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9358
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There are several logics, none of which will ever derive falsehoods from truth [Lewis,CI]
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Full Idea:
The fact is that there are several logics, markedly different, each self-consistent in its own terms and such that whoever, using it, avoids false premises, will never reach a false conclusion.
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From:
C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.366)
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A reaction:
As the man who invented modal logic in five different versions, he speaks with some authority. Logicians now debate which version is the best, so how could that be decided? You could avoid false conclusions by never reasoning at all.
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9357
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Excluded middle is just our preference for a simplified dichotomy in experience [Lewis,CI]
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Full Idea:
The law of excluded middle formulates our decision that whatever is not designated by a certain term shall be designated by its negative. It declares our purpose to make a complete dichotomy of experience, ..which is only our penchant for simplicity.
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From:
C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.365)
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A reaction:
I find this view quite appealing. 'Look, it's either F or it isn't!' is a dogmatic attitude which irritates a lot of people, and appears to be dispensible. Intuitionists in mathematics dispense with the principle, and vagueness threatens it.
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16665
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There are entities, and then positive 'modes', modifying aspects outside the thing's essence [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
Beyond the entities there are certain real 'modes', which are positive, and in their own right act on those entities, giving them something that is outside their whole essence as individuals existing in reality.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
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A reaction:
Suárez is apparently the first person to formulate a proper account of properties as 'modes' of a thing, rather than as accidents which are separate, or are wholly integrated into a thing. A typical compromise proposal in philosophy. Can modes act?
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16666
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A mode determines the state and character of a quantity, without adding to it [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
The inherence of quantity is called its mode, because it affects that quantity, which serves to ultimately determine the state and character of its existence, but does not add to it any new proper entity, but only modifies the preexisting entity.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 7.1.17), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 13.3
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A reaction:
He seems to present mode as a very active thing, like someone who gives it a coat of paint, or hammers it into a new shape. I don't see how a 'mode' can have any ontological status at all. To exist, there has to be some way to exist.
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17007
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Forms must rule over faculties and accidents, and are the source of action and unity [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
A form is required that, as it were, rules over all those faculties and accidents, and is the source of all actions and natural motions of such a being, and in which the whole variety of accidents and powers has its root and unity.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.1.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4
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A reaction:
Pasnau emphasises that this is scholastics giving a very physical and causal emphasis to forms, which made them vulnerable to doubts among the new experiment physicists. Pasnau says forms are 'metaphysical', following Leibniz.
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16780
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Partial forms of leaf and fruit are united in the whole form of the tree [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
In a tree the part of the form that is in the leaf is not the same character as the part that is in the fruit., but yet they are partial forms, and apt to be united ….to compose one complete form of the whole.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.30), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 26.6
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A reaction:
This is a common scholastic view, the main opponent of which was Aquinas, who says each thing only has one form. Do leaves have different DNA from the bark or the fruit? Presumably not (since I only have one DNA), which supports Aquinas.
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16758
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The best support for substantial forms is the co-ordinated unity of a natural being [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
The most powerful arguments establishing substantial forms are based on the necessity, for the perfect constitution of a natural being, that all the faculties and operations of that being are rooted in one essential principle.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 15.10.64), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.4
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A reaction:
Note Idea 15756, that this stability not only applies to biological entities (the usual Aristotelian examples), but also to non-living natural kinds. We might say that the drive for survival is someone united around a single entity.
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16742
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We only know essences through non-essential features, esp. those closest to the essence [Suárez]
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Full Idea:
We can almost never set out the essences of things, as they are in things. Instead, we work through their connection to some non-essential feature, and we seem to succeed well enough when we spell it out through the feature closest to the essence.
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From:
Francisco Suárez (Disputationes metaphysicae [1597], 40.4.16), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 23.5
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A reaction:
It is a common view that with geometrical figures we can actually experience the essence itself. So has science broken through, and discerned actual essences of things?
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9365
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We can maintain a priori principles come what may, but we can also change them [Lewis,CI]
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Full Idea:
The a priori contains principles which can be maintained in the face of all experience, representing the initiative of the mind. But they are subject to alteration on pragmatic grounds, if expanding experience shows their intellectual infelicity.
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From:
C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.373)
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A reaction:
[compressed] This simply IS Quine's famous 'web of belief' picture, showing how firmly Quine is in the pragmatist tradition. Lewis treats a priori principles as a pragmatic toolkit, which can be refined to be more effective. Not implausible...
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16764
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The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus]
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Full Idea:
Every accident of a living thing, as well as all its organs and temperaments and its dispositions are conserved by the soul. We see this from experience, since when that soul recedes, all these dissolve and become corrupted.
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From:
Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5
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A reaction:
A nice example of observing a phenemonon, but not being able to observe the dependence relation the right way round. Compare Descartes in Idea 16763.
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9363
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Science seeks classification which will discover laws, essences, and predictions [Lewis,CI]
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Full Idea:
The scientific search is for such classification as will make it possible to correlate appearance and behaviour, to discover law, to penetrate to the "essential nature" of things in order that behaviour may become predictable.
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From:
C.I. Lewis (A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori [1923], p.368)
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A reaction:
Modern scientific essentialists no longer invoke scare quotes, and I think we should talk of the search for the 'mechanisms' which explain behaviour, but Lewis seems to have been sixty years ahead of his time.
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