Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Substance and Individuation in Leibniz', 'Spheres of Justice' and 'An Essay in Aesthetics'

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26 ideas

8. Modes of Existence / A. Relations / 1. Nature of Relations
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?
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / a. Individuation
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.
9. Objects / A. Existence of Objects / 5. Individuation / d. Individuation by haecceity
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?
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / a. Substance
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.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / c. Types of substance
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.
9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 2. Substance / d. Substance defined
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.
9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 7. Essence and Necessity / a. Essence as necessary properties
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.
9. Objects / E. Objects over Time / 12. Origin as Essential
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).
10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 3. Transworld Objects / a. Transworld identity
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!
14. Science / D. Explanation / 2. Types of Explanation / c. Explanations by coherence
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.
16. Persons / C. Self-Awareness / 3. Limits of Introspection
20429 Most of us are too close to our own motives to understand them [Fry]
     Full Idea: The motives we actually experience are too close to us to enable us to feel them clearly. They are in a sense unintelligible.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.30)
     A reaction: Fry is defending the role of art in clarifying and highlighting such things, but I am not convinced by his claim. We can grasp most of our motives with a little introspection, and those we can't grasp are probably too subtle for art as well.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 2. Aesthetic Attitude
20424 Imaginative life requires no action, so new kinds of perception and values emerge in art [Fry]
     Full Idea: In the imaginative life no action is necessary, so the whole consciousness may be focused upon the perceptive and the emotional aspects of the experience. Hence we get a different set of values, and a different kind of perception
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.24)
     A reaction: Good. A huge range of human activities are like scientific experiments, where you draw on our evolved faculties, but put them in controlled conditions, where the less convenient and stressful parts are absent. War and sport. Real and theatrical tragedy.
20427 Everyone reveals an aesthetic attitude, looking at something which only exists to be seen [Fry]
     Full Idea: It is only when an object exists for no other purpose than to be seen that we really look at it, …and then even the most normal person adopts to some extent the artistic attitude of pure vision abstracted from necessity.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.29)
     A reaction: A painter of still life looks at things which exist for other purposes, with just the attitude which Fry attributes to the viewers of the paintings. We can encourage a child to look at a flower with just this attitude.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty
20433 'Beauty' can either mean sensuous charm, or the aesthetic approval of art (which may be ugly) [Fry]
     Full Idea: There is an apparent contradiction between two distinct uses of the word 'beauty', one for that which has sensuous charm, and one for the aesthetic approval of works of imaginative art where the objects presented to us are often of extreme ugliness.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.33)
     A reaction: The gouging of eyes in 'King Lear' was always the big problem case for aesthetics, just as nowadays it is Marcel Duchamp's wretched 'Fountain'.
21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 6. The Sublime
20430 In life we neglect 'cosmic emotion', but it matters, and art brings it to the fore [Fry]
     Full Idea: Those feelings unhappily named cosmic emotion find almost no place in life, but, since they seem to belong to certain very deep springs of our nature, do become of great importance in the arts.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.31)
     A reaction: Focus on the sublime was big in the romantic era, but Fry still sees its importance, and I don't think it ever goes away. Art styles which scorn the sublime are failing to perform their social duty, say I.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 2. Art as Form
20431 Art needs a mixture of order and variety in its sensations [Fry]
     Full Idea: The first quality that we demand in our [artistic] sensations will be order, without which our sensations will be troubled and perplexed, and the other will be variety, without which they will not be fully stimulated.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.32)
     A reaction: He makes good claims, but gives unconvincing reasons for them. Some of us rather like 'troubled and perplexed' sensations. And a very narrow range of sensations could still be highly stimulated. Is Fry a good aesthetician but a modest philosopher?
