41 ideas
| 16588 | I prefer a lack of form to mean non-existence, than to think of some quasi-existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I sooner judged that what lacks all form does not exist, than thought of as something in between form and nothing, neither formed nor nothing, unformed and next to nothing. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XII.6), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 03.1 | |
| A reaction: Scholastics were struck by the contrast between this remark, and the remark of Averroes (Idea 16587) that prime matter was halfway existence. Their two great authorities disagreed! This sort of thing stimulated the revival of metaphysics. |
| 22979 | Three main questions seem to be whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I am told that I can ask three sorts of questions - whether a thing is, what it is, and what sort it is. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a very Aristotelian approach. I am pleased to see that what it is and what sort it is are not conflated. The first one must be its individual essence, and the second its generic essence. |
| 11897 | A principle of individuation may pinpoint identity and distinctness, now and over time [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: One view of a principle of individuation is what is called a 'criterion of identity', determining answers to questions about identity and distinctness at a time and over time - a principle of distinction and persistence. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.2) | |
| A reaction: Since the term 'Prime Minister' might do this job, presumably there could be a de dicto as well as a de re version of individuation. The distinctness consists of chairing cabinet meetings, rather than being of a particular sex. |
| 11898 | Individuation may include counterfactual possibilities, as well as identity and persistence [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: A second view of the principle of individuation includes criteria of distinction and persistence, but also determines the counterfactual possibilities for a thing. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.5) | |
| A reaction: It would be a pretty comprehensive individuation which defined all the counterfactual truths about a thing, as well as its actual truths. This is where powers come in. We need to know a thing's powers, but not how they cash out counterfactually. |
| 11883 | A haecceity is the essential, simple, unanalysable property of being-this-thing [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Socrates can be assigned a haecceity: an essential property of 'being Socrates' which (unlike the property of 'being identical with Socrates') may be regarded as what 'makes' its possessor Socrates in a non-trivial sense, but is simple and unanalysable. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I don't accept that there is any such property as 'being Socrates' (or even 'being identical with Socrates'), except as empty locutions or logical devices. A haecceity seems to be the 'ultimate subject of predication', with no predicates of its own. |
| 11889 | Essentialism must avoid both reduplication of essences, and multiple occupancy by essences [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: The argument for unshareable properties (the Reduplication Argument) suggests the danger of reduplication of Berkeley; the argument for incompatible properties (Multiple Occupancy) says Berkeley and Hume could be in the same possible object. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.8) | |
| A reaction: These are her arguments in favour of essential properties being necessarily incompatible between objects. Whatever the answer, it must allow essences for indistinguishables like electrons. 'Incompatible' points towards a haecceity. |
| 11877 | An individual essence is the properties the object could not exist without [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: By essentialism about individuals I simply mean the view that individual things have essential properties, where an essential property of an object is a property that the object could not have existed without. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 1.1) | |
| A reaction: This presumably means I could exist without a large part of my reason and consciousness, but could not exist without one of my heart valves. This seems to miss the real point of essence. I couldn't exist without oxygen - not one of my properties. |
| 11882 | No other object can possibly have the same individual essence as some object [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Individual essences are essential properties that are unique to them alone. ...If a set of properties is an individual essence of A, then A has the properties essentially, and no other actual or possible object actually or possibly has them. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.1/2) | |
| A reaction: I'm unconvinced about this. Tigers have an essence, but individual tigers have individual essences over and above their tigerish qualities, yet the perfect identity of two tigers still seems to be possible. |
| 11886 | There are problems both with individual essences and without them [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: If all objects had individual essences, there would be no numerical difference without an essential difference. But if there aren't individual essences, there could be two things sharing all essential properties, differing only in accidental properties. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.5) | |
| A reaction: Depends how you define individual essence. Why can't two electrons have the same individual essence. To postulate a 'kind essence' which bestows the properties on each electron is to get things the wrong way round. |
