Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Changes in Events and Changes in Things', 'Letters to Wagner' and 'The Essence of Aesthetic'

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4 ideas

7. Existence / D. Theories of Reality / 8. Facts / b. Types of fact

15201	That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b
	A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression

20422	The experience of expression and communication are intermingled in art [Croce]
	Full Idea: It is very difficult to perceive the frontier between expression and communication in actual fact, for the two processes usually alternate rapidly and are almost intermingled.
	From: Benedetto Croce (The Essence of Aesthetic [1912]), quoted by Gary Kemp - Croce and Collingwood
	A reaction: [text unsure] I think he is getting at seeing the painting (or whatever) as a physical object, and seeing it as the experience which results from the object. The alternation of the objective and subjective views. Reminds me of Thomas Nagel.

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 7. Later Matter Theories / a. Early Modern matter

19436	Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: The active principle is not attributed by me to bare or primary matter, which is merely passive ...but to clothed or secondary matter which in addition contains a primitive entelechy, or active principle.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Wagner [1710], 1710 §2)
	A reaction: Secondary matter contains monads. The puzzling question is what primary matter consists of. It is not atoms, because it is infinitely divisible, and it seems to be composed of corpuscles. But what is it made of? Just gunge? He says it is 'flux'.

27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 2. Passage of Time / e. Tensed (A) series

22899	'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN]
	Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'.
	From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive'
	A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein?