [Kant, by Burge] |
| Full Idea: Kant defines apriority in terms of independence from genesis and from sense experience, and it is indicated by its necessity and by it generality or universality. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B003-4) by Tyler Burge - Frege on Apriority (with ps) 2 |
| 9347 | A priori knowledge is indispensable for the possibility and certainty of experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: One could establish the indispensability of the reality of pure a priori principles for the possibility of experience itself, and thus establish it a priori. Where would experience gets its certainty if it was based on empirical, contingent rules? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B005) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] There seems a touch of circularity here, apart from the transcendental argument. Proving the a priori by a priori means? All very odd. And experience is certain because it is based on a priori rules, which are necessary? |
| 3342 | Seeing that only one parallel can be drawn to a line through a given point is clearly synthetic a priori [Kant, by Benardete,JA] |
| Full Idea: Kant took Euclidean geometry to be an obvious source of synthetic a prior truths, as one can just see that through a point outside a straight line one and only one parallel to it can be drawn. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.18 |
| 20943 | Kant bases the synthetic a priori on the categories of oneness and manyness [Kant, by Bowie] |
| Full Idea: The categories of oneness and manyness are the basis of what Kant terms 'synthetic judgements a priori'. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Andrew Bowie - Introduction to German Philosophy 1 'First' | |
| A reaction: This is a solution to the paradoxes of one and many that bothered Plato. I think it is best seen in our capacity to count things, and the individuation which must precede that. Atomism and holism. |
| 5402 | Kant showed that we have a priori knowledge which is not purely analytic [Kant, by Russell] |
| Full Idea: Kant deserves credit for showing that we have a priori knowledge which is not purely 'analytic', i.e. such that the opposite would be self-contradictory. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch. 8 | |
| A reaction: It is noteworthy that a great empiricist philosopher makes this judgement. But how do you spot an a priori truth, apart from seeing that its opposite would be a contradiction? Where else can its force come from? |
| 5203 | We can think of 7 and 5 without 12, but it is still a contradiction to deny 7+5=12 [Ayer on Kant] |
| Full Idea: From the fact that one can think of the sum of seven and five without necessarily thinking of twelve, it by no means follows that the proposition '7+5=12' can be denied without self-contradiction. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by A.J. Ayer - Language,Truth and Logic Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: Kant's claim that arithmetic was synthetic always looked glib and dubious, and this pinpoints an objection very nicely. It appears that the great Kant has confused his epistemology with his ontology. |
| 5527 | That a straight line is the shortest is synthetic, as straight does not imply any quantity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That the straight line between two points is the shortest is a synthetic proposition. For my concept of the straight contains nothing of quantity, but only a quality. The concept of shortest is additional, and cannot be extracted by analysis. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B016) | |
| A reaction: We should ask Kant to define 'straight' without mentioning 'shortest'. If you think of a long walk between two towns, it becomes obvious that the straight line will be defined by being the shortest line. |
| 5528 | That force and counter-force are equal is necessary, and a priori synthetic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the proposition that in all communication of motion effect and counter-effect must always be equal, not only the necessity, and thus its a priori origin, but also that it is a synthetic proposition is clear. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B017) | |
| A reaction: No, I don't follow that. God might have made Newton's Third Law that every time you push a wall it pushes you back with double force. Looks like a Humean a posteriori observation of regularity to me. |
| 5529 | The real problem of pure reason is: how are a priori synthetic judgments possible? [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The real problem of pure reason is contained in the question: How are synthetic judgments a priori possible? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B019) | |
| A reaction: If they are possible, I would say that is not 'the real problem of pure reason', but the real problem of understanding the underlying nature of reality. I doubt whether we know much of reality by 'pure' reason, but we might 'see' that it is necessary. |
| 5537 | That two lines cannot enclose a space is an intuitive a priori synthetic proposition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that with two straight lines no space can be enclosed cannot be derived from the concept of straight lines and the number two. You are forced to take refuge in intuition, ..which is a pure a priori intuition of a synthetic proposition. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B065/A47) | |
| A reaction: A very nice example. If you gave a child two rods and told them to make a shape, they might quickly learn this from experience. Kant's proposal is nice, but I am not convinced. We learn that to create shapes you must turn corners. |
| 5546 | Are a priori concepts necessary as a precondition for something to be an object? [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The question is whether a priori concepts precede, as conditions under which alone something can be, if not intuited, nevertheless thought as objects in general. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B125/A93) | |
| A reaction: This remains a good question. Some sort of synthesis of impressions is required in order to perceive an object. To think of it as a rational inference seems wildly wrong, as it is instantaneous. How do dogs get along, I wonder…. |
| 5558 | 7+5=12 is not analytic, because 12 is not contained in 7 or 5 or their combination [Kant] |
| Full Idea: 7+5=12 is not an analytic proposition, for I do not think the number 12 either in the representation of 7 nor in that of 5 nor in the representation of the combination of the two. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B205/A164) | |
| A reaction: Unconvincing. The third option sounds analytic. Present it as: if you start at 7 and move 5 places along the natural number sequence, you have arrived at the answer (so find out its name). Or rename '12' as 'sevenplusfive'? |
| 5624 | We possess synthetic a priori knowledge in our principles which anticipate experience [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We are already in possession of synthetic a priori cognition, as is established by the principles of understanding, which anticipate experience. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B790/A762) | |
| A reaction: When put like this, I remain unconvinced that the mental states to which Kant refers should actually qualify as cognition/knowledge. If we have to look through rose-tinted spectacles, this doesn't make rose-colour a truth, or even a belief. |
| 5571 | Reason contains within itself certain underived concepts and principles [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason itself contains the origin of certain concepts and principles, which it derives neither from the senses nor from the understanding. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B355/A299) | |
| A reaction: You might say that these principles are known 'by the natural light' rather than being innate, but if they are not even 'derived from the understanding', that seems to leave them innate, which is a classic hallmark of a rationalist philosopher. |
| 5403 | If, as Kant says, arithmetic and logic are contributed by us, they could change if we did [Russell on Kant] |
| Full Idea: The main objection to Kant's philosophy is that to say that logic and arithmetic are contributed by us does not account for its certainty; if Kant is right, then tomorrow our nature could so change as to make two and two become five. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Bertrand Russell - Problems of Philosophy Ch.8 | |
| A reaction: One would expect a realist like Russell to have fairly fundamental objections to the implied anti-realism (and conventionalism) of Kant. The same comment could be made about Kant's view of space, time and causation. |
| 5525 | No analysis of the sum of seven and five will in itself reveal twelve [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The concept of twelve is by no means already thought merely by my thinking of the unification of seven and five, and no matter how long I analyze my concept of such a possible sum I will still not find twelve in it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B015) | |
| A reaction: I don't find this convincing. All sums can be revealed by analysing the relationships within the sequence of natural numbers. |
| 18262 | For Kant analytic knowledge needs complex concepts, but the a priori can rest on the simple [Coffa on Kant] |
| Full Idea: As Kant saw it, analytic knowledge is possible only in the presence of conceptual complexity, but it should have been clear that simple concepts, unaided by intuition, are as apt as their complex counterparts to act as grounds of a priori knowledge. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by J. Alberto Coffa - The Semantic Tradition from Kant to Carnap 1 'Analyt' | |
| A reaction: The point is that the concept must 'contain' something for Kant's account of what is analytic. This seems to be a very important thought for those who think the a priori is entirely analytic. |
| 5526 | With large numbers it is obvious that we could never find the sum by analysing the concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is clearer that all arithmetical propositions are synthetic if we take larger numbers, for it is then clear that, twist and turn our concepts as we will, without help from intuition we could never find the sum by means of the mere analysis of concepts. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B016) | |
| A reaction: I don't see this. Obviously we may not know the name of the number which is the answer. We must analyse 'plus' as well as the component numbers. How can it be synthetic if no experience is involved? |
| 5567 | A priori the understanding can only anticipate possible experiences [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The understanding can never accomplish a priori anything more than to anticipate the form of a possible experience in general. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B303/A246) | |
| A reaction: This is why many people think that Kant brough metaphysical (ontological) speculation to an end. He asserts that synthetic a priori knowledge is possible, but then imposes a huge limitation on it. |
| 18264 | We know the shape of a cone from its concept, but we don't know its colour [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The shape of a cone we can form for ourselves in intuition, unassisted by any experience, according to its concept alone, but the colour of this cone must be previously given in some experience or other. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B743/A715) | |
| A reaction: Coffa says this gives a 'transcendental twist' to the primary/secondary distinction. The distinction doesn't seem to help much, since you clearly don't know the shape of a pebble from its concept. Is the angle of the cone part of its concept? |
| 5532 | Colours and tastes are not qualities of things, but alterations of the subject [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Things like colors, taste etc. are correctly considered not as qualities of things but as mere alterations of our subject, which can even be different in different people. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B045/A29) | |
| A reaction: This acceptance of the category of 'secondary' qualities shows that Kant is not totally daft about reality. He 'considers them as' alterations in the subject, but how does he view primary qualities? Not, I think, as features of the noumenon. |