| 11909 | Unlike Hesperus=Phosophorus, water=H2O needs further premisses before it is necessary [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: There is a disanalogy between 'necessarily water=H2O' and 'necessarily Hesperus=Phosphorus'. The second just needs the necessity of identity, but the first needs 'x is a water sample' and 'x is an H2O' sample to coincide in all possible worlds. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1.) | |
| A reaction: This comment is mainly aimed at Kripke, who bases his essentialism on identities, rather than at Putnam. |
| 11899 | Why are any sortals essential, and why are only some of them essential? [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Accounts of sortal essentialism do not give a satisfactory explanation of why any sortals should be essential sortals, or a satisfactory account of why some sortals should be essential while others are not. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 8.6) | |
| A reaction: A theory is not wrong, just because it cannot give a 'satisfactory explanation' of every aspect of the subject. We might, though, ask why the theory isn't doing well in this area. |
| 11906 | The Kripke and Putnam view of kinds makes them explanatorily basic, but has modal implications [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Kripke and Putnam chose for their typical essence of kinds, sets of properties that could be thought of as explanatorily basic. ..But the modal implications of their views go well beyond this. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: Cf. Idea 11905. The modal implications are that the explanatory essence is also necessary to the identity of the thing under discussion, such as H2O. So do basic explanations carry across into all possible worlds? |
| 11894 | Origin is not a necessity, it is just 'tenacious'; we keep it fixed in counterfactual discussions [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: I suggest 'tenacity of origin' rather than 'necessity of origin'. ..The most that we need is that Caesar's having something similar to his actual origin in certain respects (e.g. his actual parents) is normally kept fixed in counterfactual speculation. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 6.9) | |
| A reaction: I find necessity or essentially of origin very unconvincing, so I rather like this. Origin is just a particularly stable way to establish our reference to something. An elusive spy may have little more than date and place of birth to fix them. |
| 11887 | Transworld identity without individual essences leads to 'bare identities' [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Transworld identity without individual essences leads to 'bare identities'. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.7) | |
| A reaction: [She gives an argument for this, based on Forbes] I certainly favour the notion of individual essences over the notion of bare identities. We must distinguish identity in reality from identity in concept. Identities are points in conceptual space. |
| 11890 | De re modality without bare identities or individual essence needs counterparts [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: Anyone who wishes to avoid both bare identities and individual essences, without abandoning de re modality entirely, must adopt counterpart theory. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 4.1) | |
| A reaction: This at least means that Lewis's proposal has an important place in the discussion, forcing us to think more clearly about the identities involved when we talk of possibilities. Mackie herself votes for bare indentities. |
| 11892 | Things may only be counterparts under some particular relation [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: A may be a counterpart of B according to one counterpart relation (similarity of origin, say), but not according to another (similarity of later history). | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 5.3) | |
| A reaction: Hm. Would two very diverse things have to be counterparts because they were kept in the same cupboard in different worlds? Can the counterpart relationship diverge or converge over time? Yes, I presume. |
| 11893 | Possibilities for Caesar must be based on some phase of the real Caesar [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: I take the 'overlap requirement' for Julius Caesar to be that, when considering how he might have been different, you have to take him as he actually was at some time in his existence, and consider possibilities consistent with that. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 6.5) | |
| A reaction: This is quite a large claim (larger than Mackie thinks?), as it seems equally applicable to properties, states of affairs and propositions, as well as to individuals. Possibility that has no contact at all with actuality is beyond our comprehension. |
| 11884 | The theory of 'haecceitism' does not need commitment to individual haecceities [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: The theory that things have 'haecceities' must be sharply distinguished from the theory referred to as 'haecceitism', which says there may be differences in transworld identities that do not supervene on qualitative differences. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 2.2 n7) | |
| A reaction: She says later [p,43 n] that it is possible to be a haecceitist without believing in individual haecceities, if (say) the transworld identities had no basis at all. Note that if 'thisness' is 'haecceity', then 'whatness' is 'quiddity'. |
| 22981 | Mind and memory are the same, as shown in 'bear it in mind' or 'it slipped from mind' [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The mind and the memory are one and the same. We even call the memory the mind, for when we tell a person to remember something, we tell them to 'bear this in mind', and when we forget something 'it slipped out of my mind'. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This idea has become familiar in modern neuroscience, I think, presumably because we do not find distinct types of neurons for consciousness and for memory. |