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 3. Art as Imitation
20423 If graphic arts only aim at imitation, their works are only trivial ingenious toys [Fry]
     Full Idea: If imitation is the sole purpose of the graphic arts, it is surprising that the works of such arts are ever looked upon as more than curiosities, or ingenious toys, and are ever taken seriously by grown-up people.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.23)
     A reaction: But then you might say that same about fine wines. A mere nice taste is hardly worthy of grown ups, and yet lots of grown ups feeling quite passionately about it. What about Fabergé eggs?
20428 Popular opinion favours realism, yet most people never look closely at anything! [Fry]
     Full Idea: Ordinary people have almost no idea of what things really look like, so that the one standard that popular criticism applies to painting (whether it is like nature or not) is the one which most people are prevented frm applying properly.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.29)
     A reaction: A nice remark, though there is a streak of Bloomsbury artistic snobbery running through Fry. Ordinary people recognise photographic realism, so they can study things closely either in the reality or the picture, should they so choose.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 1. Artistic Intentions
20432 When viewing art, rather than flowers, we are aware of purpose, and sympathy with its creator [Fry]
     Full Idea: In our reaction to a work of art (rather than a flower) there is the consciousness of purpose, of a peculiar relation of sympathy with the man who made this thing in order to arouse precisely the sensations we experience.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.33)
     A reaction: I think this is entirely right. I like the mention of 'sympathy' as well as 'purpose'.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 4. Emotion in Art
20425 In the cinema the emotions are weaker, but much clearer than in ordinary life [Fry]
     Full Idea: One notices in the visions of the cinematograph that whatever emotions are aroused by them, though they are likely to be weaker than those of ordinary life, are presented more clearly to the conscious.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.25)
     A reaction: Fry had probably only seen very simple melodramas, but the general idea that artistic emotions are weaker than real life, but much clearer, is quite plausible.
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
20426 For pure moralists art must promote right action, and not just be harmless [Fry]
     Full Idea: To the pure moralist, accepting nothing but ethical values, to be justified, the life of the imagination must be shown not only not to hinder but actually to forward right action, otherwise it is not only useless but, by absorbing energies, harmful.
     From: Roger Fry (An Essay in Aesthetics [1909], p.26)
     A reaction: I think this is the sort of attitude you find in Samuel Johnson. Puritans even reject light music, which seems pleasantly harmless to the rest of us. 'Absorbing energies' doesn't sound much of an objection, and may not be the actual objection.
24. Political Theory / A. Basis of a State / 4. Original Position / b. Veil of ignorance
20595 You can't distribute goods from behind a veil, because their social meaning is unclear [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf]
     Full Idea: Walzer says behind the veil of ignorance there would be no way to know how a particular good should be distributed, because we would not know the social meaning of the good in question.
     From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 4 'Communitarian'
     A reaction: Is Rawls actually proposing to decide details of distribution from behind the veil? There is just the maximin principle. What that means in practice would surely come once the society was under way.
25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 2. Political equality
20592 Complex equality restricts equalities from spilling over, like money influencing politics and law [Walzer, by Tuckness/Wolf]
     Full Idea: Complex equality tries to keep advantages in one area (such as money) from translating into advantages in politics or before the law.
     From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Tuckness,A/Wolf,C - This is Political Philosophy 3 'Complex'
     A reaction: Put like that, Walzer's complex equality becomes very interesting, and pinpoints a major problem of our age, where discrepancies of wealth have become staggeringly large at the top end.
25. Social Practice / B. Equalities / 4. Economic equality
20549 Equality is complex, with different spheres of equality where different principles apply [Walzer, by Swift]
     Full Idea: Michael Walzer argues for 'complex equality', saying different goods belong to different distributive 'spheres', each with its own distributive principles.
     From: report of Michael Walzer (Spheres of Justice [1983]) by Adam Swift - Political Philosophy (3rd ed) 3 'Egalitarian'
     A reaction: Sounds interesting. Equality seems to make different demands when it concerns basic food for survival, or fine wines. You can spend your money freely, but hording in a crisis is frowned on.