| 2774 | Kant says the cognitive and sensory elements in experience can't be separated [Kant, by Dancy,J] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintains that it is impossible to draw a suitable distinction between the cognitive and sensory 'elements' in sensory experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Jonathan Dancy - Intro to Contemporary Epistemology 8.4 |
| 23454 | Appearances have a 'form', which indicates a relational order [Kant] |
| Full Idea: That which allows the manifold of appearance to be intuited as ordered in certain relations I call the 'form' of appearance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B034/A20) | |
| A reaction: An important idea, which figures prominently in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. Presumably the noumenon is responsible for generating the form in the appearances, and we infer the order of the world thereby (though we can't prove it). |
| 5569 | We cannot represent objects unless we combine concepts with intuitions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Understanding and sensibility can determine an object only in combination; if we separate them, then we have intuitions without concepts, or concepts without intuitions, but in either case representations that we cannot relate to any determinate objects. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B314/A258) | |
| A reaction: Although Kant seems to be rejecting the rationalist v empiricist debate, I take this to be evidence that Kant was a rationalist, because he thinks understanding cannot arise just from sensibility. |
| 23697 | I exist just as an intelligence aware of its faculty for combination [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I exist as an intelligence that is merely conscious of its faculty for combination. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B158) | |
| A reaction: [plucked from a complex context!] This thought seems to have its origins in Hume's account of associations, and is a fairly accurate piece of introspection, I would say. I could think of my Self simply as the thing which unites some diverse experiences. |
| 22005 | Associations and causes cannot explain content, which needs norms of judgement [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: Kant said the representational content of thought could not be explained by patterns of association or by naturalistically understood causal patterns; the cognitive content of thought is constituted entirely by the norms governing judgemental synthesis. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: I'd be inclined to say that it needs a concept of truth, rather than Kant's tangle of norms and categories. Maybe the content is there before the associations get to work. |
| 6577 | For Kant, our conceptual scheme is disastrous when it reaches beyond experience [Kant, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, the conceptual apparatus that structures our experience for us will inevitably lead to intellectual disasters when it is applied to matters completely beyond experience. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is the empiricist side of Kant, influenced by Hume. I don't agree with Kant on this. I just think that speculation and abstract theory are much more difficult and error-prone than science, because you can't keep checking against raw facts. |
| 543 | All men long to understand, as shown by their delight in the senses [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: By nature, all men long to understand [eidenai]; an indication is their delight in the senses. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0980a21) | |
| A reaction: See Idea 8331 and Idea 12038 to understand what this means. I take it to support the thesis that the aim of philosophy is explanations (at a higher level of generality than the sciences). |
| 5538 | Understanding has no intuitions, and senses no thought, so knowledge needs their unity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The understanding is not capable of intuiting anything, and the senses are not capable of thinking anything. Only from their unification can cognition arise. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B075/A51) | |
| A reaction: At first glance this seems to settle the rationalist-empiricist debate at a stroke, by rejecting the rationalist dream of knowledge arising from pure intuitions, and the empiricist dream of knowledge from pure sensation. It can't be that simple, though… |
| 5559 | Sensations are a posteriori, but that they come in degrees is known a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All sensations are given only a posteriori, but their property of have a degree can be cognised only a priori. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B218/A176) | |
| A reaction: Study the context to be fair to Kant, but this seems very unconvincing. If we were constructed in some more digital way, our sensations might be binary, so their 'degree' can hardly be a necessity. |
| 8736 | Kantian intuitions are of particulars, and they give immediate knowledge [Kant, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, intuitions are singular, in the sense that they are modes of representing individual objects, and are needed for numbers and geometric figures; ..they also yield immediate knowledge, and are tied to sense perceptions. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.2 | |
| A reaction: The ordinary usage of the word 'intuition' agrees on the immediate knowledge produced, but not on the 'singular' aspect of it, so that is the respect in which Kant's use is a term of art. Why have a special faculty for singular apprehensions? |
| 583 | The starting point of a proof is not a proof [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Who defines the healthy man, or who is awake or asleep? This is a pursuit of foundations, but this is seeking an account where there isn't one. The starting point of a proof is not a proof. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011a10) | |
| A reaction: a comment on Descartes |
| 5541 | A sufficient but general sign of truth cannot possibly be provided [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is clear that a sufficient and yet at the same time general sign of truth cannot possibly be provided. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B083/A59) | |
| A reaction: In relation to the quest of Sextus Empiricus to find the 'criterion' of knowledge, this makes Kant a sceptic. It certainly seems to rule out any foundationalist view of knowledge. (Clearly Kant believes that an account of knowledge is possible). |
| 7070 | Kant says knowledge is when our representations sufficiently conform to our concepts [Kant, by Critchley] |
| Full Idea: Kant, in his epistemology, turns the issue of scepticism around by acknowledging that, although we can never know things-in-themselves, the objects of our representations conform to the concepts we have of them in a manner sufficient for knowledge. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Simon Critchley - Continental Philosophy - V. Short Intro Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to invite the problem of a brain-in-a-vat, which is fed absurd representations, and set up with a bunch of silly concepts that conform to the representations. |
| 4708 | Kant thought he had refuted scepticism, but his critics say he is a sceptic, for rejecting reality [O'Grady on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant believed he had given a decisive answer to traditional scepticism, since we can no longer be mistaken about objects, but his critics say he is a sceptic, because he relinquishes our grasp of independent things. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Paul O'Grady - Relativism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: A simple issue to raise about the man, my first reaction being that he is a sceptic. He says the 'noumenon' (true reality) is unknowable, but I say we can meaningfully speculate and theorise about it. |
| 581 | Dreams aren't a serious problem. No one starts walking round Athens next morning, having dreamt that they were there! [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is it really an issue whether things are true that appear to those asleep or to those awake? No one in Libya who dreamt he was in Athens, would set out for the Odeon next morning! | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1010b09) |
| 5592 | Scepticism is the euthanasia of pure reason [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason is tempted to surrender itself to a sceptical hopelessness, which might also be called the euthanasia of pure reason. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B434/A407) | |
| A reaction: Colin McGinn's 'mysterian' pessimism about the mind-body problem comes to mind! |
| 5595 | Scepticism is absurd in maths, where there are no hidden false assertions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The sceptical method would be absurd in mathematics, because nowhere in mathematics do false assertions disguise themselves and make themselves invisible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B452/A424) | |
| A reaction: An interesting observation. The implication I take here is that scepticism in the realm of sensation is justified, precisely because errors and illusion do occur. |
| 6578 | For Kant, experience is relative to a scheme, but there are no further possible schemes [Kant, by Fogelin] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, experience is relativised to a categorial framework, but there is no further relativisation, at least in any deep respect, to a plurality of possible conceptual schemes. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This point is enlarged nicely by Davidson, in his view that we could make no sense of a different 'conceptual scheme' (Idea 6398). Kant's resistance to speculation prevents him imagining how it might be to be an angel, or an alien, or a Hopi. |
| 584 | If truth is relative it is relational, and concerns appearances relative to a situation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The claim that all appearances are true makes all things relational. Hence the claim is shifted to all appearances being true relative to a subject, time, sense and context. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011a20) | |
| A reaction: applies to Epicurus |
| 585 | If relativism is individual, how can something look sweet and not taste it, or look different to our two eyes? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If things are true relative to an individual, how can something seem honey to the sight but not to the taste, or, given that we have two eyes, things may not seem the same to the sight of both of them. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1011a24) |
| 576 | If the majority had diseased taste, and only a few were healthy, relativists would have to prefer the former [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When two men taste the same thing one will often find it sweet and the other bitter. Suppose all men were sick, except one or two who were healthy. It would then be the latter two who would be considered sick, and the others not! | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1009b05) |
| 12309 | There cannot be a science of accidentals, but only of general truths [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is not even possible for there to be a science of the accidental, ...for any field of science is either 'always' or 'for the most part'. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1065b30-) | |
| A reaction: His example of an accident (and thus outside of any science) is a cold spell in high summer. This leaves us trying to explain the unusually tame tiger. Copi comments (p.717), rightly I think, that modern science disagrees with Aristotle on this. |
| 11386 | Demonstrations about particulars must be about everything of that type [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There cannot be demonstrations that this particular triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles, except that every triangle is equal to the sum of two right angles, nor that this particular man is an animal, except that every man is an animal. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1086b36) | |
| A reaction: Not quite the covering-law model, but well on the way. Why can't we demonstrate that this particular is different from the others? This tiger is docile; this butterfly stings. We just like generalisations because you know more with less effort. |
| 5629 | If a proposition implies any false consequences, then it is false [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If only a single false consequence can be derived from a proposition, then this proposition is false. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B819/A791) | |
| A reaction: Seems right. Of course, it might imply entirely true consequences, and still be false. This idea has to be one of the foundations (sic) of coherentism about truth and justification. |
| 11385 | Universal principles are not primary beings, but particular principles are not universally knowable [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If the principles are universal, they will not be primary beings [ousiai], ...but if the principles are not universal but of the nature of particulars, they will not be scientifically knowable. For scientific knowledge of any thing is universal. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1003a08) | |
| A reaction: Part of the fifteenth aporia (puzzle) of this book. Plato goes for the universal (and hence knowable), but Aristotle makes the particular primary, and so is left with an epistemological problem, which the rest of 'Metaphysics' is meant to solve. |
| 11289 | Understanding moves from the less to the more intelligible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Understanding moves from things less intelligible by nature to things more so. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029b02) | |
| A reaction: The interesting phrase is 'by nature'. Whether things are intelligible or not is a feature of the natural world, and not just a feature of the mind's capacities. |
| 11246 | Aristotelian explanations mainly divide things into natural kinds [Aristotle, by Politis] |
| Full Idea: The search for explanation as Aristotle conceives it is the search for the correct way to distinguish things into natural kinds, which may involve revising our initial conceptions. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], kind) by Vassilis Politis - Aristotle and the Metaphysics 2.2 | |
| A reaction: Nowadays we would make the huge addition of objects and processes which are invisible to the naked eye, which Aristotle probably never envisaged. He is interested in categories, but we are also interested in mechanisms. |
| 11384 | We know something when we fully know what it is, not just its quality, quantity or location [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is when we know what a man is or what fire is that we reckon that we know a particular item in the fullest sense, rather than when we merely know its quality, quantity or location. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1028a36) | |
| A reaction: The word 'what' should usually be taken to indicate that Aristotle is talking about essence (as V. Politis confirms of this passage). This idea is a key one for the claim that Aristotelian essences are essentially (sic) explanatory. |
| 16135 | Real enquiries seek causes, and causes are essences [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Real enquiries stand revealed as causal enquiries (and the cause is the what-it-was-to-be-that-thing [to ti en einai]). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041a28) | |
| A reaction: As good a quotation as any for showing that Aristotelian essences exist entirely by their role in explanation. |
| 16105 | We know a thing when we grasp its essence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We have knowledge of each thing when we grasp the what-it-was-to-be [to ti en einai] that thing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1031b08) | |
| A reaction: This is a key remark in my understanding of the whole business of essentialism. It really concerns the way in which we are able to grasp reality, rather than how it is in itself. It is not mere convention, because the grasping responds to the reality. |
| 11296 | The explanation is what gives matter its state, which is the form, which is the substance [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The explanation [aition - cause] that is the object of enquiry is that by virtue of which the matter is in the state that it is in. And this cause [explanation] is the form, and the form the substance [ousia]. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1041b08) | |
| A reaction: A key sentence, I think, for understanding Aristotle's whole enterprise. The explanation is the essence; the essence is what explains. |
| 11999 | Essential properties explain in conjunction with properties shared by the same kind [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle makes it clear that properties which belong essentially to anything have explanatory power vis-à-vis the other properties of things of that kind. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], props) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation IV | |
| A reaction: This means that explanation will always occur at the level of generalisation, leading to what we call 'laws', but some events are only explicable at the level of the individual. |
| 5606 | Freedom and natural necessity do not contradict, as they relate to different conditions [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Are freedom and natural necessity contradictory in an action? We have shown that freedom can relate to conditions of a kind entirely different from those in natural necessity, so each is independent of the other. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B585/A557) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I understand this, but I suspect that it means that a serious case of kleptomania while never provide even the hint of an excuse for a minor theft. We're all free, and that's that. I am dubious. |
| 4086 | Kant thought that consciousness depends on self-consciousness ('apperception') [Kant, by Crane] |
| Full Idea: Kant thought that consciousness in general depends for its possibility on self-consciousness (or, as he called it, 'apperception'). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Tim Crane - Elements of Mind 3.21 | |
| A reaction: What would Kant have made of Darwin? Consciousness looks very useful in small dim animals for registering survival information. |
| 2869 | Kant's only answer as to how synthetic a priori judgements are possible was that we have a 'faculty'! [Nietzsche on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant asked himself: how are synthetic judgements a priori possible? And what, really, did he answer? By means of a faculty! | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Friedrich Nietzsche - Beyond Good and Evil §011 |
| 5572 | Reason has logical and transcendental faculties [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Reason has logical and transcendental faculties. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B355/A299) | |
| A reaction: The notion of a transcendental faculty is not entirely clear (despite all Kant's efforts), but it is certainly vital to grasp that rationality extends way beyond logic. The clearest example is induction, which is rational, despite its shortage of logic. |
| 9346 | Judgements which are essentially and strictly universal reveal our faculty of a priori cognition [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Empirical universality is an increase in validity from most cases to all cases (e.g. all bodies are heavy), whereas strict universality belongs to a judgement essentially; this points to a special faculty of a priori cognition for it. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B004) | |
| A reaction: I would say that 'strict' universality arises not directly from some faculty, but from increasing degrees of refinement by abstraction. It is merely the iterations of a lower faculty, not the pure deliverances of a higher one. |
| 22443 | We are seldom aware of imagination, but we would have no cognition at all without it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Imagination - a blind though indispensable function of the soul, without which we would have no cognition at all, but of which we are seldom even conscious. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B103/A78) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why he calls it 'blind', since I can very deliberately control imagination. Neverthless, I applaud his recognition of imagination's central importance, even (I take it) in the simple act of looking out of the window. |
| 9088 | Skill comes from a general assumption obtained from thinking about similar things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A skill arises when from the many cases of thinking in experience a single general assumption is formed in connection with similar things. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0981a04) | |
| A reaction: [He gives the administration of appropriate medicine as the example of a 'skill'] Note that it is 'thinking in' experience, rather than just the raw having of experiences. This is the intellectualist version of empirical abstractionism. I like it. |
| 16153 | Aristotle distinguishes two different sorts of generality - kinds, and properties [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle counts as general not only properties but also the kinds, into which objects fall, i.e. the genera, species, and differentiae of substances; and these are to be differentiated strictly from properties. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], kind) by Michael Frede - Individuals in Aristotle Intro | |
| A reaction: I take properties to be prior, since the kind of a thing is presumably decided by its properties. I'm increasingly thinking that 'general', 'generality' and 'generalisation' are far more useful words in philosophy than other words in that area. |
| 9791 | Science is more accurate when it is prior and simpler, especially without magnitude or movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A scientific subject will possess more accuracy (i.e. simplicity) the more that it is about conceptually prior and simpler things, and so it will be more accurate without than with magnitude being involved, and above all being without movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a10) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is especially concerned to show how we can achieve accuracy, even while abstracting away from the details of the objects we are studying. Frege should have studied Aristotle more closely. |
| 5627 | I can express the motion of my body in a single point, but that doesn't mean it is a simple substance [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I can express the motion of my body through the motion of a point, since its volume is not relevant, but I could not infer from this that if I know nothing except the moving force of a body, that then the body can be conceived as a simple substance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B812/A784) | |
| A reaction: A nice analogy. The centre of gravity of a body is an abstraction, and people (such as Cartesians) who represent personal identity as being atomic seem to be discussing an abstraction rather than the real thing. My personal self is a bit of a mess. |
| 9751 | To some extent we must view ourselves as noumena [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: To some extent we must view ourselves as noumena. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' xi | |
| A reaction: An illuminating idea. We are inclined to thing of reality as 'out there', and hence potentially unreachable, but we actually experience 'being reality' directly in ourselves. Is this the germ of the whole of continental philosophy? |
| 21450 | Representation would be impossible without the 'I think' that accompanies it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The 'I thinks' must be able to accompany all my representations; for otherwise something would be represented in me that could not be thought at all, which is as much as to say that representation would be impossible, or would be nothing to me. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B132) | |
| A reaction: This is evidently a flat rejection of Hume's claim that he is a bundle of experiences with no self to co-ordinate them. Presumably this should apply to animals too, if they 'represent' their world (and how could they not?). |
| 5583 | We need an account of the self based on rational principles, to avoid materialism [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Why do we have need of a doctrine of the soul grounded merely on pure rational principles? Without doubt chiefly with the intent of securing our thinking Self from the danger of materialism. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A383) | |
| A reaction: And why is materialism a 'danger'? Only, I think, because it would make immortality impossible. Huge chunks of Enlightenment philosophy are the last vestiges of the religious view of reality. I think we can base morality on a material self. |
| 5570 | Self-knowledge can only be inner sensation, and thus appearance [Kant] |
| Full Idea: We know even ourselves only through inner sense, thus as appearance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B334/A278) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what it means to say that 'inner sense' is merely 'appearance'. Surely appearance is reality, within a mind? To want to see the real 'me' behind the world of inner appearances is a very odd kind of dream. |
| 5551 | I have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself [Kant] |
| Full Idea: I have no cognition of myself as I am, but only as I appear to myself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B158) | |
| A reaction: The key thought of the 'transcendental ego', showing a clear difference from Descartes, who thinks he directly knows himself (Idea 1401). He disagrees with Hume (Idea 1317) when he says there is an appearance. What could the true ego be like? |
| 571 | Is Socrates the same person when standing and when seated? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Who, except the philosopher, is going to ask whether Socrates and Socrates seated is the same thing? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1004b01) |
| 21452 | I can only determine my existence in time via external things [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The determination of my existence in time is possible only by means of the existence of actual things that I perceive outside of myself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B275) | |
| A reaction: This may be the germ of Hegel's much more social view of the self. Kant is only concerned with the question of identity across time. |
| 5582 | As balls communicate motion, so substances could communicate consciousness, but not retain identity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A series of elastic balls can successively communicate motion to one another. If mental substances communicated consciousness in this way, the last substance would be conscious of the previous states, but would not be the very same person. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A364) | |
| A reaction: A nice attack on John Locke's proposal, though Locke was aware of this scenario, and claimed the identity followed the consciousness. Clearly, though, if I share my thoughts with you, you don't instantly become me! |
| 2965 | For Kant the self is a purely formal idea, not a substance [Kant, by Lockwood] |
| Full Idea: Kant insists that the 'I' of consciousness is purely formal, and does not carry with it any positive conception of the self as substance. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A398-9) by Michael Lockwood - Mind, Brain and the Quantum p.169 | |
| A reaction: We might agree that a self does not involve any awareness of the substance of which it is constituted, but it is hard to see why we might get so worked up about the past, present and future of something which is 'purely formal'. |
| 5549 | Mental representations would not be mine if they did not belong to a unified self-consciousness [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The manifold representations that are given in a certain intuition would not all together be my representations if they did not all together belong to a self-consciousness. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B132) | |
| A reaction: Kant's 'transcendental ego' may only be a posh way of restating the Cartesian Cogito. Descartes was keen to assert not only that there must be a thinker, but also that its essence was to be unified in a manner beyond the physical (Ideas 2303 and 1400). |
| 5596 | We must assume an absolute causal spontaneity beginning from itself [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It must be assumed that there is an absolute causal spontaneity beginning from itself. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B474/A446) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is part of the Antinomies (conflicts) of pure reason. This phrase is a beautiful statement of the dream that is free will. |
| 9756 | We must be free, because we can act against our strongest desires [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: The fact that we are able to act against our strongest desires reveals to us that we are free, and so are members of the intelligible world. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Can he prove that we can act against our strongest desires? If you choose to drown yourself in the sink, you may just be in the grips of a very strong desire to do so, which defeats the normal desire to survive. |
| 5597 | If there is a first beginning, there can be other sequences initiated from nothing [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Because we must establish the necessity of a first beginning to make comprehensible an origin of the world, we are permitted to allow that in the course of the world different series may begin on their own as far as their causality is concerned. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B478/A450) | |
| A reaction: This reinforces my firmly held view, that human free will is a bogus concept, which was invented in order place God above nature, and then ascribed to human beings because no other explanation of moral responsibility could be found. |
| 5585 | Soul and body connect physically, or by harmony, or by assistance [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The three usual systems (really the only possible ones) for the community between soul and body are physical influence, preestablished harmony, and supernatural assistance. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B406-/A390) | |
| A reaction: This summarises the views of Descartes, Leibniz and Malebranche. Kant is not committing himself to dualism here. He didn't think of epiphenomenalism, or property dualism. And the 'community' could just be a coincidence… |
| 5630 | Our concept of an incorporeal nature is merely negative [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Our concept of an incorporeal nature is merely negative. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B827/A799) | |
| A reaction: This nicely pinpoints a well-known problem with the dualist theory of mind. |
| 5589 | Neither materialism nor spiritualism can reveal the separate existence of the soul [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If materialism will not explain my existence, then spiritualism is just as unsatisfactory, and the conclusion is that in no way can we cognise anything about the constitution of our soul that concerns its possible separate existence. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B420) | |
| A reaction: This is Kant's refusal to deal with the mind-body relation, because the mind and its identity have a 'transcendental' status. I.e. they are unavoidable presuppositions about which nothing can be asked. I don't think I agree with him. I'm a materialist. |
| 5556 | A pure concept of the understanding can never become an image [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The schema of a pure concept of the understanding is something that can never be brought to an image at all. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B181/A142) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. He is thinking of triangles, for example. The emphasis is on 'pure', and this is a nice defence of the notion of 'pure reason'. Obviously you wouldn't understand a triangle if you were incapable of imagining one. |
| 8687 | Kantian 'intuition' is the bridge between pure reason and its application to sense experiences [Kant, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: In Kant's technical sense, 'intuition' is the bridge between sense experience and pure reasoning, making it possible for us to apply our reasoning to the physical world around us. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 3.3 | |
| A reaction: Although this concept invites Ockham's Razor, I like it, since it focuses on the mystery of how reasoning can have application. It is the bridge between the analytic and the synthetic, between the a priori and the empirical. It unites thought. |
| 23311 | Aristotle sees reason as much more specific than our more everyday concept of it [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: It seems that Aristotle does not associate reason primarily with ordinary, everyday thought and reasoning, as we do, but with a much more specific function of reason. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 980b) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Rationalism p.163 | |
| A reaction: Although Aristotle is naturalistic, he is also a bit of a dualist, and so is less keen than I am to connect human reason with sensible behaviour in animals. |
| 23310 | Animals live by sensations, and some have good memories, but they don't connect experiences [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: By nature animals are born with the faculty of sensation, and from sensation memory is produced in some of them, though not in others; therefore the former are more intelligent. …Animals live by appearances and memories, with little connected experience. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 980a28-) | |
| A reaction: I assume that larger animals make judgements, which have to rely on previous experiences, so I think he underestimates the cleverest animals. We now know about Caledonian Crows, which amaze us, and would have amazed Aristotle. |
| 21759 | Kant deduced the categories from our judgements, and then as preconditions of experience [Kant, by Houlgate] |
| Full Idea: Kant provided a 'metaphysical deduction' of the categories by deriving them from the fundamental forms of judgement. He also gave a 'transcendental deduction' of the categories ...as the indispensable conditions of our knowledge and experience of objects | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stephen Houlgate - An Introduction to Hegel 02 'From indeterminate' | |
| A reaction: I'm suspicious of the second method, because it seems that all you can do is make up an explanation of experience, with very little to go on, because it is hidden. Analysing the way we make judgements is more interesting. |
| 19655 | Kant says we can describe the categories of thought, but Hegel claims to deduce them [Kant, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Kant maintains that we can only describe the a priori forms of knowledge (space and time, and the twelve categories), whereas Hegel insists that it is possible to deduce them. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 2 | |
| A reaction: I've some sympathy with Kant here. There is a sort of introspective philosophical psychology which seems to be possible, independently from empirical psychology. |
| 5552 | Categories are concepts that prescribe laws a priori to appearances [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Categories are concepts that prescribe laws a priori to appearances. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B163) | |
| A reaction: The intriguing word here is 'laws'. Might it be possible to create a new category of the understanding, by taking drugs, or by spectacularly imaginative thought? It all sounds a bit conservative (as Nietzsche suggested - Idea 2859). |
| 5544 | Four groups of categories of concept: Quantity, Quality, Relation and Modality [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Four groups of categories: Quantity (unity,plurality,totality), Quality (reality,negation,limitation), Relation (inherence/subsistence, causality/dependence,community), and Modality (possible/impossible,exist/non-exist,necessary/contingent). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B106/A80) | |