| 22980 | Memory contains innumerable principles of maths, as well as past sense experiences [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory contains the innumerable principles and laws of numbers and dimensions. None of these can have been conveyed to me by the bodily senses. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.12) | |
| A reaction: Even if you have a fairly empirical view of the sources of mathematics (a view with which I sympathise), it must by admitted that our endless extrapolations from the sources also reside in memory. So we remember thoughts as well as experiences. |
| 22983 | We would avoid remembering sorrow or fear if that triggered the emotions afresh [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: If we had to experience sorrow or fear every time that we mentioned these emotions, no one would be willing to speak of them. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: Remembering the death of a loved one can trigger fresh grief, but remembering their dangerous illness from which they recovered no longer contains the feeling of fear. |
| 22977 | I can distinguish different smells even when I am not experiencing them [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I can distinguish the scent of lilies from that of violets, even though there is no scent at all in my nostrils. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: Augustine has a nice introspective account of how we experience memory, and identifies lots of puzzling features. I know I can identify the smell of vinegar, but I can't bring it to mind, the way I can the appearance of roses. |
| 22982 | Why does joy in my mind make me happy, but joy in my memory doesn't? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How can it be that my mind can be happy because of the joy that is in it, and yet my memory is not sad by reason of the sadness that is in it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.14) | |
| A reaction: This seems to contradict his thought in Idea 22981, that memory and mind are the same. Recall seems to be a part of consciousness which is not fully wired up to the rest of the mind. |
| 6356 | Maybe a reliable justification must come from a process working with its 'proper function' [Plantinga, by Pollock/Cruz] |
| Full Idea: A modified version of reliabilism proposes that a belief is justified in case it is the product of a process that is working according to its 'proper function' in the environment for which it is appropriate. | |
| From: report of Alvin Plantinga (Warrant and Proper Function [1993]) by J Pollock / J Cruz - Contemporary theories of Knowledge (2nd) §1.5.4 | |
| A reaction: Something might infallibly indicate something without that being its proper function (e.g. 'Red sky at night/ Shepherds' delight'). An inaccurate clock is fulfilling its proper function (telling the time), but not very well. |
| 11905 | Locke's kind essences are explanatory, without being necessary to the kind [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: One might speak of 'Lockean real essences' of a natural kind, a set of properties that is basic in the explanation of the other properties of the kind, without commitment to the essence belonging to the kind in all possible worlds. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.1) | |
| A reaction: I think this may be the most promising account. The essence of a tiger explains what tigers are like, but tigers may evolve into domestic pets. Questions of individuation and of explaining seem to be quite separate. |
| 22978 | Memory is so vast that I cannot recognise it as part of my mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The memory is a vast immeasurable sanctuary. It is part of my nature, but I cannot understand all that I am. Hence the mind is too narrow to contain itself entirely. Is the other part outside of itself, and not within it? How then can it be a part? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: He seems to understand the mind as entirely consisting of consciousness. Nevertheless, this seems to be the first inklings of the modern externalist view of the mind. |
| 22984 | Without memory I could not even speak of myself [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I do not understand the power of memory that is in myself, although without it I could not even speak of myself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.16) | |
| A reaction: Even if the self is not identical with memory, this idea seems to establish that memory is an essential aspect of the self. This point is neglected by those who see the self as an entity (the 'soul pearl') which persists through all experience. |
| 5982 | If the future does not exist, how can prophets see it? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: How do prophets see the future, if there is not a future to be seen? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.17) | |
| A reaction: The answer, I suspect, is that prophets can't see the future. The prospect that the future already exists would seem to saboutage human freedom and responsibility, and point to Calvinist predestination, and even fatalism. |
| 22976 | Memories are preserved separately, according to category [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: In memory everything is preserved separately, according to its category. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.08) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the first seeds of the idea that the mind functions by means of mental files. Our memories of cats are 'close to' or 'linked to' our memories of dogs. |
| 22985 | Everyone wants happiness [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Surely happiness is what everyone wants, so much so that there can be none who do not want it? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], X.20) | |
| A reaction: His concept of happiness is, of course, religious. Occasionally you meet habitual grumblers about life who give the impression that they are only happy when they are discontented. So happiness is achieving desires, not feeling good? |
