6 ideas
| 12695 | Epicurean atomists say body is sensible, to distinguish it from space. [Garber] |
| Full Idea: The Epicurean atomists also defined body in terms of the property of being sensible, in order to distinguish it from empty space, which is not sensible. | |
| From: Daniel Garber (Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad [2009], 1) | |
| A reaction: This is a very illuminating bit of background, for those of us who have the knee-jerk reaction that monadology is barking mad. |
| 21354 | It may be that internal relations like proportion exist, because we directly perceive it [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Some philosophers maintain that we literally perceive proportions and other internal relations. These relations must exist, otherwise we couldn't perceive them. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |
| A reaction: [He cites Mulligan 1991, and Hochberg 2013:232] This seems a rather good point. You can't perceive the differing heights of two people, yet fail to perceive that one is taller. You also perceive 'below', which is external. |
| 21353 | Internal relations are fixed by existences, or characters, or supervenience on characters [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: Internal relations are determined either by the mere existence of the things they relate, or by their intrinsic characters, or they supervene on the intrinsic characters of the things they relate. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 3) | |
| A reaction: Suggesting that they 'supervene' doesn't explain anything (and supervenience never explains anything). I vote for the middle one - the intrinsic character. It has to be something about the existence, and not the mere fact of existence. |
| 21352 | 'Multigrade' relations are those lacking a fixed number of relata [MacBride] |
| Full Idea: A 'unigrade' relation R has a definite degree or adicity: R is binary, or ternary....or n-ary (for some unique n). By contrast a relation is 'multigrade' if it fails to be unigrade. Causation appears to be multigrade. | |
| From: Fraser MacBride (Relations [2016], 1) | |
| A reaction: He also cites entailment, which may have any number of premises. |
| 16764 | The soul conserves the body, as we see by its dissolution when the soul leaves [Toletus] |
| 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. | |
| From: Franciscus Toletus (Commentary on 'De Anima' [1572], II.1.1), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| 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. |
| 12705 | Epicurean atoms are distinguished by their extreme hardness [Garber] |
| Full Idea: In Epicurean atomism (of Cordemoy, for example) there is a world of basic things distinguished by virtue of their extreme hardness. | |
| From: Daniel Garber (Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad [2009], 2) | |
| A reaction: Garber says that Leibniz espouses 'substantial atomism', which is different from this. Leibniz's atoms have active power, where these atoms just embody total resistance. |