| A reaction: I can't challenge this claim, but Kant himself invites us to compare his scheme with that of Aristotle. See Idea 3311 for a summary. I prefer the way Aristotelian categories 'peter out', rather than being clear and determinate. Hegel had a shot too. |
| 5547 | The categories are objectively valid, because they make experience possible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The objective validity of the categories, as a priori concepts, rests on the fact that through them alone is experience possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B126/A93) | |
| A reaction: The human mind is clearly a sort of database, with a flexible structure, but the grounding of it has to be innate, and a priori additions are made at an early stage. I take the categories to be the basic folders of the database, but they may be cultural. |
| 11245 | Many memories make up a single experience [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Many recollections of the same thing perform the function of a single experience. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0980b28) | |
| A reaction: This beautifully simple remark seems to me to be extremely important if we are going to understand the nature of thought. Personally I think it endorses the 'database' view of how the mind works (as a set of labelled 'files'). See Fodor's 'LOT2'. |
| 17616 | Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Without sensibility no object would be given to us, and without understanding none would be thought. Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B075/A51) | |
| A reaction: A famous assertion, which requires quite a lot of deconstruction. See MacDowell 1994 for example. Whatever the solution, it had better allow animals to cope with their world, because that's what they do. |
| 5553 | Either experience creates concepts, or concepts make experience possible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: There are only two ways in which a necessary agreement of experience with the concepts of its objects can be thought: either the experience makes these concepts possible or these concepts make the experience possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B166) | |
| A reaction: A nice clear statement of the big question about concepts. The extremes seem to be the 'tabula rasa' versus Fodor's strong 'nativism' (that most concepts are innate). Personally I want to be as empiricist as possible. Kant needs a theory of their origin. |
| 5593 | Reason generates no concepts, but frees them from their link to experience in the understanding [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Only from the understanding can pure concepts arise, and reason cannot generate any concept at all, but can only free a concept of the understanding from the unavoidable limitations of possible experience, and extend it beyond empirical boundaries. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B435/A409) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Descartes' 'natural light' should cover the understanding as much as the reason. This quotation brings out the empirical aspect of Kant's thought. It suggests that analysis is the main function of reason. |
| 22004 | Concepts are rules for combining representations [Kant, by Pinkard] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, concepts should be thought of as rules for the combination of representations. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Terry Pinkard - German Philosophy 1760-1860 01 | |
| A reaction: Kant seems to have thought that they are rules we decree for ourselves (like the categorical imperative). So think of private languages, and you get Hegel's much more social view of concepts (I think). |
| 5543 | All human cognition is through concepts [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The cognition of every, at least human, understanding is a cognition through concepts. ...A concept is a unity of the act of bringing various representations under one common representation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B093/A68) | |
| A reaction: This puts concepts right at the heart of human understanding, as the building blocks for propositions and beliefs. Do gods and dogs use concepts? If artificial intelligence cannot program concepts, is it defeated? Are there non-conscious concepts? … |
| 8735 | Kant implies that concepts have analysable parts [Kant, by Shapiro] |
| Full Idea: Kant's definition of 'analyticity' presupposes that concepts have parts (at least metaphorically). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics | |
| A reaction: The concept of a 'bachelor' seem undeniably to have parts. Others, however, seem to lack components, such as 'one', 'red', 'true'. Hence concepts must fall into two groups: primitive and composite. In any language. In any proposition. |
| 10954 | It is unclear whether acute angles are prior to right angles, or fingers to men [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Suppose parts are prior to the whole - then, since the acute angle is a part of the right angle, and a finger is part of an animal, this would mean the acute angle and the finger were prior, but received opinion says otherwise. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1034b24) |
| 9792 | Mathematicians study quantity and continuity, and remove the perceptible features of things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The mathematician conducts a study into things in abstraction (after the removal of all perceptible features, such as weight and hardness, leaving only quantity and continuity). | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1061a26) | |
| A reaction: Frege complained that there is nothing left if you remove the perceptible features, but clearly Aristotle is not an empiricist in this passage, and it is doubtful if even Mill can be totally empirical in his account. We have relations of ideas. |
| 9077 | Mathematicians suppose inseparable aspects to be separable, and study them in isolation [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Study things as mathematicians do. Suppose what is not separable to be separable. A man qua man is an indivisible unity, so the arithmetician supposes a man to be an indivisible unity, and investigates the accidental features of man qua indivisible. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a19) | |
| A reaction: This is the abstractionist view of mathematics. Qua indivisible, a man will have the same properties as a toothbrush. Aristotle clearly intends the method for scientists as well. It strikes me as common sense, but there is a lot of modern caution. |
| 9075 | If health happened to be white, the science of health would not study whiteness [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If we have a science of the healthy, and the healthy happens to be white, the science of the healthy does not deal with the white. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1077b30) | |
| A reaction: Given this point, we certainly cannot think of Aristotle as believing in simple abstractionism. The problem of the coextension of renates and cordates looms here (Idea 7317). 'Relevant' similarities require extensive cross-referencing. |
| 8734 | Non-subject/predicate tautologies won't fit Kant's definition of analyticity [Shapiro on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Not every proposition has a subject-predicate form, and so by contemporary lights Kant's definition of analyticity [predicate contained in subject] is unnatural and stifling. What of 'If it is raining now, then either it is raining or it is snowing'? | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Stewart Shapiro - Thinking About Mathematics 4.2 | |
| A reaction: Only a logician would want to assert something so pointless. Kant gives a pretty good account of normal language tautologies. Still, you can't deny the point. |
| 7314 | How can bachelor 'contain' unmarried man? Are all analytic truths in subject-predicate form? [Miller,A on Kant] |
| Full Idea: There are two problems with Kant's characterisation of analytic truths (as having 'the predicate contained within the subject'): what exactly does it mean to say that bachelor "contains" unmarried man?, and it is limited to subject-predicate sentences. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Alexander Miller - Philosophy of Language 4.2 | |
| A reaction: He picks these objections up from Quine. I always have reservations about Quine's supposed demolition of analytic truths, but there is no denying that these are two excellent problems which need addressing. |
| 20291 | If the predicate is contained in the subject of a judgement, it is analytic; otherwise synthetic [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In judgements, the relation of subject to predicate is possible in two ways. Either the predicate B belongs to the subject A as (covertly) contained in this concept A; or B lies entirely outside A. The first I call analytic, the second synthetic. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B010/A6) | |
| A reaction: Rey says this is the first introduction of the analytic/synthetic disctinction. Modern philosophers seem to reject this definition, mainly because they are suspicious of the vague word 'contained'. Depends what a concept is. |
| 20292 | Analytic judgements clarify, by analysing the subject into its component predicates [Kant] |
| Full Idea: One could call an analytic judgement one of clarification ...since the predicate does not add anything to the concept of the subject, but only breaks it up by means of analysis into its component concepts. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B011/A7) | |
| A reaction: This is a very illuminating view of the concept, which seems to have fallen into disrepute. If we ask what predicates are contained in 'tree', we may quickly have to embrace essentialism, to decide which predicates matter. |
| 636 | Beauty involves the Forms of order, symmetry and limit, which can be handled mathematically [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The major Forms of the beautiful are order, symmetry and delimitation, and these are very much objects of the proofs of the mathematical sciences. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a31) |
| 635 | The good is found in actions, but beauty can exist without movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The good is always in some action, whereas the beautiful can also be in things without movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a26) |
| 5599 | Without God, creation and free will, morality would be empty [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If there is no original being different from the world, if the world is without a beginning and without an author, if our will is not free and our soul is of the same corruptibility as matter, then moral ideas and principles lose all validity. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B496/A468) | |
| A reaction: Atheism or determinism might lead to the collapse of your morality, if you had an amazingly inflated idea of the cosmic importance of human beings behaving well. My view is that morality just concerns important decisions made by healthy persons. |
| 5576 | We cannot derive moral laws from experience, as it is the mother of illusion [Kant] |
| Full Idea: With respect to moral laws, experience is (alas!) the mother of illusion, and it is most reprehensible to derive the laws concerning what I ought to do from what is done, or to want to limit it to that. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B375/A319) | |
| A reaction: Kant agrees with Hume, and turns to a non-naturalistic and cognitivist explanation, whereas Hume turns to a non-cognitivist naturalistic one (based on human feelings). Aristotle's view is somewhat based on the experience of human nature. |
| 21455 | We only understand what exists, and can find no sign of what ought to be in nature [Kant] |
| Full Idea: In nature the understanding cognizes only what exists, or has been, or will be. It is impossible that something ought to be other that what it in fact is. ...We cannot ask what ought to happen in nature, any more than what properties a circle should have. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B575/A547) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the first clear recognition of what we now call 'normativity', which seems like a misfit in naturalistic views. Davidson derives a sort of mental dualism from it. Note that powers and dispositions can also not be directly cognised. |