| 11907 | Maybe the identity of kinds is necessary, but instances being of that kind is not [Mackie,P] |
| Full Idea: One could be an essentialist about natural kinds (of tigers, or water) while holding that every actual instance or sample of a natural kind is only accidentally an instance or a sample of that kind. | |
| From: Penelope Mackie (How Things Might Have Been [2006], 10.2) | |
| A reaction: You wonder, then, in what the necessity of the kind consists, if it is not rooted in the instances, and presumably it could only result from a stipulative definition, and hence be conventional. |
| 5984 | Maybe time is an extension of the mind [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I begin to wonder whether time is an extension of the mind itself. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.26) | |
| A reaction: The observation that the mind creates a 'specious present' (spreading experience out over a short fraction of second) reinforces this. Personally I like David Marshall's proposal that consciousness is entirely memory, which would deny this idea. |
| 22888 | To be aware of time it can only exist in the mind, as memory or anticipation [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: Augustine answers that for us to be aware of time it must exist only in the mind, …and the difference between past and future is just the difference between memory and anticipation. | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: This is an extreme idealist view. Are we to say that the past consists only of what can be remembered, and the future only of what is anticipated? Absurd anti-realism, in my view. Where do his concepts come from, asks Le Poidevin. |
| 5980 | How can ten days ahead be a short time, if it doesn't exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: A short time ago or a short time ahead we might put at ten days, but how can anything which does not exist be either long or short? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: A nice question, which gets at the paradoxical nature of time very nicely. How can it be long, but non-existent? We could break the paradox by concluding '..and therefore time does exist', even though we can't see how. |
| 5979 | If the past is no longer, and the future is not yet, how can they exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Of the three divisions of time, how can two, the past and the future, be, when the past no longer is, and the future is not yet? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: This is the oldest bewilderment about time, which naturally leads us to the thought that time cannot actually 'exist'. The remark implies that at least 'now' is safe, but that also succumbs to paradox pretty quickly. |
| 5981 | The whole of the current year is not present, so how can it exist? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: We cannot say that the whole of the current year is present, and if the whole of it is not present, the year is not present. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.15) | |
| A reaction: Another nice way of presenting the paradox of time. We are in a particular year, so it has to be real. |
| 5978 | I know what time is, until someone asks me to explain it [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I know well enough what time is, provided that nobody asks me; but if I am asked what it is and try to explain, I am baffled. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.14) | |
| A reaction: A justly famous remark, even though it adds nothing to our knowledge of time. This sort of thought pushes us towards accepting many things as axiomatic, such as time, space, identity, persons, mind. |
| 5983 | I disagree with the idea that time is nothing but cosmic movement [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: I once heard a learned man say that time is nothing but the movement of the sun and the moon and the stars, but I do not agree. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.22) | |
| A reaction: It is tempting to say that you either take time or movement as axiomatic, and describe one in terms of the other, but you are stuck unable to give the initial statement of the axiom without mentioning the second property you were saving for later. |
| 5977 | Heaven and earth must be created, because they are subject to change [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The fact that heaven and earth are there proclaims that they were created, for they are subject to change and variation; ..the meaning of change and variation is that something is there which was not there before. | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.04) | |
| A reaction: It seems possible that the underlying matter is eternal (as in various conservation laws, such as that of energy), and that all change is in the form rather than the substance. |
| 22887 | If God existed before creation, why would a perfect being desire to change things? [Augustine, by Bardon] |
| Full Idea: If nothing existed by God before creation, then what could have happened to, or within, God that led God to decide to create the universe at that particular moment? Why would an eternal or perfect being want or need to change? | |
| From: report of Augustine (Confessions [c.398]) by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 1 'Augustine's' | |
| A reaction: I suppose you could reply that change is superior to stasis, but then why did God delay the creation? |
| 5976 | If God is outside time in eternity, can He hear prayers? [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: O Lord, since you are outside time in eternity, are you unaware of the things that I tell you? | |
| From: Augustine (Confessions [c.398], XI.01) | |
| A reaction: This strikes me as the single most difficult and most elusive question about the nature of a supreme divine being. If the being is trapped in time, as we are, it is greatly diminished, and if it is outside, it is hard to see how it could be a participant. |