6 ideas
3536 | Supervenient properties must have matching base properties [Kim] |
Full Idea: Each supervenient property necessarily has a coextensive property in the base family. | |
From: Jaegwon Kim (Concepts of supervenience [1984], §5) | |
A reaction: This is presumably the minimum requirement for a situation of supervenience. How do you decide which property is the 'base' property? Do we just mean that the base causes the other, but not vice versa? |
16608 | Ockham was an anti-realist about the categories [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Ockham is the scholastic paradigm of anti-realism with respect to the categories. | |
From: report of William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 05.3 | |
A reaction: These are the ten categories mentioned in Aristotle's book 'Categories'. |
16599 | Ockham says matter must be extended, so we don't need Quantity [William of Ockham, by Pasnau] |
Full Idea: Ockham regards Quantity as an entirely superfluous ontological category, …because matter is intrinsically extended. | |
From: report of William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320]) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 04.4 |
16681 | Matter gets its quantity from condensation and rarefaction, which is just local motion [William of Ockham] |
Full Idea: Matter is made to have a greater or lesser quantity not through its receiving any absolute accident, but through condensation and rarefaction alone. Parts come more or less close together, which can happen with local motion. | |
From: William of Ockham (Summula philosophiae naturalis [1320], I.13), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 15.1 | |
A reaction: This is Ockham at his most modern, rejecting the odd idea of Quantity in favour of a modern corpuscular view of the mere motions of matter. |
541 | Virtue comes more from habit than character [Critias] |
Full Idea: More men are good through habit than through character. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B09), quoted by John Stobaeus - Anthology 3.29.41 |
542 | Fear of the gods was invented to discourage secret sin [Critias] |
Full Idea: When the laws forbade men to commit open crimes of violence, and they began to do them in secret, a wise and clever man invented fear of the gods for mortals, to frighten the wicked, even if they sin in secret. | |
From: Critias (fragments/reports [c.440 BCE], B25), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 9.54 |