| 15772 | A thing's active function is its end [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A thing's active function is its end. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1050a16) | |
| A reaction: This sort of remark is the basis of modern teleological functionalism about the mind. I think that is misguided. Don't define things by their function. They have functions because of intrinsic character. |
| 629 | Is the good a purpose, a source of movement, or a pure form? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The good is a principle for all things, and is so in the very highest degree, but in what way? As a purpose, as a source of movement, or as a form? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075a32) | |
| A reaction: I tend to think of it as an 'ideal', whatever that is, and hence an inspiration, but a rather vague one. Beauty, goodness and truth. Surely not a source of movement? |
| 591 | Excellence is a sort of completion [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Excellence is a sort of completion. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1021b19) |
| 625 | Is excellence separate from things, or part of them, or both? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Does the universe possess goodness and excellence as something separated and by itself, or because of its arrangement? But why should it not be both ways? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075a14) |
| 621 | Contemplation is a supreme pleasure and excellence [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Contemplation is a supreme pleasure and excellence. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072b22) |
| 5605 | Moral blame is based on reason, since a reason is a cause which should have been followed [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Moral blame is grounded in the law of reason, which regards reason as a cause that, regardless of all the empirical conditions, could have and ought to have determined the conduct of the person to be other than it is. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B583/A555) | |
| A reaction: This appears to be a description of akrasia, in which case it is hard to see how a reason is a cause if it doesn't actually produce the result it judges to be right. Kant is an intellectualist about morality, but not about practical reason, it seems. |
| 5632 | Moral laws are commands, which must involve promises and threats, which only God could provide [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Everyone regards moral laws as commands, which they could not be if they did not connect consequences with their rule a priori, and thus carry with them promises and threats, which must lie in a necessary being as the highest good. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B839/A811) | |
| A reaction: This reveals the thinking of Kant's moral argument for God rather more nakedly than elsewhere. |
| 6916 | For Kant, essence is mental and a mere idea, and existence is the senses and mere appearance [Kant, by Feuerbach] |
| Full Idea: Kant's philosophy is the contradiction of essence and existence; essence lies in the mind and existence in the senses; existence without essence is mere appearance, and essence without existence is mere idea. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Ludwig Feuerbach - Principles of Philosophy of the Future §22 | |
| A reaction: The Sartrean challenge is that existence without essence is not mere appearance, but is the central feature of reality as it actually is. One might even flirt with the slogan 'existence is essence'. |
| 5575 | An obvious idea is a constitution based on maximum mutual freedom for citizens [Kant] |
| Full Idea: A constitution providing for the greatest human freedom according to laws that permit the freedom of each to exist together with that of others is at least a necessary idea. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B373/A316) | |
| A reaction: The basis of Mill's 'On Liberty'. Given that he claims it to be a necessary idea, it is strikingly characteristic of the Enlightenment, and not the sort of thing that occurred to people in 1320. Individual freedom acquired a value. John Lilburne? |
| 5621 | The existence of reason depends on the freedom of citizens to agree, doubt and veto ideas [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The very existence of reason depends on freedom, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express reservations, indeed even veto, without holding back. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B766/A738) | |
| A reaction: I think the biggest conflict within modern societies (as opposed to currently existing medieval ones) is between the freedom that is required for a rational society, and the restraint which is required for a virtuous society. What has highest value? |
| 11241 | Wise men aren't instructed; they instruct [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The wise man should not be instructed, but should instruct. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0982a20) | |
| A reaction: I take this to refer to the duties of a wise man, as well as to his (or her) superior rights. |
| 632 | Why are some things destructible and others not? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: A basic principle of things has to explain why some things are destructible and others are not. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075b15) |
| 22052 | Kant's nature is just a system of necessary laws [Bowie on Kant] |
| Full Idea: In the first Critique, nature is just a system of necessary laws. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Andrew Bowie - German Philosophy: a very short introduction 1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to have provoked rebellion in Schiller and the early Romantics, and Kant tried to add teleology to his picture of nature. Leibniz saw nature as dimly alive, and Schiller focused on organisms. Biology is not very lawlike. |
| 8256 | Kant identifies nature with the scientific picture of it as the realm of law [Kant, by McDowell] |
| Full Idea: For Kant the idea of nature is the idea of the realm of law, the idea that came into focus with the rise of modern science. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by John McDowell - Mind and World V.4 | |
| A reaction: Any doubts about the existence of laws of nature (e.g. Ideas 5470, 6781, 5474) would pull the mat out from under this view. I am inclined to view nature as the realm of natural kinds, which give rise to the regularities we call 'laws'. |
| 626 | Everything is arranged around a single purpose [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: All things are arranged around a single purpose. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075a18) |
| 5591 | Reason must assume as necessary that everything in a living organism has a proportionate purpose [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Regarding the nature of living beings in this world, reason must assume as a necessary principle that no organ, no faculty, nothing superfluous, or disproportionate to its use, hence nothing purposeless, is to be met with. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B425) | |
| A reaction: Extraordinary to treat this as an a priori truth! In fact Darwin seems to have discovered that most organs have a purpose, but sometimes they have become redundant, and certainly they can be disproportionate. Did Kant really need that massive intellect? |
| 17858 | Pythagoreans say the whole universe is made of numbers [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: For Pythagoreans the entire universe is constructed from numbers. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1080b16) | |
| A reaction: The original view seems to have been more extreme than the mere idea that mathematics is the guide to nature, or the language of God. Stones are made of numbers. Aristotle was unimpressed. |
| 12299 | Aristotle had a hierarchical conception of matter [Aristotle, by Fine,K] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle had a hierarchical conception of matter; what is matter may itself have matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Kit Fine - Aristotle on Matter §1 | |
| A reaction: This shows that Aristotle's 'hule' is not like our word 'matter' so a real effort must be made to grasp how he is conceptualising it. |
| 601 | Substance must exist, because something must endure during change between opposites [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There can be no doubt that matter is a substance. Consider all changes between opposites. In all of them there is something that underlies the change. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1042a30) |
| 10955 | Matter is perceptible (like bronze) or intelligible (like mathematical objects) [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Matter divides into that which is perceptible and that which is intelligible: the former comprises bronze, wood and all process-apt matter, the latter matter is present in the perceptibles but not qua perceptible, e.g. the mathematicals. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1036a09) |
| 16590 | Matter is neither a particular thing nor a member of a determinate category [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: By matter I mean that which in itself is neither a particular thing nor a certain quantity nor assigned to any other of the categories by which being is determined. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1029a20) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the classic definition of matter in Aristotle. He doesn't say here that matter has an inferior mode of existence, but elsewhere he says that it is potential rather than actual, which seems to confiscate its passport. |
| 12001 | Aristotle says matter is a lesser substance, rather than wholly denying that it is a substance [Aristotle, by Kung] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics Z.3, often read as denying that matter is a substance, can more plausibly be interpreted as claiming that matter cannot be the only and not a first-rank substance. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Joan Kung - Aristotle on Essence and Explanation VI | |
| A reaction: This certainly sounds a more plausible view, and in modern understanding some kind of elemental matter is our best candidate for what could be meant by 'substance'. Perhaps the 'fields' of modern physics play that role. |
| 12868 | Ultimate matter is discredited, as Aristotle merged substratum of change with bearer of properties [Simons on Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The idea of ultimate matter is discredited philosophically because of the version of the doctrine found in Aristotle, who ran together the two notions of being a substratum of change on the one hand, and being the bearer of properties on the other. | |
| From: comment on Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], Bk 06.6) by Peter Simons - Parts 6.6 | |
| A reaction: This is an illuminating comment on Aristotle. The substratum of change seems to be a fairly substantial essence, while the bearer of properties seems to shrivel to minimal size because it can't have properties of its own. |
| 15954 | Aristotle may only have believed in prime matter because his elements were immutable [Aristotle, by Alexander,P] |
| Full Idea: It has been held that Aristotle needed the conception of prime matter only because he held that the transmutation of one element into another is impossible. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 01.2 |
| 16099 | The traditional view of Aristotle is God (actual form) at top and prime matter (potential matter) at bottom [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Since antiquity prime matter has enjoyed a hallowed place in the Aristotelian system, which displays an awesome completeness, with God (pure form and actuality) at the top, and prime matter (pure matter and potentiality) at the bottom. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], God) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: Gill suggests that actually the four elements should be at the bottom, with matter only coming into it when distinct objects are in the offing. The Great Chain of Being emerged as the story between the two extremes. |
