Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence', 'Ontological Ground of Alethic Modality' and 'Metaphysical conseqs of principle of reason'

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9 ideas

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 3. Metaphysical Systems

13917	Metaphysics aims to identify categories of being, and show their interdependency [Lowe]
	Full Idea: The central task of metaphysics is to chart the possibilities of existence by identifying the categories of being and the relations of ontological dependency in which beings of different categories stand to one another.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], Intro)
	A reaction: I am beginning to think that he is right about the second one, and that dependency and grounding relations are the name of the game. I don't have Lowe's confidence that philosophers can parcel up reality in neat and true ways.

1. Philosophy / E. Nature of Metaphysics / 6. Metaphysics as Conceptual

13919	Philosophy aims not at the 'analysis of concepts', but at understanding the essences of things [Lowe]
	Full Idea: The central task of philosophy is the cultivation of insights into natures or essences, and not the 'analysis of concepts', with which it is apt to be confused.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1)
	A reaction: This immediately strikes me as a false dichotomy. I like the idea of trying to understand the true natures of things, but how are we going to do it in our armchairs?

7. Existence / C. Structure of Existence / 6. Fundamentals / c. Monads

5060	All substances analyse down to simple substances, which are souls, or 'monads' [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: What (in the analysis of substances) exist ultimately are simple substances - namely, souls, or, if you prefer a more general terms, 'monads', which are without parts.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Metaphysical conseqs of principle of reason [1712], §7)
	A reaction: This seems to me to be atomistic panpsychism. He is opposed to physical atomism, because infinite divisibility seems obvious, but unity is claimed to be equally obvious in the world of the mental. Does this mean bricks are made of souls? Odd.

9. Objects / B. Unity of Objects / 3. Unity Problems / d. Coincident objects

13918	Holes, shadows and spots of light can coincide without being identical [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Holes are things of such a kind that they can coincide without being identical - as are, for example, shadows and spots of light.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 1)
	A reaction: His point is that they thereby fail one of the standard tests for being an 'object'.

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 8. Essence as Explanatory

13921	All things must have an essence (a 'what it is'), or we would be unable to think about them [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Things must have an essence, in the sense of 'what it is to be the individual of that kind', or it would make no sense to say we can talk or think comprehendingly about things at all. If we don't know what it is, how can we think about it?
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2)
	A reaction: Lowe presents this as a sort of Master Argument for essences. I think he is working with the wrong notion of essence. All he means is that things must have identities to be objects of thought. Why equate identity with essence, and waste a good concept?

9. Objects / D. Essence of Objects / 14. Knowledge of Essences

13922	Knowing an essence is just knowing what the thing is, not knowing some further thing [Lowe]
	Full Idea: To know something's essence is not to be acquainted with some further thing of a special kind, but simply to understand what exactly that thing is.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2)
	A reaction: I think he is wrong about this, or at least is working with an unhelpful notion of essence. Identity is one thing, and essence is another. I take essences to be certain selected features of things, which explain their nature.

9. Objects / F. Identity among Objects / 4. Type Identity

13920	Each thing has to be of a general kind, because it belongs to some category [Lowe]
	Full Idea: Any individual thing must be a thing of some general kind - because, at the very least, it must belong to some ontological category.
	From: E.J. Lowe (Two Notions of Being: Entity and Essence [2008], 2)
	A reaction: Where does the law that 'everything must have a category' come from? I'm baffled by remarks of this kind. Where do we get the categories from? From observing the individuals. So which has priority? Not the categories. Is God a kind?

10. Modality / E. Possible worlds / 1. Possible Worlds / e. Against possible worlds

9220	Lewis must specify that all possibilities are in his worlds, making the whole thing circular [Shalkowski, by Sider]
	Full Idea: If purple cows are simply absent from Lewis's multiverse, then certain correct propositions turn out to be impossible. Lewis must require a world for every possibility. But then it is circular, as the multiverse needs modal notions to characterize it.
	From: report of Scott Shalkowski (Ontological Ground of Alethic Modality [1994], 3.9) by Theodore Sider - Reductive Theories of Modality 3.9
	A reaction: [Inversely, a world containing a round square would make that possible] This sounds very nice, though Sider rejects it (p.197). I've never seen how you could define possibility using the concept of 'possible' worlds.

26. Natural Theory / C. Causation / 3. Final causes

5059	Power rules in efficient causes, but wisdom rules in connecting them to final causes [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: In all of nature efficient causes correspond to final causes, because everything proceeds from a cause which is not only powerful, but wise; and with the rule of power through efficient causes, there is involved the rule of wisdom through final causes.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Metaphysical conseqs of principle of reason [1712], §5)
	A reaction: Nowadays this carrot-and-stick view of causation is unfashionable, but I won't rule it out. The deepest 'why?' we can ask won't just go away. This unity by a divine mind strikes me as too simple, but Leibniz is right to try to unify Aristotelian causes.