41 ideas
| 21360 | Unobservant thinkers tend to dogmatise using insufficient facts [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatise on the basis of a few observations. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 316a09) | |
| A reaction: I totally approve of the idea that a good philosopher should be 'observant'. Prestige in modern analytic philosophy comes from logical ability. There should be some rival criterion for attentiveness to facts, with equal prestige. |
| 4037 | Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Ockham's Razor is the principle that we need reasons to believe in entities. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §9) | |
| A reaction: This presumably follows from an assumption that all beliefs need reasons, but is that the case? The Principle of Sufficient Reason precedes Ockham's Razor. |
| 13212 | Infinity is only potential, never actual [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Nothing is actually infinite. A thing is infinite only potentially. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 318a21) | |
| A reaction: Aristotle is the famous spokesman for this view, though it reappeared somewhat in early twentieth century discussions (e.g. Hilbert). I sympathise with this unfashionable view. Multiple infinites are good fun, but no one knows what they really are. |
| 13221 | Existence is either potential or actual [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Some things are-potentially while others are-actually. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 327b24) | |
| A reaction: I've read a lot of Aristotle, but am still not quite clear what this distinction means. I like the distinction between a thing's actual being and its 'modal profile', but the latter may extend well beyond what Aristotle means by potential being. |
| 16100 | True change is in a thing's logos or its matter, not in its qualities [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In that which underlies a change there is a factor corresponding to the definition [logon] and there is a material factor. When a change is in these constitutive factors there is coming to be or passing away, but in a thing's qualities it is alteration. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317a24) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be a key summary of Aristotle's account of change, in the context of his hylomorphism (form-plus-matter). The logos is the account of the thing, which seems to be the definition, which seems to give the form (principle or structure). |
| 16101 | A change in qualities is mere alteration, not true change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: When a change occurs in the qualities [pathesi] and is accidental [sumbebekos], there is alteration (rather than true change). | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317a27) | |
| A reaction: [tr. partly Gill] Aristotle doesn't seem to have a notion of 'properties' in quite our sense. 'Pathe' seems to mean experienced qualities, rather than genuine causal powers. Gill says 'pathe' are always accidental. |
| 12133 | If the substratum persists, it is 'alteration'; if it doesn't, it is 'coming-to-be' or 'passing-away' [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since we must distinguish the substratum and the property whose nature is to be predicated of the substratum,..there is alteration when the substratum persists...but when nothing perceptible persists as a substratum, this is coming-to-be and passing-away. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 319b08-16) | |
| A reaction: As usual, Aristotle clarifies the basis of the problem, by distinguishing two different types of change. Notice the empirical character of his approach, resting on whether or not the substratum is 'perceptible'. |
| 13213 | All comings-to-be are passings-away, and vice versa [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Every coming-to-be is a passing away of something else and every passing-away some other thing's coming-to-be. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 319a07) | |
| A reaction: This seems to be the closest that Aristotle gets to sympathy with the Heraclitus view that all is flux. When a sparrow dies and disappears, I am not at all clear what comes to be, except some ex-sparrow material. |
| 13076 | Scholastics treat relations as two separate predicates of the relata [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The scholastics treated it as a step in the right explanatory direction to analyze a relational statement of the form 'aRb' into two subject-predicate statements, attributing different relational predicates to a and to b. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2.1) | |
| A reaction: The only alternative seems to be Russell's view of relations as pure universals, having a life of their own, quite apart from their relata. Or you could take them as properties of space, time (and powers?), external to the relata? |
| 4027 | Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Properties are respects in which particular objects may be alike or differ. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §1) | |
| A reaction: Note that this definition does not mention a causal role for properties. |
| 4029 | Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Nominalists ask why we should postulate properties at all. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §3) | |
| A reaction: Objects might be grasped without language, but events cannot be understood, and explanations of events seem inconceivable without properties (implying that they are essentially causal). |
| 13102 | If you individuate things by their origin, you still have to individuate the origins themselves [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: If we go for the necessity-of-origins view, A and B are different if the origin of A is different from the origin of B. But one is left with the further question 'When is the origin of A distinct from the origin of B?' | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: There may be an answer to this, in a regress of origins that support one another, but in the end the objection is obviously good. You can't begin to refer to an 'origin' if you can't identify anything in the first place. |
| 13103 | Numerical difference is a symmetrical notion, unlike proper individuation [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Scholastics distinguished criteria of numerical difference from questions of individuation proper, since numerical difference is a symmetrical notion. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: This apparently old-fashioned point appears to be conclusively correct. Modern thinkers, though, aren't comfortable with proper individuation, because they don't believe in concepts like 'essence' and 'substance' that are needed for the job. |
| 13104 | Haecceity as property, or as colourless thisness, or as singleton set [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a contemporary property construal of haecceities, ...and a Scotistic construal as primitive, 'colourless' thisnesses which, unlike singleton-set haecceities, are aimed to do some explanatory work. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.4) | |
| A reaction: [He associates the contemporary account with David Kaplan] I suppose I would say that individuation is done by properties, but not by some single property, so I take it that I don't believe in haecceities at all. What individuates a haecceity? |
| 13100 | Maybe 'substance' is more of a mass-noun than a count-noun [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: We could think of 'substance' on the model of a mass noun, rather than a count noun. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.3) | |
| A reaction: They offer this to help Leibniz out of a mess, but I think he would be appalled. The proposal seems close to 'prime matter' in Aristotle, which never quite does the job required of it. The idea is nice, though, and should be taken seriously. |
| 13068 | We can ask for the nature of substance, about type of substance, and about individual substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: In the 'blueprint' approach to substance, we confront at least three questions: What is it for a thing to be an individual substance? What is it for a thing to be the kind of substance that it is? What is it to be that very individual substance? | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.1) | |
| A reaction: My working view is that the answer to the first question is that substance is essence, that the second question is overrated and parasitic on the third, and that the third is the key question, and also reduces to essence. |
| 13069 | The general assumption is that substances cannot possibly be non-substances [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: There is a widespread assumption, now and in the past, that substances are essentially substances: nothing is actually a substance but possibly a non-substance. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: It seems to me that they clearly mean, in this context, that substances are 'necessarily' substances, not that they are 'essentially' substances. I would just say that substances are essences, and leave the necessity question open. |
| 12134 | Matter is the substratum, which supports both coming-to-be and alteration [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Matter, in the proper sense of the term, is to be identified with the substratum which is receptive of coming-to-be and passing-away; but the substratum of the remaining kinds of change is also matter, because these substrata receive contraries. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 320a03) | |
| A reaction: This must be compared with his complex discussion of the role of matter in his Metaphysics, where he has introduced 'form' as the essence of things. I don't think the two texts are inconsistent, but it's tricky... See Idea 12133 on types of change. |
| 13072 | Modern essences are sets of essential predicate-functions [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern view of essence is that the essence of a particular thing is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to it, and the essence of any kind is given by the set of predicate-functions essential to every possible member of that kind. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.2.2) | |
| A reaction: Thus the modern view has elided the meanings of 'essential' and 'necessary' when talking of properties. They are said to be 'functions' from possible worlds to individuals. The old view (and mine) demands real essences, not necessary properties. |
| 17080 | Modern essentialists express essence as functions from worlds to extensions for predicates [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The modern essentialist gives the same metaphysical treatment to every grammatical predicate - by associating a function from worlds to extensions for each. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 2.2) | |
| A reaction: I take this to mean that essentialism is the view that if some predicate attaches to an object then that predicate is essential if there is an extension of that predicate in all possible worlds. In English, essential predicates are necessary predicates. |
| 16572 | Does the pure 'this' come to be, or the 'this-such', or 'so-great', or 'somewhere'? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The question might be raised whether substance (i.e. the 'this') comes-to-be at all. Is it not rather the 'such', the 'so-great', or the 'somewhere', which comes-to-be? | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317b21) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting because it pulls the 'tode ti', the 'this-such', apart, showing that he does have a concept of a pure 'this', which seems to constitute the basis of being ('ousia'). We can say 'this thing', or 'one of these things'. |
| 16573 | Philosophers have worried about coming-to-be from nothing pre-existing [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: In addition, coming-to-be may proceed out of nothing pre-existing - a thesis which, more than any other, preoccupied and alarmed the earliest philosophers. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 317b29) | |
| A reaction: This is the origin of the worry about 'ex nihilo' coming-to-be. Christians tended to say that only God could create in this way. |
| 13214 | The substratum changing to a contrary is the material cause of coming-to-be [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The substratum [hupokeimenon?] is the material cause of the continuous occurrence of coming-to-be, because it is such as to change from contrary to contrary. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 319a19) | |
| A reaction: Presumably Aristotle will also be seeking the 'formal' cause as well as the 'material' cause (not to mention the 'efficient' and 'final' causes). |
| 13215 | If a perceptible substratum persists, it is 'alteration'; coming-to-be is a complete change [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is 'alteration' when the substratum is perceptible and persists, but changes in its own properties. ...But when nothing perceptible persists in its identity as a substratum, and the thing changes as a whole, it is coming-to-be of a substance. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 319b11-17) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] Note that a substratum can be perceptible - it isn't just some hidden mystical I-know-not-what (as Locke calls it). This whole text is a wonderful source on the subject of physical change. Note too the reliance on what is perceptible. |
| 13101 | Necessity-of-origin won't distinguish ex nihilo creations, or things sharing an origin [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: A necessity-of-origins approach cannot work to distinguish things that come into being genuinely ex nihilo, and cannot work to distinguish things sharing a single origin. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 7.4.1) | |
| A reaction: Since I am deeply suspicious of essentiality or necessity of origin (and they are not, I presume, the same thing) I like these two. Twins have always bothered me with the second case (where order of birth seems irrelevant). |
| 13081 | Even extreme modal realists might allow transworld identity for abstract objects [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: It might be suggested that even the extreme modal realist can countenance transworld identity for abstract objects. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 3.2.2 n46) | |
| A reaction: This may sound right for uncontroversial or well-defined abstracta such as numbers and circles, but even 'or' is ambiguous, and heaven knows what the transworld identity of 'democracy' is! |
| 16717 | Which of the contrary features of a body are basic to it? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: What sorts of contrarities, and how many of them, are to be accounted 'originative sources' of body? | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 329b04) | |
| A reaction: Pasnau says these pages of Aristotle are the source of the doctrine of primary and secondary qualities. Essentially, hot, cold, wet and dry are his four primary qualities. |
| 13071 | We can go beyond mere causal explanations if we believe in an 'order of being' [Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: The philosopher comfortable with an 'order of being' has richer resources to make sense of the 'in virtue of' relation than that provided only by causal relations between states of affairs, positing in addition other sorts of explanatory relationships. | |
| From: Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J (Substance and Individuation in Leibniz [1999], 1.1.2) | |
| A reaction: This might best be characterised as 'ontological dependence', and could be seen as a non-causal but fundamental explanatory relationship, and not one that has to depend on a theistic world view. |
| 4039 | Abstractions lack causes, effects and spatio-temporal locations [Mellor/Oliver] |
| Full Idea: Abstract entities (such as sets) are usually understood as lacking causes, effects, and spatio-temporal location. | |
| From: DH Mellor / A Oliver (Introduction to 'Properties' [1997], §10) | |
| A reaction: This seems to beg some questions. Has the ideal of 'honour' never caused anything? Young men dream of pure velocity. |
| 13216 | Matter is the limit of points and lines, and must always have quality and form [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The matter is that of which points and lines are limits, and it is something that can never exist without quality and without form. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 320b16) | |
| A reaction: There seems to be a contradiction here somewhere. Matter has to be substantial enough to have a form, and yet seems to be the collective 'limit' of the points and lines. I wonder what 'limit' is translating? Sounds a bit too modern. |
| 17994 | The primary matter is the substratum for the contraries like hot and cold [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: We must reckon as an 'orginal source' and as 'primary' the matter which underlies, though it is inseparable from the contrary qualities: for 'the hot' is not matter for 'the cold' nor 'cold' for 'hot', but the substratum is matter for them both. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 329a30) | |
| A reaction: A much discussed passage. |
| 13224 | There couldn't be just one element, which was both water and air at the same time [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: No one supposes a single 'element' to persist, as the basis of all, in such a way that it is Water as well as Air (or any other element) at the same time. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 332a09) | |
| A reaction: Of course, we now think that oxygen is a key part of both water and of air, but Aristotle's basic argument still seems right. How could multiplicity be explained by a simply unity? The One is cool, but explains nothing. |
| 16594 | The Four Elements must change into one another, or else alteration is impossible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: These bodies (Fire, Water and the like) change into one another (and are not immutable as Empedocles and other thinkers assert, since 'alteration' would then have been impossible). | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 329b1) | |
| A reaction: This is why Aristotle proposes that matter [hule] underlies the four elements. Gill argues that by matter Aristotle means the elements. |
| 13223 | Fire is hot and dry; Air is hot and moist; Water is cold and moist; Earth is cold and dry [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The four couples of elementary qualities attach themselves to the apparently 'simple' bodies (Fire, Air, Earth, Water). Fire is hot and dry, whereas Air is hot and moist (being a sort of aqueous vapour); Water is cold and moist, and Earth is cold and dry. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 330b02) | |
| A reaction: This is the traditional framework accepted throughout the middle ages, and which had a huge influence on medicine. It all looks rather implausible now. Aristotle was a genius, but not critical enough about evidence. |
| 13220 | Bodies are endlessly divisible [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Bodies are divisible through and through. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 326b27) | |
| A reaction: This is Aristotle's flat rejection of atomism, arrived at after several sustained discussions, in this text and elsewhere. I don't think we are in a position to say that Aristotle is wrong. |
| 13210 | Wood is potentially divided through and through, so what is there in the wood besides the division? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If having divided a piece of wood I put it together, it is equal to what it was and is one. This is so whatever the point at which I cut the wood. The wood is therefore divided potentially through and through. So what is in the wood besides the division? | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 316b11) | |
| A reaction: Part of a very nice discussion of the implications of the thought experiment of cutting something 'through and through'. It seems to me that the arguments are still relevant, in the age of quarks, electrons and strings. |
| 13211 | If a body is endlessly divided, is it reduced to nothing - then reassembled from nothing? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Dividing a body at all points might actually occur, so the body will be both actually indivisible and potentially divided. Then nothing will remain and the body passes into what is incorporeal. So it might be reassembled out of points, or out of nothing. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 316b24) | |
| A reaction: [a bit compressed] This sounds like an argument in favour of atomism, but Aristotle was opposed to that view. He is aware of the contradictions that seem to emerge with infinite division. Graham Priest is interesting on the topic. |
| 13228 | There is no time without movement [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There can be no time without movement. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 337a24) | |
| A reaction: See Shoemaker's nice thought experiment as a challenge to this. Intuition seems to cry out that if movement stopped for a moment, that would not stop time, even though there was no way to measure its passing. |
| 16595 | If each thing can cease to be, why hasn't absolutely everything ceased to be long ago? [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: If some one of the things 'which are' is constantly disappearing, why has not the whole of 'what is' been used up long ago and vanished away - assuming of course that the material of all the several comings-to-be was infinite? | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 318a17) | |
| A reaction: This thought is the basis of Aquinas's Third Way for proving the existence of God (as the force which prevents the vicissitudes of nature from sliding into oblivion). |
| 13227 | Being is better than not-being [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Being is better than not-being. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 336b29) | |
| A reaction: [see also Metaphysics 1017a07 ff, says the note] This peculiar assumption is at the heart of the ontological argument. Is the existence of the plague bacterium, or of Satan, or of mass-murderers, superior? |
| 13226 | An Order controls all things [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: There is an Order controlling all things. | |
| From: Aristotle (Coming-to-be and Passing-away (Gen/Corr) [c.335 BCE], 336b13) | |
| A reaction: Presumably the translator provides the capital letter. How do we get from 'there is an order in all things' to 'there is an order which controls all things'? |