| 15771 | Primary matter is what characterises other stuffs, and it has no distinct identity [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If earth is air-esque and earth is (not fire but) fire-esque, then it is fire that is primary matter. Such matter is not a this-something. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1049a25) | |
| A reaction: For being a 'this-something' read 'having determinate identity'. Aristotle's account of 'primary matter' is controversial and much discussed. |
| 616 | It doesn't explain the world to say it was originally all one. How did it acquire diversity? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nor is it a sufficient explanation of the world to say just that all things were originally together. For things differ in matter. Indeed, why otherwise did an infinity of things come-to-be, and not just one? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1069b25) |
| 16098 | I claim that Aristotle's foundation is the four elements, and not wholly potential prime matter [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| Full Idea: Tradition holds that prime matter, a subject exhausted by its potentialities, lies at the foundation. I argue that Aristotle's system is instead grounded in the four simple bodies, earth, water, air and fire, as ultimate objects. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], matter) by Mary Louise Gill - Aristotle on Substance Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a controversial view of Gill's, though I found her case persuasive. Those seeking an Aristotelianism that fits with modern science should like her reading. However, physical fields may be seen as pure potentiality. |
| 5615 | Extension and impenetrability together make the concept of matter [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Extension and impenetrability together constitute the concept of matter. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B646/A618) | |
| A reaction: Descartes had settled for extension alone. Kant's simple claim is probably now just a historical footnote, as we would now turn to physicists to define matter. Extension might survive, but impenetrability is not a key notion in quantum mechanics. |
| 10952 | Unusual kinds like mule are just a combination of two kinds [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The kind that is common to both horse and ass and which most nearly comprises them happens not to have a name, but can safely be presumed to be both, i.e. the horse-ass or 'mule'. ...A mule does not come from a mule. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1033b32) | |
| A reaction: [second part at 1034b04] Does ancient Greek have a word for 'mule' - it sounds as if it doesn't. Nice chicken-and-egg problem. Must a natural kind be derived from a natural kind? No. Gold does not derive from gold. |
| 561 | Is there cause outside matter, and can it be separated, and is it one or many? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We must especially inquire and investigate whether there is any cause beyond matter in itself or not, and whether this is separable or not, and whether it is one or many in number. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 0995b28) |
| 14560 | A ball denting a pillow seems like simultaneous cause and effect, though time identifies which is cause [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If I consider a ball that lies on a stuffed pillow and makes a dent in it as a cause, it is simultaneous with its effect. Yet I distinguish the two by means of the temporal relation of the dynamical connection. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B248/A203) | |
| A reaction: Mumford and Lill Anjum use this example to defend simultaneous cause and effect, whereas Kant seems to be in the grip of an a priori assumption that cause must come first. At the micro level Kant may be right. Two books lean on one another? |
| 588 | We exercise to be fit, but need fitness to exercise [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Exercise is the cause of fitness, but fitness is also the cause of exercise. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1013b10) |
| 5545 | Appearances give rules of what usually happens, but cause involves necessity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The concept of cause always requires that something A be of such a kind that something else B follows from it necessarily and in accordance with an absolutely universal rule. Appearances may give a rule that something usually happens, but not necessarily. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B124/A91) | |
| A reaction: I must side with Hume when it is put like this. As all empiricists are keen to tell us, a strong feeling of necessity is not enough to guarantee it. Has Kant confused 'natural' and 'metaphysical' necessity? We can't learn natural necessity a priori. |
| 634 | Pure Forms and numbers can't cause anything, and especially not movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If we allow Forms or numbers, they will not be the cause of anything, or, if that is too strong, they will at any rate not be the cause of any movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1075b23) | |
| A reaction: This is Benacerraf's famous observation (1973) that we can't accept a platonic account of numbers because, lacking causal powers, they are unknowable. |
| 9755 | The concept of causality entails laws; random causality is a contradiction [Kant, by Korsgaard] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, the will is a causality, and the concept of a causality entails laws; a causality which functions randomly is a contradiction. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Christine M. Korsgaard - Intro to 'Creating the Kingdom of Ends' Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a rather Humean view, which may be confusing the epistemology (of how we might detect causes) from the ontology (of what causation is). Where is the logical contradiction in random unpredictable causes? |
| 17709 | We judge causation by relating events together by some law of nature [Kant, by Mares] |
| Full Idea: Kant says that we can judge one event to cause another if we can relate the two events to one another by some law of nature. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Edwin D. Mares - A Priori 07.3 | |
| A reaction: I take this to have got things exactly the wrong way round, since it leaves no notion of the foundations of the laws being used to do the explaining. The laws have to be primitive or supernatural. |
| 5562 | Experience is only possible because we subject appearances to causal laws [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It is only because we subject the sequence of appearances and thus all alteration to the law of causality that experience itself is possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B234/A189) | |
| A reaction: Remarks like this make me sympathise with Hume. Kant puts it too strongly. It strikes me as theoretically possible to 'experience' a sequence with no thought of causality. |
| 14543 | When a power and its object meet in the right conditions, an action necessarily follows [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Whenever the potential active and the potentially affected items are associated in conditions propitious to the potentiality, the former must of necessity act and the latter must of necessity be affected. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1048a08) | |
| A reaction: Of course the world could end between the two happenings, so this can't be full-scale metaphysical necessity. That point is not enough, though, to get rid of Aristotle's intuition here. |
| 5523 | Causation obviously involves necessity, so it cannot just be frequent association [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The very concept of a cause obviously contains the concept of a necessity of connection with an effect and a strict universality of rule, which would be entirely lost if one sought, as Hume did, to derive it from a frequent association. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B005) | |
| A reaction: It is not clear (in the next paragraphs) whether Kant is saying causation is necessary because it is knowable a priori, or knowable a priori because it is necessary. I am quite sure that Hume cannot be dismissed as glibly as this. |
| 19669 | For Kant the laws must be necessary, because contingency would destroy representation [Kant, by Meillassoux] |
| Full Idea: Kant considers the hypothesis of the contingency of the laws of nature to be refuted by the mere fact of representation. ...If representation were no longer structured by causality, it would no longer structure any aspect of the phenomenon at all. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 4 | |
| A reaction: This is based on the belief that a contingent nature would continually change, which Meillassoux denies. |
| 19672 | Kant fails to prove the necessity of laws, because his reasoning about chance is over-ambitious [Meillassoux on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant's belief in the necessity of laws is revoked as an instance of aleatory reason's unwarranted pretension to reach beyond the limits of experience. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Quentin Meillassoux - After Finitude; the necessity of contingency 4 | |
| A reaction: A glimpse of Meillassoux's master argument. He cites Cantor on the uncountable transfinite, claiming that chance in nature involves the transfinite, but normal reasoning about chances should be restricted to what is countable. |
| 17736 | We can't learn of space through experience; experience of space needs its representation [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Thus the representation of space cannot be obtained from the relations of outer appearance through experience, but this outer experience is itself first possible only through this representation. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B038/A23) | |
| A reaction: There is an obvious symbiosis between the mental experience of such things as space and the nature of the thing itself, but I don't see what basis Kant can have for his confident distinction. |
| 5531 | Space is an a priori necessary basic intuition, as we cannot imagine its absence [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Space is a necessary representation, a priori, which is the ground of all outer intuitions. One can never represent that there is no space, although one can very well think that there are no objects to be encountered. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B038/A24) | |
| A reaction: The proposal that space is a mental intuition rather than a reality strikes me, and most people, as daft, but the observation that we are incapable of imagining the absence of space is striking. It is one of the basics of thought. |
| 5536 | If space and time exist absolutely, we must assume the existence of two pointless non-entities [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Those who decide in favour of the subsistence of the absolute reality of space and time must assume two eternal and infinite self-subsisting non-entities which exist (without there being anything real) only to comprehend everything real within themselves. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B056/A39) | |
| A reaction: This is an attack on Newton, and modern physics seems (thanks to Einstein) to agree with Kant. However the modern view strikes me as the usual confusion of epistemology and ontology. Physicists report what we can know, without speculation about how it is. |
| 5534 | One can never imagine appearances without time, so it is given a priori [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Time is a necessary representation that grounds all intuitions. In regard to appearances in general on cannot remove time, though one can very well take the appearances away from time. Time is therefore given a priori. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B046/A31) | |
| A reaction: As with space, the notion that time is a purely a priori intuition, and not a real feature of the 'space-time manifold' strikes me as absurd (though, unlike space, a reductive account of time might be possible), but its absence is indeed unimaginable. |
| 5535 | That times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, so it is known by intuition, not analysis [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The proposition that different times cannot be simultaneous is synthetic, and cannot arise from concepts alone. It is therefore immediately contained in the intuition and representation of time. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B047/A32) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that this proposition is in fact analytic. What would it be like for two times to be simultaneous? If it happened we would not accept it, because it would violate our very concept of an instant in time. |
| 5560 | The three modes of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The three 'modi' of time are persistence, succession and simultaneity. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B219/A177) | |
| A reaction: I find such an assertion quite breathtaking in its confidence. How does he know this? It is tempting to try to reduce the three modes down to two or one. See Ideas 2608 and 4230 for McTaggart's reduction to two. |
| 5561 | If time involved succession, we must think of another time in which succession occurs [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If one were to ascribe succession to time itself, one would have to think yet another time in which this succession would be possible. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B226/A183) | |
| A reaction: The implication of this might be that while we must believe that time exists, we are utterly incapable of imagining its existence. |
| 617 | It is hard to see how either time or movement could come into existence or be destroyed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that movement should either come-to-be or be destroyed. The same can be said for time itself, since it is not even possible for there to be an earlier and a later if time does not exist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071b06) |
| 620 | The first mover is necessary, and because it is necessary it is good [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The existence of the first mover is necessary, and in that it is necessary it is good. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072b10) | |
| A reaction: This is the direct antithesis of David Hume's is/ought distinction (that the universe is value-free). |
| 619 | Something which both moves and is moved is intermediate, so it follows that there must be an unmoved mover [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since that which is moved and which also moves is an intermediate, it follows that there must be something that moves without being moved. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072a19) |
| 613 | Even if the world is caused by fate, mind and nature are still prior causes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even if luck or the automatic are the cause of the world, mind and nature are prior causes still. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1065b03) |
| 622 | There must a source of movement which is eternal, indivisible and without magnitude [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There exists an eternal unmoved substance separate from sensible things. It can have no magnitude, and is without parts and indivisible. As the source of movement for infinite time, it must itself be infinite. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1073a05) |
| 7603 | God is not a creator (involving time and change) and is not concerned with the inferior universe [Aristotle, by Armstrong,K] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's god had not created the world, since this would involve an inappropriate change and temporal activity; everything yearns towards god, but god remains indifferent, since he cannot contemplate anything inferior to himself. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], God) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Trust Aristotle to come up with the only rational and consistent account of a deity anyone has ever offered. Endless paradoxes and inconsistencies arise if god steps into time, makes things, changes, and responds to prayers. |
| 5633 | We don't accept duties as coming from God, but assume they are divine because they are duties [Kant] |
| Full Idea: So far as practical reason has the right to lead us, we will not hold actions to be obligatory because they are God's commands, but will rather regard them as divine commands because we are internally obligated to them. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B847/A819) | |
| A reaction: Thus Kant agrees with Plato in his response to the latter's 'Euthyphro Question' (Ideas 336 and Idea 337). |
| 16165 | For Aristotle God is defined in an axiom, for which there is no proof [Aristotle, by Frede,M] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle is committed to the view that strictly speaking there is no proof of the essence and existence of God. There will be a real definition of him as an axiom of special theology, and then a deduction of theological theorems. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], God) by Michael Frede - Aristotle's Conception of Metaphysics p.94 | |
| A reaction: The cynical response would be 'why not start with a Great White Rabbit, then?', but I presume one must read what Aristotle says (late in 'Metaphysics') to understand why this particular axiom is chosen. Economy, power etc.? |
| 5607 | Only three proofs of God: the physico-theological (evidence), the cosmological (existence), the ontological (a priori) [Kant] |
| Full Idea: There are three proofs of the existence of God: the physico-theological, the cosmological, and the ontological. There are no more of them, and there also cannot be any more. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B619/A591) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to deny this, though the 'physico-theological' group may be a sizeable family. The immediate difficulty may be that physical evidence supports something less than God, the cosmological is just speculation, and a priori proofs won't work. |
| 5609 | If 'this exists' is analytic, either the thing is a thought, or you have presupposed its existence [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If the proposition 'this thing exists' is analytic, ..then either the thought is the thing, or else you have presupposed the existence and then inferred it, which is just a miserable tautology. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B625/A597) | |
| A reaction: I love the phrase "miserable tautology"! A possible strategy is to treat God as a self-evident a priori axiom. This would not be a tautology, but it would make evidence irrelevant. This may be the strategy behind Kierkegaard's 'leap of faith'. |
| 5610 | If an existential proposition is synthetic, you must be able to cancel its predicate without contradiction [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If you concede that every existential proposition is synthetic, then how would you assert that the predicate of existence may not be cancelled without contradictions? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B626/A598) | |
| A reaction: The point is that the Ontological Argument claims that "God does not exist" is a contradiction. Kant is echoing Hume here. The proposition that 'nothing exists' hardly sounds like a logical impossibility |
| 5611 | Being is not a real predicate, that adds something to a concept [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Being is obviously not a real predicate, i.e. a concept of something that could add to the concept of a thing. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B626/A598) | |
| A reaction: Kant's famous slogan against the Ontological Argument. The modern line is that existence is a quantifier, which stands outside a proposition, and says whether it applies to anything. It is worth considering the possibility that Kant is wrong. |
| 5612 | You add nothing to the concept of God or coins if you say they exist [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If I take God together with all his predicates (among which omnipotence belongs), and say 'God is', then I add no new predicate to the concept of God. ..A hundred actual thalers do not contain the least bit more than a hundred possible ones. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B627/A599) | |
| A reaction: Norman Malcolm claims that 'necessary existence' adds something to a concept. We can compare a concept with and without contingent existence, but the comparison is void if the existence is necessary. I love Kant's objection, though. |
| 8451 | Existence is merely derived from the word 'is' (rather than being a predicate) [Kant, by Orenstein] |
| Full Idea: For Kant, existence derives from a true affirmative subject-copula-predicate judgement; existence is not a real predicate, but is merely derivatively implied by the copula ('is'). | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by Alex Orenstein - W.V. Quine Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This is Kant's understanding of 'existence is not a predicate', prior to the later move of Brentano and Frege, which places existence claims in the quantifier, which is outside the proposition. |
| 3321 | Modern logic says (with Kant) that existence is not a predicate, because it has been reclassified as a quantifier [Benardete,JA on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant's famous critique of the Ontological Argument that existence is not a predicate leaves one perplexed as to what it might be, but modern logic says that existence is a quantifier, not a predicate. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by José A. Benardete - Metaphysics: the logical approach Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: See McGinn's criticism of this in Idea 6062. |
| 13732 | Kant never denied that 'exist' could be a predicate - only that it didn't enlarge concepts [Kant, by Fitting/Mendelsohn] |
| Full Idea: Kant denied that 'exists' was a predicate that enlarged the concept; he never denied that it was a predicate. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) by M Fitting/R Mendelsohn - First-Order Modal Logic 8.4 |
| 5608 | Is "This thing exists" analytic or synthetic? [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Is the proposition "This or that thing exists" an analytic or a synthetic proposition? | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B625/A597) | |
| A reaction: Quine's challenge to the analytic/synthetic distinction (e.g. Idea 1626) may spoil this question, but it seems fine ask whether we are talking about words or facts here. Once this question is asked, the Ontological Argument is in trouble. |
| 5598 | If you prove God cosmologically, by a regress in the sequences of causes, you can't abandon causes at the end [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If one begins the proof cosmologically, by grounding it on the series of appearances and the regress in this series in accordance with empirical causal laws, one cannot later shift from this and go over to something which does not belong to the series | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B484/A456) | |
| A reaction: Badly expressed, but it is the idea that if you start from 'everything has a cause', you can't use it to prove the existence of an uncaused entity. Better to say: an uncaused entity is the only explanation we can imagine for a causal sequence. |
| 610 | The world can't be arranged at all if there is nothing eternal and separate [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: How is there to be an arrangement of the world at all, in the absence of something eternal, separable and permanent? | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1060a21) |
| 12097 | There are as many eternal unmovable substances as there are movements of the stars [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is clearly necessary that the number of substances eternal in their nature and intrinsically unmovable (and without magnitude) should equal that of the movements of the stars. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1073a34) | |
| A reaction: There are many unmoved movers! This is an important corrective to those who think Aristotle was endorsing one great Unmoved Mover, and thus founding monotheism. He was agreeing with Plato's account in 'The Laws'. |